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.     

论浙南侨乡移民意识的生成、作用及其提升

本文借助社会网络理论，阐述了浙南侨乡所特有的精神产物——移民意识，解析了它产生的社会历史条件，论述了它对侨乡社会各方面所发生的作用和影响，同时，也分析了它有待进一步提升的内容及途径，以助侨乡可持续发展。     

CV–the Vital First Step

正When enjoying the excitement of coming to China to ind a job,does it ever occur to you that 100of the CVs you’ve sent out don’t even get a glimpse from the Chinese HR?! To keen overseas job seekers who want to work in China:While anticipating the excitement of coming to China to find a job,does it ever occur to you that maybe100 of the CVs you’ve sent out won’t even get a glimpse from the Chinese company HR?Does that shock you?If you expect to get a good job because of your years of work experience and career     

全球金融危机对我国海外引才的机遇、挑战和对策

华尔街刮起的金融风暴引发了全球经济危机,继而导致全球企业裁员潮,使全球人才供需发生变化,这对于正处在经济转型升级关键时期的我国来说,既带来了抄底海外人才为我所用的机遇,又面临了人才吸引的诸多挑战。客观分析海外引才可能面临的挑战,对我们引进和有效使用高层次、高技能、高质量且符合实践需要的人才意义重大。     

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.     

论我国海外投资保险制度的构建

海外投资保险制度是资本输出国为了保护本国海外投资、消除本国国民海外投资的政治风险而建立的一种保护制度。保险人和保险范围是构建海外投资保险制度中两个非常重要的问题。在我国，海外投资活动尽管开展得较晚，但其发展却极为迅速，然而，目前我国尚未建立起发达国家所普遍实行的海外投资保险制度。我国在建立海外投资保险制度中，保险人的资格应采取将直接投资的管理、审批机构与具体承办海外投资保险业务的保险机构分开成立的方式，保险范围除了各国一般承保的征收险、外汇险以及战争险，还应包括违约风险、恐怖主义风险以及营业中断风险。     

A perfect match? The impact of statement selection on voting advice applications' ability to match voters and parties

This study examines how statement selection systematically affects the output of voting advice applications (VAAs). Does the statement selection influence how often voters are matched with parties that ‘should be’ close to them? Our benchmark is a classic account of issue voting, the proximity left–right model. We analyze the Belgian VAA Do the Vote Test and find that the output resembles the left–right model. When more left–right statements are included, more left-wing voters get the advice to vote for left-wing parties and the same is true on the right, while simultaneously advantaging parties with more extreme positions on this dimension. We also analyze issue saliency and find that parties are disadvantaged when more statements about salient issues are included. These findings imply tough choices for VAA builders.