Voting,non‐voting and consumer buying behaviour: non‐voter segmentation (NVS) and the underlining causes of electoral inactivity

This paper examines some of the issues and debates surrounding the voting and non‐voting of the UK electorate. It attempts to compare and contrast voter behaviour from both a political science perspective and a consumer buying behaviour perspective. In particular, the paper details the output of primary research into non‐voter behaviour and attempts to cluster these motivations and rationales into psychographic segments of non‐voting behaviour. Issues such as alignment and dealignment, social and inherited values are debated in detail, with particular attention being paid to party identification, issue voting and social determinant theory. The paper both challenges and supports previously presented arguments regarding political issues and voting. In addition, electoral turnout and voter participation are analysed and the consequences for democracy discussed. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Migrants and their families in the home country: a bi-directional influence on voting behaviour

ABSTRACT

The voting behaviour of migrants has been studied extensively but limited attention has been paid to how the discussion with families in the home country can be important. This article analyzes under what circumstances migrants influence or are influenced by their families in voting decisions. The analysis uses individual-level data from a survey conducted in 2018 on a sample of 1,839 Romanian migrants. The results indicate that most migrants are not engaged in acts of persuasion about voting. Those who influence their families have a direct interest in the election results, are informed about what happens in the country and are politically active. The migrants who are influenced by their families have limited experience in the countries of residence and strong ties to their home country.     

Campaigning and split-ticket voting in new electoral systems: the first MMP elections in New Zealand, Scotland and Wales

New electoral systems create learning problems for parties and electors: the parties have to learn how to focus their campaigns and the electors how best to use their votes. This was the case in three countries in the late 1990s where MMP was used for the first time rather than first-past-the-post: New Zealand in 1996 and Scotland and Wales in 1999. MMP involves each elector voting twice — for a candidate in a single-member constituency contest and for a party in a regional/national list contest. Survey and (in New Zealand) official data show that substantial proportions of the three electorates voted a split ticket — the candidate they supported was from a different party to that they voted for in the list contest. (Approximately one-in-five did this in Scotland and Wales and two-in-five in New Zealand.) We argue that split-ticket voting will be influenced by the amount of information received by electors regarding the candidates for the constituency seats. Using the amount of campaign expenditure by each candidate as a measure of the volume of information provided, we find strong supporting evidence for this responsive voter model in each of the three countries.     

Economic evaluations vs. ideology: Diagnosing the sources of electoral change in Turkey, 2002–2011

Turkish elections reflect two competing influences. One concerns a long-term increasingly conservative ideological orientation; the other, more short-term pragmatic evaluations primarily on the economic policy front. This article uses three nationwide representative surveys from 2002, 2007 and 2011 to assess the relative merits of these competing hypotheses. The findings indicate that the critical election of 2002 is not shaped by economic performance evaluations but rather by indicators of ideology at large and left–right ideology in particular. The influence of ideology appears to rise from 2002 to 2007 and 2011. Economic performance evaluations increase in salience from 2002 to 2007 but seem to have somewhat lost their power for 2011. Implications of these findings for the Turkish party system and further research questions are discussed in the concluding section.     

论异议股东股份回购请求权

异议股东股份回购请求权,是指当公司股东大会基于多数表决,就有关公司合并、分立、重大资产出售、换股计划、公司章程修改等公司重大事项作出决议时,持异议的少数股东拥有要求公司对其所持股份的价值进行评估,并由公司以公平价格予以购买的权利。从基础理论、具体内容方面对异议股东股份回购请求权进行研究,通过对我国目前回购请求权立法现状的分析及对存在弊端的检讨,在分析我国构建回购请求权的必要性的基础上,提出完善我国异议股东股份回购请求权制度的具体设想。     

In participatory budgeting we trust? Fairness,tactics and (in)accessibility in participatory governance

ABSTRACT

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a significant innovation in democracy and local development. PB provides the opportunity for citizens to engage in processes of deliberation and decision-making upon the allocation of public funds. As new critical discourse emerges surrounding this model of local government spending, a significant area warranting investigation concerns how trust, and indeed mistrust, factor into PB. Through an analysis of interviews with residents and Council staff engaged in PB processes in a county in the north of England, we highlight the ways in which issues of trust can impact on participation in these initiatives, and also strengthen relationships between voting delegates, project teams and local government. This paper argues that increasing the perceived accessibility, and reconsidering the inclusion of mass membership groups in PB, might help to create progressive, effective and trustful participation.     

