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Since the end of the Second World War, two political parties have dominated political activity in the Kurdish territory in Northern Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Recently, a new movement has begun to emerge that presents the first legitimate opposition to these ruling parties. The Change List, a splinter group formed by former PUK members, is mobilizing Kurdish voters on the platform of change. In the KRG's 2009 parliamentary elections, the Kurdistan Region's ruling parties took nearly 60% of the votes, leaving the Change List with a mere 25% of the open parliamentary seats. While still a loss for the new movement, this development illustrated an unprecedented shift away from the nearly seventy years of the patronistic rule that defined Kurdish politics. This paper hypothesizes that voter concerns regarding nepotism, patronism and lack of transparency with the ruling parties drove this ground-breaking development and that socioeconomic changes over the past two decades have allowed for this shift in voter preferences. The emergence of the Gorran-Change List indicates a challenge to the status-quo relationship between the parties and the voters. This study will use a historical-sociological single-case study of security and economic liberalization as possible causal mechanisms influencing the realignment of the party-voter relationship in the Kurdish Regional Government of Northern Iraq. Additionally, this paper will investigate the implications of this shift on the Kurdish nationalist and separatist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs about the ban of lobbyists to contribute financially by U.S. President Barack Obama. It informs about tactics used from the period 2008-2009 during the presidential translation. It mentions that the analysis focuses on policies including area of transportation, criminal justice and disabilities. It also mentions that research has been done to analyze types of group including for-profit business, non-profit government and citizen groups.

This paper revisits the question of whether voter turnout matters for Democratic Party success in gubernatorial elections, examining the years 1978 to 2000 in 43 states. In contrast to past research, the relative voter turnout of low and upper income people is emphasized, in contrast to examining aggregate turnout. Controlling for a variety of factors, the higher turnout among low income people compared to upper income people the better Democratic gubernatorial candidates do in elections. Together with the well-known finding that lower income people are less likely to vote compared to upper income people, this paper constitutes evidence that the electorate is not representative of the population as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strongly influencing recent work on political parties has been the framework of party system institutionalization developed by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully in their 1995 book Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. This paper addresses an important anomaly arising from Mainwaring and Scully's work on party system institutionalization when the approach travels from its home base in Latin America to a communally-charged or ethnically-segmented environment such as exists in many countries of Asia and Africa. Using the case of post-Suharto Indonesia and drawing on the author's dissertation research, the paper discusses institutionalization in the contemporary Indonesian party system and shows how party rooting, one of Mainwaring and Scully's four key areas of party system institutionalization, can serve as a negative force in the consolidation of democracy, rather than the positive one highlighted by the authors. Particularly, in the Indonesian case, party rooting in communal groups and the existence of historic and programmatic tensions among those groups have contributed to high levels of instability, as could be seen in the tumultuous process surrounding the impeachment of President Abdurrahman Wahid in 2001. In the Indonesian case, the negative effects of party rooting have been brought about by the exploitation of party roots by cost-conscious potential political leaders in the development of their political power bases. As rational actors, Indonesia's party leaders have perpetually used the least costly means available to reach their political goals. The existence of ready-made groups waiting to be captured by an enterprising leader has allowed inter-communal tension to be escalated, bringing the country almost to the brink of civil war in 2000 and 2001. In addition to the threats to Indonesia's stability, the exploitation of inter-communal tensions for political gain has had important effects (all negative) on the nature of... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1994, Republicans have matched their success in presidential politics in the South by winning and maintaining a majority of the Southern congressional seats. One theory suggests that prior to the 1990s the paradox of Republican success in presidential elections and holdover Democratic success in congressional elections was, in part, the result of an advantage in the size and quality of the Democratic candidate pool. The theory argues that Republicans had no viable alternative to defeat Democratic candidates in open seat congressional elections, much less in elections to challenge incumbents. Recent research has shown that Republicans largely negated this advantage in the 1990s. This paper argues that alongside partisan realignment and redistricting favorable to Republicans (among other factors), changing patterns of candidate emergence contributed to the Republican?s success in winning and maintaining a majority of Southern congressional seats at the end of the 20th and into the 21st Century. This paper introduces measures of candidate emergence to the prevailing models used to explain the rise of Republican strength in Southern House elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most countries, elections are complex events, presenting voters with an extensive choice menu. In the modeling of electoral behavior, however, much of this complexity seems to get lost. This paper outlines a novel approach to understanding vote choice that relies on ideas from consumer research. The approach is slowly gaining ground but remains on the periphery of the discipline. The paper shows the potential benefits of choice sets, outstanding methodological issues, as well as potential domains of application. It finishes by sketching potential domains of application in electoral research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic definition for wave elections, a concept which has been used frequently in discussions of congressional elections throughout history, but which has previously lacked a precise definition. Tracing the usage of the term "wave election" (and similar variations) since the mid-1800s, this paper details the frequency and manner in which this concept has been used in considerations of congressional elections over time. Subsequently, this paper offers a definition for wave elections that is based on the seat gain and seat-level for parties following an election. This definition can be used to classify House and Senate elections throughout American history, and can also be applied to state legislative elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the debate over polarization continues, one of the key facets of the debate that has not yet received as much attention is the degree of clustering between politically like-minded individuals. This paper will argue that the clustering or sorting of politically