The Politics of Legislative Debates

The contribution of this chapter to our volume is fourfold. First, we look at why we should study legislative debates and how scholars may benefit from representation, legislative politics, party politics, and electoral studies by incorporating debates in their analysis. In so doing, we unpack their functions in liberal democracies. Second, the chapter offers a state of the art of the burgeoning field of legislative debates. We focus on the normative scholarly discussion about legislative debates and their importance for deliberation and democratic outputs. In addition, we dwell on Proksch and Slapin’s model as a watershed in the empirical study of legislative debates, particularly due to its capacity to travel and its usefulness in understanding how different institutional settings have an impact of speechmaking. Third, the chapter presents the theoretical framework, the key hypotheses guiding the volume, and our empirical approach to legislative debates. Fourth, the chapter concludes with the plan of the book.

Reactionary Politics and Resentful Affect in Populist Times

<p>This thematic issue brings together ten articles from political psychology, political sociology, philosophy, history, public policy, media studies, and electoral studies, which examine reactionary politics and resentful affect in populist times.</p>

'Them' Without 'Us': Negative Identities and Affective Polarisation in Brazil

High levels of hostility between those on opposing sides of politics have led to a burgeoning literature on the concept of affective polarisation. Though a globally widespread phenomenon, extant literature has generated theoretical expectations and empirical findings mostly inspired by the United States and Western Europe. By studying the case of Brazil, I argue and show that traditional explanations do not provide satisfactory accounts of affective polarisation in contexts where politics is only weakly structured by ideology or partisan attachments. I argue and show that in such contexts the concept of negative political identities can provide a much better explanation for why politics is so divisive. Using both the 2014 and 2018 waves of the Brazilian Electoral Studies (BES) and independently collected survey data (N = 1,732), I provide robust empirical findings supporting the primacy of negative political identities over traditional hypotheses. Negative identification with the out-party/leader has a strong effect on dislike towards out-voters even when controlling for instrumental evaluations of political elites. This paper contributes to the comparative research agenda on affective polarisation outside Western contexts, as well as to the the study of negative political identities.

Spatial analysis for political scientists

How does space matter in our analyses? How can we evaluate diffusion of phenomena or interdependence among units? How biased can our analysis be if we do not consider spatial relationships? All the above questions are critical theoretical and empirical issues for political scientists belonging to several subfields from Electoral Studies to Comparative Politics, and also for International Relations. In this special issue on methods, our paper introduces political scientists to conceptualizing interdependence between units and how to empirically model these interdependencies using spatial regression. First, the paper presents the building blocks of any feature of spatial data (points, polygons, and raster) and the task of georeferencing. Second, the paper discusses what a spatial matrix (W) is, its varieties and the assumptions we make when choosing one. Third, the paper introduces how to investigate spatial clustering through visualizations (e.g. maps) as well as statistical tests (e.g. Moran's index). Fourth and finally, the paper explains how to model spatial relationships that are of substantive interest to some of our research questions. We conclude by inviting researchers to carefully consider space in their analysis and to reflect on the need, or the lack thereof, to use spatial models.

BAWASLU DAN PENEGAKAN HUKUM PEMILU

Election law enforcement is a necessity in an election that is democratic and has legal provisions. Election law enforcement agencies are the key to the implementation of democratic and fair elections. No matter how small the violations that occur, it is important to follow up, so that substantial democracy can be achieved and carried out. The reconceptualization of institutions authorized to enforce election law is important to be formulated in the revision of the Election Law. Activists and stakeholders who are concerned about electoral studies are obliged to provide contributions, ideas for the realization of elections and electoral justice in subsequent elections.

The Factors Determining Voter Turnouts in Presidential Elections in Nigeria: Multivariate Correlation Analysis of the 2019 Presidential Election

People’s active participation in elections is one of the key measures of electoral democracy. The people’s lack of interests or apathy in elections tends to undervalue the democratic process, engender mistrust in political institutions, and enthrone unaccountable leadership. This is why voter turnout is a crucial aspect of electoral studies. Even though Nigeria has successfully undergone two decades of uninterrupted democracy, she may not be too fast in imbibing the tenets of electoral democracy which presupposes active people’s participation in the electoral process. This is because there has been a conspicuous decline in voter turnouts in presidential elections since 2003. There are several factors responsible for this decline. This paper analysed three key variables – violence, socioeconomic factors, and candidate’s popularity - with the use of Multivariate Correlation Analysis (a statistical procedure that calculates correlation coefficients of two or more variables to determine the strengths of their relationships). The study, therefore, finds that of the three variables, candidate’s popularity as indicated by voters’ preferences for candidate’s/running mate’s tribe, political party, and trust in candidate’s abilities provide stronger evidence of the declining turnouts in Nigerian presidential elections.

