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This research paper discusses the reality of electoral governance in Algeria, after the issuance of law No. 21-01 regulating elections, which was issued on March 10, 2021, and the subsequent legislative and local elections in the same year. The paper questions the extent to which governance indicators are applied in the electoral affairs in Algeria through the aforementioned past election entitlements, and the extent to which they are free from aspects of corruption or fraud. The integrity and credibility of elections is considered essential in the democratic process of any country, given that it produces future elites capable of managing people's concerns and hopes, and formulate development strategies that are in the interest of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracies are under attack from various sides. In recent years AI-powered techniques such as profiling, targeting, election manipulation, and massive disinformation campaigns via social bots and troll farms challenge the very foundations of democratic systems. Against this background, demands for regulating AI have gotten louder. In this paper, we focus on the European Union (EU) as the actor that has gone the furthest in terms of regulating AI. We therefore ask: What kind of instruments does the EU envision in their binding and non-binding documents to prevent AI harm to democracy? And what critique can be formulated regarding these instruments? To address these questions, the article makes two contributions. First, by building on a systematic understanding of deliberative democracy, we introduce the distinction between two types of harm that can arise from the widespread use of AI: rights-based harm and systemic harm. Second, by analysing a number of EU documents, including the GDPR, the AI Act, the TTAP, and the DSA, we argue that the EU envisions four primary instruments for safeguarding democracy from the harmful use of AI: prohibition, transparency, risk management, and digital education. While these instruments provide a relatively high level of protection for rights-based AI harm, there is still ample space for these technologies to produce systemic harm to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political representation of ethnic minorities in a liberal democratic system is a crucial step towards having the interests of ethnic minority groups heard. The under-representation of ethnic minorities in a political institution can exacerbate inequality between majority and minority populations and increase feelings of alienation among minority groups. As a country observing increasing ethnic diversity, Australia saw record-level ethnic minority candidates elected in the 2022 federal election. However, the shares of candidates and elected Members of Parliaments with ethnic minority backgrounds are still much lower than their relative shares in the population. In this regard, Australia has lagged behind other major settler countries. In this paper, we examine the political representation of ethnic minorities in Australia's federal election. Drawing on data from the 2022 federal election and 2021 population census, we find a positive association between ethnic minority concentration and ethnic representation. However, for the two major parties, ethnic minority candidates are less likely to be in safe seats, even when the seat observes high ethnic minority concentration. Findings suggest that ethnic voting is evident but it is perhaps too early to celebrate higher levels of ethnic representation in Australian politics as political parties act as gatekeepers in safe seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various electronic voting channels have been introduced across a range of countries. In some countries these new channels have proved uncontroversial, while in others, they remain contentious and have even been abandoned. Relatively little is known about whether and why voters have confidence in new and old voting channels. Australia provides a useful case for researching these issues, since it is a mature democracy in which election processes and outcomes are widely accepted. The 2013 Australian Election Study results show that in this context, voters have most confidence in paper-based voting and least in voting via smartphones. Positive political attachments, ease of voting and familiarity with technology are all associated with higher levels of confidence in voting channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main questions that has resurfaced in the post-2011 Arab Uprisings era has been to what extent these public protests and the popular calls for political opening would result in democratization in the MENA region. Despite the conventional arguments that explain the persistence of authoritarian regimes as a derivate of cultural authenticity and patriarchy, the Arab Uprisings have unlocked the threshold of fear, and given rise to a new moment of political activism in the region. In light of this, one of the arguments of this paper is centred on the idea that during and after the 2011 Arab Uprisings, regimes did not travel similar trajectories in this region; as a result, it is not possible to talk about an 'Arab path' and/or an 'Arab regime typology'. This work draws its data from the opinion surveys conducted between 2017 and 2020 by the World Values Survey Wave 7, and aims to shed light on the current demands for and perceptions of democracy and elections in the MENA region. To that end, this paper will scrutinize the various trajectories in the post-Arab Spring era through the lenses of three selected countries. These countries are Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cambodia is undergoing profound change in its pursuit of economic development. Respect for human rights and democracy deteriorated in Cambodia post the 2018 General Election. In retaliation, the European Union (EU), Cambodia's second most important export destination, launched the procedure to withdraw Cambodia's preferential trade scheme, the Everything but Arms (EBA), in an attempt to generate economic pressure to encourage democratic reform and respect for human rights principles. In assessing whether this procedure has been successful or not, this paper finds that the EU has not been effective at promoting democracy and human rights in Cambodia through these measures. Not only is the EU's conditionality mechanism flawed, but the EU has also lost much of its leveraging power due to the growing presence of China and actions from the UK to boost trade with Cambodia. Ultimately, the EU's conditionality punishes the wrong groups, and so in effect is a contradiction of what the EU is trying to achieve in opening space for democracy and the improvement of human rights principles for the people of Cambodia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is perennial debate in comparative politics about electoral institutions, but what characterizes this debate is the lack of consideration for citizens' perspective. In this paper, we report the results of an original survey conducted on representative samples in 15 West European countries (N = 15,414). We implemented an original instrument to elicit respondents' views by asking them to rate "real but blind" electoral outcomes. With this survey instrument, we aimed to elicit principled rather than partisan preferences regarding the kind of electoral outcomes