The Politics of Succession in Charismatic Movements: Routinization versus Revival in Argentina, Venezuela, and Peru

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-315
Author(s):  
Caitlin Andrews-Lee
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Leadership Selection ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The World ◽  
And Control

Scholars suggest that charismatic movements must institutionalize to survive beyond the death of the founder. Yet charismatic movements around the world that have maintained their personalistic nature have persisted or reemerged. This article investigates the conditions under which politicians can use their predecessors' charismatic legacies to revive these movements and consolidate power. I argue that three conditions - the mode of leadership selection, the presence of a crisis, and the ability to conform to the founder's personalistic nature - shape successors' capacity to pick up their forefather's mantle and restore the movement to political predominance. To demonstrate my theory, I trace the process through which some leaders succeeded while others failed to embody the founder's legacy across three charismatic movements: Argentine Peronism, Venezuelan Chavismo, and Peruvian Fujimorismo. Alexander Lee, Incumbency, Parties, and Legislatures: Theory and Evidence from India Incumbent legislators in some developing countries are often thought to face an electoral disadvantage relative to challengers. This article traces this effect to high levels of centralization within the political parties and governments of these countries. In political systems dominated by party leaders, legislators face substantial formal and informal constraints on their ability to influence policy, stake positions, and control patronage, which in turn reduce their ability to build up personal votes. This theory is tested on a dataset of Indian national elections since 1977, using a regression discontinuity design to measure the effects of incumbency. Candidates less affected by centralization - those from less-centralized political parties and from parties not affected by restrictions on free parliamentary voting - have a low or non-existent incumbency disadvantage.

Incumbency, Parties, and Legislatures: Theory and Evidence from India

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-331
Author(s):  
Alexander Lee
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
And Control ◽  
Incumbency Disadvantage

Incumbent legislators in some developing countries are often thought to face an electoral disadvantage relative to challengers. This article traces this effect to high levels of centralization within the political parties and governments of these countries. In political systems dominated by party leaders, legislators face substantial formal and informal constraints on their ability to influence policy, stake positions, and control patronage, which in turn reduce their ability to build up personal votes. This theory is tested on a dataset of Indian national elections since 1977, using a regression discontinuity design to measure the effects of incumbency. Candidates less affected by centralization-those from less-centralized political parties and from parties not affected by restrictions on free parliamentary voting - have a low or non-existent incumbency disadvantage.

I. The Committee-Men in the Long Parliament, August 1642–December 1643

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotte Glow
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The Political ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The World ◽  
The Commons

It has been said that the Civil War was won by committees. Recent writers on this subject have begun to show how parliamentary policy and its execution was forged in the committee chambers rather than on the crowded floor of the House of Commons. This article is concerned with the personnel of these committees, in particular with those men who were not famous for their political activities and attitudes. Obviously, a core of leaders was needed in order to direct the business of the committees, to give continuity to their proceedings and to ensure that their work was in accord with the policy of the Commons. But the political ‘parties’ were relatively small, and with all the enthusiasm in the world their members could not attend personally to all aspects of government, civil and military. This study is concerned with the men who had no known political views but who contributed a great deal of time and effort to the running of parliamentary affairs. Because of their relative obscurity in the House it will be useful to ask why they were chosen to serve on certain committees, how their background and activity compared with that of their more ‘political’ colleagues, and how they reacted to situations where they were required to take a political stand. Above all, it will be possible to judge whether these men formed a coherent group rather than a random collection of individuals. These men owed their positions to their administrative skill rather than to their political affiliations. As administrators they were responsible to the legislature, and during a time of intensified state intervention, they became analogous to a non-political civil service, ready to execute the policy decisions of the party leaders.

Miners as Voters: The Electoral Process in Bolivia's Mining Camps

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
National Elections ◽  
The World ◽  
Single Block ◽  
National Leadership

In the 1940s Bolivia's mineworkers achieved a major impact in national elections. The electoral system was favourable to them (far more so than after the 1952 National Revolution); they acquired a unified and effective national leadership, with extensive back-up organization in all the main mining camps; they, therefore, began casting their votes as a single block, an expression of mineworkers' exceptional degree of solidarity in various parts of the world; and the political parties that courted their votes were constrained by the demands of their electorate, not only to adopt intransigent language but actually to become more radical in their programmes, recruitment and commitments.

The Primary Effect: Preference Votes and Political Promotions

2016 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
OLLE FOLKE ◽  
TORSTEN PERSSON ◽  
JOHANNA RICKNE
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Primary Elections ◽  
Primary Effect ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Internal Organization ◽  
Causal Impact ◽  
Local Party

In this analysis of how electoral rules and outcomes shape the internal organization of political parties, we make an analogy to primary elections to argue that parties use preference-vote tallies to identify popular politicians and promote them to positions of power. We document this behavior among parties in Sweden's semi-open-list system and in Brazil's open-list system. To identify a causal impact of preference votes, we exploit a regression discontinuity design around the threshold of winning the most preference votes on a party list. In our main case, Sweden, these narrow “primary winners” are at least 50% more likely to become local party leaders than their runners-up. Across individual politicians, the primary effect is present only for politicians who hold the first few positions on the list and when the preference-vote winner and runner-up have similar competence levels. Across party groups, the primary effect is the strongest in unthreatened governing parties.

