Ballots,Bargains, and Bombs: Terrorist Targeting of Spoiler Opportunities

Benjamin Netanyahu's come-from-behind victory over Shimon Peres in the Israeli national elections of May 1996, following an apparent intensification of Palestinian terrorism over the course of that spring, reminded observers of the political ramifications of terrorism. Since May 1996 was also the month in which Israel reentered Final Status negotiations with a Palestinian delegation in Taba, Egypt, the timing of this surge in violence encourages us to ask if terrorists regularly conceive of elections and rounds of negotiations as “spoiler opportunities,” or opportune times to undermine peaceful political processes. We address this question in the context of Israel's long‐running experience with elections, negotiations, and terrorism. We hypothesize that attacks resulting in fatalities are likely to increase in periods immediately surrounding Israeli general elections and key rounds of negotiations affecting the fate of the Palestinian population. Negative binomial event count analyses of the period 1970–2007 suggest that violent opponents indeed viewed the periods preceding negotiations and the ends of electoral cycles as “spoiler opportunities.”     

Democracy Promotion versus Engagement with Iran

US President Barack Obama has tried two very distinct policy options in dealing with Iran. The engagement policy was designed to make a break with the past experience and re-start US-Iran relations on a positive footing. This approach was consistent with the advice offered to the new administration by Iran analysts and leaders of non-governmental organisations. The implication of the engagement policy, however, was sidelining the US commitment to democracy and human rights in Iran. This policy could offer little to the budding reform movement in 2009. The alternative policy of containment was not beneficial to the reform movement either. The policy shift at the end of 2009 was a response to Iran's failure to comply with the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The containment policy, manifested in the fourth round of UN-imposed sanctions on Iran, has led to a further entrenching of the hard-liners in the regime and intolerance of internal dissent.     

Nothing personal: explaining the rise and decline of political machines in Ukraine

This article is the first to explore and compare the dynamics of party-building between the three main political forces that competed for power during the last decade in Ukraine – Viktor Yushchenko's Nasha Ukrayina (Our Ukraine), Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), and Viktor Yanukovych's Partiya Rehioniv (Party of Regions). We show that their political trajectories can be explained by differences in their organizational structure and distribution of resources within the party's leadership. When a party depends on resources linked primarily to one individual, it will develop a personalized decision-making structure advantaging its leader, and the party's fortunes will be tied to the popularity (or lack of same) of the leader. By contrast, when a party relies equally on resources from several groups, a more consociational style of decision-making is likely to emerge. Using Ukraine as a case study, the article shows that personality-led parties will be more vulnerable to defections and less capable of absorbing potential competitors. On the other hand, coalition-led parties are better capable of surviving defeats, maintaining internal cohesion, and merging with like-minded parties.     

Mass Media Paradoxes in the Bulgarian Elections of 2001

ABSTRACT

Electoral year '01 marked another headway of the country along the road of its democratic development.

For the first time after 1989, the parliamentary elections (fifth in a row) were not held before their time, but after a normally completed cycle. The unproductive bipolar model of alternating the main political opponents was broken. A new and unusual player of royal blood emerged, who, without any firm structures, with little funds, and under the conditions of political and media hostility, won firmly the majority vote.

For the first time since the outset of transition, a representative of the Left qualified for the presidential post, which was the most articulate acknowledgement that the Left has changed and the most eloquent criticism of the former bearers of public confidence.

Both parliamentary and presidential elections '01 took part under the conditions of a free media system and after the advent of Internet into political campaigning, information, and analysis. Both campaigns and election returns, however, manifested grave professional problems in the domain of sociology and the media that failed to meet the principal requirement for unbiased information and predictability of developments and results. In this situation, the society manifested considerable civil advancement. The paradox of that electoral year was that both Par-Lilia Raycheva is affiliated with the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication, The St. Kliment Ohridsky Sofia University, Bulgaria. Parliament and President were elected contrary to sociological forecasts and attitudes.     

The 2001 British Election Study Internet Poll

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the findings of the Internet component of the 2001 BES and compares them with those of the other BES pre-election surveys. Part 1 outlines the rationale that underpins the introduction of Internet polling as a supplement to more traditional methods of assessing mass public opinion. Part 2 describes the marginal distributions on the key dependent variable-the projected vote shares of the main political parties-of the three pre-election polls that were conducted using BES questionnaires. Intriguingly, the (unweighted) Internet-based poll provided a better guess of the actual vote shares in the subsequent election than either of the two conventional polls. Part 3 provides a more detailed comparison of the profiles of the face-to-face and Internet-based polls. It shows how the Internet poll, compared with the face-to-face poll, was skewed demographically towards the professional classes and politically towards the Conservative Party. Part 4 explores the extent to which the use of the Internet poll might result in spurious causal inferences being drawn about the sources of voting preferences in the 2001 UK election. A simple, direct-effects causal model is estimated using both the face-to-face probability sample data and the Internet survey data. The results suggest that, although the raw probability and Internet samples differ significantly, the relationships among the key variables do not differ significantly across the two samples. We conclude that Internet polling has an important part to play in gauging and analysing public opinion in future UK elections.     