like-minded individuals goes beyond that of Democrats and Republicans and is also prevalent within parties. Using a spatial analysis of several early primary state election results from the 2012 Republican primary, this paper will analyze the degree of spatial polarization within the Republican Party. Using spatial statistics, counties in each state will be analyzed to determine if and how much ideological voters within the GOP are clustering geographically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rich literature discussing the effects of participation, and a growing number of studies have tried to estimate proposed effects using empirical data. However, empirical testing is difficult because participation is typically both voluntary and costly, causing it to be partially determined by the characteristics it is theorized to affect. Put simply, there is an endogeneity problem. This paper discusses theories regarding how engaging in the act of participation might affect political efficacy and political trust, and then contributes to the empirical literature through experimental innovations which improve our ability to make valid causal inferences. An intensive mobilization treatment was integrated into a panel survey conducted before and after the 2011 San Francisco Municipal Election. Actual voter turnout was validated from the official voter history file. The mobilization treatment increased participation by over 33 percentage points, generating an excellent opportunity to isolate exogenously-driven participation. The analysis uses assignment to the mobilization treatment as an instrument for voter turnout, in order to isolate and estimate the independent effect of being mobilized to vote on different dimensions of political efficacy and political trust. Heterogeneous treatment effects are also identified, based on whether each subject approved or disapproved of the electoral outcomes. This paper is part of a larger project intended to isolate and estimate the effects of participation. Additional experiments and observational studies will soon be integrated into the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the link between religion and politics in the U.S. has been heavily researched, the idea of religion as a voting cue in congressional elections warrants attention. This paper expands on the idea that religion can act as a voting cue signaling voters to cast their ballot for a candidate who shares their religious affiliation. Specifically, this paper answers the question of whether individuals vote for a congressional candidate who shares their religion. Data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2008 post-election survey, as well as data on candidate religion from Project Vote Smart's candidate biography dataset and the 2008 Almanac of American Politics, are used to gauge the extent to which religion acts as a voting cue in U.S. House elections. This paper finds that there is indeed a relationship between the major religious group of voters and the major religious group of House candidates. In other words, this paper suggests that there is a link between voter religion and vote choice, which gives insight into both voter behavior and the link between religion and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties can be major players in promoting citizens' political participation, One of the mechanisms parties can utilize to increase citizens' participation are open and democratic internal processes in the selection of their candidates. In this paper, based on the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional internal primaries, held in November 1999, and a panel data survey with four rounds analyzing the Mexican presidential elections of 2000 I show that citizens who participated in the PRI primaries had a larger propensity to be engaged in the electoral process. This paper brings new evidence to three understudied subjects: primaries in Latin American democracies, primaries in democratizing countries, and the participatory effects of those election mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about social composition of the Korean National Assembly is presented. It mentions that the electoral system for the National Assembly is defined by laws and political parties also establishes rules for the selection of political candidates. Topics discussed include women quota system and its effect, adoption of a two-vote system, and gender biasness.

For the first time since 1992, pundits were dubbing the election cycle as ushering in "The Year of the Woman" in the Summer of 2010. But after the Fall Elections, these same pundits are changing their tune, calling the midterm elections a setback for female candidates. In this paper we explore what happened in the year 2010, what has happened over time, what is happening in the world, and (more importantly) why. Studies look at performances in legislative elections, statewide elections, state legislatures, gender statistics in parliaments of the world, females heads of state and heads of government from other countries, gender quota laws, poll responses, and studies from political scientists about evaluating female candidates for issue preference, ideology and qualifications for political office. The paper concludes with a look toward the future of women in American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation to voters' competence is controversial topic. Some scholars are very pessimistic, but other scholars retain the hope. The purpose of the paper is to assess the relationship between democratic accountability mechanism and voters' competence by focusing on the swing voting in the 2009 lower house election to cause the historical power shift. This paper displays that swing voting from the LDP to the DPJ contributed to the triumph of the DPJ. Moreover, analyzing the level of political knowledge and political information environment on the Japanese Election Study 4 dataset, this paper indicates that the swing voters are not ideal, but ordinary citizens who followed more knowledgeable side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

House members looking to preserve their seat are at a notable advantage in comparison to potential challengers (Erikson 1971; Bickers and Stein 1996). While many factors influence incumbent advantage, few studies have been devoted to an incumbents' ability to solidify the ultimate form of incumbent security: running unopposed (for exceptions see Wrighton and Squire 1997; Squire 1989). This paper explores the tool of earmarks, a means for all incumbents to fortify their electoral advantage and deter challengers. Utilizing newly-released data on Congressional earmarks from fiscal year 2009, this paper focuses on the 2010 election to draw three substantive conclusions. First, earmarks have no measurable effect on running uncontested for Representatives from safe districts (that is districts where the incumbent received sixty percent or more of the vote in the last election). Second, as would be expected, being elected to a marginal district results in a reduced probability of running uncontested in the next election. Finally, when interacted, for those from marginal districts, earmarks have a significant and positive impact on increasing the chances a member will run unopposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about politics of elections related to the ethnopolitical actors in the Middle East and North America is presented. It discusses about the efforts of researchers to study the dynamics of elections in these autocratic systems. It also discusses about studies for exploring the strategic incentives and behaviors of the political actors that contest elections under autocracy.

