Township caucus guide, 2001 /

"FY01-24-2000-8-00"--Colophon.

Township caucus guide, 2009 /

"FY09-3-2000-10-08"--P. [4] of cover.

Policy on the hoof:the handling of the foot and mouth disease outbreak in 2001

The foot and mouth disease (FMD) epidemic of 2001 was a disaster for sections of the agricultural industry, a number of businesses and for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), which met its demise as a government department during the crisis, being replaced by the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). There were some 2,030 confirmed cases and over four million animals slaughtered. It caused the postponement of local elections and of a general election. From a public policy perspective it raised questions about contingency planning, the adjustment of policy to take account of change and how to manage a crisis. This article focuses on the background to the crisis and how it was handled.

Comportamiento de la participación electoral y su relación con las dinámicas de violencia política en Norte de Santander (1997-2011)

La investigación analiza el comportamiento de la participación electoral (PE) y su relación con las dinámicas de violencia política en Norte de Santander durante 1997-2011, con el fin de demostrar que la región del Catatumbo ha tenido un comportamiento electoral diferente al resto del departamento dado que tiene una tendencia en porcentajes de participación bajos durante las elecciones locales que se dieron en 1997, 2000 y 2003, lo cual se debe a la presencia y disputa por el control territorial entre los Grupos Armados Ilegales (GAI). Contrario a lo anterior, en las elecciones de 2007 y 2011 se presenta una variación positiva al aumentar la PE en el departamento en general. Se utilizará una combinación del método cuantitativo y cualitativo, el primero mediante un análisis de datos electorales de cinco comicios locales; el segundo, por medio de entre

Essays in political and gender economics

In the first chapter, “Political power and the influence of minorities: theory and evidence from Italy”, I analyze the relationship between minority and majority in politics, and how it can influence policy outcomes. I first present a theoretical model describing the possible consequences of an increase in a minority’s political power and show how it can increase difficulties in reaching a compromise on policy outcomes between parties. Furthermore, I empirically test these implications by exploiting the introduction in 2012 of a gender quota in Italian local elections: the increase in female politicians had heterogeneous effects on the level of funding for daycare, based on its differential effects on the share of women councillors. The second chapter, “Marriage patterns and the gender gap in labor force participation: evidence from Italy”, presents evidence highlighting a new possible determinant of the large gender gap in the Italian labor force: endogamy intensity. I argue that endogamy helps preserve social norms stigmatizing working women and reduces the probability of divorce, which disincentivizes women’s participation in the labor force. Endogamy is proxied by the degree of concentration of its surnames’ distribution, and I provide evidence that a more intense custom of endogamy contributed to enlarging gender participation gaps across Italian municipalities in 2001. The third chapter, “Information and quality of politicians: is transparency helping voters?”, studies how voting choices are affected by giving voters more personal information on candidates. I exploit the introduction of the “Spazzacorrotti” law in Italy in 2019, which imposed candidates at local elections to publish their CVs and criminal records before elections. I find no effects on elected candidates’ age, gender, educational level, or ideology. Moreover, I present anecdotal evidence that candidates with a criminal record received fewer votes on average, but only in the case of local media exposing it.

Changing local elite selection in Thailand : emergence of new local government presidents after direct elections and their capabilities

Before rural local government units were established in Thailand, reform debates within the country faced a crucial issue: Candidates at the rural sub-district levels might adopt electioneering methods such as vote buying and the patronage system of the local political and economic elite, the methods that had been used in the national elections. In fact, the results of the 2006 survey in this paper, which followed the introduction of direct elections in rural local government units in 2003, contrast with the result anticipated during the debates on political reform. The preliminary data of the survey shows that the decentralization process and the introduction of the direct election system in the rural areas had some effect in changing the selection process of the local elite in Thailand.

Election consolidation handbook for local election officials : 1983 elections.

Cover title.

Handbook for local election officials for 1985 elections.

Cover title.

THERE GOES THE ELECTORAL NEIGHBORHOOD: LOCAL NETWORKS, ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE (UN) FAIRNESS OF ELECTIONS

During the last two decades there have been but a handful of recorded cases of electoral fraud in Latin America. However, survey research consistently shows that often citizens do not trust the integrity of the electoral process. This dissertation addresses the puzzle by explaining the mismatch between how elections are conducted and how the process is perceived. My theoretical contribution provides a double-folded argument. First, voters’ trust in their community members (“the local experience”) impacts their level of confidence in the electoral process. Since voters often find their peers working at polling stations, negative opinions about them translate into negative opinions about the election. Second, perceptions of unfairness of the system (“the global effect”) negatively impact the way people perceive the transparency of the electoral process. When the political system fails to account for social injustice, citizens lose faith in the mechanism designed to elect representatives -and ultimately a set of policies. The fact that certain groups are systematically disregarded by the system triggers the notion that the electoral process is flawed. This is motivated by either egotropic or sociotropic considerations. To test these hypotheses, I employ a survey conducted in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during May/June 2014, which includes a population-based experiment. I show that Voters who trust their peers consistently have higher confidence in the electoral process. Whereas respondents who were primed about social unfairness (treatment) expressed less confidence in the quality of the election. Finally, I find that the local experience is predominant over the global effect. The treatment has a statistically significant effect only for respondents who trust their community. Attribution of responsibility for voters who are skeptics of their peers is clear and simple, leaving no room for a more diffuse mechanism, the unfairness of the political system. Finally, now I extend analysis to the Latin America region. Using data from LAPOP that comprises four waves of surveys in 22 countries, I confirm the influence of the “local experience” and the “global effect” as determinants of the level of confidence in the electoral process.

Definindo a arena política local: sistemas partidários municipais na federação brasileira

This article analyzes the Brazilian political system from the local perspective. Following Cox (1997), we review the problems with electoral coordination that emerge from a given institutional framework. Due to the characteristics of the Brazilian Federal system and its electoral rules, linkage between the three levels of government is not guaranteed a priori, but demands a coordinating effort by the parties' leadership. According to our hypothesis, the parties are capable of coordinating their election strategies at different levels in the party system. Regression models based on two-stage least squares (2SLS) and TOBIT, analyzing a panel of Brazilian municipalities with data from the 1994 and 2000 elections, show that the proportion of votes received by a party in a given election correlates closely with its previous votes in majoritarian elections. Despite institutional incentives, the Brazilian party system shows evidence that it is organized nationally to the extent that it links the competition for votes at the three levels of government (National, State, and Municipal).

'Localizing the national' - The rediscovery and reshaping of local campaigning in Australia

Pippa Norris provides a schematic account of the evolution of campaigning through premodern, modern and postmodern stages. In particular she points to an emerging postmodern phase of electioneering characterized by a renewed emphasis upon direct forms of engagement which resonate with an earlier period in which campaigns were locally fought and largely dependent upon the canvassing efforts of party workers and volunteers. Norris's analysis offers a useful prism with which to view recent developments in electioneering in Australia. In the past several elections the rival Labor and Liberal parties have attempted to achieve a synergy between their centrally conducted and constituency-level campaigns by ensuring that their national campaigns are locally relevant and address local concerns. Their efforts to 'localize the national' meld the use of sophisticated software with elements of a traditional 'meet and greet' politics and suggest that local campaigning may now have a new shape and importance.

Spatial Patterns and Irregularities of the electoral data: general elections in Canada

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.