Corruption scandals, press reporting, and accountability. Evidence from Spanish mayors.

[spa] En este trabajo se analiza con datos de España los efectos de la corrupción local sobre los resultados electorales. En base a las noticias publicadas entre 1996 y 2009, se construye una nueva base de datos que recoge los casos de corrupción y noticias relativas a cambios en los planes urbanísticos que no han seguido el procedimiento legal. La base de datos muestra que los primeros escándalos de corrupción urbanística surgieron durante el mandato electoral de 1999-2003, pero que éstos alcanzaron sus niveles máximos justo antes de las elecciones de 2007. Se estima una ecuación del porcentaje de voto obtenido por el partido en el poder en estas elecciones locales y se encuentra que la pérdida media de voto después de un caso de corrupción se sitúa alrededor del 4%. Este efecto es más elevado (del 9%) si el caso de corrupción ha recibido una amplia cobertura por los diarios. Los efectos estimados para las elecciones de 2003 son significativamente inferiores. Cuando se consideran los casos en que los políticos han tenido cargas judiciales por corrupción y amplia cobertura por los diarios, la pérdida de voto asciende hasta el 12%. No obstante, la cobertura por los diarios genera un efecto negativo en el voto incluso cuando no hay cargas judiciales.

Corruption scandals, press reporting, and accountability. Evidence from Spanish mayors.

[spa] En este trabajo se analiza con datos de España los efectos de la corrupción local sobre los resultados electorales. En base a las noticias publicadas entre 1996 y 2009, se construye una nueva base de datos que recoge los casos de corrupción y noticias relativas a cambios en los planes urbanísticos que no han seguido el procedimiento legal. La base de datos muestra que los primeros escándalos de corrupción urbanística surgieron durante el mandato electoral de 1999-2003, pero que éstos alcanzaron sus niveles máximos justo antes de las elecciones de 2007. Se estima una ecuación del porcentaje de voto obtenido por el partido en el poder en estas elecciones locales y se encuentra que la pérdida media de voto después de un caso de corrupción se sitúa alrededor del 4%. Este efecto es más elevado (del 9%) si el caso de corrupción ha recibido una amplia cobertura por los diarios. Los efectos estimados para las elecciones de 2003 son significativamente inferiores. Cuando se consideran los casos en que los políticos han tenido cargas judiciales por corrupción y amplia cobertura por los diarios, la pérdida de voto asciende hasta el 12%. No obstante, la cobertura por los diarios genera un efecto negativo en el voto incluso cuando no hay cargas judiciales.

A crisis of social democracy : organized labour and the NDP in an era of neoliberalism

The NDP was founded out of the ashes of the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation to cooperate with the Canadian Labour Congress to become the 'political arm of organized labour' in Canada. The NDP has long claimed they are the party which represents the policy goals of organized labour in Canada: that the NDP alone will fight for trade union rights, and will fight for Canadian workers. Divergent Paths is an examination of the links between the labour movement and the ND P in an era ofneo-liberalism. Provincial NDP governments have become increasingly neoliberal in their ideological orientation, and have often proved to be no friend to the labour movement when they hold office. The Federal party has never held power, nor have they ever formed the Official Opposition. This thesis charts the progress of the federal NDP as they become more neoliberal from 1988 to 2006, and shows how this trend effects the links between the NDP and labour. Divergent Paths studies each federal election from 1988 to 2006, looking at the interactions between Labour and the NDP during these elections. Elections provide critical junctions to study discourse - party platforms, speeches, and other official documents can be used to examine discourse. Extensive newspaper searches were used to follow campaign events and policy speeches. Studying the party's discourse can be used to determine the ideological orientation of the party itself: the fact that the party's discourse has become neoliberal is a sure sign that the party itself is neoliberal. The NDP continues to drive towards the centre of the political spectrum in an attempt to gain multi-class support. The NDP seems more interested in gaining seats at any cost, rather then promoting the agenda of Labour. As the party attempts to open up to more multi-class support, Labour becomes increasingly marginalised in the party. A rift which arguably started well before the 1988 election was exacerbated during that election; labour encouraged the NDP to campaign solely on the issue of Free Trade, and the NDP did not. The 1993 election saw the rift between the two grow even further as the Federal NDP suffered major blowbacks from the actions of the Ontario NDP. The 1997 and 2000 elections saw the NDP make a deliberate move to the centre of the political spectrum which increasingly marginalised labour. In the 2004 election, Jack Layton made no attempt to move the party back to the left; and in 2006 the link between labour and the NDP was perhaps irreparably damaged when the CAW endorsed the Liberal party in a strategic voting strategy, and the CLC did not endorse the NDP. The NDP is no longer a reliable ally of organized labour. The Canadian labour movement must decide wether the NDP can be 'salvaged' or if the labour movement should end their alliance with the NDP and engage in a new political project.