The paper presents an examination of the role of nationalism and ethnicity in the 2009 Bulgarian parliamentary elections and elections to the European Parliament. An analytical approach and research agenda concerning national identity in cross-border communities in the "eastern enlargement" countries of the European Union is suggested based on this examination. The paper presents the complexities of nationalism and national identity in Bulgaria, examines the historical and current political context of nationalism, and provides a model for analysis of the impact of E.U. membership. The paper ultimately lays the groundwork for asking questions through a comparison with Romanian nationalist and ethnically based political parties: how have efforts by elites to maintain and generate nationalistic identities amongst sub-national minorities been affected by accession to the European Union? Will there be variance based on the subnational minority sharing an ethnic identity with a non-E.U. state versus another E.U. state (for example, Turks in Bulgaria versus Hungarians in Romania)? With a constructivist model of identity, how will the efforts of elites be affected by the addition of the symbols, political forums, and regional politics of a new European identity as members of the E.U.? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that individuals who vote for the winning party in an election are more satisfied with democracy than those who backed a losing party. However, many winners deviate from their first choice in the voting booth. I argue that the ideological and psychological mechanisms that boost satisfaction should attenuate among such winners. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this paper shows that these "non-optimal winners" do, in fact, experience a much smaller boost in satisfaction than "optimal winners," those who voted their expressed first preference. Results also demonstrate that psychological benefits better explain the boost in satisfaction associated with winning than ideological considerations. Lastly, this paper shows that the proportion of winners voting for the optimal party is more prevalent under majoritarian electoral rules, which provides a new explanation for the relatively pronounced effect of winning on satisfaction in such systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain Euroskeptic attitudes by examining the relationship between information and Euroskepticism and the role of Euroskepticism in the post-enlargement integration debate. Drawing upon data from the Eurobarometer survey series and the European Election Studies, this paper tests the relationship between information and attitudes towards membership and the direction of integration, as well as the relationship between information and voting in European elections. By utilizing public opinion surveys on the direction of integration post enlargement in addition to attitudes toward membership, this paper is able to address the effect of information on both hard and soft Euroskepticism. This analysis concludes the roles of knowledge and awareness have divergent influences on hard and soft Euroskepticism. While increased knowledge increases support for membership in the EU, increased awareness decreases support for the direction of integration. This conclusion is further supported by evidence from the 2004 European election that suggests as awareness increases, the likelihood of voting for a pro-EU party decreases. This conclusion suggests that knowledge may initially inform individuals of the benefits of being a member in the EU but greater awareness increases the likelihood they will be a harsher critic of the way in which it is developing, necessitating further examination of the role of the Euroskeptic movement in public opinion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choosing a new electoral system is a purposeful behavior. Electoral rules can be seen as the vehicle that takes a country to their expected destination; regardless of what actually caused the change. In this paper, I will conduct a case study to investigate the consequences of electoral reform in two countries that have changed its electoral system from the pure type (majoritarian) to a mixed system (but different subtypes) - New Zealand (mixed member proportional system - MMP) and Thailand (mixed member majoritarian system - MMM). Although many scholars have produced studies of mixed electoral systems (MMS), with a great amount of them addressing their effect on voting behavior and party systems, a few of them have addressed the effect of MMS on party strategy survival in a new environment - new electoral rules, laws and new parties, and perhaps new constituencies also. Moreover, there are varieties of subtypes in MMS which these analysis have failed to produce a detailed investigation on the consequences of these subtypes. Thus the goal of this paper is to show the political consequences that happen to the countries that employed the same mixed electoral system but different schemes and hope to offer a new insight to the study of mixed electoral system (MMS). The paper will focus primarily on changes in the party system and changes in party strategy of the first two elections after the changes in the preexisting electoral system of these two countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent can electoral systems reinforce or undermine the conflict dampening potential of power sharing arrangements in divided, post-conflict states? Despite previous research that highlights the potential for democratic institutions to defuse inter-sectarian conflict, particularly power sharing arrangements and electoral frameworks, central questions remain regarding how varying mechanisms work in combination to either defuse or exacerbate domestic conflict and whether particular institutions may work to either reinforce or undermine other mechanisms or democracy in general. In contributing to research on democratic peacebuilding, this paper explores the interactive relationship between power sharing and electoral systems in the fragmented, confessional environment of post-war Lebanon. As one of the longest-running cases of continuous institutional engineering in the region, Lebanon offers not only a rich exploratory case in which to evaluate institutional interactions and the impact on inter-communal conflict, but also salient insight into power sharing initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as intra-state conflict outside the region. Investigating several institutional configurations over time, the paper assesses the hypothesis that a confessional electoral system stymies executive and legislative power sharing, while undermining genuine democratic participation and competition, thus