Electoral Umpires and the Task of Tracking Political Campaign Funds

Author(s):  
Benjamin Enahoro Assay

In some climes, the electoral law places a limit on the amount political parties and candidates can spend during campaigns. But very often, contestants and their parties flout the law on campaign funds limit especially in evolving democracies where the implementation of the law is weak. And this has prompted stakeholders in the political process to urgently canvass for the tracking of campaign funds by Election Management Bodies (EMBs). In Nigeria, despite the existence of a law which requires political parties to make public their campaign spending and submit same to the Independent National Electoral Commission for scrutiny, there appears to be a zero compliance with the Electoral Act. Political parties' non-compliance with the provisions of the law has placed INEC in a precarious situation as far as the tracking of campaign funds is concerned. It is against this backdrop that this chapter proffers solutions and recommends ways to make the electoral umpire live up to its responsibilities.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 130
Author(s):  
Sulistyowati Sulistyowati

The dynamic changes in the Law on Election for Governors, Regents, and Mayors prove that there are dynamics and progressiveness in the implementation of Pilkada. The process of the birth of laws, including the process of the birth of amendments to the Law, is a legal political process. The legal political process is under the authority of the legislator. The approach method used is normative juridical method. The power of legislators in the political and legal process is not absolute, because the government also has a domain of authority, although not as big as the authority of legislators. The result states that The legal political process always rests on the principle of normative democracy as the embodiment of the das sollen principle. At the level of implementation of the rule of law, there will always be legal anomalies, because there is a mismatch between normative democracy as the embodiment of the basic principle with empirical democracy as the embodiment of the basic sein principle. The legitimacy of a single candidate in Law Number 10 of 2016 concerning the Election of Governors, Regents, and Mayors makes the preferences of political parties increasingly pragmatism.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Benjamin Moffitt

Abstract How does a political party become ‘mainstream’? And what makes some parties receive arguably the opposite designation – ‘pariah party’? This conceptual article examines the processes by which parties’ mainstream or pariah status must be constructed, negotiated and policed, not only by political scientists in the pursuit of case selection, but by several actors actively involved in the political process, including media actors and political parties themselves. It explains how these actors contribute to these processes of ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘pariahing’, considers their motivations and provides illustrative examples of how such processes take place. As such, the article moves beyond the literature on the ways in which mainstream parties seek to deal with or respond to threats from a variety of pariah parties, instead paying attention to how those parties have been constructed as pariahs in the first place, and how these processes simultaneously contribute to the maintenance of mainstream party identities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 63-67
Author(s):  
T. Beydina ◽  
◽  
N. Zimina ◽  
A. Novikova ◽  
◽  
...  

Political parties today are important elements of the regional political process. Parties, along with other political institutions, participate in the implementation of state policy within the region. The practice of recent years shows a negative trend in the creation of political parties, but those parties that are already registered and are actively fighting for political power at all stages of the Russian elections. Political parties participate in the regional political process to embrace the advantages of the political party space. These advantages are due to both objective factors (territorial potential, the economy of the region) and subjective reasons (personal factors associated with the rating of the leader, both the governor and the party coordinator, the nature of his acquaintance with the central financial department, and more). The study of the organization of power in the regions allows us to talk about its various modifications due to these factors. Political parties are a political institution, they represent an ideological, conceptual, personnel and electoral resource of any government. Regional branches of political parties in today’s political situation fully personify the needs of the regions and represent them at elections. They reflect regional interests, as well as the degree of democracy of the regional government


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurdistan Saeed

This study deals with the political parties’ pluralism in Iraq under the Parties Law No. 36 of 2015. The importance of the study lies in the fact that it looks at a topic that is at the heart of democracy and it is necessary for the success of any democratic processes. The study focuses on parties’ pluralism in Iraq since the establishment of the Iraqi state in 1921 until the end of the Baath Party regime in 2003, it also covers the period after 2003 and pays particular attention to the Parties Law No. 36 of 2015. It focuses on the legal framework of political parties after the adoption of the Political Parties Law and studies the impact of this law on parties’ pluralism in Iraq after its approval in 2015. The study concludes that Law No. 36 of 2015 is incapable of regulating parties’ pluralism for reasons including: the lack of commitment by the political parties to the provisions of the law, the inability of the Parties Affairs Department to take measures against parties that violate the law the absence of a strong political opposition that enhances the role of political parties, the association of most Iraqi parties with foreign agendas belonging to neighboring countries, and the fact that the majority of Iraqi parties express ethnic or sectarian orientations at the expense of national identity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 327
Author(s):  
Sholehudin Zuhri