Political Influence, Economic Interests and Endogenous Tax Structure in a Computable Equilibrium Framework: with Applicatioon to the United States, 1973 and 1983

A full understanding of public affairs requires the ability to distinguish between the policies that voters would like the government to adopt, and the influence that different voters or group of voters actually exert in the democratic process. We consider the properties of a computable equilibrium model of a competitive political economy in which the economic interests of groups of voters and their effective influence on equilibrium policy outcomes can be explicitly distinguished and computed. The model incorporates an amended version of the GEMTAP tax model, and is calibrated to data for the United States for 1973 and 1983. Emphasis is placed on how the aggregation of GEMTAP households into groups within which economic and political behaviour is assumed homogeneous affects the numerical representation of interests and influence for representative members of each group. Experiments with the model suggest that the changes in both interests and influence are important parts of the story behind the evolution of U.S. tax policy in the decade after 1973.

Continuity and Incentive Compatibility in Cardinal Voting Mechanisms

We show that every cardinal incentive compatible voting mechanism satisfying a continuity condition, must be ordinal. Our results apply to many standard models in mechanism design without transfers, including the standard voting models with any domain restrictions.

Congress composition and electoral advantage

In 2003, an electoral reform changed the mechanism to assign seats in the Colombian Congress. I simulate the 2006 Senate elections using the previous assignment mechanism to determine which senators benefited from the reform, i.e. would have not been elected had the reform not been made. With the results of the simulation, I use a regression discontinuity design to compare the senators that would have been barely elected anyways with those who would have lost, but were near to be elected. I check the differences in the amount of law drafts presented, the attendance to voting sessions, and a discipline index for each senator as proxy of their legislative behavior. I find that the senators benefiting from the reform present a different legislative behavior during the 4-year term with respect to the senators that would have been elected anyways. Since the differential legislative behavior cannot be interpreted as being better (worse) politician, I examine if the behavioral difference gives them an electoral advantage. I find no difference in the electoral result of 2010 Senate election in terms of the probability of being (re)elected in 2010, the share of votes, the share of votes within their party list, and the concentration of their votes. Additionally, I check the probability of being investigated for links with paramilitary groups and I find no differences. The results suggest that political reforms can change the composition of governing or legislative bodies in terms of performance, but it does not necessarily translate into an electoral advantage.

Free and Fair? A Challenge for the EU as Georgia and Ukraine gear up for elections. CEPS Commentary, 27 September 2012

In an important test for democracy, Georgia and Ukraine will go to the polls for parliamentary elections on the 1st and 28th of October, respectively. The political leaders of these two Eastern Partnership countries have committed themselves to European values and principles – rhetorically. In reality, the promise of their colour revolutions is unrealised and they have shifted further towards authoritarianism, albeit following different paths in their respective post-revolution periods.

The rise of the far right in debtor and creditor European countries: the case of European Parliament elections

While the 2014 European Parliament elections were marked by the rise of far right-wing parties, the different patterns of support that we observe across Europe and across time are not directly related to the economic crisis. Indeed, economic hardship seems neither sufficient nor necessary for the rise of such parties to occur. Using the cross-national results for the 2004, 2009 and 2014 EP elections in order to capture time and country variations, we posit the economy affects the rise of far right-wing parties in more complex ways. Specifically, we compare the experience of high debt countries (the ‘debtors’) and the others (the ‘creditors’) and explore the relationship between far right-wing party success on the one hand, and unemployment, inequality, immigration, globalization and the welfare state on the other hand. Our discussion suggests there might be a trade off between budgetary stability and far right-wing party support, but the choice between Charybdis and Scylla may be avoided if policy makers carefully choose which policies should bear the brunt of the fiscal adjustment.

Risks, costs and labour markets: explaining cross-national patterns of far right party success in European Parliament elections

What is the impact of the economy on cross national variation in far right-wing party support? This paper tests several hypotheses from existing literature on the results of the last three EP elections in all EU member states. We conceptualise the economy affects support because unemployment heightens the risks and costs that the population faces, but this is crucially mediated by labour market institutions. Findings from multiple regression analyses indicate that unemployment, real GDP growth, debt and deficits have no statistically significant effect on far right-wing party support at the national level. By contrast, labour markets influence costs and risks: where unemployment benefits and dismissal regulations are high, unemployment has no effect, but where either one of them is low, unemployment leads to higher far right-wing party support. This explains why unemployment has not led to far right-wing party support in some European countries that experienced the 2008 Eurozone crisis.

Voting rights of refugees

The book develops a novel legal argument about the voting rights of recognised 1951 Geneva Convention Refugees. The main normative contention is that such refugees should have the right to vote in the political community where they reside, assuming that the political community is a democracy and that its citizens have the right to vote. The basis of this contention is that the right to political participation in some political community is a basic right from the point of view of dignity and the protection of one’s interests. Due to their unique political predicament, 1951 Geneva Convention Refugees are a special category of non-citizen residents. They are unable to participate in elections of their state of origin, do not enjoy its diplomatic protection and consular assistance abroad, and – most fundamentally – are unable or unwilling, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution, to return to it; thus, they are in limbo for a potentially protracted period. Refugees, too, deserve to have a place in the world in the Arendtian sense, where their opinions are significant and their actions are effective. Their state of asylum is, for the time being, the only community in which there is any realistic prospect of political participation on their part.