negating the ability of democratic mechanisms to facilitate meaningful conflict resolution. Moreover, the research explores the extent to which consequent erosion in government legitimacy, combined with a weakened executive, impedes the ability of the state to mediate inter-group conflicts or promote national unity effectively in the face of destabilizing forces from domestic and regional/international arenas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central topic of this paper is the measurement of one variable, civic duty. This variable has become a mainstay in empirical research on individual voting behavior since the 1960s and it is one of the chief explanatory saviors of the rational choice model of voting. Nevertheless, the measurement of civic duty on the American National Elections Study is prima facie substandard. Question wording is one concern, as a number of scholars have demonstrated that seemingly small changes in question wording can have large effects on the answers individuals provide and the conclusions scholars draw. My primary concern is measurement validity, commonly defined as "whether a variable measures what it is supposed to measure" (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). In survey research, the question is the instrument through which we measure a concept; if the wording is unclear, biased, or just plain bad, then any research that uses that indicator will also be flawed.In the paper, I will explain the controversies surrounding question wording and measurement validity; I will examine the existing body of work on civic duty; and I will empirical evaluate the validity of survey instruments that use different measures of civic duty in the United States and the United Kingdom. Possible explanations for the results, recommendations for further analysis, and the implications of these findings for research on voting behavior will also be discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How individual voters make their choices is a well-studied topic where candidate and officeholder elections are concerned. But voters in referenda cannot be assumed to make choices on the basis of the same determinants - group identity, self-interest and judgmental shortcuts - that citizens use to select candidates. This paper explores the nature of choice in referenda and the role that partisan and leader cues play in balloting on questions that are often, on their face, devoid of partisan and leader links. The paper uses British survey data from 2008 (N=17540) to construct a model of individual choice using a hypothetical referendum on denying benefits to illegal immigrants. To analyze partisan cues, a survey experiment was embedded in the Dynamics of Party Support in Britain follow-up survey to determine the relative effects of cues alone and cues placed in context by an individual's partisan identification and affect for the cue giver. We hypothesize that cues alone are suspect and uncertain messages for most voters, and thus would not be statistically significant. Cues in context are expected to produce statitically significant effects. Findings support both hypotheses. To determine other effects on voter choice, rival models are tested and a composite model of choice is constructed that suggests that attitudes held by individuals on immigration and immigration threats were the most powerful determinants of voter choice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Election boycotts are a common occurrence in unconsolidated democracies particularly in the developing world, with prominent examples from recent years occurring in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. Despite the frequent occurrence of boycotts, there are few studies available in the scholarly literature concerning the effectiveness of electoral boycotts, particularly as a strategy of opposition parties seeking to bring about the end of electoral authoritarian governments. This paper is based in the democratization literature, with a particular focus on the behavior and vulnerabilities of hybrid or electoral authoritarian regimes. Using an original dataset with global coverage including hybrid regimes from 1980 to 2006, this paper seeks to use event-history analysis to determine the efficacy of boycotts in national elections among other factors thought to undermine electoral authoritarian regimes as well as the possibilities for subsequent democratization occurring following both contested and boycotted electoral processes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite popular opinion and media claims to the contrary, scholars have largely determined that candidates' traits do not significantly influence election outcomes (e.g., Bartels, 2002). However, such survey data utilize voters' perceptions of candidates' qualities, and are somewhat suspect regarding reliable and valid measurements of personality traits. Psychologists have created a methodologically sound measurement of at least one personality trait that can be assessed through content analysis: optimism. Additionally, this operationalization of optimism, when combined with content analysis of another psychological traitâ??ruminationâ??has been highly correlated with electoral success at the presidential and senate levels. The more optimistic non-ruminative candidates for president won 19 of the 23 general elections from 1900-1988 (83%), and 25 out of 29 (86%) analyzed U.S. Senate elections in 1988. Unfortunately, no work has been done in this vein in nearly two decades, leaving the question unanswered as to whether optimistic non-ruminating candidates have an advantage in the polarized new media environment of "post-broadcast democracy" elections (Prior, 2007). This paper will re-examine optimism and rumination in the main 2008 presidential primary candidates (five Republicans and three Democrats), only the second time presidential primaries have ever been studied in this light. Potential moderating and antecedent variables will be identified and controlled for, and various potential causal mechanisms driving the influence between optimistic non-rumination and election victory will be tested. Regardless of the findings, this paper will add evidence to the ongoing debate as to the extent an individual candidate's traits can influence election outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploiting a natural experiment that occurs in South Africa's local municipalities, this paper explores anew direction. Namely, it examines the hypothesis that the motivations for legislators to defect from their parties will differ depending on the electoral rules under which they were elected. Because legislators elected under PR rules are primarily accountable to party elites rather than to voters in a constituency, these legislators may be less constrained by strategic concerns. Legislators elected under the plurality rule, however, are accountable to a constituency and therefore may be more apt to defect only under certain conditions. The analysis confirms that legislators elected by the plurality rule defect only when specified strategic conditions are met whereas those elected under a PR regime defect irrespective of these conditions. The evidence presented here also challenges the commonly accepted understanding of party switching in South Africa. While many argue that the flurry of defections that occurred in South Africa throughout the present decade was largely the product of a between-election realignment in a weakly institutionalized party system, this paper shows that the legislators who defected were responding acutely to the strategic environment and the incentives established by the electoral rules under which they competed for office. