US election reopens financial reform debate

Significance The resilience of the Sanders campaign ahead of the February 1 Iowa caucuses despite its low pre-2015 profile with the national electorate, and the vigilance of banking watchdog Elizabeth Warren in the Senate, continue to shift the political debate on financial regulation leftwards, particularly among Democrats. Impacts Overlap between Republicans and Democrats on Fed transparency may lead to greater scrutiny of the central bank's operations post-2016. Pressure to police and prosecute financial crimes more aggressively will continue to build and will not require legislation to achieve. The likely persistence of divided government will prevent either party from updating bank regulatory legislation.

Why Two Parties? Ambition, Policy, and the Presidency

Duverger’s Law suggests that two parties will dominate under first-past-the-post (FPTP) within an electoral district, but the law does not necessarily establish two-party competition at the national level. United States is unique among FPTP countries in having the only durable and nearly pure, two-party system. Following this observation, we answer two questions. First, what contributes to the same two parties competing in districts all across the country and at different levels of office? Second, why is the US two-party system so durable over time, dominated by the same two parties? That is, “Why two parties?” As an answer, we propose the APP: ambition, the presidency, and policy. The presidency with its national electorate and electoral rules that favor two-party competition establishes two national major parties, which frames the opportunity structure that influences party affiliation decisions of ambitious politicians running for lower offices. Control over the policy agenda helps reinforce the continuation of a particular two-party system in equilibrium by blocking third parties through divergence on the main issue dimension and the suppression of latent issue dimensions that could benefit new parties. The confluence of the three factors explains why the United States is so uniquely a durable two-party system.

Expansionism, Slavery, and Sectionalism: James K. Polk and American Enlargement under the Fluctuating Forces of Manifest Destiny

This article explores the relationship between President James K. Polk’s progressive ambition in the national electorate and the geographic expansion of the United States, particularly with regard to the social and religious foundations for manifest destiny in the public conscience. The author finds that manifest destiny played a central role in President James K. Polk’s successful campaign for the White House as well as his handling of foreign and domestic affairs.

A Dynamic Simultaneous Equation Model of Electoral Choice

This article develops a simultaneous equation model of the voting decision in a form thought to mirror the main lines of cognitive decision-making processes of individual voters. The model goes beyond earlier efforts in two respects. First, it explicitly represents the causal interdependence of voter assessments in the election situation, permitting such estimations as the degree to which correlations between voter issue positions and issue positions ascribed to preferred candidates arise because of projection onto the candidate or persuasion by the candidate. Secondly, the model is truly dynamic, in the sense that it is dependent on longitudinal data for its proper estimation. The utility of the model is certified by the goodness of fit achieved when applied to 1972–76 panel data for a sample of the national electorate.

The Chilean Socialist Party: Prolegomena to its Ideology and Organization

It is common knowledge that, prior to the military coup of 1973, Chile was the only Latin American country to have strong workers' political parties of the European type. Many reasons have been given for this phenomenon, but it is clear that Chile has been the only country in Latin-America to allow the development of Marxist parties with strong appeal and a strong following, within the framework of what could be called liberal, democratic processes. Up to 1970, the electoral force of the Socialist and Communist Parties in Chile oscillated between 20 and 30 per cent of the total national electorate. This rose to more than 40 per cent during 1975.

De politieke participatie aan de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen

Municipal elections are not the only channel of participation in the municipal policy nor are they the only participation-problem. But it is nevertheless useful to make research into them because they are the unique institutionalized possibility of participation.This participation-research deals with the different aspects of the municipal elections.The first thing to note is that a number of council-members are pointed out by elections without competition. This phenomenon is not very extended: 373 out of some 2,600 municipalities, 12 % of the council members, 200,000 voters. There is no notable change of size since 1920 in this phenomenon.Compared to the legislative elections, candidatures are very stable and limited : an average of 2,3 candidates per seat. These limited candidatures also mean that in practically half of the cases municipal elections have a two-parties system, by which the electoral corps chose directly the Court of Mayor and Aldermen. But even in municipalities with more than two parties, this «direct choice of the government» is made in 75 % of the cases. In respect of these facts, participation is qualitatively much better than in the case of the parliamentary elections.Forsaking of choice is notably lower at municipal than at parliamentary elections. As to the use of preference-votes, the choice of the municipal electorate is richer than that of the national electorate not only because municipal electors more aften express their preference for individuals, but also and not in the least because, by this more frequent use of preference-votes, they have real participation in the choice of the councilmembers themselves.The possibilities of choice at municipal elections offer an original alternative : to vote beyond party-frontiers with the «mixed vote». This multi-party vote is but seldom used : by 2,5 % of the electorate.And even then those who tlus mixed way lose half of their votingcapacity. Generally seen however, the municipal elections show a more favorable participation-pattern than the legislative ones. This leads to the question if it can be imputed to the voters when something is wrong with municipal politics. Is this problem not-situated on a higher level of the participation-pyramid ?

Critical Elections in Illinois: 1888–1958

In the past seventy years, lasting reorientations of the national electorate have taken place in two periods, centering about the presidential elections of 1896 and 1918. Most other presidential elections have involved relatively uniform swings of states or counties toward one party or the other; Louis Bean summarized this phenomenon in his chapter title, “As Your State Goes, So Goes the Nation.” But the occasions when this uniform swing does not occur are of special interest, because if the reorientations persist they can mark the injection of new issues into national and state politics for a generation. Lubell noted the importance of the “Al Smith revolution” which preceded the “Roosevelt revolution”; and Key, naming these phenomena “critical elections,” went on to show that Bryan's candidacy in 1896 marked an earlier major reorientation of the electorate. He defined a critical election as one in which “the depth and intensity of electoral involvement are high, in which more or less profound readjustments occur in the relations of power within the community, and in which new and durable electoral groupings are formed.”

British Parliamentary Elections

War-time conditions joined with a new and revolutionizing electoral law to give the British parliamentary elections of last December many novel features. The national electorate, including six million women, was twice as large as ever before; balloting, except by soldiers and other absentees, was confined to a single day; votes were allowed to be sent in by post, or to be cast by proxy; the usual party contest was replaced by a trial of strength between a coalition government which found support among practically all political elements and a number of groups whose physiognomy would hardly have been recognized by an antebellum observer.