Protests and Repression in New Democracies

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Erdem Aytaç ◽  
Luis Schiumerini ◽  
Susan Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Survey Research ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Loss Of Life ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Tear Gas ◽  
Authoritarian Politics ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Rubber Bullets

Elected governments sometimes deal with protests by authorizing the police to use less-lethal tools of repression: water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and the like. When these tactics fail to end protests and instead spark larger, backlash movements, some governments reduce the level of violence but others increase it, causing widespread injuries and loss of life. We study three recent cases of governments in new democracies facing backlash movements. Their decision to scale up or scale back police repression reflected the governments’ levels of electoral security. Secure governments with relatively unmovable majorities behind them feel freer to apply harsh measures. Less secure governments, those with volatile electoral support, contemplate that their hold on power might weaken should they inflict very harsh treatment on protesters; they have strong incentives to back down. Our original survey research and interviews with civilian authorities, police officials, and protest organizers in Turkey, Brazil, and Ukraine allow us to evaluate this explanation as well as a number of rival accounts. Our findings imply that elected governments that rest on very stable bases of support may be tempted to deploy tactics more commonly associated with authoritarian politics.

scholarly journals Preferences, vote choice, and the politics of social investment: Addressing the puzzle of unequal benefits of childcare provision

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
ERIK NEIMANNS
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Original Survey

Abstract Research on the politics of social investment finds public opinion to be highly supportive of expansive reforms and expects this support to matter for the politics of expanding social investment. Expanding social investment, it is argued, should be particularly attractive to left-wing voters and parties because of the egalitarian potential of such policies. However, few studies have examined to what extent individual preferences concerning social investment really matter politically. In this paper, I address this research gap for the crucial policy field of childcare by examining how individual-level preferences for expanding childcare provision translate into voting behavior. Based on original survey data from eight European countries, I find that preferences to expand public childcare spending indeed translate into electoral support for the left. However, this link from preferences to votes turns out to be socially biased. Childcare preferences are much more decisive for voting the further up individuals are in the income distribution. This imperfect transmission from preferences to voting behavior implies that political parties could have incentives to target the benefits of childcare reforms to their more affluent voters. My findings help to explain why governments frequently fail to reduce social inequality of access to seemingly egalitarian childcare provision.

Economic Origins of Electoral Support for Authoritarian Successors

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byong-Kuen Jhee
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Economic Voting ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Knee Jerk ◽  
The Past ◽  
Electoral Support

This study explores how economic performance prior to democratic transitions affects the fate of successors to authoritarian rulers in new democracies. It investigates 70 founding election outcomes, finding that successful economic performance under an authoritarian regime increases the vote share of successors. It also finds that the past economic performance of authoritarian rulers decreases the likelihood of government alternation to democratic oppositions. Interim governments that initiate democratic transition, however, are neither blamed nor rewarded for economic conditions during transition periods. This study concludes that electorates are not myopic and that economic voting is not a knee-jerk reaction to short-term economic performance in new democracies.

scholarly journals The Lesser Evil? Corruption Voting and the Importance of Clean Alternatives

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias Agerberg
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Public Office ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
The World ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Choice Option

Surveys show that citizens in all parts of the world have a strong distaste for corruption. At the same time, and contrary to the predictions of democratic theory, politicians involved in the most glaring abuse of public office often continue to receive electoral support. Using an original survey experiment conducted in Spain, this article explores a previously understudied aspect of this apparent paradox: the importance of viable and clean political alternatives. The results suggest that voters do punish political corruption when a clean alternative exists, even when the corrupt candidate is very appealing in other respects. However, when only given corrupt alternatives, respondents become much more likely to tolerate a candidate accused of corruption—even when given a convenient “no-choice” option. I discuss how these results can help us understand corruption voting and why some societies seem to be stuck in a high-corruption equilibrium.