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although women make up a majority of voters in contemporary elections, the rate of female voting lagged far behind that of males for decades after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. In this paper, we explore the questions of how female turnout has changed and how these changes can inform our understanding of turnout and socialization. Over a long time series and using a plethora of quantitative data at both the individual and aggregate levels, we specifically test hypotheses of changing female turnout including general socialization, generational differences, and demographic explanations. Thus, this paper speaks both to the role of women in politics and a broader appreciation of the dynamics of and influences on turnout. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the National Election Study to examine the impact, or lack thereof, of religious preferences in the last four U.S. presidential elections. Using multinomial logistic regression, the paper looks for the influence of religion, in terms of specific preferences as well as attendance, on presidential vote choice as well as stated preferences on individual issues as diverse as abortion rights, same-sex marriage, environmental preservation, foreign intervention, and social welfare spending. Additionally, the paper explores interactions between religious preferences and demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and age. Finally, the paper examines the relative predictive values of the traditional categorization of religion by sect and the contemporary culture war hypothesis put forth by Morris Fiorina and others, which emphasizes the importance of religiosity in determining political behavior. Specifically, I argue that the influence of the evangelical vote may be overstated by media and scholars alike. The paper concludes by suggesting that the increased importance of foreign policy in presidential elections has resulted in a decline in the influence of religion and religiously-based social preferences on voting behavior at the national level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper synthesizes the statistics and literature on party competition for key elective offices in the eleven southern states over the past hundred years by proposing a unified theory of electoral politics. The theory tested unifies the social-psychological model of presidential voting behavior (issues-parties-candidates) with the more recent literature on the ideological realignment of the southern parties (Carmines and Stanley 1990; Knotts, Abramowitz, Allen, and Saunders 2005), and includes documentation of the partisan identifications in each state over recent decades. The paper's three parts form the framework of a proposed book. First, I document the era of Democratic dominance with specific Democratic gubernatorial and senate candidates possessing popular personal attributes who stressed FDR-era issues. In this era, Republicans could score gubernatorial and senatorial electoral breakthroughs only with appealing candidates exploiting popular issues, and were often helped by an ideologically split Democratic Party. Second, the era of party realignment in each state is documented with visually appealing tables depicting the Democratic Party's shift to the ideological left in the U.S. House and Senate delegations, and among party activists. Third, the contemporary era of competitive southern parties is documented with visually helpful tables on partisan control of numerous levels of elective offices. The power of short-term factors of candidates and issues in shaping gubernatorial and senate elections in this modern era is provided in tables, as is the model's predictions of the senate and gubernatorial election outcomes in the most recent case of 2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the determinants of final rulings of Mexico's Federal Electoral Court regarding fines imposed by the country's Federal Electoral Institute on national political parties between 1996 and 2006. It is often assumed that "horizontal accountability" institutions, such as autonomous, specialized electoral courts, reduce politicization and rent-seeking, and improve the quality of democratic competition. However, even the best-designed institutional arrangements can fall prey to partisan capture and/or ineffective performance. This paper addresses this debate by analyzing patterns of adjudication, by Mexico's national electoral court, of campaign finance fines imposed by the country's national electoral management body. Both of these organizations, and the regulation enforce, have been lauded as examples of virtuous rule-making and implementation, but there is yet to be a systematic study of their joint behavior on substantive matters. The paper uses a database of nearly 1000 rulings by the Federal Electoral Court, based on as many cases challenged by national political parties over the Federal Electoral Institute's enforcement of party finance regulations during the period 1996 to 2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper Abstract – State politics scholar Malcolm Jewell noted in 1982 that most “state election surveys are carried out by nonacademic polling organizations” which either do not make the results available to political scientists or use techniques and questions inappropriate for academic purposes. Moreover, he lamented, “the costs of surveys and the realities of sampling make it almost prohibitive to carry out” the collaborative state polling projects most likely to generate generalizable findings. In this paper, we examine the current status of state-level polling in the U.S. Specifically, we rely on a survey of 51 state poll directors (in 35 states) to investigate the location, frequency, scope, budget, purpose, content and perceived policy impact of such projects. We also examine the still challenging prospect of greater state-to-state collaboration. