scholarly journals Expressive Voting in Autocracies: A Theory of Non-Economic Participation with Evidence from Cameroon

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Wenzell Letsa
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Direct Transfer ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Civic Duty ◽  
Expressive Voting ◽  
Material Reward ◽  
Economic Stagnation

Why do people vote in autocratic elections? Until now, most answers to this question have argued that people vote because they expect a material reward, such as patronage or a direct transfer via vote-buying, or as a way of rewarding the regime for its economic performance. I argue that citizens also vote for different non-economic, expressive reasons, such as a sense of civic duty or a desire to improve the democratic process. I present data from an original quasi-national public-opinion survey conducted in Cameroon, which shows that expressive reasons for voting can explain more variation in voting behavior than economic reasons. These different motivations challenge the implications of existing models of democratization by explaining how some of the poorest electoral autocracies have withstood decades of economic stagnation.

scholarly journals Economic Growth and the Public Sector: A Comparison of Canada and Italy, 1870-2013

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-243
Author(s):  
Livio Di Matteo ◽  
Thomas Barbiero
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Government Size ◽  
Size Of Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Stagnation

There is considerable evidence that the size of the public sector can influence an economy’s rate of economic growth. We investigate public sector spending of central governments and economic performance in two G7 countries over the long-term, Canada and Italy. Their economic performance has diverged in the last 25 years and it is worth investigating whether the size of government was a contributing factor. We find that in both the case of Canada and Italy the size of central government spending directly affects the performance of their economies in an inverse U-shaped relationship known as a Scully/BARS Curve. These results suggest that along with modifying current central government size, other levels of governments may need to shrink their own spending. The fact that the amount spent by government on pensions as a percentage of GDP in Italy is nearly 4 times that in Canada may partly explain the higher level of Italy’s public debt as well as an indirect contributing factor to economic stagnation in the last 25 years.

The Ethics of Voting

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Civic Duty ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Common ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right

Nothing is more integral to democracy than voting. Most people believe that every citizen has the civic duty or moral obligation to vote, that any sincere vote is morally acceptable, and that buying, selling, or trading votes is inherently wrong. This book challenges our fundamental assumptions about voting, revealing why it is not a duty for most citizens—in fact, it argues, many people owe it to the rest of us not to vote. Bad choices at the polls can result in unjust laws, needless wars, and calamitous economic policies. The book shows why voters have duties to make informed decisions in the voting booth, to base their decisions on sound evidence for what will create the best possible policies, and to promote the common good rather than their own self-interest. They must vote well—or not vote at all. This book explains why voting is not necessarily the best way for citizens to exercise their civic duty, and why some citizens need to stay away from the polls to protect the democratic process from their uninformed, irrational, or immoral votes. In a democracy, every citizen has the right to vote. This book reveals why sometimes it's best if they don't. In a new afterword, “How to Vote Well,” the book provides a practical guidebook for making well-informed, well-reasoned choices at the polls.

Production Micro-Processes Under high collectivism, determination of the division of labour within the productive unit and specification and management of the actual work pro-cesses were handled by the collectives, apparently in a rather democratic fashion. To some extent the collectives still discharge these functions, although now less through a collective democratic process and more by arrangement and supervision of contracts. How the collectives now arrive at a division of labour (on the basis of which to let contracts) is also an area for further research, although the general thrust of policies on planning and management would suggest a drift towards technocratic rather than participatory criteria and methods. Once the division of labour is determined and workers allocated within it, there are still the problems of managing and supervising the work process. Under high collectivism, this was handled by a combination of monitoring by elected local officials, direct mass participatory political processes (at work point meetings, for example), and continuous monitoring by other peasants working on the same job nearby (whose interest in maintaining certain stan-dards of work derived at least partly from the fact that their incomes depended - via the work point - on the economic performance of the collective as a whole). Now, management and supervision of the labour process is the responsibility of the contracting group or household. The peasants have lost control of the capacity to set work standards and monitor work performance for the collective as a whole; hence they have less control over its economic performance. Yet, if they still receive remuneration in work points, their incomes continue to depend on that performance. In this sense, they have been separated from the capacity to control some of the important forces which determine their livelihood. This is a key contradiction of the specialised and production contracting responsibility systems, which may have had something to do with their relatively rapid demise and the corresponding rise of 'con-tracting in a big way' to a predominant position. One major and still unresolved analytical problem revolves around the question of why Chinese peasants, who made high collectivism work satisfactorily for two decades, could abandon it so rapidly and utterly rather than embracing moderate reforms more fully. This analysis suggests that perhaps they preferred depending mainly on them-selves to a situation in which they depended on their neighbours but could not control or monitor them. Production Macro-Processes The state still plays a major role in agricultural planning. It is unclear whether the relationship between the lowest level of collective organisation - the team - and its superior units, and among its superior units, in the planning process has changed. Within the team, the method of implementing plans passed down from above now takes the form of regulation by contract with peasant producers. The scope of production planning and regulation has also been reduced, and restrictions on engaging in many sorts of sidelines have been lifted, so that the collectives and peasants have greater latitude to determine the nature of their production activities.