that citizens think is good for democracy. We find that West Europeans do not clearly endorse a majoritarian or proportional vision of democracy. They tend to focus on aspects of the government rather than parliament when they pass a judgment. They want a majority government that has few parties and enjoys wide popular support. Finally, we find only small differences between citizens of different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1990, multilateral organizations have invested in the idea that multiparty political systems are an essential part of building durable peace, and that former insurgents must be converted to political actors. To what extent does this foster longer term democracy and stability? In this paper, we focus on the role of electoral inclusion for post-rebel parties in the creation of stable party systems as one feature that supports both democratization and durable peace. We find that political integration of former insurgents in electoral politics not only serves the short-term purpose of bringing such groups "inside the tent" and smoothing the transition from war to peace. It also lays a foundation for the creation of stable party systems. We test our propositions with an original dataset and offer explanatory analysis of small set of parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African Union is emerging as a prominent actor in election assistance and observation. Considering the continued centrality of the electoral process to democracy-building efforts in Africa, African continental and regional organisations are increasingly monitoring elections and taking the lead in election observation processes across the continent. This paper contributes to the African agency literature by showing how agency is operationalised and implemented through international election observation. Focusing on Malawi's recent electoral history (2004–2020), this paper argues that the African Union is institutionalising its election observation protocols and challenging the dominant position of western international actors, through enacting the role and agency of continental and regional actors. It critically assesses the African Union's ability to undertake these efforts and how it has addressed elections, and the politics surrounding them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections in fragmented states are usually contested along the divisive lines present within the geo polity, and this plays an important role in the emergence of political leaders. Nigeria, one of the most heterogeneous countries in the world, has exhibited predominantly ethnic voting since the consolidation of its fourth republic, and this has contributed to mixed socioeconomic and political fortunes. Using a qualitative approach based on secondary sources such as, books, journals, articles, this study highlights that mature democracies exhibit retrospective voting, through which objective scrutiny of government performance in the economy and other aspects of the state is done to determine whether to reward or punish political leaders at the polls. The limitations of primal and ethnic voting considerations in Nigeria, visible in development outcomes, call for a new guardrail to electoral choice. This paper argues the need for economic voting to predominate the ethnic considerations that determine electoral choice, as this can guarantee developmental outputs, and ensure political accountability that benefit the state. This study concludes that, if Nigeria is to experience significant changes in its fortunes going forward, the 2023 elections must change the narrative from non-evaluative considerations to evaluative voting considerations, for positive socioeconomic dividends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the performance of Pakistan's religious parties in Senate and general elections, 1970–2021, to re-evaluate widely repeated claims of poor performance. Employing datasets of provincial assembly, Senate, and National Assembly results, I argue that performance has been consistently underestimated and overlooked as a result of "whole-nation bias" in a country with very significant regional diversity. Given that parties' electoral power coalesces at the provincial level in Pakistan, and that religious parties are built around strong denominational identities, election data has been disaggregated along these lines. The results challenge conventional narratives of political Islam's trajectories in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the practice of international election observation in the Commonwealth Caribbean was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries were faced with the decision on whether to conduct or delay elections during the pandemic. Between March 2020 and June 2022, 10 out of 12 Commonwealth Caribbean countries held elections. All these countries, except for Barbados, have had their elections observed by at least one regional or international organization during the last two decades. The closure of borders and the various quarantine requirements had practical implications for maintaining this trend during the pandemic. Most countries that regularly invite international observers did not have their pandemic held elections observed. This paper considers the reasons for the absence of observers in some elections and explores the adjustments observer groups have had to make during the last two years. The discussion also explores how Caribbean countries were able to indicate their commitment to holding free and fair elections in the absence of observers. For the countries that had observers, the discussion examines how these missions navigated issues of cost, shorter invitation periods, challenges in international travel, the recruitment of suitable observers and local pandemic protocols and conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the determinants of free, fair and credible election is the security of lives and property before, during and after the electioneering process. Despites the fact that large number of Military and Paramilitary personnel are mobilized for the conduct of Elections, cases of violence, snatching of ballot boxes, loss of lives and property are on the increase in most elections in Nigeria during the fourth republic. In light of the above, this paper examines the challenges and prospects of 2023 general elections with regards to the security of lives and property through the instrumentalities of the Nigerian Police Force and other security personnel. The main objective of the paper is to assess the implications of using the police and other security personnel on national security in 2023 general elections. Methodologically, the paper adopts a qualitative approach for the purpose of obtaining the required materials through the contents analysis of documents from National Independent Electoral Commission, Election (INEC), Independent Observers reports, observations from the participating political parties, the reports of Transparency International and extant laws. The outcome of the paper revealed that the major challenges envisaged from 2023 general elections is the fact that the security of lives and property of citizens may not be guaranteed if the security Agencies carry out assigned responsibilities in an unprofessional and partisan manner. The study therefore recommended that the security agencies should carry out assigned duties and responsibilities in a