Election Forecasting under Opaque Conditions

Election forecasting models assume retrospective economic voting and clear mechanisms of accountability. Previous research indeed indicates that incumbent political parties are being held accountable for the state of the economy. In this article we develop a ‘hard case’ for the assumptions of election forecasting models. Belgium is a multiparty system with perennial coalition governments. Furthermore, Belgium has two completely segregated party systems (Dutch and French language). Since the prime minister during the period 1974-2011 has always been a Dutch language politician, French language voters could not even vote for the prime minister, so this cognitive shortcut to establish political accountability is not available. Results of an analysis for the French speaking parties (1981-2010) show that even in these conditions of opaque accountability, retrospective economic voting occurs as election results respond to indicators with regard to GDP and unemployment levels. Party membership figures can be used to model the popularity function in election forecasting.

Testaments,

I. The testament of a vivisector, 1901.--II. The testament of a man forbid, 1901.--III. The testament of an empire-builder, 1902.--IV. The testament of a prime minister, 1904.

Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context : Taiwan, Japan, and Beyond /

After the electoral reform in 1994, Japan saw a gradual evolution from a multi-party system toward a two-party system over the course of five House of Representatives election cycles. In contrast, after Taiwan’s constitutional amendment in 2005, a two-party system emerged in the first post-reform legislative election in 2008. Critically, however, Taiwan’s president is directly elected while Japan’s prime minister is indirectly elected. The contributors conclude that the higher the payoffs of holding the executive office and the greater degree of cross-district coordination required to win it, the stronger the incentives for elites to form and stay in the major parties. In such a context, a country will move rapidly toward a two-party system. In Part II, the contributors apply this theoretical logic to other countries with mixed-member systems to demonstrate its generality. They find the effect of executive competition on legislative electoral rules in countries as disparate as Thailand, the Philippines, New Zealand, Bolivia, and Russia. The findings presented in this book have important implications for political reform. Often, reformers are motivated by high hopes of solving some political problems and enhancing the quality of democracy. But, as this group of scholars demonstrates, electoral reform alone is not a panacea. Whether and to what extent it achieves the advocated goals depends not only on the specification of new electoral rules per se but also on the political context—and especially the constitutional framework—within which such rules are embedded.

Manifiesto, que hace el gobierno de Colombia de los fundamentos que tiene para hacer la guerra al gobierno del Peru; con la contestacion que da a los cargos el ciudadano M. L. Vidaurre, como primer ministro de estado y de relaciones interiores y esteriores.

Cover-title: Manifiesto del gobierno de Colombia y respuesta del cuidadano M. L. Vidaurre ...

Works.

Separate title-page for each vol.

Reconciliation without Forgiveness: The EU in Promoting Postwar Cooperation in Serbia and Kosovo

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Allies down under? The Australian at war

There can be no doubt that the Murdoch press played an important role in cohering what support there was for Australia's involvement in 'Gulf War Two'. From the start, Murdoch's 'Australian' newspaper was firmly committed to the coalition of the willing and provided a well-orchestrated cheer squad for Prime Minister John Howard and the war against Iraq.

Society

What is the nature of our current societies? Do we see a clash of civilizations, or the end of history? The advent of globalization, or the birth of the network society? Are we witnessing the emergence of a risk society, or the advent of the knowledge society? More fundamentally, is ‘society’ an ideological construct that should be abandoned? Coming into English from the Latin term ‘societas’ via Old French ‘société’, the etymology of ‘society,’ in the sense of a system adopted by a group of co-existing individuals for mutually beneficial purposes, can be traced back at least to the mid-sixteenth century. By the Age of Enlightenment, ‘society’ was increasingly used in intellectual discourse to characterize human relations, often in contrast to notions of ‘the state’. During the nineteenth century, the concept was subject to highly elaborate treatment in various intellectual fields, such as political economy, philosophy, and legal thought; and ‘society’ continues to be a central conceptual tool, not only for sociology, but also for many other social-science disciplines, such as anthropology, economics, political sciences, and law. The notion resonates beyond the social sciences into the humanities; it is a fundamental concept, like nature, the universe, or the economy. Moreover, ‘society’ remains a highly contested concept, as was demonstrated, for example, by the controversy surrounding the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s pithy assertion of the neoliberal economic wisdom that ‘there is no such thing as society’ (Woman’s Own, 31 October 1987); and by the term’s rehabilitation at the turn of the twenty-first century, not least with the ascendancy of the notion of ‘civil society’. This four-volume collection, a new title in the Routledge Critical Concepts in Sociology series, brings together both canonical and the best cutting-edge research to document the intellectual origins and development of what remains a key framework within which contemporary work in the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular, proceeds. Edited by Reiner Grundmann and Nico Stehr, two leading scholars in the field, this Routledge Major Work makes available the most useful, important and representative treatments of the subject matter, and helps to make sense of the great variety of perspectives and approaches in which social scientists and other thinkers have understood, and continue to understand, society. Fully indexed and with a comprehensive introduction newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Society is an essential reference work, destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital research resource.

