Precarity and Political Immobilisation: Migrants from Burma in Chiang Mai,Thailand

An estimated 1.5 million citizens of Burma reside as refugees or migrants in Thailand, where harsh treatment, harassment and social stigmas contribute to a climate of precarity. Although one possible course of action for any community under strain is political mobilisation, for migrants from Burma in the northern city of Chiang Mai, high degrees of exploitation and insecurity have generated an overwhelming disinterest in political issues. The article examines this relationship in five main sections. The first presents the two key concepts that structure the analysis: precarity and political mobilisation. The second examines the context of migration from Burma to Thailand, focusing both on the climate of unrest found in much of Burma and on Thailand's treatment of migrant workers, its non-participation in core international legislation and its sub-standard migrant registration system. The third explains how this study of Burmese migrants in Chiang Mai was undertaken and reviews the ethical considerations required in a study of vulnerable groups. The fourth documents the study's findings and presents migrants' testimony. The fifth seeks to explain the link between precarity and political passivity in this case, and considers the wider implications. The concluding section restates the core finding.     

Addressing the schizophrenia of global Jihad

This paper deploys Deleuze and Guattari's AntiOedipus to critique discourses on radicalisation that call for a ‘public diplomacy’ to challenge a Jihadi meta-narrative or core identity. It argues that the Global Jihad should be reconceptualised as schizophrenic inasmuch as it is made up of a multiplicity of groups, aims, values, rationales and identities. The paper seeks to develop the utility of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy for bridging critical and traditional terrorism studies by arguing that their schizoanalysis is a helpful aid to reassessing dominant identitarian conceptual frameworks for Jihad, and offers directions for reformulating our responses to radicalisation.     

Local News Media and Voter Turnout

A reasonably high turnout is a quality of a local democracy. In this article, we investigate whether media coverage of politics leads to increased or decreased voter turnout. Based on a unique data set, our analysis shows that local news media coverage has a positive effect on voter turnout, but only if the news media provide politically relevant information to the voters and only at local elections. Both findings are in accordance with the Information Model, which states that rising levels of political relevant information increases the probability of voting.     

Strategic campaigning, closeness, and voter mobilization in U.S. Presidential elections

The scholarly literature on voter mobilization is ambivalent regarding the effects of closeness on turnout. Economic analyses of turnout (i.e. the classic calculus of voting) contend that as elections become closer, voters perceive their participation as more valuable because there is a greater chance that they will cast the deciding vote. Other work argues that voters do not take closeness into account because the probability that their vote uniquely changes the outcome of an election is quite small even in close elections. Still, this second perspective maintains that closeness may increase turnout because elites distribute campaign resources to places where election results could be affected by mobilizing additional supporters. While the latter perspective is theoretically well-developed, empirical support for the notion that elite activity (rather than citizen perceptions) connects closeness and turnout is limited. Using improved measures of closeness and campaign activities, we test for citizen perception and elite mobilization effects on turnout in the context of U.S. Presidential elections. Results show that while closeness has no direct effect on turnout, elites indeed target campaign activities on close states and the asymmetric distribution of resources across states results in higher turnout in battleground states.     

Optimists and skeptics: Why do people believe in the value of their single vote?

We investigate the origins of voters' beliefs about the value of their single vote. We construe such beliefs as a function of psychological predispositions and exposure to information about the competitiveness of the electoral race. We test this theoretical model using data from the 2008 Canadian federal election and a new survey question tapping voters' beliefs about whether their vote can make a difference. Our results show that sense of efficacy has a strong effect, efficacious voters being more prone to optimism. Competitiveness of the race also matters, but only among attentive voters.     

A balance between candidate- and party-centric representation under mixed-member systems: The evidence from voter behavior in Taiwan

Mixed-member systems are usually defined as electoral systems that combine SMDP and CLPR, both of which are more likely to induce party reputation-seeking. Building on the literature of electoral institutions, this article provides an explanation of how mixed-member systems structure voter behavior and achieve a balance between candidate- and party-centric representation. Using Taiwan as a case of MMS, this article tests hypotheses against survey data and investigates the determinants of voting decisions for the two ballots. By employing a Bayesian bivariate probit model, this article shows that, first, partisan factors affect voter behavior in both nominal and list ballots. However, it is affective rather than rational considerations for political parties that play the major role. Second, personal reputation influences voters' choices of the nominal and list vote, but only negative elements matter for the list vote. Finally, there is a moderately positive correlation between the two ballots, which potentially results from affective, partisan considerations.     

Boxholm tea party: Taxation and voter turnout in a mature democracy

The link between taxation and representation is generally considered foundational to the emergence of democratic governance. Nevertheless, the empirical relationship between taxation and the extent to which citizens actually exert representation by turning out to vote remains virtually unexplored. Using a panel of all Swedish municipalities from 1979 to 2018, I find that hikes in local tax rates are linked to increased municipal voter turnout. Accounting for a wide range of confounders, including turnout in concurrent parliamentary- and county elections, these results indicate an important untapped explanation for changes in turnout, while offering a rare explicit test of the taxation-representation argument drawn from a mature democracy.     

Did you see it coming? Explaining the accuracy of voter expectations for district and (sub)national election outcomes in multi-party systems

The expectations of voters regarding election outcomes appear to be mostly influenced by their own political preferences. This raises two important questions. First, once partisan predispositions have been accounted for, how much do other variables like interest in the campaign, election news attentiveness, political knowledge, education or competitiveness help to explain one’s ability at predicting election outcomes? Second, does one’s level of sophistication moderate the link between political preferences and forecasting abilities? To answer these questions, I mobilize data from seven elections taken at the district and (sub)national levels. I also introduce a new measure of forecasting ability—the cumulative Brier score index. In most cases, variables other than preferences and knowledge have little or no influence on the accuracy of voters’ expectations both at the (sub)national and district levels. Political knowledge is positively associated with citizens’ forecasting abilities; however, it does not appear to moderate the preference–expectation link. This result contradicts findings from existing work and holds important implications for the study of citizen forecasting.     

Representatives of the public? Public opinion and interest group activity

Although scholars have long speculated about how organised interests link the public to decision makers, there has actually been little empirical research on this important element of democratic theory. This important gap in the literature is addressed in this article by examining, in addition to other supply‐side and demand‐side factors, whether groups mobilise on issues in policy areas that are regarded as salient by the public. Based on an analysis of 4,501 contributions in 142 European Commission online consultations, it is found that organised interests potentially can act as a transmission belt between the public and decision makers. Although the results vary to some degree by issues, higher rates of mobilisation are found on those issues that fall within policy areas that are regarded as salient by the general public and those with consequences for budgetary spending.     

Armed mobilisation and the nexus of territory,identity, and authority: the contested territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge in eastern DR Congo

The closely intertwined notions of territory, identity, and authority are at the heart of conflict dynamics in the eastern DR Congo. Focusing on the territorial aspirations of the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu, this article looks at the ways in which the nexus of territory, identity, and authority shapes and is shaped by armed mobilisation. Excluded from a customary chiefdom in the colonial era, the Banyamulenge, a community framed as ‘migrants’, have been striving for a territory of their own for decades. These aspirations have fed into armed activity by both Banyamulenge and Mai-Mai groups linked to opposing communities, providing deeply resonating mobilising narratives that are employed to justify violent action. Yet, as this article demonstrates, the links between armed mobilisation and the nexus of territory, identity, and authority are both contingent and reciprocal, as violent conflict also impacts the meanings and boundaries of identities, authority structures and territory.