Electoral rules and elite recruitment: A comparative analysis of the Bundestag and the U.S. House of Representatives

In this research, I analyze the effects of candidate nomination rules and campaign financing rules on elite recruitment into the national legislatures of Germany and the United States. This dissertation is both theory-driven and constitutes exploratory research, too. While the effects of electoral rules are frequently studied in political science, the emphasis is thereby on electoral rules that are set post-election. My focus, in contrast, is on electoral rules that have an effect prior to the election. Furthermore, my dissertation is comparative by design.^ The research question is twofold. Do electoral rules have an effect on elite recruitment, and does it matter? To answer these question, I create a large-N original data set, in which I code the behavior and recruitment paths and patterns of members of the American House of Representatives and the German Bundestag. Furthermore, I include interviews with members of the said two national legislatures. Both the statistical analyses and the interviews provide affirmative evidence for my working hypothesis that differences in electoral rules lead to a different type of elite recruitment. To that end, I use the active-politician concept, through which I dichotomously distinguish the economic behavior of politicians.^ Thanks to the exploratory nature of my research, I also discover the phenomenon of differential valence of local and state political office for entrance into national office in comparative perspective. By statistically identifying this hitherto unknown paradox, as well as evidencing the effects of electoral rules, I show that besides ideology and culture, institutional rules are key in shaping the ruling elite. The way institutional rules are set up, in particular electoral rules, does not only affect how the electorate will vote and how seats will be distributed, but it will also affect what type of people will end up in elected office.^

Ballots for Equality: An Approach to the Radical Tradition in U.S. Electoral Politics

Posing radical challenges to structural inequality is the defining quality of the Left. What role electoral politics might play in such processes is a dilemma of radical politics, the contours of which vary by historical and national contexts. For the U.S. Left there is a distinctive aspect of the dilemma directly related to the failure of a "Left" party of even the most moderate social democratic type to take root, creating a seemingly never ending debate over the value if any of "third party" progressive organizing. This debate is current, as illustrated by three divergent approaches; independent left electoral politics (Socialist Alternative), organizing within the less conservative of the dominant parties (Progressive Democrats of America), and a social movement focus outside the electoral process (Occupy Movement). The present day examples of alternative Left strategies noted here in passing are but three of many such specific organizational options for progressive politics. This article does not seek to advocate for any one of these options to the exclusion of the others but rather seeks to provide historical perspective.

The Electoral Geography of the Slovak Republic: A Comparison of the 1994, 1998, and 2002 Parliamentary Elections

In what can rightly be said to be one of the most dramatic geopolitical shifts in modern times, the collapse of communist regimes in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union brought about dramatic changes in the entire region. As a consequence, wide ranging political, economic, and social transformations have occurred in almost all of these countries since 1989. The Slovak Republic, as a newly democratic country, went through the establishment of the electoral and party systems that are the central mechanisms to the formation of almost all modern democratic governments. The primary research purpose of this dissertation was to describe and explain regional variations in party support during Slovakia’s ten years of democratic transformation. A secondary purpose was to relate these spatial variations to the evolution of political parties in the post-independence period in light of the literature on transitional electoral systems. Research questions were analyzed using both aggregate and survey data. Specifically, the study utilized electoral data from 1994, 1998, and 2002 Slovak parliamentary elections and socio-economic data of the population within Slovak regions which were eventually correlated with the voting results by party in the 79 Slovak districts. The results of this study demonstrate that there is a tendency among voters in certain regions to provide continuous support to the same political parties/movements over time. In addition, the socio-economic characteristics of the Slovak population (gender, age, education, religion, nationality, unemployment, work force distribution, wages, urban-rural variable, and population density) in different regions tend to influence voting preferences in the parliamentary elections. Finally, there is an evident correlation between party preference and the party’s position on integration into European Union, as measured by perceived attitudes regarding the benefits of EU membership.

Detección de fraude bancario en tiempo real utilizando tecnologías de procesamiento distribuido

En este Trabajo de Fin de Máster se desarrollará un sistema de detección de fraude en pagos con tarjeta de crédito en tiempo real utilizando tecnologías de procesamiento distribuido. Concretamente se considerarán dos tecnologías: TIBCO, un conjunto de herramientas comerciales diseñadas para el procesamiento de eventos complejos, y Apache Spark, un sistema abierto para el procesamiento de datos en tiempo real. Además de implementar el sistema utilizando las dos tecnologías propuestas, un objetivo, otro objetivo de este Trabajo de Fin de Máster consiste en analizar y comparar estos dos sistemas implementados usados para procesamiento en tiempo real. Para la detección de fraude en pagos con tarjeta de crédito se aplicarán técnicas de aprendizaje máquina, concretamente del campo de anomaly/outlier detection. Como fuentes de datos que alimenten los sistemas, haremos uso de tecnologías de colas de mensajes como TIBCO EMS y Kafka. Los datos generados son enviados a estas colas para que los respectivos sistemas puedan procesarlos y aplicar el algoritmo de aprendizaje máquina, determinando si una nueva instancia es fraude o no. Ambos sistemas hacen uso de una base de datos MongoDB para almacenar los datos generados de forma pseudoaleatoria por los generadores de mensajes, correspondientes a movimientos de tarjetas de crédito. Estos movimientos posteriormente serán usados como conjunto de entrenamiento para el algoritmo de aprendizaje máquina.

Del 15M al cambio del mapa electoral

Desde la entrada en la escena política española de Podemos en las elecciones al Parlamento Europeo de mayo de 2014 y la reaparición de Ciudadanos en enero de 2015, se ha escrito mucho sobre las posibilidades de superar el bipartidismo en la representación parlamentaria en España.