professional and non-partisan way in order to guarantee the security of life and properties of citizens before, during and after the 2023 general elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 'majoritarian turn' identified by scholars of Asian democracy in the 1990s saw the rise of mixed-member majoritarian electoral systems and more centripetal party competition across both Northeast and Southeast Asia. In this paper, we argue that since the 2000s, the institutional pendulum has shifted, with more consensual approaches to democracy appearing to better represent key identity cleavages of gender, ethnicity, and territory—a trend evident not just in East Asia but South Asia as well. This new 'Asian model' typically involves increasing the proportional components of existing electoral formulas and grafting gender quotas, multiethnic party lists, and quasi-federal elements onto ostensibly majoritarian state structures. We show that these reforms have, as intended, mostly increased female and ethnic minority representation and decentralized governance structures. At the same time, however, these de jure changes are not associated with de facto political development in terms of greater democratic quality, counter to theoretical expectations. Indeed, democracy has declined across most of Asia at the same time as its democratic institutions have become more consensual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the years 1945 – 1948. The Slovak historiography calls this era the “people’s democracy”. A people´s government and democracy itself were supposed to be the cornerstones of post-war Czechoslovakia. The word “democracy” had not only been used very often in public by the organiser of the Slovak people’s uprising (Slovenské národné povstanie), but it was a keyword in all important political documents. Those intellectuals who were part of the revolution were fighting for a functioning democratic system, plurality, free elections, a pluralistic party system and a government that was approved by parliament. These ideals first materialized in the foundation of the Slovenská národna rada (National Councilof the Slovak Republic) and the founding of the Demokratická strana (Democratic Party in Czechoslovakia) in Banská Bystrica. Andrej Cvinček, a canon from Nitra (Slovakia), was an active player in this process. Cvinček was not only a politician with a Christian background, he was a politician who stood up against secular tendencies within the state and was a proponent of conservative political opinions. Cvinček was a forceful advocate of the Christian weltanschauung and the axioms, principles, and interests of his church and religious bodies and organizations. This paper wants to analyze his view on and perception of democracy in post-war Czechoslovakia. Cvinček was hinting at the extreme divergence of what communists described to be a people’s democracy and the very communist reality: this was a warning of what to expect from the immanent rise of totality. Simultaneously, we need to raise the question of whether changes in the political system and society had an impact on the convictions and the career of a politician that was fighting for church interests and Christian principles. This paper is based on materials kept in archives, press articles of his time, and memoirs of his contemporaries. The aim of this paper is, to a lesser extent, to portray his political career, but the focus is being laid on the creation of a typology of how he perceived and understood democracy and how democratic ideas were implemented in the given years 1944 – 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural reforms over the past several decades have seen the institution of local government in Australia become progressively less local. Primarily as a result of municipal amalgamation, the average population of Australia's local governments has more than doubled since the early 1990s. The democratic implications of this de-localisation, however, have been severely understudied. This article addresses this gap by analysing the effect of municipality size on several modes of local political participation in the mainland capital city regions of Adelaide and Perth. Drawing on a quantitative analysis of primary survey and electoral data, this paper presents evidence of a negative relationship between municipality size and participation – as size increases, rates of voting, candidacy, contact with local representatives, and council meeting attendance decrease. The implications for local government's input legitimacy and its role as a training ground for democracy – as well as options for 're-localising' local politics – are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been a subject of debate among scholars and political analysis on whether election governance is a prerequisite for ensuring successful decentralization. This is not unconnected with the general notion that the extent of decentralization in any political set-up is solely dependent on the desire of higher levels of government to share its powers with the lower tiers of government. Therefore, this paper examines the roles of electoral governance in the enhancement of successful decentralization. The main thrust of the paper is to determine the implications of electoral process on decentralization. Descriptive survey was adopted for the purpose of data collection. Purposive sampling was used to sample 280 respondents out of a total population of 1,282. Out of a total of 280 questionnaire administered to the staff of Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Abuja. 264 were completed and retuned accordingly. The statistical tool used of testing the validity of hypotheses is chi-square analysis. The research findings revealed that election governance has great role to play in the enchantment of successful decentralization. This is not unconnected with the fact that pluralistic politics during elections and representative government bequeath more influence to citizens, or their representatives in the formulation and implementation of policies. Also, it was discovered that the decisions made with greater participation through favourble electoral governance will be better informed and more relevant to diverse interests in society than those made only by national political authorities. Above all, the selection of representatives from local electoral jurisdictions allows citizens to know better their political representatives and allows elected officials to know better the needs and desires of their constituents. The study therefore recommended that electoral governance should give room for popular participation in grassroots democracy thorough political education and sensitization in order to guarantee successful decentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 Sāmoa general election produced a constitutional crisis, attracting international attention to issues regarding the quality of its democracy. In her 2006 book, Tradition versus Democracy, Lawson provides an extensive examination of these and similar issues and argues that elites, identified as matai, manipulate traditional institutions so as to perpetuate representational practices that deprive ordinary Sāmoans of their 'democratic' rights. This paper critically analyses Lawson's argument and concludes that it is empirically unsustainable insofar as it identifies the matai as an elite class. Nevertheless, Lawson legitimately draws attention