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the connection between electoral structures and descriptive representation in the case of South Carolina Public School Boards, and whether increased descriptive representation has an impact on school desegregation. We find that electoral structures do influence the election of persons of color to school boards; single-member district structures are the most favorable for the election of persons of color. A very prelimnary analysis of electoral structures and school desegregation found no relationship between these variables. More research into this question is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that white voters are less likely to support African American candidates (Reeves 1997; Terkildsen 1993; Citron et al 1990; but see Sigelman et al. 1995; Highton 2001). This paper examines the campaigns of African American state legislative candidates to assess under what conditions white voters will cast ballots for African American candidates in state legislative elections. Drawing on candidate and campaign centered theories of voting behavior, I argue that African American candidates who use deracialized issue strategies garner higher levels of white voter support than those who do not. More specifically, I contend that African American candidates who focus on economic and social welfare issues will be more likely to attract white voters to their campaigns. Ordinary Least Squares regression models show that African American candidates' issue strategy significantly influences white crossover voting. The results also confirm the positive impact of deracialization in majority white electoral districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review essay I discuss the findings from three related areas of research that evaluate the effect of 1990s congressional redistricting on (1) minority representation, (2) party competition, and (3) legislative responsiveness. The paper proceeds in the following manner. Each line of research is discussed separately with an emphasis on piecing together consistent findings and offering possible explanations for conflicting results. Then, I discuss in greater detail, several of the disputed issues that stem from these areas of research. I conclude with some final observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the generational replacement hypothesis to test further that whites residing in the American South are undergoing a secular realignment in terms of their partisan identification. Four Logit models are tested using National Election Studies survey data (1972-2000). Predicted probabilities of "modal" Democratic and Republican respondents show that the generational replacement hypothesis is indeed at work over four cohort categories: the Solid South cohort, the Post World-War II cohort, the Goldwater-Civil Rights Act cohort, and the Reagan-Clinton cohort. As older and more Democratic generations of white Southerners age, they are slowly being replaced by younger and more Republican individuals. Furthermore, these findings hold after controlling for plausible alternative explanations for partisan change (i.e., family income, deep/rim south, gender, urbanism, education, ideology, married, union household, church attendance) and regardless of how one defines the partisan identification dependent variable (i.e., as either strong/weak partisans or strong/weak/leaning partisans). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that strategic voting in young democracies increases as voters become more experienced with the functioning of democracy. This proposition is tested with election results from Eastern European countries. The amount of wasted votes decreases with time, controlling for the number of lists running, the electoral system, the legal threshold, and the amount of votes for the leading list. The study contributes to the literature on strategic voting and democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper formally models workers' intertemporal labor supply decisions conditioned on their expected wage offers, their unemployment benefits, and the probability of receiving a job offer or being laid off. The latter two probabilities are affected by the party in power. The solution to the model requires these workers, when acting as voters, to integrate "pocketbook" and "sociotropic" considerations. The model implies five related hypotheses about voting behavior. Relative to the employed, unemployed workers' education, income, and unemployment benefits reduce the probability they will vote for the party likely to increase growth. The unemployment rate and the number of times the individual has been unemployed have the same impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European integration and ethno-regional mobilization have been considered as two of the most important forces that not only undermine state sovereignty but also disturb partisan coalitions within the member states of the European Union (EU). At first sight, these two seem to be incompatible in that the EU has tried to establish a new European identity against national or sub-national one, while ethnic leaders have criticized the intergovernmental decision making process of the EU that would block their participation further. Thus, it is not surprising that during the early EU history, leaders of ethnic parties had no sympathy on the European project. However, since the mid-1980s, most ethnic parties have shifted their anti-EU position by committing themselves to a deeper European integration, and in some regions, this change was followed by the electoral success of ethnic parties. Are the revitalization of the EU and the revival of ethnic parties just coincident? If not, what aspects of European integration benefit ethnic parties?; and how? This paper presents an argument that as European integration deepens, the ethno-regional cleavage becomes more salient in elections and this change reinforces ethnic parties? electoral power. Economic impact of European integration is a catalyst for such a change by promoting the formation of common regional interests that crosscut the traditional left-right ideological cleavage. Yet, the ?multilevel? governance system of the EU that raises the status of regions and legitimizes political demands of regional autonomy is a more proximate cause for the rise of ethnic parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, political psychology research has focused intently on the two major models of individual information processing: on-line and memory-based. A