Dalam perkembangan politik hukum kontemporer, keputusan politik dalam pembentukan regulasi sering dihadapkan pada dua persoalan sekaligus yang saling berhadapan. Konfigurasi politik dalam pembentukan Undang-Undang Nomor 7 Tahun 2017, partai politik di parlemen tidak hanya merepresentasikan kepentingan politiknya, tetapi juga dihadapkan pada keharusan mengakomodir putusan Mahkamah Konstitusi Nomor 14/PUU-XI/2013 sebagai koreksi keputusan politik yang otoriter. Penelitian ini adalah penelitian yuridis normatif dengan metode kualitatif, studi ini menitikberatkan pada pemahaman komprehensif yang meliputi interaksi politik dan hukum dalam terciptanya konfigurasi politik hukum pemilu. Hasil studi ini dapat menjelaskan kepatuhan partai politik terhadap hukum dalam menciptakan konfigurasi politik di parlemen, namun di sisi lainnya lemahnya partai politik dalam membangun koalisi dalam mewujudkan sistem pemilu demokratis justru menjadikan keputusan politik yang dipilih menjadi otoriter dalam pelaksana teknisnya. Kehadiran hukum dalam perkembangan konfigurasi politik kontemporer, dapat menjadi paradigma baru dalam terciptanya konfigurasi politik demokratis yang pada akhirnya terbentuknya hukum pemilu yang demokratis.In the development of contemporary political laws, political decisions in regulatory formation are often confronted with two issues at once facing each other. The political configuration in the Law No. 7 year 2017, political parties in parliament not only represent political interests but also face the necessity to accommodate the decision of the Constitutional Court Number 14/ PUU-XI/2013 as a correction of authoritarian political decisions. This research is normative juridical research with qualitative method. The results of this study can explain the compliance of political parties to the law in creating the political configuration in parliament. Yet on the other hand, the weakness of political parties in building coalitions in realizing the democratic election system makes the selected political decision become authoritarian in its technical execution. The presence of law in the development of contemporary political configuration can be a new paradigm in creating democratic political configuration which ultimately the formation of democratic law of elections.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Millard

Latvia’s highly distinctive proportional electoral system owes its origins to Latvia’s 1922 Constitution and the new democracy’s electoral legislation of 1919 and 1922. Latvia’s unique feature lies in its preference system, offering the voters the opportunity to judge each candidate on their party’s list. Although the system appears to maximise responsiveness to voters’ preferences, in practice this promise remained unfulfilled and the representative quality of parliament was questionable. This was in large measure because of the capacity of candidates to stand in multiple constituencies. In 2009 amendments to the electoral law altered this key provision. This change clearly made a difference, but it could not resolve fundamental problems of Latvia’s political process in general and its political parties in particular.


2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
SACHA KAPOOR ◽  
ARVIND MAGESAN

We estimate the causal effect of independent candidates on voter turnout and election outcomes in India. To do this, we exploit exogenous changes in the entry deposit candidates pay for their participation in the political process, changes that disproportionately excluded candidates with no affiliation to established political parties. A one standard deviation increase in the number of independent candidates increases voter turnout by more than 6 percentage points, as some voters choose to vote rather than stay home. The vote share of independent candidates increases by more than 10 percentage points, as some existing voters switch who they vote for. Thus, independents allow winning candidates to win with less vote share, decrease the probability of electing a candidate from the governing coalition by about 31 percentage points, and ultimately increase the probability of electing an ethnic-party candidate. Altogether, the results imply that the price of participation by independents is constituency representation in government.


2021 ◽  
pp. 254-268
Author(s):  
Nikolai N. Morozov

This chapter combines an analysis of the party-political system of post-communist Romania with the impressions of a direct witness to the most important historical events in the country, tracing the political evolution of Romania over the 30 years after the December revolution of 1989, which led to the overthrow of the totalitarian regime of Ceauşescu. A review of political parties and alliances is presented, which may be of practical benefit to researchers working on this period in Romanian history. On the basis of numerous sources and direct interviews with Romanian politicians, some specific characteristics of the political process in the country are identified. An attempt has been made to show the mechanisms of political power that have emerged since the collapse of the former totalitarian system.


1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
JOAN ALDOUS

Using the proposed Child Labor Amendment of 1924 as an example of family policy, this article analyzes the reasons for its failure to be ratified in a Massachusetts referendum. This failure had much to do with its later nonacceptance in other states. The discussion begins with the Congressional hearings and the arguments for and against the amendment. The following description of the movement for its ratification in the states and the Massachusetts referendum focuses on the factors involved in the outcome of the political process. After a summary of the political campaign leading to the amendment's loss, the article concludes with its implications for present-day family policy initiatives.


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