The electoral roots of unequal representation. A spatial modelling approach to party systems and voting in Western Europe

For a number of Western democracies, it has been observed that the preferences of poor and rich citizens are unequally represented in political institutions and outcomes. Yet, the causes of this phenomenon are still under debate. We focus on the role of elections in this process, by disentangling biases towards different income groups that stem from the party system and from voters’ behaviour. Our aim is to uncover whether elections as selection mechanisms contribute to unequal representation by analysing factors of the supply and demand sides of the electoral process. On the supply side, we focus on the congruence of parties’ policy offers and voters’ preference distributions. This shapes citizens’ possibilities to express their policy preferences. On the demand side, we are interested in the extent to which citizens from different income groups base their vote decisions on their policy preferences. The empirical analysis relies on the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and covers 13 Western European countries. Our results indicate, first, that the economic and cultural preferences of poor and rich citizens differ significantly, and second, that party systems in the countries under investigation represent the lowest income groups the worst, and the middle income groups the best. This makes it difficult for citizens at both the lower and the higher end of the income distribution to voice their preferences in elections. Additionally, we show that low income citizens tend to take policy less into consideration when making an electoral choice than richer citizens. Thus, while the rich make up for their representation bias by taking policy more into account in their voting behaviour, the electoral stage poses another obstacle for the poor to overcome the representation bias. In summary it can be said that already on the supply side there is an unbalanced disadvantage in terms of representation for the very poor and the very rich, but the pattern leads to an even more asymmetrical misrepresentation of the poor due to the election act.     

What accounts for Duverger's law? The behavioral mechanisms underpinning two-party convergence in India

Duverger's Law states the single-member district plurality rules should produce two-party competition. In district-level election races where this expectation holds, what political behaviors—ranging from elites' strategic formation of political parties to voters' strategic abandonment of losing candidates—account for these outcomes? Using data from state elections in India, this article demonstrates that no single mechanism accounts for most electoral outcomes consistent with Duverger's Law. However, mechanisms related to the behavior elites, far more than voters, produce convergence on two-party competition. This article uncovers relatively little evidence of outcomes driven by strategic voting, instead finding that much of the convergence on two parties is attributable to various forms of strategic entry in which parties selectively field candidates in certain races. In particular, elite collusion—when multiple parties coordinate on where to field candidates—is especially important. Data from other countries confirm that these findings are not unique to India.     

An experimental investigation of voter myopia in economic evaluations

A prevalent assumption in the economic voting literature is that voters’ retrospective evaluations are based on very recent outcomes only, that is, they are myopic. I test this assumption by drawing on a population-based survey experiment from Turkey. Turkey presents a good opportunity to explore voters’ time horizons for economic voting: the long tenure of the same single-party government entailed periods of both good and poor performance, and its overall record to date has been better than its immediate predecessors. I find that voters can provide divergent assessments of incumbent’s performance in managing the economy over different time periods that are in line with the country’s macroeconomic trajectory. Moreover, voters’ evaluations of the incumbent’s performance during its entire tenure have a stronger effect on economic vote than their shorter-term evaluations, defying voter myopia. I provide evidence that long-term outcomes might weigh heavier in voters’ considerations than commonly assumed.     

表决权代理制度研究

表决权代理制度是现代公司制度中维护股东权益的重要手段,本文研究了国外公司法对表决权代理的规定,并对完善我国的表决权代理制度提出了立法建议。