Translating membership into power at the ballot box? Trade union candidates and worker voting patterns in Indonesia's national elections

This article analyses the effectiveness of trade unions' electoral engagement in the union-dense electoral localities of Bekasi and Tangerang in Indonesia's 2009 legislative elections. Our analysis reveals that legacies of authoritarianism, electoral rules, and union fragmentation pushed unions to pursue an ineffective electoral strategy of running union cadres on various party tickets. In Bekasi, local leaders within the Federation of Indonesian Metalworkers Unions (FSPMI) chose not to mobilize resources to support union candidates because the union's national leadership had failed to convince them of the soundness of its strategy. In Tangerang, local leaders embraced the National Workers Union's (SPN) national electoral strategy, but had inadequate membership data to conduct electoral mapping and did not provide candidates with financial and leadership support. Neither union, meanwhile, gave much consideration to the problem of translating membership to votes: survey data reveal that most members could not name union candidates, and many of those who could did not vote for them. The article argues that, despite its flaws, trade unions' strategy of engagement in the electoral arena constitutes an important step forward in the consolidation of Indonesia's democracy.     

Estimating relative prevalence of competing issue voting rules in multiparty elections using finite mixture modeling

How do citizens of democratic polities translate their policy preferences into voting choices? Proximity and directional theories of issue voting offer different answers to this question that have strong implications for parties’ strategies. Controlled scenarios in imaginary two-candidate contests have gained popularity as a method to estimate proportions of proximity and directional voters in the population. However, this method is not always applicable in comparative research where scholars often have to study multiparty elections with observational data. In the present paper, I demonstrate how relative prevalence of different issue voting rules can be estimated using finite mixture modeling. Using both a paradigmatic and a recent case, I demonstrate that the mixture model predicts observed voting choices better than the alternatives. I also show how finite mixture modeling can be used to study individual-level characteristics of proximity and directional voters using education as an example.     

The Europeanization of national elections. The role of country characteristics in shaping EU issue voting

Research has shown that voting in European elections is affected by domestic politics. However, in the last years, and particularly after the European debt crisis, also the EU has gained relevance and salience in national politics. In this paper we address the Europeanization of national elections and assess to what extent the characteristics of countries condition the intensity of EU issue voting. Using data from the European Election Studies and the Comparative Manifestos Project, our results demonstrate the importance of congruence between citizens' and parties’ positions on the EU for the individual vote on the national level and show how this varies across countries. We provide evidence that EU issue voting is more intense in countries with more political influence in the EU as well as in countries that are net contributors to EU funds.     

Economic voting in multi-level contexts: Evidence from Kerala and West Bengal in India

What determines electoral support for national incumbent parties and state-level challengers in sub-national pro-poor contexts? Based on survey data from the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal, collected prior to the 2019 national election, we find that voters were more (less) inclined to vote for the sub-national incumbent relative to the national incumbent if their household economic conditions were perceived to have improved (deteriorated) relative to national economic conditions. Our findings indicate that voters in these settings correctly assume that the sub-national incumbent cannot be held responsible for changes in national economic conditions, but, at the same time, the existence of a strong welfare state at the sub-national level creates expectations that the sub-national government is responsible for personal welfare. Hence, the national election is used to assess the economic performance of both the sub-national and the national incumbent.     

我国审前准备程序的现状及改革构想

审前准备程序是法院受理案件开庭审理之前所进行的全部诉讼活动,以当事人整理争点和收集证据为主要内容,其在保证诉讼公正、提高诉讼效益、维护程序安定等方面都具有相当积极的意义,在民事诉讼活动中发挥着越来越重要的作用。我国目前的审前程序实际上仍然局限于仅为法官审理案件提供准备的狭隘范围内,其弊端已经开始逐步显露出来,改革势在必行。     

网络公证的法律规制

网络公证是网络公证机构被依法授权实施的使用电子技术对有关电子文件所进行的公证行为。网络公证应该遵循特定的程序以确保网络公证能够发挥与传统公证同样的功能。网络公证的安全性和可靠性是个可能引发争议的问题,因此迫切需要对网络公证进行法律约束。对现行立法来说,网络公证机构的设立模式、网络公证员的资质、网络公证的法律效力等问题都是挑战,需要我们作出回应。     

立足法律监督角度审视《民事诉讼法》的修改

"申诉难"与"执行难"这两大固疾困扰司法实务由来已久,此次《民事诉讼法》的修改在解决这两大难题方面作了突破性立法。修改后的《民事诉讼法》就解决"申诉难"问题进行了详细的规定,作为法律监督角色的检察机关如何应对《民事诉讼法》的修改后的新局面将成为民事检察工作的当务之急。检察机关应提高对民事诉讼审判活动的监督能力,明确民事诉讼监督的当务之急,强化民事诉讼监督理念和提高民事抗诉水平。     

Voting on Europe,again and again: Stability and change in the Irish experience with EU referendums

This article is about comparative voting behaviour in referendums on the EU and explores variation within one country rather than variations across countries. This enables us to control for broad national context while allowing variations in the immediate referendum context, in terms of campaign intensity and incumbency. It analyses voting behaviour in the many referendums that have taken place in Ireland. The major part of the analysis deals with the five referendums since 2001, as this allows the use of the same measurement of EU support and the use of post referendum surveys. Most attention is paid to attitude to the EU, party support and satisfaction with the incumbent government, reflecting the main debates in the literature on the issues and party cues. The relative importance of each is said to depend on contextual factors such as campaign intensity and economic strength. We find both party cues and issues matter consistently, and suggestive evidence that incumbency matters to the effectiveness of cues given by the two main pro-EU parties but the major finding is that variations in the factors driving voting behaviour in different Irish polls on Europe are slight and barely significant.     

Voting rules in insolvency law: a simple-game theoretic approach

A chief characteristic of modern insolvency law in Canada, Germany, the UK, and the US is the provision for ‘workouts’ or ‘schemes of arrangement’ by which insolvent companies can attempt to rehabilitate the business. If reorganization is chosen, the debtor has to devise a plan of action which will be voted upon by claimants. The voting rules, however, differ in each jurisdiction to a greater or lesser extent and as yet have not been analyzed in any rigorous manner. This paper provides an approach based upon the theory of simple games to analyze the rules in terms of the ease which each of these regimes can pass (or hinder) plans and how these rules distribute value among claimants. We pay particular attention to the role of classification and the effect of coalition formation.