2013 ◽  
pp. 122-122
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Work Performance ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Agricultural Planning ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
The Relationship

scholarly journals The Determinants of Voting Behaviour: Evidences from the 2015 Elections in Oyo State, Nigeria

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Christiana O. Ogbogu ◽  
Jesutola A. Olaoye
Keyword(s):  
Standard Deviation ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Civic Duty ◽  
Election Process ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Nigerian Government ◽  
Personal Ideology

This study identified the determinants of voting behavior of electorates in the year 2015 general election in Oyo State, Nigeria.  This was done with a view to ascertain whether gender, age and personal ideology affected the voting behavior of the electorates in the election process. The study which is a survey generated its primary data through the administration of questionnaire on 640 randomly selected electorates from 3 randomly selected local government in Oyo State, Nigeria. The retrieved data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics in the form of means, standard deviation, t-test and multiple regression.The results revealed that age (β = 0.158; t = 4.051; P<0.05) and personal ideology (-0.135; t = -3.472; P<0.05) significantly predicted electorates’ voting behavior, while gender (β = 0.068; t = 1.748, P>0.05) did not directly predict the voting behavior of the electorates. This implied that there was no significant difference between the voting behavior of the male and female electorates (t = -1.488; P >0.05).The study concluded that the Nigerian government needs to harness efforts in educating her citizenry on the essence of voting as a civic duty which should not be affected by age, or gender. This would improve the personal ideology of the electorates to the level that guarantees sustenance of democracy.

Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob N. Shapiro ◽  
C. Christine Fair
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
International Security ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Islamic Militancy ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Economic Well Being

Islamist militancy in Pakistan has long stood atop the international security agenda, yet there is almost no systematic evidence about why individual Pakistanis support Islamist militant organizations. An analysis of data from a nationally representative survey of urban Pakistanis refutes four influential conventional wisdoms about why Pakistanis support Islamic militancy. First, there is no clear relationship between poverty and support for militancy. If anything, support for militant organizations is increasing in terms of both subjective economic well-being and community economic performance. Second, personal religiosity and support for sharia law are poor predictors of support for Islamist militant organizations. Third, support for political goals espoused by legal Islamist parties is a weak indicator of support for militant organizations. Fourth, those who support core democratic principles or have faith in Pakistan's democratic process are not less supportive of militancy. Taken together, these results suggest that commonly prescribed solutions to Islamist militancy—economic development, democratization, and the like—may be irrelevant at best and might even be counterproductive.

scholarly journals Institutions, Entrepreneurship, and Post-Soviet Development: An Assessment of Moldova’s Entrepreneurial Climate (1991-2009)

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Olga Nicoara
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Market Process ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
Institutional Barriers ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Entrepreneurial Climate

<p>This paper explores the relation between Moldova’s institutions, entrepreneurship, and poor economic performance 18 years after socialism. The prevailing local institutions determine the direction of entrepreneurship in society (North, 1990; Baumol, 1990; Olson, 1996; Boettke, 1998). Societies with a mix of institutions favorable to productive entrepreneurship experience sustained growth. Conversely, societies with institutions rewarding unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship experience economic stagnation. Using the conceptual frameworks of new institutional economics, Austrian market process theory, and interviews with local entrepreneurs, I explore the link between Moldova’s institutional context and the local entrepreneurship and underdevelopment. For a better understanding of Moldova’s poor economic performance after socialism, scholars and policy makers must investigate the existing underlying gap between the <em>de jure</em> and the <em>de facto</em> institutional barriers to productive entrepreneurship.</p>

Vote Buying dan Perilaku Pemilih Pemula: Kasus Pemilihan Gubernur Bali 2018 di Tabanan

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Made Bayu Permana Adhinata
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Election Process ◽  
Buying In

This article discusses vote-buying as a phenomenon in the 2018th Bali local head election process which affects the voting behavior of youth voters in Tabanan Regency. This research applies to qualitative methods. The research found that there is a linkage of giving money and gift as a form of aid to the society before and during the election can affect youth voter voting preferences. This article argues that the preference of youth voters influenced by their communities where they live and they herded to choose what community say so. Vote-buying in the form of ‘aid’ are liked by the community and youth voter seen it as something ordinary in the socio-political situation. With vote-buying strategy, the candidate can easily obtain a vote, especially from youth voter who has not yet decided their choice. In addition, vote-buying became a kind of magnet to attract youth voter sympathy.

Civic Duty and Expressive Voting: Is Virtue its own Reward?

Kyklos ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jones ◽  
John Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Civic Duty ◽  
Expressive Voting
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