La traduction des discours politiques au Canada

This work focuses on translated political speeches made by Canadas prime minister during times of national crises. Delivered orally in both English and French, this translation-based political discourse is examined in a tripartite manner, offering the reader contextualisation of the corpus researched; description of the translation shifts encountered; and interpretation of the discourse varies greatly depending on the era observed. Since the latter half of the 20th century, for instance, different text types have been assigned to different categories of translators. As for translative shifts revealed in the corpus, they have been categorised as either paratextual or textual divergences. Paratextual differences indicate that the Canadian prime ministers national statements in English and French do not necessarily seek to portray symmetry between what is presented in each language. Each version of a national speech thus retains a relative degree of visual autonomy. In sum, accumulated instances of paratextual divergence suggest an identifiable paratextual strategy, whereby translation contributes to the illusion that there is only one federal language: the readers. The deployment of this paratextual strategy obscures the fact that such federal expression occurs in two official languages. The illusion of monolingualism generates two different world views one for each linguistic community. Similarly, another strategy is discerned in the analysis of translative textual shifts a textual strategy useful in highlighting some of the power struggles inherent in translated federal expression. Textual interpretation of data identifies four federal translation tendencies: legitimisation and characterisation of linguistic communities; dislocation of the speech-event; neutralisation of (linguistic) territory; and valorisation of federalism.

Political leadership:character and performance. A comparative analysis of British political leadership, 1997-2010.

Classical and contemporary scholarship on leadership has referred to political performance and the ability of political actors to deploy the self to political purpose. Literature on contemporary British politics (Hennessy, 2001; Marquand, 2008, King, 2009) has highlighted the qualitative shift in political leadership from the mid-1990s towards a focus upon the image, style, celebrity and performance of political leaders, and the shift towards the presidentialisation or semi-presidentialisation of the prime minister (Foley, 2001). However, the literature has lacked a focus upon political performance and a methodology for assessing leadership performance within cultural and institutional contexts. This thesis assesses British political leadership performance from 1997-2010 through the proposal of a framework of political performance to suit comparative purpose. The framework consisting of culture, institutions and performance is used to assess the performance of the case studies (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, and Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the televised Leaders’ Debates of 2010). The application of the framework to the case studies will allow us to a) analyse political performance within given cultural and institutional contexts; b) establish the character traits and other aspects of a politician’s political persona; and c) appraise the role and effects of performance and persona upon the political process.

"Our kith and kin"?:Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and the ethnonationalist parties of Tamil Nadu

This article explains the impact of substate nationalism on the political dynamic surrounding ethnic kin migration through a case study of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. Examples drawn from the migration studies literature identify ethnic kinship between refugees and host as an indicator of favorable reception and assistance. While this expectation is borne out to an extent in the Tamil Nadu case, it is tempered by a period of hostility following the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber, when the refugees were figured as a disruptive and dangerous presence by Tamil Nadu's political elites. A version of the "triadic nexus" model of kin state relations, reconfigured to accommodate the larger political unit within which the substate nationalism is incorporated, is proposed as a framework of analysis for these events. This can better account for Tamil Nadu's substate ethnonationalist elite's movement between expressions of coethnic solidarity with the refugees and the more hostile, security-focused response postassassination. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The Multiple Hierarchical Legislatures in a Representative Democracy: Districting for Policy Implementation

We build a multiple hierarchical model of a representative democracy in which, for instance, voters elect county representatives, county representatives elect district representatives, district representatives elect state representatives, and state representatives elect a prime minister. We use our model to show that the policy determined by the final representative can become more extreme as the number of hierarchical levels increases because of increased opportunities for gerrymandering. Thus, a sufficiently large number of voters gives a district maker an advantage, enabling her to implement her favorite policy. We also show that the range of implementable policies increases with the depth of the hierarchical system. Consequently, districting by a candidate in a hierarchical legislative system can be viewed as a type of policy implementation device.

Castles in the air: the life, times and influence of the Reverend Moses Harvey (1820-1901).

