The Role of State Advertising in Latin American Newspapers: Was the Demise of Nicaragua’s Barricada Newspaper Political Sabotage?

Barricada, a daily newspaper in Nicaragua, closed in 1998. The editor said his newspaper was a victim of a government policy to remove state advertising from Barricada, which was the official newspaper of the opposition Sandinista political party. This study examines the role of state advertising as a means of governmental control of the news media. The study finds evidence to support the claim that Barricada was the victim of a partisan campaign to withhold advertising. But it also finds that the Sandinistas had done the same thing when they were in power in the 1980s.     

新权利的生成:以“户外广告发布权”为例

随着户外广告市场的繁荣,各地纷纷通过地方立法确立了户外广告发布制度,概括起来主要有四种模式。梳理这四种模式的演变思路发现,政府的角色从行政许可主体逐步演化为户外广告发布权的产权主体。这里的户外广告发布权是地方立法创设的新权利,它的生成在一定程度上反映出物权权能的权利化趋势。然而,地方立法创设的新权利并不具有当然的合理性,一项新权利的诞生不仅取决于法律规定,更取决于实践的需要和理论上的内在合理性。从理论研究角度出发,法律必须慎重对待新权利的诞生,防止因权利泛滥给司法实践带来混乱。     

Candidate appearance in campaign advertisements

Many scholars have examined the nature of campaign advertising strategy across differing contexts in U.S. elections. Little attention has been devoted to exploring the incentives that candidates face to appear — or not — in their own advertisements. We argue that candidates should seek to distance themselves from potential backlash stemming from more negative messages by not appearing in negative ads. We also expect that candidates should be more likely to appear in advertisements aired during primary elections relative to general elections because candidates should use ads in this election stage to introduce themselves to voters. Furthermore, incumbents should be less likely to appear in ads than other candidates because their constituents should not need to be introduced to them. Data on candidate-sponsored television advertisements collected across four years for four different offices provides support for our expectations and suggests that candidates make strategic decisions about when to appear in advertisements.     

How (Not) to Form a Progressive Alliance: Lessons from the History of Left Cooperation

Britain’s political parties can be divided into two blocs: a ‘progressive bloc’ of parties on the left/centre‐left, and a ‘reactionary bloc’ of those on the right/centre‐right. In three of the last four general elections, the progressive bloc won an appreciably larger share of the popular vote than its reactionary rival. Yet its greater internal fragmentation has been repeatedly punished under first past the post, leading to what is now over a decade of Conservative‐led governments. This has prompted growing pressure to form a ‘progressive alliance’ between Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and their Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish nationalist competitors. This article sheds a historical and international light on these demands, examining the difficulties other similar efforts at progressive cooperation have faced across the world. It considers how progressive alliances have previously sought to overcome geographical, ideological, and social divides between their constituent members, and draws some salutary lessons for British progressives today.     

Intersectionality and women's political citizenship: the case of Mauritius

This paper analyses the impact of intersectionality and multiple identities on women's political citizenship in Mauritius. Mauritius is commonly known as a ‘rainbow nation’ with its multiethnic population marked by ethnic or communal divisions. Communalism dominates the Mauritian political system and institutions, intensifying during elections when the different communal groups compete for representation in parliament. The paper argues that the strong emphasis attributed to ethnic and communal representation by the Mauritian political system and structures marginalises women's political citizenship. Political candidates are often sponsored by religious and sociocultural organisations that are male dominated whereas the women's lobby is weak in comparison to the communal lobby. The paper thus contends that the communal dimension in Mauritian politics carries a significant gendered dimension. Communalism has made the political system very resistant to change, despite the fact that it marginalises women.     

Russia’s local government in the process of authoritarian regime transformation: incentives for the survival of local democracy

In 2003, the authorities of Russia launched a comprehensive reform of local government. One of the elements of this reform was the replacement of the previously predominant form of local government, characterised by the presence of directly elected mayors, with the council-manager model. While originally motivated largely by the desire to enhance the efficacy of local government, the reform was implemented concurrently with Russia’s transition to electoral authoritarianism, with the council-manager model emerging as a major tool of authoritarian transformation. This study uses the data from 79 capitals of Russia’s regions in order to identify those factors that facilitated the survival of directly elected mayors in these cities. The analysis reveals that the past trajectories of regime transitions at the regional level in the form of elite settlement, economic resourcefulness, and the lack of politically motivated deference to the federal authorities contributed to the survival of local democracy in Russia.     

Recalibrating social protection: Electoral competition and the new partisan politics of the welfare state

This article investigates the new party politics of welfare states with a particular focus on electoral competition. The argument is that welfare state politics are no longer just about more or less, but involve trade-offs among ‘new’ versus ‘old’ social rights, and hence social investment versus social consumption. However, party priorities on these issues are highly dependent upon their electoral situation. As electoral competition becomes more intense, parties focus more on vote maximisation than on their traditional policy goals. For left parties, this means focusing more on social investment, which appeals to their growing constituency of progressive sociocultural professionals, and less on defending the traditional income maintenance programmes favoured by their core blue-collar voters. Centre-right parties, on the other hand, should hesitate to retrench old social rights when electoral competition intensifies because they need to prioritise their appeal to culturally conservative working-class voters over their traditional fiscally conservative policy profiles. Using a new dataset and a recently published measure of electoral competitiveness, the article shows that as electoral competition intensifies, left governments are willing to prioritise social investment by reducing pension rights generosity in order to expand programmes for new social risks, while centre-right governments by contrast avoid retrenchment of pension rights and pension expenditures. The findings demonstrate that this relationship is moderated by the presence of a credible radical right challenger, which increases the electoral risk of welfare state recalibration.     

Is the Future of Electoral Reform Local?

The Electoral Reform Society has recently published two reports putting the case for electoral reform in local government. These suggest acceptance, in the wake of defeat in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, that the group's ultimate goal of change to the Westminster electoral system is unlikely to be fulfilled soon and that a more gradual strategy is therefore needed. This paper examines this shift by asking three questions. First, is Westminster electoral reform really a dead letter? Second, is local electoral reform more likely—and, if so, just how much more likely? Third, would local electoral reform matter in itself?