Economic voting in multi-level contexts: Evidence from Kerala and West Bengal in India

What determines electoral support for national incumbent parties and state-level challengers in sub-national pro-poor contexts? Based on survey data from the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal, collected prior to the 2019 national election, we find that voters were more (less) inclined to vote for the sub-national incumbent relative to the national incumbent if their household economic conditions were perceived to have improved (deteriorated) relative to national economic conditions. Our findings indicate that voters in these settings correctly assume that the sub-national incumbent cannot be held responsible for changes in national economic conditions, but, at the same time, the existence of a strong welfare state at the sub-national level creates expectations that the sub-national government is responsible for personal welfare. Hence, the national election is used to assess the economic performance of both the sub-national and the national incumbent.     

香港修例风波背后的深层次问题

香港2019年爆发的修例风波是香港回归祖国后遇到的最严峻的政治局面,也是“一国两制”在香港实践以来遇到的最大挑战。这场风波清晰地暴露了一系列严重妨碍“一国两制”在香港全面和准确贯彻的因素和情况。这些因素和情况包括:国家安全漏洞明显、政治体制内“自由”和“威权”失衡、“一国两制”的“另类诠释”存在、香港“核心价值”并不牢固、部分香港人“亲西方、抗中国”固有心态、国家宪法和基本法教育不到位、香港自由放任资本主义体制的缺失。中央对此已有察觉,并针对部分因素和情况制定了应对之策,从而为在香港全面和准确贯彻“一国两制”营造有利条件。     

Voting on Europe,again and again: Stability and change in the Irish experience with EU referendums

This article is about comparative voting behaviour in referendums on the EU and explores variation within one country rather than variations across countries. This enables us to control for broad national context while allowing variations in the immediate referendum context, in terms of campaign intensity and incumbency. It analyses voting behaviour in the many referendums that have taken place in Ireland. The major part of the analysis deals with the five referendums since 2001, as this allows the use of the same measurement of EU support and the use of post referendum surveys. Most attention is paid to attitude to the EU, party support and satisfaction with the incumbent government, reflecting the main debates in the literature on the issues and party cues. The relative importance of each is said to depend on contextual factors such as campaign intensity and economic strength. We find both party cues and issues matter consistently, and suggestive evidence that incumbency matters to the effectiveness of cues given by the two main pro-EU parties but the major finding is that variations in the factors driving voting behaviour in different Irish polls on Europe are slight and barely significant.     

Voting rules in insolvency law: a simple-game theoretic approach

A chief characteristic of modern insolvency law in Canada, Germany, the UK, and the US is the provision for ‘workouts’ or ‘schemes of arrangement’ by which insolvent companies can attempt to rehabilitate the business. If reorganization is chosen, the debtor has to devise a plan of action which will be voted upon by claimants. The voting rules, however, differ in each jurisdiction to a greater or lesser extent and as yet have not been analyzed in any rigorous manner. This paper provides an approach based upon the theory of simple games to analyze the rules in terms of the ease which each of these regimes can pass (or hinder) plans and how these rules distribute value among claimants. We pay particular attention to the role of classification and the effect of coalition formation.     

Voting after war: Legacy of conflict and the economy as determinants of electoral support in Croatia

In spite of a rapidly expanding literature on democratization, elections, and conflict, we lack systematic understanding of what determines electoral results in post-conflict societies. This article offers a novel initiative in revealing electoral patterns in states recuperating from painful experiences of war by analyzing data from more than 500 Croatian municipalities during five post-war electoral cycles. While the findings suggest voters do respond to parties' economic policies, the underlying pattern of electoral support demonstrates that competition is heavily constrained by the legacy of conflict, with the communities more exposed to the violence being more likely to vote for the principal party of the center-right which led the country into independence and throughout the war. This tendency exhibits a remarkable level of stability over time, which suggests conflict dynamics can become firmly embedded in post-conflict democratic electoral competition – even in societies that are not ethnically diverse.     

Compared to what? Media-guided reference points and relative economic voting

The idea of the relative economy, or benchmarking economic voting, has been around for a long time. However, the choice of international benchmark(s) remains underspecified, especially in cross-national and time-series studies. This paper argues that the selection process of benchmark(s) should be guided by the theory suggesting that voters benchmark countries that are similar, familiar, and connected, and that media guide voters to appreciate these reference points. Using domestic media coverage from Lexis-Nexis spanning 22 languages, 29 democracies, and over 30 years, this research identifies the unique reference points across time and space. Analysis of this novel dataset shows that voters react strongly to relative economic performance when they make vote choices. Moreover, the benchmarking effects become more pronounced with highly educated populations, but are not affected by clarity of responsibility.     

It's not only the economy,stupid! Good governance matters in elections

This paper examines the impact of good governance in elections compared to the role of the economy. The latter is considered the key factor in electoral survival, while governance issues are rarely included in politicians' discourse or campaigning strategies. Using the ParlGov data and the ICRG indicators for 160 elections, the analysis shows that good governance matters, but mainly for developing countries. Economic growth is an important electoral topic in most of the elections, but its effect varies systematically across contexts. The impact of each good governance and the economy get weaker as the other worsens, and these conditional effects are moderated by the level of economic development.     

The gender gap in same-gender voting: The role of context

If parties nominate both male and female candidates, open-list PR electoral rules enable voters to engage in same-gender voting (i.e. select candidate of the same gender). In this regard, there is a gender gap in Finland, an otherwise highly egalitarian country: over time, men tend to support mostly male candidates, while women are roughly equally divided between male and female candidates. This study investigates whether voters' likelihood of selecting a candidate of the same gender is affected by contextual factors. Based on pooled cross-sectional data from five Finnish parliamentary elections between 1979 and 2011, it shows that gender differences in same-gender voting are substantially reduced when district magnitude and gender ratios among candidates and elected deputies are taken into account.     

Online versus offline: Exploring the link between how candidates campaign and how voters cast their ballot

The Internet is playing an increasingly important role in shaping citizens’ political experience. We turn to it to consume political news and, in some countries, to even cast our ballots at parliamentary elections. Leading the way in embracing Internet voting (i-voting) is Estonia where nearly half of the ballots cast during the 2019 parliamentary election were submitted online. Using original data from the 2019 Estonian Candidate Study, this paper explores the relationship between how candidates campaign and their electoral performance. It finds greater use of both offline and online campaign tools to contribute to higher vote shares as candidates win more traditional and i-votes. These positive effects are similar in size, in terms of candidates’ overall electoral performance as well as their ability to attract different types of votes. The results show not only that individual-level campaigns continue to matter, but that online campaigns have become as important as offline campaigns for candidates, and voters’ political activity often transcends the medium through which they receive political communication.