to the issue of whether an elite exists in Sāmoan politics and, if so, how they maintain power. The 2021 election crisis provides important insights into this issue, drawing attention to what is perhaps a better focus in analysing the existence of an elite, as well as the broader issue of whether Sāmoa's political system is 'democratic'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of new voting channels, voting technologies and other voting innovations are often thought to improve voter participation in elections and democracy. However, it frequently happens at the expense of administrators, who needs to deliver even more complex elections. This article traces how the introduction of a new voting channel, Internet voting, affects frontline administrators through a qualitative in-depth case study of the 2017 local elections in Estonia. Findings show that the local election administration plays a substantial role in delivering Internet voting, despite the centralized election hierarchy. The case shows little evidence to support the expectation that Internet voting decreases the administrative burden of local election officials. The article outlines the vulnerabilities in Internet voting administration, resulting from the complexity of delivering multi-channel elections, particularly the ones integrating Internet- and paper-based voting channels. The article makes important recommendations for improving the implementation of electronic voting and improving the quality of elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation in politics is one of the most important elements for sustaining of any political system, particularly the democratic political system. Political participation of women of Rangia Legislative Assembly Constituency of Kamrup district, Assam (India) is comparatively analyzed with male participation in this paper since 1951 Legislative Assembly Elections. Today, women participation in politics is very low and inactive in comparison to men’s participation. But, people’s active and willing participation, whether men or women despite being any gender is very crucial for the fulfillment of the democratic political system. Rangia Legislative Assembly Constituency bearing no 57 out of 126 Legislative Assembly Constituencies of Assam Legislative Assembly, India is chosen as the study area of this paper. On the basis of secondary data, the study discloses the political status of women of Rangia LAC in terms of voting, standing in an election, receiving MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) seats in the Assam Legislative Assembly from 1st Legislative Assembly Election,1951 to 14th Legislative Assembly Election,2016. There is a need of increasing political awareness and education to secure equal, active women’s political participation so thus all the segments of society can fully be represented in the politics of a state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important quality of representative democracy is the strength of the linkage between citizens and the state. To provide a strong incentive for this relationship, Ghanaian legislators are elected on First-Past-The-Post system which in principle should foster close links between legislators and their constituents. In contrast to this expectation, there is an observed disconnect between the country's legislators and their constituents. This paper investigates why Ghana's electoral system is producing a starkly different outcome and which explanations could account for the gap between the country's representatives and the represented. Previous studies have not assessed patron–client networks mediating legislators' pathway to power in Ghana and how it complicates the expected effects of electoral institutions. The paper argues that the relationship between legislators and their constituents in Ghana is mediated by the strong presence of clientelistic networks in intra-party primaries that tamper with the constraining effects of formal electoral rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional Head Elections (Pilkada) on 2020 have a positive effect on the implementation of a constitution and at least democracy for measuring political participation, the elections that were held after reform started from a Regional Head who was elected by the Regional People’s Representative Council (DPRD), then elected directly by the community (one man one vote). The direct election then became a simultaneous election in all parts of Indonesia. Until the latest development, namely the presence of a single candidate. The Single Candidate then implies the Empty Box as a companion because there are no candidates or no eligible candidates. This consequence must be accepted due to the DirectSimultaneous Election system with the threshold record regulations as full of regional head nominations. This gave birth to various interests of political elites and party elites playing in it so that party elites inevitably intervened to whom the letter of recommendation would be given, or consolidation at the elite political level had agreed on a political dowry which then gave birth to a single candidate. This research uses qualitative methods with comprehensive analysis through data collected from the General Election Commission (KPU) and previous research. This paper examines the main factors that gave birth to a single candidate and the political elite’s role in compiling the party’s recommendation letter. The hypothesis that can be seen from the phenomenon of fighting empty boxes is the political dowry factor and the party cadre system’s ineffectiveness in producing leader candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asking citizens "the way democracy works" is the basis of a wide literature on the support citizens have for their political institutions and is one of the most common survey items in political science. Moreover, it is a key indicator for the purported global decline in legitimacy. Yet, its trends, levels, and dynamics are still debated, and conclusions may be erroneous. In this paper, we compile a unique global dataset between 1973 and 2018 encompassing all major cross-national datasets and national election studies in twelve countries to study the dynamics and consistency of "satisfaction with democracy" (SWD) measures globally. Our results show that while trends and between-country differences in democratic satisfaction are largely similar, the levels of satisfaction vary substantially between survey projects, and both trends and levels vary significantly in several widely studied countries. We show that this has consequences at the individual level: opting for one survey over another may alter our conclusions about the relationship between key demographics and SWD. Thus, researchers studying SWD should endeavor to consult diverse survey sources and should be cautious about their conclusions when they do not, especially when it comes to making claims about changes in SWD over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global trend of populism affects established democracies in Europe and around the world. Instrumental to this wave is the notion of the People, harnessed by populists' rhetoric to their political advantage. Yet only little is known on the various, even contradicting meanings of the People in political discourse. Drawing on popular sovereignty theories and representation studies, in this paper I develop a theoretical framework