Election de M. Asquith député de Paisley : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 58254

Government Spending and Re-election

Does additional government spending improve the electoral chances of incumbent political parties? This paper provides the first quasi-experimental evidence on this question. Our research design exploits discontinuities in federal funding to local governments in Brazil around several population cutoffs over the period 1982-1985. We find that extra fiscal transfers resulted in a 20% increase in local government spending per capita, and an increase of about 10 percentage points in the re-election probability of local incumbent parties. We also find positive effects of the government spending on education outcomes and earnings, which we interpret as indirect evidence of public service improvements. Together, our results provide evidence that electoral rewards encourage incumbents to spend part of additional revenues on public services valued by voters, a finding in line with agency models of electoral accountability.

Associationism and electoral participation: A multilevel study of 2000 Spanish general election

This work presents an application of the multilevel analysis techniques tothe study of the abstention in the 2000 Spanish general election. Theinterest of the study is both, substantive and methodological. From thesubstantive point of view the article intends to explain the causes ofabstention and analyze the impact of associationism on it. From themethodological point of view it is intended to analyze the interaction betweenindividual and context with a modelisation that takes into account thehierarchical structure of data. The multilevel study of this paper validatesthe one level results obtained in previous analysis of the abstention andshows that only a fraction of the differences in abstention are explained bythe individual characteristics of the electors. Another important fraction ofthese differences is due to the political and social characteristics of thecontext. Relating to associationism, the data suggest that individualparticipation in associations decrease the probability of abstention. However,better indicators are needed in order to catch more properly the effect ofassociationism in electoral behaviour.

Government spending and re-election: Quasi-experimental evidence from Brazilian municipalities

Does additional government spending improve the electoral chances of incumbent politicalparties? This paper provides the first quasi-experimental evidence on this question. Our researchdesign exploits discontinuities in federal funding to local governments in Brazil around severalpopulation cutoffs over the period 1982-1985. We show that extra fiscal transfers resulted in a20% increase in local government spending per capita, and an increase of about 10 percentagepoints in the re-election probability of local incumbent parties. In the context of an agency modelof electoral accountability, as well as existing results indicating that the revenue jumps studiedhere had positive impacts on education outcomes and earnings, these results suggest that expectedelectoral rewards encouraged incumbents to spend additional funds in ways that were valued byvoters.

Iowa election day registration guide, January 2008

A guide describing the steps, requirements and procedures necessary to register to vote in Iowa.

Ambiguity in election games

We construct a model in which the ambiguity of candidates allows them toincrease the number of voters to whom they appeal when voters have intense preferences for one of the alternatives available. An ambiguous candidate may offer voters with different preferences the hope that their most preferred alternative will be implemented. We find conditions under which ambiguous strategies are chosen in equilibrium. These conditions include the case in which there is an outcome that is a majority winner against all other outcomes but is not the most preferred outcome for a majority of voters. It is shown that if the number of candidates or parties increases, ambiguity will not be possible in equilibrium, but a larger set of possible policies increases the chance that at least one candidate will choose to be ambiguous in equilibrium.

Election Day Registration Guide, 2008

As of January 1, 2008, Iowa law allows you to register to vote on Election Day at the polling place for the precinct you currently live in. After showing proper identification you may register and vote at the precinct the same day. Please open file for more information.

ELECTION LAWS OF IOWA 2011

This publication contains all election laws either included in the 2011 Iowa Code or to be included in the 2011 Iowa Code Supplement. The Supplement will contain all enactments from 2011 and earlier years that are made effective in 2011 or on January 1, 2012. Changes in Code language to be included in the 2011 Iowa Code Supplement are marked by highlighting in yellow. Code sections with changes are also highlighted in yellow in the Table of Contents. In previous editions of this publication some Code sections were not printed in their entirety, with only the portion relating to election law printed. This year all Code sections relating to election law are printed in their entirety, including the Code section’s complete history and footnotes. DISCLAIMER This document is not an official legal publication of the state of Iowa. For the official publication of the Iowa Acts and the Iowa Code, see those publications. (2011 Iowa Code §2B.17)

Understanding Political Knowledge and Its Influence on Voting Preferences in the 2007 Federal Election

In this article we propose a model to explain how voters' perceptions of their ideological proximity to a party affect their propensity to vote for that party. We argue that political knowledge plays a crucial moderating role in the relationship between party proximity and voting propensity. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between institutional knowledge (information about the political system) and party knowledge (information about the parties' left-right positions). An analysis of survey data from the 2007 Swiss federal elections supports our main hypothesis that party knowledge enhances the link between party proximity and voting propensity. Institutional knowledge may have additional influence, but clear evidence for this effect was obtained only for propensities to vote for the Swiss People's Party (SVP). Overall, the impact of political knowledge was found to be substantial, even after controlling for the outstanding influence of party identification and other predictors of voting propensities

E-tools for civic education : experiences from the election campaign in Switzerland 2007

Political participation is often very low in Switzerland especially among students and young citizens. In the run-up to the Swiss parliamentary election in October 2007 several online tools and campaigns were developed with the aim to increase not only the level of information about the political programs of parties and candidates, but also the electoral participation of younger citizens. From a practical point of view this paper will describe the development, marketing efforts and the distribution as well as the use of two of these tools : the so-called "Parteienkompass" (party compass) and the "myVote"-tool - an online voting assistance tool based on an issue-matching system comparing policy preferences between voters and candidates on an individual level. We also havea look at similar tools stemming from Voting Advice Applications (VAA) in other countries in Western Europe. The paper closes with the results of an evaluation and an outlook to further developments and on-going projects in the near future in Switzerland.

The Half-Life of Election Pledges : What makes MPs change their positions?

"Thou shalt not bear false witness," as we all know. Yet changing one's mind in case of respectable reasons seems to be allowed. Which is good news for politicians, but reduces the effectiveness of prospective voting, i.e. the focus on "the commitments of candidates to take actions that citizens desire to be taken" (Powell 2000: 9). This may be bad news for voters. By comparing pre-election commitments of Swiss members of parliament (MPs) with actual voting behaviour in the lower house of parliament, the following article explores the question how much confidence voters can have in prospective voting and what factors explain (non-)fulfilment of election pledges.