Interlude

2020 ◽  
pp. 156-162
Author(s):  
Jodi Rios
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officer ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Police Responses ◽  
Tear Gas ◽  
Law Enforcement Officials ◽  
Repeated Use ◽  
Rubber Bullets

This interlude details the death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown Jr., who was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. Several witnesses of the shooting claim that Brown had had his hands above his head at the time he was shot. For over an hour, Brown remained uncovered with an increasing trail of blood moving down the street as his body bled out. As time went on, more people began arriving at the scene from across the St. Louis region, as did law enforcement officials. The Ferguson and St. Louis County police departments struggled to secure the area, and many people later reported that it was unclear who was in charge. Continued protests, arrests, and militarized police responses, which included repeated use of tear gas and the firing of rubber bullets into the crowd, escalated over the following days. Many people who witnessed Brown in the street recalled specific ways in which the image of his body conveyed their own vulnerability—as people out of place. Most viewed his death as a lynching. Residents also spoke of a disturbing irony they had long felt but saw play out before them on that day: their experience of being targeted, harassed, and regarded as less than human by those who simultaneously practice a most extreme inhumanity.

Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets and Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Herman Wasserman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Transition ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Tear Gas ◽  
The Media ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Rubber Bullets ◽  
Key Questions ◽  
Ethical Responsibilities

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on conflict, democratization, and the media and positions the book within key debates in the field. The chapter explains the book’s approach to the topic of media and conflict from the angle of democratization and social transition and provides an overview of the key arguments made throughout the book. The chapter also introduces key questions regarding the media’s ethical responsibilities in times of conflict and crisis. These questions are complicated by the rise of social media platforms and the widening of access to content production and curation by media users. The chapter argues that conflict provides a lens through which to examine the media’s relationship to publics, politics, and society in a globalized world.

Contingent Prize Allocation and Pivotal Voting

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Smith ◽  
Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Supportive Group ◽  
Prize Allocation ◽  
Dominant Influence

Parties can elitcit widespread electoral support by making the distribution of prizes or rewards to groups of voters contingent upon electoral support. In addition to altering which party wins, a voter's choice also influences the distribution of prizes. This latter factor, referred to in this article as prize pivotalness, tends to be the dominant influence in vote choice. The desire to win prizes can induce voters to coalesce into a highly supportive group, even if they dislike the party's policies. Characterizing voting equilibria in this framework explains the rationale for the support of patronage parties, variance in voter turnout and the endogenous political polarization of groups in both established and new democracies.

scholarly journals Understanding Sample Surveys: Selective Learning about Social Science Research Methods

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 533-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Currin-Percival ◽  
Martin Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Active Learning ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Modest Improvement ◽  
Original Survey

AbstractWe investigate differences in what students learn about survey methodology in a class on public opinion presented in two critically different ways: with the inclusion or exclusion of an original research project using a random-digit-dial telephone survey. Using a quasi-experimental design and data obtained from pretests and posttests in two public opinion courses, we test the hypothesis that students who participate in an original survey research project will have a stronger understanding of survey research methods than students who do not. To better assess the effect of the active learning element of the course, we estimate average treatment effects on the students who participated in the original survey project using nearest neighbor matching (Abadie et al. 2004) with student scores on a pretest. We find evidence of modest improvement in learning of survey methods in the course featuring the original survey research project; however, the major finding here is that a course featuring this kind of opportunity appeals to a different kind of student than a course that allows participants to stay closer to the classroom and library instead of the social science research laboratory. This discovery may have important implications for our understanding of the effects of active learning opportunities in other types of elective courses.

‘Suleiman: Mubarak decided to step down #egypt #jan25 OH MY GOD’: examining the use of social media in the 2011 Egyptian revolution

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Genevieve Barrons
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Tear Gas ◽  
Step Down ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Rubber Bullets ◽  
The Revolution

For the last decade, a debate has raged over the place of social media within popular uprisings. The 2011 Egyptian revolution shed new light on this debate. However, while the use of social media by Egyptians received much focus, and activists themselves pointed towards it as the key to their success, social media did not constitute the revolution itself, nor did it instigate it. Focusing solely on social media diminishes the personal risks that Egyptians took when heading into the streets to face rubber bullets and tear gas, as well as more lethal weapons. Social media was neither the cause nor the catalyst of the revolution; rather it was a tool of coordination and communication.

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