What Is Electoral Psychology?—Scope, Concepts, and Methodological Challenges for Studying Conscious and Subconscious Patterns of Electoral Behavior, Experience, and Ergonomics

Electoral psychology is defined as any model based on human psychology that is used to explain any electoral experience or outcome at the individual or aggregate level. Electoral psychology can also be an interface with other crucial aspects of the vote. For example, the interface between electoral psychology and electoral organization constitutes electoral ergonomics. The very nature of the models tested in electoral psychology has also led scholars in the field to complement mainstream social science methodologies with their own specific methodological approaches in order to capture the subconscious component of the vote and the subtle nature of the psychological processes determining the electoral experience and the way in which it permeates citizens’ thoughts and lives. After defining electoral psychology, this introductory article scopes its analytical roots and contemporary relevance, focuses on the importance of switching from “institution-centric” to “people-centric” conceptions of electoral behavior, and notably how it redefines key concepts such as electoral identity and consistency, and approaches questions of personality, morality, memory, identity, and emotions in electoral psychological models. Then, it discusses some of the unique methodological challenges that the field faces, notably when it comes to analyzing largely subconscious phenomena, and addresses them, before explaining how the various contributions to this Special Issue give a flavor of the scope and approaches of electoral psychology contributions to electoral studies.

Public goods equilibria under closed- and open-list proportional representation

Building on past research, this paper develops a game theoretic model to study the provision of local public goods under closed- and open-list proportional representation (CLPR and OLPR). The core results suggest that, all thing equal, legislators will provide voters with higher levels of public goods in OLPR than in CLPR systems. However, two intervening variables condition the institutional comparison: the district magnitude and electoral volatility. Firstly, public goods effort increases as district magnitude increases in OLPR systems, while it tends to decrease as magnitude increases in CLPR systems. Indeed, when district magnitude is [Formula: see text], the two systems are often indistinguishable. Furthermore, the distinction between OLPR and CLPR weakens when electoral volatility is low, such that neither system generates high levels of public goods effort. In addition to their relevance for political economy, the paper’s results provide game theoretic foundations for a series of theoretical conjectures found in Carey and Shugart’s (1995) seminal study of electoral institutions and legislative personalism (Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: A rank-ordering of electoral formulas. Electoral Studies 1995; 14(4): 417–439).

Landeswahlrecht

In German politics, elections occur constantly. When voters are not being called upon to elect a new Bundestag, the next election at federal state level is just around the corner. Despite some commonalities, each federal state parliament is elected within a different legal framework. In both the public’s perception and electoral studies, however, those differences are not always duly taken into account. Therefore, this volume describes the electoral laws of the states in 16 specific chapters following a short introduction on their theoretical and historical foundations as well as on the requirements of the federal constitution. It provides a reliable basis for comparing the German electoral systems with one another. The electoral laws of the states do not appear as mere imitations of the federal system, but as autonomous legislative entities with their own structural decisions and emphases. The volume deals, in particular, with controversial reform projects, such as the reduction of the voting age and so-called affirmative action Legislation. With contributions by Prof. Dr. Tristan Barczak, LL.M.; Dr. Henner Gött, LL.M.; Lukas Christoph Gundling, M.A.; Dorothea Heilmann; Dr. Patrick Hilbert; Laura Jung, MJur, Maître en droit; Benjamin Jungkind; Dr. Roman Kaiser; Dr. Manuel Kollmann, Dr. Stefan Lenz, Dr. Stefan Martini; Michael Meier; Dr. Fabian Michl, LL.M.; Nadja Reimold; Christina Schulz, LL.M.; Dr. Thomas Spitzlei; Victor Struzina