The 2013 South Tyrolean Election: The End of SVP Hegemony

The results of the 2013 South Tyrolean elections, held on 27 October, caused major changes in the political system of the autonomy. For the first time since the Second World War the South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP) lost its absolute majority. While the German secessionist parties increased their electoral support, the Italian parties suffered heavy electoral losses, thus leading to an under-representation of Italian speakers in the political institutions. The election report shows how the electoral results affect the South Tyrolean system of ethnic proportional representation, which is characterized by an increasing asymmetry.     

Rebel-to-political and back? Hamas as a security provider in Gaza between rebellion,politics and governance

ABSTRACT

After winning the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections and subsequently taking control of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, the Palestinian Hamas – a hybrid political, social and military actor – undertook a complex process to ascertain authority and control over Gaza. The article focuses on understanding Hamas’s performance as a political party and a “rebel government” as well as the impact of this newly acquired role on the group’s strategy. Relying on primary sources, field-work and interviews with members of the Hamas government and its security sector, the study looks at Hamas’s role as a security provider and analyses the complex relationship between the institutionalized security sector and the group’s insurgent armed wing. Examining Hamas’s logic as a security provider and exploring the inherent tensions between political and insurgent logics allows for a better understanding of both the rebel group’s role as a political actor and the broader challenges behind the successful rebel-to-political transformations of non-state armed organizations. In doing so it contributes to the emerging literature on non-state actors’ shifts between ballots and bullets and on their potential role as alternative governance providers.     

Do mayors matter? Reverse coattails on congressional elections in Brazil

In federal democracies, parties often invest in local politics as a strategy to improve their performance on upcoming national elections. In this study, I use the concept of reverse coattails to investigate how winning local elections affect upper-level electoral dynamics in Brazil. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD), I show that parties in Brazil boost their national performance, earning more votes on House elections in districts where their members control local offices. I discuss how access to ‘‘pork” controlled by co-partisan House members and mechanical information gains explain these effects. Additionally, I use a Bayesian LASSO algorithm to address data sparsity in RDD designs, and to demonstrate the existence of pro-large party bias on the coattail effects. By disentangling the various effects of winning local elections, this paper contributes to a greater understanding of how parties build electoral strength in fragmented democracies.     

Don't call me a populist! The meaning of populism for western European parties and politicians

In recent years a common understanding of the core elements of populist communication has been achieved in academia. Yet, we know less about how the term populism is used by political parties themselves, despite widespread assumptions about the use of populism as a battle term to disqualify competitors. Based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Twitter content from mainstream and populist actors in six western European countries, this study finds that populism is indeed used by mainstream parties in a pejorative way in order to label political competitors. Yet, not only populist but also mainstream competitors are labeled populist by the center parties linking a variety of different negative meanings to the term, which are often of a less demonizing nature not questioning the legitimacy of others. Populists in Italy and France refer to the term in a positive way, while Spanish and German populists rather reject the label.     

How to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters: Disaggregating data from voting advice applications versus modeling survey responses

Valid and reliable estimates of the policy preferences of political parties' supporters are essential for the study of political representation. However, such estimates are not directly available from standard surveys of public opinion, which are typically representative by design only at the national level and rarely ask questions about public support for specific policies. In this article, we explore the possibility to use data from voting advice applications (VAA) to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters. To do that, first, we identify 10 questions on preferences towards issues of public policy that were asked around the same time and with similar wording in traditional surveys of public opinion and in VAAs fielded in Germany and in the Netherlands. Then we compare the VAA data disaggregated by political affiliation of the respondents to the survey data adjusted via multilevel regression modeling with poststratification (MRP). We find strong positive correlations between the estimates derived from both methods, especially after weighting the VAA data. Yet, point estimates are not always very close, and the match is sensitive to the treatment of neutral and ‘don't know’ answers. Overall, our results bode well for the validity of using VAA data in empirical research on political representation.     

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.     

影响交通事故认定的因素分析

交通事故认定的客观、公正与否是由诸如证据收集、成因分析、当事人责任确定规则、认定程序、监督机制和警员素质等一系列因素决定的。为此,应强化取证意识、改善取证手段、提高取证能力;全面科学地掌握因果关系的基本理论和基本方法,提高科学地进行交通事故成因分析的能力;制定具体的有可操作性的《交通事故当事人责任确定规则》;强化程序意识,建立交通事故认定专家会诊等制度;建立包括交通事故案件审查、案卷抽查和评审以及责任追究等在内的监督机制;通过系统的职业化、专业化教育等措施,培养公正无私、业务精通的交通事故认定人员。     

程序正义与控辩平衡制度构建

程序正义理念的发展经历了漫长时期。随着人类文化的融合,人们对程序正义的认识逐渐趋同并集中体现在国际公约所确认的众多司法准则之中。无论是学者的理论还是国际公约,平等价值映照下的控辩平衡是程序正义最重要的制度设计。与国际刑事司法准则相较而言,我国刑事诉讼制度控辩关系失衡,应进行制度上的构建。     

航空国际私法领域中弱者利益保护问题初探

21世纪国际航空运输已成为各国人员和货物流动的主要方式,一旦发生航空事故常常伴随着机毁人亡的灾难性后果。作为消费者的旅客和托运人这一弱势群体利益的保护和救济便成为人们关注的焦点和司法实践的主要问题之一。本文主要对航空私法领域中弱者利益保护的必要性、保护的方法和公约的立法方面作初步探讨。     

Issue ownership attack: how a political party can counteract a rival’s issue ownership

Abstract

A central part of representative democracy is that voters evaluate political parties based on how competently they handle issues, so-called ‘issue ownership’. Since issue ownership is a central ingredient in the vote choice, rival parties often try to influence how voters evaluate a competing party. This is an issue ownership attack. However, despite intense scholarly interest in issue ownership, the understanding of how parties shape issue ownership is very limited. Therefore a new theoretical model is tested here to understand issue ownership attack. Using several survey experiments, the analysis shows that a mainstream party can counteract another mainstream party’s issue ownership by reframing the issue and by blaming the party for its performance, but not by changing its own position on the issue. Hence, the study not only advances the understanding of issue ownership stability and change but also brings important insights on how parties influence voters.