of four key facets of the People—political, national, spatial, and abstract, and their two dimensions—concrete and diffuse. I argue that while elections are associated primarily with the political facet of the People, cross-temporal approaches to electoral representation highlight the People as a multifaceted construct. I explore these theoretical conjectures with computational text analysis of news media coverage of the 2016 American election. I find that the People is a multidimensional construct, with temporal dynamics that connect the political facet with the broader political agency of the People. However, this connection holds only before the 2016 election, and not after them. The results are discussed in relation to populism and the challenges democracies are facing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Nigerian elections are sufficiently observed by domestic and international observer groups, the frequent pronouncements of religious leaders claiming to have supernatural insights into election outcomes have never captured the attention of these observers. This is despite the fact that election prophecy may have adverse effects on the electoral process and the survival of Nigeria's nascent democracy. This paper critiques the failure of election observers to capture this unfolding trend in their reports bearing in mind that pre-emptive electoral prophecies violate Section 95 (3) (b) of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended). The tendency to question the integrity and neutrality of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and the judiciary (in cases of post-election litigations), has worsened because of unguarded electoral prophetism. It is therefore recommended that election prophecy should be captured in official election reports so as to – at least – show its enormity. This may trigger a concerted effort among election stakeholders to control it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common feature of democratic politics is that the opposition may sabotage the implementation of policies put forth by the incumbent party. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the opposition's optimal use of sabotage and of how the prospect of sabotage conditions the incumbent's agenda. We show that, when a proposed policy enjoys moderate public support, the incumbent will attempt to pass it as early as possible, and the opposition will exert increasing effort to sabotage it as the next election approaches. In contrast, the incumbent delays the passage of highly popular policies until near the end of her term, and these are not subject to sabotage. Finally, the threat of sabotage persuades the incumbent to abandon unpopular proposals. In extensions, we show how our results compare under different electoral institutions, and how legislative obstruction can be used as an alternative or complement to sabotage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of the twentieth century the Irish party system was stable and unchanging, centred on Fianna Fáil, Europe's most electorally successful political party. That system suddenly collapsed in 2011 when Irish electoral politics became unusually volatile, ending decades of one-party dominance and leaving democratic elections unable to provide for government choice and accountability. This paper traces this transformation of the party system, unmasking the altered dynamics of the country's electoral competition, through a focus on its long-dominant natural party of government. It concludes by considering the challenges and prospects for Ireland's party democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The average number of hours we spend at work varies dramatically by country. Previous research focuses on tax policy, social security, and labor market regulation to explain the differences. This paper builds on previous work by focusing on politics. Specifically, it examines the relationship between democracy and the average number of hours worked per person employed. Using data on the supply of labor from the Penn World Tables 9.1, I find there is an important difference between democracies and dictatorships: as GDP/capita increases, individuals in democracies spend fewer hours at work than their counterparts in dictatorships. The results are robust to various specifications of the model that account for selection bias and data that are missing not at random (MNAR). These findings imply that the elections, civil rights, and the political liberties associated with democracy influence the amount of time people spend at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-general elections' 1970 developments resulted in the loss of eastern wing of Pakistan and creation of a new country on the world's map naming Bangladesh; consisting of the region previously known as East Pakistan. After December 1971(creation of Bangladesh), it was only West Pakistan which made a new beginning with a directly elected National Assembly (NA), Lower House of the Parliament. In this scenario, the state faced many challenges among which the most critical was formulation of a constitution, acceptable for remaining federating units of Pakistan, to save it from any further national loss and create harmony and cohesion among the federating units as a federal state. To fulfill this responsibility, the first directly elected National Assembly of Pakistan started functioning under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and the Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP). This assembly completed one of its major tasks of formulating a constitution for Pakistan in 1973 and was dissolved in January 1977 to conduct second general elections in Pakistan. The present paper is focused on the functioning of the National Assembly to analyze its working considering it as the basis of democracy in contemporary Pakistan. In this paper an attempt is made to answer the questions like how serious the business of Assembly was taken by the members? What were the attitudes of the members towards adjournments motions and during the question-and-answer session? How seriously were taken the budget sessions? Was there any constructive criticism on the government policies during the budget sessions? Since the attitude of members of the first National Assembly provided basis for the democratic system, answers to these questions may help to understand the contemporary practices inside the National Assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations (UN) introduced multiparty elections to Cambodia in 1993 in the hope of bringing about democracy in that country. Ironically, the two-and-a-half decades of uninterrupted elections have led to an ever-more authoritarian government under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). Authoritarianism under the singledominant party system began in 1997, but has intensified since 2017 with the ban on the leading opposition party. While concurring that repetitive elections have consolidated authoritarianism, this paper argues that elections are not merely tools that authoritarian leaders deploy to hold on to power. Elections are arguably mechanisms that have compelled the CPP to offer several extraordinary economic concessions since 2013; this is the first argument of the paper. The developments have created a win-win scenario for the rulers and the ruled--the authoritarian leaders prolong their rule, and the masses have