Religious differences in electoral turnout among women in Northern Ireland

Peer reviewed

Electoral Volatility, Political Sophistication, Trust and Efficacy

In this article we investigate voter volatility and analyze the causes and motives of switching vote intentions. We test two main sets of variables linked to volatility in literature; political sophistication and ‘political (dis)satisfaction’. Results show that voters with low levels of political efficacy tend to switch more often, both within a campaign and between elections. In the analysis we differentiate between campaign volatility and inter-election volatility and by doing so show that the dynamics of a campaign have a profound impact on volatility. The campaign period is when the lowly sophisticated switch their vote intention. Those with higher levels of interest in politics have switched their intention before the campaign has started. The data for this analysis are from the three wave PartiRep Belgian Election Study (2009).

Macroeconomics, economic crisis and electoral outcomes: A national European pool

An abundance of comparative survey research argues the presence of economic voting as an individual force in European elections, thereby refuting a possible ecological fallacy. But the hypothesis of economic voting at the aggregate level, with macroeconomics influencing overall electoral outcomes, seems less sure. Indeed, there might be a micrological fallacy at work, with the supposed individual economic vote effect not adding up to a national electoral effect after all. Certainly that would account for the spotty evidence linking macroeconomics and national election outcomes. We examine the possibility of a micrological fallacy through rigorous analysis of a large time-series cross-sectional dataset of European nations. From these results, it becomes clear that the macroeconomy strongly moves national election outcomes, with hard times punishing governing parties, and good times rewarding them. Further, this economy-election connection appears asymmetric, altering under economic crisis. Indeed, we show that economic crisis, defined as negative growth, has much greater electoral effects than positive economic growth. Hard times clearly make governments more accountable to their electorates.

Las cooperativas y el fraude laboral : El caso de la "Cooperativa San Martín" del Hospital de Niños Sor María Ludovica de La Plata

Fil: Di Bello, Mariana. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

La Derecha Conservadora en los Debates Parlamentarios (1930-1943)

El 6 de septiembre de 1930 una revolución, encabezada por el General Uriburu, destituyó de la presidencia a Hipólito Irigoyen, produciéndose el primer quiebre institucional en la vida política argentina. Dicho golpe de Estado, no sólo mostró la incapacidad del sistema democrático de canalizar el conflicto en su interior, sin recurrir a métodos extraordinarios, sino que contribuyó posteriormente al restablecimiento del fraude en el sistema electoral y dio paso a un proceso de inestabilidad democrática que se proyectó en períodos subsiguientes. Esta situación se desarrollaba dentro de un contexto mundial, en el que se producía el ascenso y consolidación de gobiernos totalitarios en Europa, frente a democracias liberales que atravesaban una profunda crisis tanto económica como política. El propósito de este trabajo es analizar las posiciones adoptadas por los miembros de la Concordancia (socialistas independientes, radicales antipersonalistas y demócratas 1nacionales) a partir del estudio de la evolución de las temáticas planteadas en la escena parlamentaria. Se parte de la hipótesis de que dicho bloque dominante durante la década del 30, no constituyó un bloque homogéneo y que las disidencias entre ellos y otros sectores generó no sólo el debilitamiento y dispersión de sus fuerzas sino un nuevo reacomodamiento político a partir de 1943. El análisis de las posturas de los sectores que constituían la Concordancia en los debates parlamentarios aportará nuevos elementos para establecer el posicionamiento de esas diferentes fuerzas, teniendo en cuenta que en gran parte de la literatura sobre el tema se ha tendido a diluir su heterogeneidad

Las cooperativas y el fraude laboral : El caso de la "Cooperativa San Martín" del Hospital de Niños Sor María Ludovica de La Plata

Fil: Di Bello, Mariana. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

La Derecha Conservadora en los Debates Parlamentarios (1930-1943)

El 6 de septiembre de 1930 una revolución, encabezada por el General Uriburu, destituyó de la presidencia a Hipólito Irigoyen, produciéndose el primer quiebre institucional en la vida política argentina. Dicho golpe de Estado, no sólo mostró la incapacidad del sistema democrático de canalizar el conflicto en su interior, sin recurrir a métodos extraordinarios, sino que contribuyó posteriormente al restablecimiento del fraude en el sistema electoral y dio paso a un proceso de inestabilidad democrática que se proyectó en períodos subsiguientes. Esta situación se desarrollaba dentro de un contexto mundial, en el que se producía el ascenso y consolidación de gobiernos totalitarios en Europa, frente a democracias liberales que atravesaban una profunda crisis tanto económica como política. El propósito de este trabajo es analizar las posiciones adoptadas por los miembros de la Concordancia (socialistas independientes, radicales antipersonalistas y demócratas 1nacionales) a partir del estudio de la evolución de las temáticas planteadas en la escena parlamentaria. Se parte de la hipótesis de que dicho bloque dominante durante la década del 30, no constituyó un bloque homogéneo y que las disidencias entre ellos y otros sectores generó no sólo el debilitamiento y dispersión de sus fuerzas sino un nuevo reacomodamiento político a partir de 1943. El análisis de las posturas de los sectores que constituían la Concordancia en los debates parlamentarios aportará nuevos elementos para establecer el posicionamiento de esas diferentes fuerzas, teniendo en cuenta que en gran parte de la literatura sobre el tema se ha tendido a diluir su heterogeneidad

Las cooperativas y el fraude laboral : El caso de la "Cooperativa San Martín" del Hospital de Niños Sor María Ludovica de La Plata

Fil: Di Bello, Mariana. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.