Constitutional Design of Electoral Governance in Federal States

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Michael Pal

Abstract This article explores the constitutional politics of electoral governance in federations by focusing on the role of election commissions, drawing mainly on examples from Asia. All democracies face the challenge of insulating electoral governance from interference and capture. Compared to unitary states, federations confront the additional dilemma of how to disperse authority over electoral governance across multiple orders of government. Federal democracies must decide whether electoral governance should be a matter for the center or the states. I argue that the basic choice is between what I will call the ‘unitary model’ and the ‘division of powers model.’ The main institution of electoral governance is the electoral management body or ‘EMB.’ In the unitary model, a central EMB administers both national and state-level elections. In the ‘division of powers model’, both a central and state-level EMBs exist, with the state commissions administering elections in the component units of the federation. In federal democracies generally, but especially in Asia, the allure of the unitary model has been strong. The article draws on the example of the Constituent Assembly in India to illustrate what is at stake in how federal constitutions allocate authority over electoral governance.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Rosenfeld

At the state level within the United States, did political ideology predict the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19)? Throughout March 2020, the United States became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, recording the most cases of any country worldwide. The current research found that, at the state level within the United States, more conservative political ideology predicted delayed implementation of stay-at-home orders and more rapid spread of COVID-19. Effects were significant across two distinct operationalizations of political ideology and held over and above relevant covariates, suggesting a potentially unique role of political ideology in the United States’ COVID-19 outbreak. Considering political ideological factors may offer valuable insights into epidemiological processes surrounding COVID-19.


Author(s):  
Erin Heidt-Forsythe

This chapter explores and analyzes the role of partisan women in leadership and in setting agendas around the politics of egg donation at the state level. Given the ways that reproductive health, medicine, and family have been strongly associated with leadership and representation by female legislators in U.S. politics, this chapter explains and analyzes the diverse and complex roles of women in politics on egg donation politics and policymaking. This chapter provides the first comprehensive study of egg donation politics at the state level over time (1995–2010), and it connects the divergent policy strategies around egg donation in reproduction and research to the diverse and varied roles of partisan women in state politics.


2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 524-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Baun

It is evident to any serious observer that the practice of governance in Western democracies is increasingly divergent from traditional theoretical and conceptual models. In West- ern Europe, traditional models of parliamentary democracy no longer accurately describe reality. The neocorporatist literature of the 1970s and 1980s pointed out the key role of organized interests and their (often formally recognized) privileged relationship with the state, creating arrangements that bypassed or subverted usual parliamentary processes.


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hayes Clark ◽  
Tracy Osborn ◽  
Jonathan Winburn ◽  
Gerald C. Wright

Roll-call data have become a staple of contemporary scholarship on legislative behavior. Recent methodological innovations in the analysis of roll-call data have produced a number of important theoretical insights, such as understanding the structure of congressional decisionmaking and the role of parties and ideology in Congress. Many of the methodological innovations and theoretical questions sparked by congressional scholarship have been difficult to test at the state level because of the lack of comprehensive data on various forms of state legislative behavior, including roll-call voting. The Representation in America's Legislatures project rectifies that problem through collection of comprehensive state legislative roll-call votes across all 99 state legislative chambers for the 1999–2000 and 2003–04 legislative sessions. In this article, we describe the data available through this project as well as our data acquisition procedures, including Stata and Perl programming and OCR of paper documents, with suggestions about how to use these methods to collect a wide range of state-level data.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2198901
Author(s):  
Thomas Gray ◽  
Banks Miller

Chief judges stand as visible leaders of their courts. Analyses of the Supreme Court focus on the role of the chief justice as an institution-builder seeking out public-facing consensus to protect Court legitimacy. Studying the powers of chief judges and political leadership in general is difficult. Analyzing all 50 states over 16 years we find no evidence that the identity of chief judges explains consensus behavior any better than random chance. This is true even among the subset of chief judges with additional institutional powers like opinion assignment. We show that court structures explain consensus, while leader features do not. Being chief judge correlates with an elevated likelihood of being in the majority, particularly in cases decided by one vote. These results add to our understanding of leadership on courts and imply that the office of chief judge at the state level is more symbolic than uniquely powerful.


2008 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Kyle Scott

While research exists that explains how institutions impact judicial decision-making at the state level, less is known about what affects the creation and reform of institutions at the state level. This paper provides an exploratory investigation into why states choose to create Intermediate Appellate Courts (IAC). This paper finds that organized legal interests have a significant impact on policy adoption and the explanation that IACs are created to relieve the workload of the state’s highest appellate court finds no support. The findings refute some previously held assumptions about state judicial reform and in doing so provide insight for policy scholars interested in the role organized interests play in institutional reform.