more disposable income, among various benefits. The second argument is that such policy concessions are made only when the ruling party senses critical challenges from the opposition and voters. This paper contributes to the literature arguing that multiparty elections in electoral authoritarian regimes extract economic policy concessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the time oil was discovered off the Ghanaian coast in 2007, the capacity of elections to encourage alternation between government by the two main political parties was already clear. This paper aims to investigate the terms in which the debates have developed around the relationship between natural resources and democracy in Ghana. Three main issues have been addressed: the capacity of democratic institutions to condition and shape the social and political effects of the oil industry in the country; the potentially perverse effects of oil extraction on democratic institutions; and the role of international actors and the international arena in forming the political economy of oil in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting is becoming of significance in Nigeria, as in many other countries in Africa. Although Nigerian electoral politics has attracted full attention from scholars, there is little research on the factors that determine voter turnout in the country at the local level, especially the South-East geopolitical zone (GPZ). This paper is a stepwise logistic regression analysis of the determinants of voting in Nsukka council in Enugu State, South-East GPZ of Nigeria. The results show that age (0.230), education (0.532), marital status (1.355), political trust (1.309) and partisanship (˗0.570) are significant predictors of voter turnout. The effect of age, education, marital status and political trust on voting is positive and statistically significant, but partisanship has a statistically significant negative relationship with voting (p<0.01). The paper highlights the importance of local level geographical differentials in the factors influencing voting in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do electoral incentives encourage candidates to target immigrants with discriminatory rhetoric? I address this question through a novel dataset of refugee-related tweets by elites in Lebanon, the country hosting the most Syrian refugees per capita globally. I find that Lebanon's 2018 election, the first under a new set of electoral rules, precipitated an increase in anti-migrant tweets. However, the electoral campaign did not affect candidates' rhetoric uniformly, but rather fueled xenophobic discourses specifically among Christian candidates, whose voter base is particularly hostile towards refugees, and especially among Christians facing the fiercest electoral competition. This paper makes three contributions: theoretically, it elucidates the consequences of partisan competition for xenophobia; conceptually, it relaxes an assumption common in the ethnic institutions literature that ethnic composition is fixed over time; and empirically, it demonstrates how social media data can be harnessed for expanding a nascent literature on migration politics in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the 2016 US elections and the scandal around Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in 2018, the EU and several of its members promoted initiatives to fight disinformation. This paper focuses on one instrument, the "Permanent Commission against disinformation", created by the Government of Spain in 2020. It analyzes its background, parliamentary debates and early work, as well as similar instruments in Europe and USA. And it is hypothesized that this type of tool may not be an adequate solution to the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper brings the preliminary results of an experiment carried out during the 2020 local elections in São Luís/MA. The aim was to investigate whether and how a collaborative and decentralized fact-checking model affects the way participants perceive disinformation. For this, a fact-checking platform called "Sem Migué" was developed as a minimum viable product, which was tested with the participation of 24 volunteers, including non-journalists. The data analyzed was collected from the website's metrics, questionnaires answered by the volunteers, a focus group and participant observation. The results will guide the development of a new version of the model, which might be tested in new applications of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines fake news in the electoral context through a behavioral approach. It discusses the relationship between fake news and democracy, the behavioral and structural factors that explain the spread of fake news in the internet and also the strategies to face them properly. Finally, it tackles the adopted measures against fake news in the Brazilian law, notably in the electoral norms, debating their effectiveness considering the previous behavioral analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Footnotes 1 Nixon propounded, as an "honorable end to the war", a policy of "Vietnamization" "in which the United States would slowly pull its ground forces out of Vietnam while escalating the air war and increasing its training of the South Vietnamese military" (Laderman, [23], p. 2). 2 Abramowitz's ([1]) public polling research points to the white racial resentment so key to Trump's support during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, under the confounded notion that Trump could "bring back [ I sic i .] Tocqueville's categories in this regard anticipate the "Silent Majority" of Trump and Nixon. REPRESENTING THE VOX POPULI In his essay, "Populism and Constitutionalism", Jan-Werner Müller (2017) remarks: "It is not an accident that Richard Nixon's famous (or infamous) notion of a "silent majority" has had such a career among populists: if the majority were not silent, it would already have a government that truly represents the people" (p. 595). To bring this point into the context of this paper, the hubris and I failure i surrounding the storming of the Capitol in 2021 - the Trump-led effort to overturn the 2020 election results - as with Watergate in 1972, may be read ultimately as both Trump and Nixon's I misrecognition i of the separation of these two images of power. [Extracted from the article]