The period from 1874 to 1901 was a time of significant transition in the economic and political life of Newfoundland. Twenty years into responsible government and with Confederation on the backburner, the colony’s politicians turned their attention to economic diversification, landward development and carving out the island’s place in the British Empire. The period saw both economic prosperity and retrenchment; the construction of a trans-insular railway; the adoption of policies to foster agriculture, forestry, manufacturing and mining; and diplomatic efforts to resolve France’s outstanding claims on the northwest coast of the island. At the same time, the government made an attempt to intervene directly in its primary industry, the fisheries. It created a Fisheries Commission in 1889 that recommended conservation measures and artificial propagation as ways to restore the health of some of the island’s fish stocks. They also proposed new methods of curing, packaging and marketing Newfoundland’s cod, as well as a complete overhaul of the truck system. A major player in both the public and private debates surrounding all of these subjects was the Reverend Moses Harvey. Along with being minister of the Free Church of Scotland in St. John’s, Harvey was one of Newfoundland’s most active promoters in the late nineteenth century. He served as the media mouthpiece for both Prime Minister William Whiteway and Prime Minister Robert Thorburn; editing the Evening Mercury – the official organ of the Liberal Party and then the Reform Party – from 1882 to 1883 and 1885 until 1890. As well, Harvey wrote regular columns on Newfoundland issues for newspapers in London, New York, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, and Halifax. He also produced numerous books, articles, encyclopedia entries, and travel guides outlining the island’s attractions and its vast economic potential. In short, Harvey made a significant contribution in shaping the way residents and the outside world viewed Newfoundland during this period. This thesis examines late nineteenth-century Newfoundland through the writing of Moses Harvey. The biographical approach offers a fuller, more nuanced account of some of the major historical themes of the period including the politics of progress, opening up the interior, railway construction and attitudes toward the fisheries. It also provides an insider’s prospective on what led to some of the major political decisions, policy positions or compromises taken by the Whiteway and Thorburn governments. Finally, a more detailed review of Harvey’s work exposes the practical and political differences that he had with people like D.W. Prowse and Bishop Michael Howley. While these so-called “boomers” in Newfoundland’s historiography agreed on broad themes, they parted ways over what should be done with the fisheries and how best to channel the colony’s growing sense of nationalism.

Election Forecasting under Opaque Conditions

Election forecasting models assume retrospective economic voting and clear mechanisms of accountability. Previous research indeed indicates that incumbent political parties are being held accountable for the state of the economy. In this article we develop a ‘hard case’ for the assumptions of election forecasting models. Belgium is a multiparty system with perennial coalition governments. Furthermore, Belgium has two completely segregated party systems (Dutch and French language). Since the prime minister during the period 1974-2011 has always been a Dutch language politician, French language voters could not even vote for the prime minister, so this cognitive shortcut to establish political accountability is not available. Results of an analysis for the French speaking parties (1981-2010) show that even in these conditions of opaque accountability, retrospective economic voting occurs as election results respond to indicators with regard to GDP and unemployment levels. Party membership figures can be used to model the popularity function in election forecasting.

#DressCodePM & Re-Framing The Niqab: News Sources, Hashtag Activism, and Media Representation

This thesis originates from my interest in exploring how minorities are using social media to talk back to mainstream media. This study examines whether hashtags that trend on Twitter may impact how news stories related to minorities are covered in Canadian media. The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated the niqab was “rooted in a culture that is anti-women” on 10 March 2015. The next day #DressCodePM trended in response to the PM’s niqab remarks. Using network gatekeeping theory, this study examines the types of sources quoted in the media stories published on 10 and 11 March 2015. The study’s goal is to explore whether using tweet quotes leads to the representation of a more diverse range of news sources. The study compares the types of sources quoted in stories that covered Harper’s comments without mentioning #DressCodePM versus stories that mention #DressCodePM. This study also uses Tuen A. van Dijk’s methodology of asking “who is speaking, how often and how prominently?” in order to examine whose voices have been privileged and whose voices have been marginalized in covering the niqab in Canadian media from the 1970s and until the days following the PM’s remarks. Network gatekeeping theory is applied in this study to assess whether the gated gained more power after #DressCodePM trended. The case study’s findings indicates that Caucasian male politicians were predominantly used as news sources in covering stories related to the niqab for the past 38 years in the Globe and Mail. The sourcing pattern of favouring politicians continued in Canadian print and online media on 10 March 2015 following Harper’s niqab comments. However, ordinary Canadian women, including Muslim women, were used more often than politicians as news sources in the stories about #DressCodePM that were published on 11 March 2015. The gated media users were able to gain power and attract Canadian Media’s attention by widely spreading #DressCodePM. This study draws attention to the lack of diversity of sources used in Canadian political news stories, yet this study also shows it is possible for the gated media users to amplify their voices through hashtag activism.