number of factors, including the venue in which citizens receive political information and the kind of political judgment at hand, have been shown to influence the type of processing that will be employed. This paper asks whether candidate similarity affects the likelihood that voters will use one type of processing over the other. Using an experimental design conducted with 263 subjects, we find that subjects who chose between two candidates with similar policy positions later recalled more factual information about the candidates than did individuals who chose between two ideologically polarized candidates. Controlling for levels of political sophistication, the results suggest that candidate similarity may trigger a tendency for memory-based processing. An on-line tally may be of little utility when candidates do not take distinct policy positions, forcing voters to search their memories for some way to distinguish between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore some of the conceptual difficulties associated with explaining individual participation in extremist politics. Policymakers and scholars interested in the mo-tivating factors behind terrorism and extremism need to move beyond the limited assump-tions associated with traditional analyses that all too frequently presume that individuals are engaged in a constant struggle to accrue the greatest number of material goods. Certainly individuals do strive for pecuniary gain. Still, such a framework may be better apt to describe the employee who changes one workplace for a higher paying substitute or even the astute politician altering their party?s platform in a bid to appeal to the electorate?s sway. Conjec-tures that all people seek to improve their material lot fail to explain the sacrifices made while engaging in other activities, particularly politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1996 there has been a dramatic growth in party soft money and interest group issue advocacy spending in competitive congressional elections. These campaign expenditures are unlimited and independent of the candidates. They are also often more negative in tone than candidate communications. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is intended to eliminate soft money and some forms of issue advocacy. One of the standards the courts have employed in the past to justify campaign finance regulation is to retain public confidence in elections and democracy. While studies have been done on public confidence more generally, this paper is the first research on how voters who have been exposed to substantial soft money and issue advocacy campaigns react to those campaigns. First, we establish that the competitive races do indeed see a significantly higher number of advertising of all types compared to non-competitive races that do not attract significant party and interest group activity. We use a three wave panel design to closely examine four of these competitive races in 2002. We also include a national baseline sample. This allows us to test for effects over both space and time. We find that on the standard general measures of trust and confidence that exposure to intense soft money and issue advocacy electioneering has little impact. However, when asked more specific questions about the fairness and truthfulness of campaigns, voters in the battleground races were much less confident in the campaigns truthfulness and fairness, more likely to see the campaigns as more negative than previous campaigns, and inclined to stop paying attention to television and mail ads and turn instead to trusted sources of information like newspapers and television news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of the gender gap in American politics, there is still much debate about the source of this disparity in party identification and vote choice. For example, it is unclear whether campaigns have a role in affecting the size of the gender gap. In this paper, we examine how the issue-focus of Senate campaigns influences the size of the gender gap in those contests. We argue that the gender gap will be larger in elections where women?s issues are more central to the campaign and smaller when women?s issues are not as salient. Our analysis combines exit polls with data on campaign advertising in 24 Senate campaigns to examine the relationship between campaigns and the gender gap. We find that, even when controlling for partisanship, gender is a significant factor in affecting vote choice when women?s issues are more prevalent in campaign advertising. Thus, campaigns can affect the size of the gender gap by focusing more on the issues that tend to produce that gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Congressional elections, incumbent candidates possess a number of advantages over their opponents. Considering the sizeable gap in their ability to raise and spend funds, money is often assumed to be one of those advantages. However, scholarly research provides mixed evidence on the effects of spending by incumbent candidates in competitive elections, especially at the individual level. This paper develops a dynamic model of how the information available to the electorate responds to different spending strategies by Congressional candidates. The logic of this model implies that the main effect of incumbent spending is to reduce the marginal effect of challenger spending. This hypothesis is confirmed by analysis based on the data originally used by Jacobson (1990) in opening up inquiry on this topic at the individual level. Additional implications of the theoretical model are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on midterm House contests as a prototype of low-turnout elections and examines effects of the low level of voter participation on the ideological cohesiveness of the electorate. The electorate is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different between presidential and midterm elections. As less politically active citizens, ones with weak or no partisan attachment, withdraw from participation in midterm years, the remaining active electorate becomes relatively more partisan. Since strongly partisan voters are known to be highly loyal to their party and more ideological than weak partisans and independents, their disproportionate influence in the electorate, which gets more pronounced in midterm elections, is expected to increase its ideological cohesiveness. The analysis shows the midterm electorate does become more polarized along the party line. Preliminaly test also indicates House members first elected in midterm years are somewhat more ideological than those who initially won in presidential years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A majority of American