The concept of algorithmic political communication has arisen through the joint development of propaganda and communication theories, as well as the findings of computer science. This is a field that generates results that amplify and extend to political communication, such as microsegmentation or automated diffusion of content; likewise, it produces some adverse effects that hinder citizen participation in the cybersphere. This paper presents a review of works published in three Latin American countries (Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico) with artificial intelligence, communication, and democracy as their constituent elements. The data come from a total of 206 documents, including reports from supranational organisms and associations, and publications in scientific journals indexed in databases such as Google Scholar and Scopus between 2011 and 2021. The selection criterion is based on the total or partial appearance of certain keywords, plus filters by relevance and impact factors. This systematic review is structured based along four axes that explain democracy according to Landman et al. (2009): electoral participation, participation of civil society, media integrity, and impartial administration. The main conclusions indicate that many of the practices in the studied countries are still at an incipient or experimental stage, with algorithmic political communication being used especially during electoral campaigns. Similarly, an increasing resistance from civil society to the influence of social networks is starting to be detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relates to the role of the media in democratizing societies. The analysis of the Reuters Institute for Journalist Studies finds that researchers have different understandings over the democratization and this derives from the reason of having different ways of understanding what democracy is . The definition of democracy may even range from the minimal need to conduct free elections all the way to the definitions that underline different forms of participations. Democratization may best be understood as a complex and long-term, dynamic and open process that is consisted of progress towards a more participatory politics for more justice and consensus. This requires two different approaches. First approach is focused on the conditions that need to precede the democratization in search of internal and international factors that make it possible for the democratization to start and be successful. The second one focuses on the democratizing processes that emphasize the more approximate reasons rather than the long-term. In any case, democratic transitions represent a hybrid regime where the institutions of the previous regime cohabit with those of the new state and often autocrats and democrats share power, whereas the democratic consolidation refers to the challenges to make new democracies secure. A third possible approach may be referred to the aspects of democracy in countries that aren't subject of a destabilization threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Election Commission of India (henceforth, the EC), an institution created by the Constitution of India in 1950, manages and conducts parliamentary and state assembly (provincial level) elections. In recent elections, it has made tremendous efforts to make the electoral process more participatory. More than 900 million people were eligible to vote in the Indian parliamentary elections of 2019. In addition to the conventional ways of spreading voter awareness, the EC tried to reach out to voters through previously untried means to persuade them to come to the polling booths and vote – reflecting an institutional enthusiasm for popular mobilisation. However, there are also a significant number of missing names from the electoral rolls, and the EC faces accusations of being apathetic towards this anomaly. Is this eagerness on one hand and anomaly on the other symptomatic of 'democracy at crossroads', with India transiting to a more efficacious and involved institutional functioning, or is this an instance of strained institutional performance in the face of rising popular aspirations and tighter executive controls? The paper tries to explore this theme by looking at the functioning of the EC and its efforts towards voter participation in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representative democracy gives voters the right to influence who governs but its influence on policy making is only indirect. Free and fair referendums give voters the right to decide a policy directly. Elected representatives usually oppose referendums as redundant at best and as undermining their authority at worst. Democratic theorists tend to take electing representatives as normal and as normatively superior. The nominal association of popular decision making and populism has strengthened this negative view. Public opinion surveys show substantial support for holding referendums on important issues. Two major theories offer contrasting explanations for popular support for referendums; they reflect populist values or a commitment to the civic value of participation. This innovative paper tests an integrated model of both theories by the empirical analysis of a 17‐country European survey. There is substantial support for all three civic hypotheses: referendum endorsement is positively influenced by attitudes towards participation, democratic ideals and whether elected representatives are perceived as responsive. By contrast, there is no support for populist hypotheses that the socioeconomically weak and excluded favour referendums and minimal support for the effect of extreme ideologies. The conclusion shows that most criticisms of referendums also apply to policy making by elected representatives. While referendums have limits on their use, there is a democratic argument for holding such ballots on major issues to see whether or not a majority of voters endorse the choice of their nominal representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political science theories and concepts that describe the real political process have always been the empirical basis for political philosophy. According to the author, the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election campaign can best be understood and described using the concepts of "populism" and "post-truth". The paper analyzes the discourse of the concept of "populism", and reveals its content and main features. The need to establish social supervision over the actions of the authorities as a means of countering populism is emphasized. Essential characteristics of the post-truth phenomenon are revealed. The theoretical chain of the terms "verity" - "truth" - "posttruth" is presented. The meme as a unit of post-truth is analyzed. The paper proves that it was the bundle of populism and post-truth that had been the background of the electoral consciousness where the manipulative election technologies of the presidential campaign in Ukraine unfolded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new measure polyarchy for a global sample of 182 countries from 1900 to 2017 based on the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data, deriving from an expert survey of more than 3000 country experts from around the world, with on average 5 experts rating each indicator. By measuring the five components of Elected Officials, Clean Elections, Associational Autonomy, Inclusive Citizenship, and Freedom of Expression and Alternative Sources of Information separately, we anchor this new index directly in Dahl's (1971) extremely influential theoretical framework. The paper describes how the five polyarchy components were measured and provides the rationale for how to aggregate them to the polyarchy scale. We find that personal characteristics or ideological predilections of the V-Dem country experts do not systematically predict their ratings on our indicators. We also find strong correlations with other existing measures of electoral democracy, but also decisive differences where we believe the evidence supports the polyarchy index having higher face validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Digital spaces, and in particular social networking sites, are becoming increasingly present and influential in the functioning of our democracies. In this paper, we propose an integrated methodology for the data collection, the reconstruction, the analysis and the visualization