Online Opposition in Singapore: Communications Outreach Without Electoral Gain

While “new media” have substantially altered the landscape for information dissemination and social mobilisation, these media are neither all alike in their ideological leanings or intentions, nor independently capable of identity transformation and mobilisation. The paper explores these new media in the context of Malaysia since the late 1990s. It differentiates among news sites and organisational websites, which transmit (often previously proscribed) information to domestic and foreign audiences, with potentially significant effects on “civicness” and mobilisation; blogs, which tend to be primarily personalised, monological and often unfiltered; and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which have eroded the anonymity of online interaction but represent the apex of self-selected communities. “Old media” still populate this landscape as well, from newspapers and other media sources, to public lectures, to leaflets and other ad hoc publications. Even apart from common caveats as to who has access, criteria for evaluation of these new and old media as tools for political change must vary, including differing degrees of information-provision and edification, interest articulation and aggregation, and transformation of collective identities so as to enable new patterns of mobilisation for collective action.     

The regional outcome of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement five years down the road: Are external forces playing a progressive role?

ABSTRACT

The Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of January 2005 is the outcome of regional and international mediation led by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD)1 and the IGAD Partners’ Forum broadened to include the United States of America, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy and the United Nations. Five years into its implementation the peace agreement appears to have transformed the war between North and South Sudan into a series of engagements of conflicting nature. Numerous contradictory actions by both the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the National Congress Party (NCP) (the main political forces behind the CPA) have been noted during the ongoing implementation process (Grawert forthcoming 2010; Grawert and El-Battahani 2005; Wassara 2008). Although internal Sudanese forces are the key actors in implementing the CPA, external forces are critical in providing the support and pressure needed for a complete realisation of the peace deal. The New Regionalism Approach (NRA), as advanced by Grant and Soderbäum (2003), is instrumental in understanding this dynamic. This article is based on the result of a study that seeks to examine why positive engagements of external forces are needed for a timely implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.     

Assessing the reset: successes and failures in the Obama administration's Russia policy, 2009–2012

Critics of the Obama administration's ‘reset’ with Russia claim that it has failed to improve bilateral relations and has conceded too much to Russia at the expense of American interests. In fact, the reset has delivered significant improvements in key areas and established the institutional basis for continued cooperation in the future, benefiting both states. Although disagreements remain on several important issues including missile defence, humanitarian intervention, and democracy, the reset has been broadly successful on its own terms, which were always limited in scope and based on a pragmatic recognition of the limits of possible cooperation. Future progress is uncertain, however – obstacles include differences of national interest; the complicating effects of relations with third party states and the impact of domestic politics. A continuation of the pragmatic approach underpinning the reset represents the best chance for stability in the US–Russia relationship.     

A Review of: “Media Democracy: How the Media Colonize Politics,by Thomas Meyer with Lew Hinchman”

This study assesses the importance of paid advertising. Drawing from observations and interviews with ad creators and campaign managers, it describes, analyzes, and evaluates what the candidates did and why in the 1992 New Hampshire presidential primary election. Specifically, the study examines the importance of initial ads, consistency in ads, and the use of negative ads. It demonstrates that candidates flooded the airwaves with 30‐second ads, spending well in excess of overall spending limits on advertising alone. Ad innovations in 1992 were as follows: heavy New Hampshire and Boston time buying, an attack strategy against an incumbent president, an informercial to raise money, distributed videotapes, interactive video appeals, and half‐hour programs. Candidates who advertised early and stayed consistent in their imagery did better than candidates who advertised later and created multiple images and varied ads.     

A Review of: “Free Press vs. Fair Trial: Examining Publicity's Role in Trial Outcomes,by Jon Bruschke and William E. Loges”

Using data from the 2002 Wisconsin Advertising Project and a Democratic direct mailing firm, we ask if candidates publicly court African American and Hispanic voters through the inclusion of these groups in their campaign advertisements or through appeals to their substantive policy interests. We find evidence that Democratic and Republican candidates make symbolic and substantive appeals only when these appeals are very unlikely to be viewed by White voters. These findings lend credence to studies that conclude that candidates are hesitant to publicly court minority voters due to concerns that such activities may harm their existing electoral coalitions, particularly their standing with White voters.