voters currently have a meaningful opportunity to vote before Election Day, whether in person or by mail. As such, voter mobilization experiments and observational studies of turnout need to consider voting as a dependent variable that occurs over time. This paper presents three statistical methods for estimating turnout across a multi-day voting period: binary logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression, and Cox proportional hazards survival analysis. Ultimately, survival analysis allows for the estimation of treatment effects over time and the potential to test for interactions between covariates and time. A discussion of the implications for researchers and campaign professionals is also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power to forbid political parties from running for office is an important instrument in the arsenal of both democracies and electoral autocracies. Although party bans can significantly affect electoral outcomes--whether by increasing the likelihood of an authoritarian incumbent's reelection or by decreasing the threat of an authoritarian opposition party's dismantling of democracy--which parties are targeted for bans, and when, remains unclear. In this paper, I address these questions using a game theoretic model. I show that different kinds of opposition party extremism have different, and often surprising, implications for the possibility of a ban. While an opposition party's "insider status" decreases the probability of a ban, so does its militarism; and a party's ideological extremism has an ambiguous, potentially non-monotone effect on the likelihood that it is banned. In addition to these results, I demonstrate that the involvement of a court in the banning decision has surprising effects: While the court may function as a "veto player" in situations when the court prefers the opposition party to be in office, banning is not automatic if the court shares the incumbent party's interests. Lastly, the unavailability of other instruments of electoral manipulation has a positive effect on the probability of a ban, suggesting one reason party bans may be so prevalent among democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking at recent presidential primary elections in an historical context, this paper seeks to better understand and measure how religion affects candidate selection and party platforms for the two major political parties in America. To some extent, the candidate's religion and the presentation of that belief is merely an integrated part of the overall candidacy. However, this study employs some content analysis and historical context to isolate religious aspects of the presidential primaries and test their effects on the eventual nominee and the party's political platform. The representation of religious candidates, views, and sects early in the candidate selection process appears to affect the construction of platforms for both parties later in the election cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern democracies rely on the participation of their citizens to function properly. This paper investigates how district magnitude affects political efficacy and participation. District magnitude determines is the number of people who serve a district and it influences the number of candidates and parties that participate in elections (Cox 1997; Duverger 1963). Based upon previous work, I theorize that there is a link or tie between voters and politicians and as the district magnitude increases from one to two to three and so on, the closeness or link between voters and politicians gets weaker (Norris 2001; Powell 2000; Sartori 1997). This closeness is based on several factors. Voters in systems with smaller districts have fewer candidates and parties from which to choose, making it easier for them to recognize elected officials and distinguish their different policy positions (Powell 2000). Fewer candidates also help to create a clarity of responsibility for the voter about whom to contact when in need of assistance and whom to hold accountable for their performance in office (Powell 2000). Due to the heightened identifiability of candidates and elected officials, there is pressure to maintain close relationships with voters (Fenno 1978; Norris 2001, 2004). Utilizing data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems I found that generally, voters in smaller district magnitudes have more political efficacy and are more likely to participate in politics than are voters from larger magnitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, there has been little -- if any -- analysis of how removing voter protections impacted provisional voting practices. This paper presents a statistical analysis of the probability of voters being given a provisional ballot and having it counted in Harris County, Texas in the 2014 election cycle based on Census-level demographics for race and income. Our novel approach uses Census block-level and group-level data for each voter to explore which demographic traits are associated with higher rates of being issued provisional ballots, and if racial or income variables predict whether those ballots will be counted. Our results suggest troubling patterns. Namely, voters in Hispanic neighbourhoods and low-income areas are more likely to be given provisional ballots; voters from Black and Asian communities, once given a provisional ballot, are less likely to have them counted. To further assess these patterns, we propose a more advanced statistical methodology to determine the impact of race and income on the kind of provisional ballot received during the early voting period versus Election Day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The party duopoly in the United States necessarily constrains the policy space to a single dimension. Although this simplifies electoral choice, two parties are insufficient to represent the plethora of interests in the electorate. Many voters are either ambivalent or discontent with the major parties. The emergence of third parties reflects this discontentment, which can be represented by the difference between major and third party manifestos. In this paper, I analyze these manifestos to provide a more comprehensive model of the US electoral space. I utilize a combination of the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) and Laver, Benoit, and Garry's (2003) Wordscore to generate policy positions for 38 third parties. I then examine the dimensionality of the policy space and find that third parties tend to occupy the far-left and far-right. Additionally, third parties enter the electoral contest on a series of issues not addressed by the major parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]