Political Translation and the Sustainable Development Goals

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Chris G. Pope ◽  
Meng Ji ◽  
Xuemei Bai
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals

The chapter argues that whether or not the world is successful in attaining sustainability, political systems are in a process of epoch-defining change as a result of the unsustainable demands of our social systems. This chapter theorizes a framework for analyzing the political “translation” of sustainability norms within national polities. Translation, in this sense, denotes the political reinterpretation of sustainable development as well as the national capacities and contexts which impact how sustainability agendas can be instrumentalized. This requires an examination into the political architecture of a national polity, the norms that inform a political process, socioecological contexts, the main communicative channels involved in the dissemination of political discourse and other key structures and agencies, and the kinds of approaches toward sustainability that inform the political process. This framework aims to draw attention to the ways in which global economic, political, and social systems are adapting and transforming as a result of unsustainability and to further understanding of the effectiveness of globally diffused sustainability norms in directing that change.

Polish Elections 1919-1928

Slavic Review ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Groth
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Life ◽  
National Elections ◽  
The World ◽  
Cast Doubt

Much valuable information on the dynamics of Poland's political life between the world wars is still to be uncovered in the records of national elections. Of particular interest are the contests of 1919, 1922, and 1928, since in all of these elections political parties were still allowed to participate directly (as they were not in 1935 and 1938), and governmental restraint and manipulation were not yet so massive as to cast doubt on the entire result (as in 1930).

The World. Challenges of the Global Crisis. Germany

2014 ◽  
pp. 38-52
Author(s):  
I. Semenenko ◽  
G. Irishin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Market Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Economy Model ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Market ◽  
The Eu

The economic crisis of 2008–2009 highlighted new problems in the development of the German social market economy model and brought to the forefront the factors of its resilience that have ensured Germany’s leadership positions in the EU. Changes in economic policy have affected in the first place the energy and the financial sectors. Shifts in the political landscape have led to the appearance of new political parties. These changes have affected the results of the 2013 elections, the liberal democrats failure to enter the Bundestag has made the winner – CDU – seek new coalition partners.

scholarly journals Elections and the Regression Discontinuity Design: Lessons from Close U.S. House Races, 1942–2008

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devin Caughey ◽  
Jasjeet S. Sekhon
Keyword(s):  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Covariate Adjustment ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Covariate Balance ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
And Control

Following David Lee's pioneering work, numerous scholars have applied the regression discontinuity (RD) design to popular elections. Contrary to the assumptions of RD, however, we show that bare winners and bare losers in U.S. House elections (1942–2008) differ markedly on pretreatment covariates. Bare winners possess largeex antefinancial, experience, and incumbency advantages over their opponents and are usually the candidates predicted to win byCongressional Quarterly's pre-election ratings. Covariate imbalance actually worsens in the closest House elections. National partisan tides help explain these patterns. Previous works have missed this imbalance because they rely excessively on model-based extrapolation. We present evidence suggesting that sorting in close House elections is due mainly to activities on or before Election Day rather than postelection recounts or other manipulation. The sorting is so strong that it is impossible to achieve covariate balance between matched treated and control observations, making covariate adjustment a dubious enterprise. Although RD is problematic for postwar House elections, this example does highlight the design's advantages over alternatives: RD's assumptions are clear and weaker than model-based alternatives, and their implications are empirically testable.

The German Elections of 1928

1928 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 698-705
Author(s):  
James K. Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The Political ◽  
City Councils ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Methods ◽  
Political Consolidation ◽  
National Socialists ◽  
The Right ◽  
Intensive Work

The elections which were held throughout Germany on May 20, 1928, are of considerable interest and importance not only to Germany but also to the rest of the world. These elections, to be sure, did not have the dramatic interest which attended the Reichstag elections of December, 1924. But they deserve attention for a number of reasons: first, because they are the first elections to be held in the Reich under what may be called normal conditions; second, because elections for five Landtags and several city councils were held at the same time; and third, because the elections gave a further test, and supplied additional evidence of the operation, of the German system of proportional representation.Despite the intensive work of the political parties, the people were not aroused to much enthusiasm during the campaign. The old Reichstag was dissolved before Easter, but not until the last week of the campaign could one detect any excitement. Never before had the electors been bombarded with so much printed matter, posters, and, last but not least, loud-speakers and films. All the modern methods of appealing to the voters were tried by the numerous political parties. There were lacking, however, the overpowering issues and the battlecries which were so effective in 1924. Parades, demonstrations, meetings, and all the rest were carried through successfully on the whole, but they were quite dull and uninteresting. Only the two extreme parties, the National Socialists or Hitlerites on the right, and the Communists on the left, could appear enthusiastic. Nevertheless, the lack of what the Germans call a “grosse Parole” and the lack of excitement are not to be deplored; their absence probably indicates progress toward social and political consolidation.

scholarly journals Winners and Losers of the Ballot: Electronic vs. Traditional Paper Voting Systems in Brazil

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Schneider ◽  
Kelly N. Senters
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Electronic Voting ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Ballot Design ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Gradual Transformation

AbstractScholars concur that free and fair elections are essential for proper democratic functioning, but our understanding of the political effects of democratic voting systems is incomplete. This article mitigates the gap by exploiting the gradual transformation of voting systems and ballot structures in Brazil’s 1998 executive elections to study the relationship between voting systems and viable and nonviable candidates’ vote shares, using regression discontinuity design. It finds that the introduction of electronic voting concentrated vote shares among viable candidates and thus exhibited electoral bias. We posit that this result occurred because viable candidates were better able to communicate the information that electronic voters needed to cast valid ballots than were their nonviable counterparts. The article uses survey data to demonstrate that electronic voters responded to changes in ballot design and internalized the information viable candidates made available to them.

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