of the development of a country’s political landscape from Twitter data. Method: The proposed method relies solely on the interactions between Twitter accounts and is independent of the characteristics of the shared contents such as the language of the tweets. We validate our methodology on a case study on the 2017 French presidential election (60 million Twitter exchanges between more than 2.4 million users) via two independent methods: the comparison between our automated political categorization and a human categorization based on the evaluation of a sample of 5000 profiles descriptions; the correspondence between the reconfigurations detected in the reconstructed political landscape and key political events reported in the media. This latter validation demonstrated the ability of our approach to accurately reflect the reconfigurations at play in the off-line political scene. Results: We built on this reconstruction to give insights into the opinion dynamics and the reconfigurations of political communities at play during a presidential election. First, we propose a quantitative description and analysis of the political engagement of members of political communities. Second, we analyze the impact of political communities on information diffusion and in particular on their role in the fake news phenomena. We measure a differential echo chamber effect on the different types of political news (fake news, debunks, standard news) caused by the community structure and emphasize the importance of addressing the meso-structures of political networks in understanding the fake news phenomena. Conclusions: Giving access to an intermediate level, between sociological surveys in the field and large statistical studies (such as those conducted by national or international organizations) we demonstrate that social networks data make it possible to qualify and quantify the activity of political communities in a multi-polar political environment; as well as their temporal evolution and reconfiguration, their structure, their alliance strategies and their semantic particularities during a presidential campaign through the analysis of their digital traces. We conclude this paper with a comment on the political and ethical implications of the use of social networks data in politics. We stress the importance of developing social macroscopes that will enable citizens to better understand how they collectively make society and propose as example the “Politoscope”, a macroscope that delivers some of our results in an interactive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landslide victory of the pan-democrats sent shockwaves through the political sector, including the Hong Kong and Chinese governments in the 2019 District Council election. A new phenomenon was observed in the election that voting was no longer based principally on utilitarian pragmatism as a driving force. This paper analyzes the 2019 District Council election results from a localism perspective. The adoption of a localism perspective is conduced by the political turmoil triggered by the extradition bill proposed by the Hong Kong government months before the election. The fundamental opposition to the extradition bill is the lack of trust toward Hong Kong leaders and the Chinese political system. This in turn is translated into an anti-China feeling among the Hong Kong general public. The rise of an anti-China feeling is related to rise of Hong Kong localism and the weakening of Chinese identity among the Hong Kong people. Localism plays an important role shaping the electoral politics and governance in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2020 general election, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won 920 of the total 1,117 seats, which was upped by 61 seats from its win in the 2015 election. The main opposition party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), won 71 seats, down 46 from the 2015 election when it won 117 seats. The election result gave a strong mandate to the NLD for another five years. On the other hand, the USDP accused the NLD of engaging in electoral fraud including the buying of votes, and called for fresh elections in coordination with the military. Following a complaint from its proxy party, the USDP, the military initially said it would conduct an investigation in 218 townships where the military personnel and their family members cast their votes, which it expanded to 314 townships in all states and regions across the country; this finally led to the declaration of a state of emergency rule (the military coup) on 1 February 2021. Ethnic parties also alleged that the NLD government made certain pre-poll decisions that disadvantaged the ethnic minorities. This paper analyzes the electoral process and its outcome in an attempt to understand whether the election led to the deepening of democracy or the widening of division in the country's democratization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Chinese scholars, media, and writers have long reported a noteworthy rural-urban difference in political participation, the meaning of this divergence to China's local democracy remains underexplored. This paper explores the different patterns of electoral participation between rural and urban residents. I argue that the rural zeal in elections is due to VC governments' strong capacity to mobilize loyalists to vote in state-controlled elections, while voter apathy in urban elections is resulted from the RC governments' lack of the equivalent power to cultivate loyalist voters. Using Chinese General Social Survey 2013 to test the argument, I find evidence that shows that in VC elections rural people are more likely to vote in state-controlled elections than are urban residents. In addition, villagers' electoral participation has nothing to do with their democratic consciousness but is significantly associated with Party membership. In contrast, urban turnout is highly correlated with democratic consciousness but not Party membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory predicts democracy should reduce corruption. Yet, scholars have found that while corruption is low at high levels of democracy, it is high at modest levels, as well as low when democracy is absent. A weakness of studies that aim to explain this inverted curvilinear relationship is that they do not disaggregate the complex concepts of democracy and corruption. By contrast, this paper disaggregates both. We demonstrate that the curvilinear relationship results from the collective impact of different components of democracy on different types of corruption. Using Varieties of Democracy data, we examine 173 countries from 1900 to 2015, and we find freedom of expression and freedom of association each exhibit an inverted curvilinear relationship with corruption—both overall corruption and four different types. The introduction of elections and the quality of elections each act in a linear fashion—positively and negatively with corruption, respectively—but jointly form a curvilinear relationship with both overall corruption and many of its types. Judicial and legislative constraints exhibit a negative linear relationship with executive corruption. We offer a framework that suggests how these components affect costs and benefits of engaging in different types of corruption and, therefore, the level of corruption overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]