Author(s):  
Laura Baamonde Gómez

Resumen: El objetivo es reflexionar acerca del concepto de Estado regulador, y cómo el rol del Estado como Estado social ha evolucionado en las últimas décadas a partir de los procesos de liberalización económica. La crisis del modelo del Estado prestacional ha dejado espacio a los agentes privados del mercado en régimen de competencia. El Estado, por su parte, se ha reservado el papel de regulador, garante o supervisor del funcionamiento eficiente de los mercados que requieren de una intervención pública más intensa para la satisfacción de las necesidades colectivas. En este marco, se abordará, asimismo, cómo esta nueva situación ha impactado en la tradicional división de poderes: protagonismo de las autoridades independientes, surgimiento de nuevos poderes normativos y dificultades para el control judicial de las decisiones de las agencias reguladoras. Finalmente, se propondrán algunas líneas de actuación para el futuro. Palabras clave: Estado regulador, Estado social, derecho regulatorio, liberalización, derecho de la competencia, servicio de interés económico general, autoridades independientes, autorregulación. Abstract: The aim is to reflect about the concept of regulatory state, and how the role of the state as welfare state has developed in the last decades since the first economic liberalization processes. The crisis of the provider state scheme, has let space for the market private agents in a competition regime. The State, for its part, has reserved for itself the authority of regulator, guarantor and supervisor of the efficient functioning of markets that demand more intensive public intervention for the collective needs satisfaction. Within this framework, this article will also address how this new situation has impacted on the traditional division of powers: role of independent authorities, emergence of new regulatory powers and difficulties for judicial review of the decisions of regulatory agencies. Finally, some lines of action for the future will be proposed. Keywords: regulatory state, welfare state, regulation, liberalization, competition law, service of general economic interest, independent authorities, self-regulation.


Federalism-E ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Marjun Parcasio

Since the ascendancy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the centrepiece of a new constitutional order in Canada, there has been a distinctive decline of federal discourse in the courts and within the political sphere. Traditional cases pertaining to the division of powers at the Supreme Court have been eclipsed by the novelty of rights jurisprudence that has consumed the court in the past three decades1. Moreover, constitutional issues have been considered an anathema since the failure of the negotiations at Meech Lake and Charlottetown, exacerbated by the near-death experience for federalism in the 1995 referendum in Québec. In recent years, however, the changing nature of Canada’s political dynamics has signalled a return of federalism and constitutional politics [...]


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iuliia Udovenko ◽  
Tetiana Melnychuk ◽  
Julia Gorbaniuk

AbstractObjective: The purpose of the study is to analyze and define the content, specifics, and procedures of social and psychological work with citizens who have expressed a desire to become mentors for orphans.Introduction: In Ukraine, there are more than 750 foundations of institutional care and upbringing of children, in which approximately 106,000 children live. Only 8% among them have the status of orphans and children deprived of parental care; the other 92% have parents, but due to some difficult life circumstances of parents or presence of special needs or disability in children, they cannot live or be brought up in the family. It means that 92% of children without the status of orphans or children deprived of parental care cannot be adopted or placed for living and upbringing to other forms of family placement (guardianship/care, foster family, family-type orphanage). Along with this, out of 8% of orphan children and children deprived of parental care, there are no opportunities to be accommodated in any family forms of upbringing the following children: teenagers and youngsters, brothers and sisters from families with many children, and children with disabilities. In such children, close emotional relationships with meaningful, constant adults, which is a vital necessity for their psycho-emotional development and well-being, have been lost or were not formed at all. Accordingly, the introduction of mentoring for orphans and children deprived of parental care who live in relevant institutions is motivated by the necessity to satisfy the need of every child in emotional support, assistance and protection by a significant, authoritative person, and friend.Methods: The study uses an experience which was gained during the realization of the project as the author-developer of the methodology of socio-psychological work with citizens and children concerning preparations for mentoring and training for both coordinators and mentors of the Mentoring Program in cooperation with specialists of the “One Hope” non-governmental organization; in the role of educator for the preparation of coordinators for the Mentoring Program implementation, as well as in the role of expert during the implementation of Mentoring Program by the community organization “One Hope” during the 2009-2016 period [1]. Also, authors participated in developing of the mentors preparing program over orphans and children deprived of parental care in order to receive approval at the state level.Results: Mentoring for orphans and children deprived of parental care residing in institutions has been implemented in Ukraine since 2009 by the “One Hope” (“Odna Nadia”) public organization in cooperation with the Kyiv City Children’s Service and the Kyiv City Center of Social Services for Families, Children and Young People. The project “One Hope” was launched in the city of Kyiv and the Kyiv region during 2009-2016. Since 2016, mentoring as an individual form of support and assistance for a child living in a residential institution has been introduced in Ukraine at the state level.Conclusions: If an orphan child or a child deprived of parental care is unable to live and being brought up in a family, then the mentor’s role in the life of this child is of paramount importance. This is due to the fact that such a form of individual support through mentoring will facilitate the preparation of every orphan child for independent living in the future.


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