Seeking an adversary: The radical right and the saliency of pro-immigration positions in green party speeches

Western European politics has experienced considerable change since the 1980s, with the emergence of new parties and immigration’s politicisation. However, no studies have examined Green party discussions of immigration, or their interaction with radical right parties. We hypothesise that increases in the radical right’s vote share, and the saliency they attach to immigration, will incentivise Greens to discuss immigration more. We also examine an alternative explanation that how salient immigration is for left- and right-wing parties will affect immigration’s saliency for Greens. We test this by applying structural topic models to parliamentary speeches in the Dutch Tweede Kamer for 2002–2019. We find that Greens react to the radical right, as the latter’s vote share is positively associated with immigration’s saliency for Greens, although radical right immigration saliency’s effect is not robust. Furthermore, we do not find evidence that Greens react to immigration’s saliency in left- or right-wing party speeches.

The Logic of the Punisher: Retrospective Voting and Hyper-Accountability in Lithuania

This article explores the roots of electoral hyper-accountability in Central and Eastern Europe. I focus on Lithuania: a country that is a stable liberal democracy, but has re-elected none of its governments (in the same party composition) since the restoration of independence. Survey data from the Lithuanian National Election Study reveal that Lithuanian voters are constantly dissatisfied with the economy and retrospectively evaluate it worse than the objective indicators would suggest. This partially explains why the Lithuanian voters constantly turn away from the government parties at parliamentary elections. However, their subsequent choice between parliamentary and new (previously marginal) parties is another puzzle. Using the 2016 Lithuanian post-election survey, I test how retrospective voting (economic and corruption issues) and political factors (trust and satisfaction with democracy) explain vote choice between the three types of parties (governmental, oppositional, and successful new party). It appears that new parties in Lithuania capitalize on double dissatisfaction, as the logic of the punisher comprises two steps. First, due to economic discontent, she turns away from the incumbent. Second, due to political mistrust, she often turns not to the parliamentary opposition, but to new parties. An analysis of retrospective economic evaluations hints at the political roots of hyper-accountability: these two steps are connected, as dissatisfaction with democracy is a strong predictor of negative retrospective evaluations of economy. Additional analysis of the 2019 post-election survey corroborates the results and reveals that a similar logic also applies in direct presidential elections.

Efficient Onboarding and Management of Members in Permissioned Blockchain Networks Utilizing TLS Certificates

Consortia blockchain networks face the issue of expanding their systems to new members. Onboarding processes are often cumbersome, as they require identifying the new participant, manually setting up rights, exchanging key material, and adding information about the new member to the consensus smart contract. Besides that, these processes are time-consuming and scale poorly. Identifying the members might be faulty as the pre-existing members might be deceived by malicious parties claiming to be someone else. This paper proposes a novel methodology to allow the onboarding of new parties without time-intensive off-chain processes. We establish identities of new consortia members by utilizing TLS certificates bound to publicly known domain names. With this identity scheme in place, the network operators can define rules such as only specific parties are allowed to join the network, e.g., only owners of *.edu domains. This methodology scales well, provides for extensive ruling and monitoring, and helps consortia blockchains to grow faster.

All Different, Yet All the Same? The Place of New Parties in Lithuanian Party System

One of the prominent feature of the Lithuanian party system is constant success of new parties. Based on political parties’ programmatic stances, this article investigates the place of these new parties in the Lithuanian party system. Using three different metrics (place in two-dimensional political spectrum, programmatic differences, nicheness), article aims at locating new parties in the party system as well as finding common denominators in party programmatic stances, which could let to assign new parties to the specific type of political parties. Analysis reveals that even though one cannot say, that all new parties are totally the same, there are common features that defines these parties (central position in the political spectrum, lack of clear programmatic niche, stressing common political issue, which separates them from traditional parties).

Elections will produce uncertain outlook in Chile

Significance Neither of the two coalitions that have governed since the restoration of democracy in 1990 seems likely to form the next government, marking the beginning of a new and probably less stable period. The new government taking office in March will have to grapple, at least initially, with slow growth and higher inflation as well as conflicting demands for change and stability. Impacts Traditional party loyalties have been undermined by a new stability-versus-change cleavage which will complicate governability. The introduction in 2017 of a more proportional voting system for legislative elections has prompted the rise of new parties. Boric’s attempts to expand into the centre will come up against the presence of the Communist Party in his coalition.

Formal modelling of the electricity markets: the example of the load reduction of electricity mechanism “NEBEF”

The liberalisation of the electricity market initiated at the beginning of the 21st century has opened it to new parties. To ensure the growth of participants’ number will support the system’s balance, the EU regulation 2019/943 confirms that “all market participants should be financially responsible of the imbalances they cause”. In their respective area, the transmission system operators develops the regulation in compliance with this condition. However, as the regulation takes into account the new realities of the market such as renewables, the interactions between the participants become more complex. One of the risks is that the imbalance of an actor may not be due to its own actions, not complying with the EU regulation then. To analyse this kind of implicit condition, we propose a formal approach to model the exchanges of energy. Using the French regulation as a base, we model the participants and their interactions in the form of symbolic equations using the energy-related terms as variables. In this paper, to illustrate the model we will use to analyse the entire electricity market, we apply it to the NEBEF mechanism only. This mechanism is dedicated to the selling of demand response in France and introduces a third party between the final producer and the final consumer: the demand response operator. We model the mechanism and analyse how the mechanism complies with the balancing responsibility. Our results demonstrate that the mechanism complies with the regulation but there are some limits due to the calculation method of the reference consumption.

Main channels of party communication in Ukraine

The dynamics of the creation of the party press in Ukraine at the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st century becomes obvious in the context of the emergence of new parties and the establishment of their journals. The main purpose of political communication is to inform, persuade, and mobilise the electorate. The quantitative indicators of the party press have changed because the number of parties has increased, as a result of which new publications have appeared more intensively. The party press is one of the most important sources of information about the party and its leader(s), the social orientation of the programme foundations; it is one of the main channels of communication with party members, supporters, and opponents. As a result of the development of information technologies, political parties started using internet resources to establish effective communication with more voters. The use of digital technologies, multimedia tools, bringing the information and propaganda activities of parties closer to the needs and opportunities of the readership in a certain way expands the social and communication horizons of party influence.

The Phenomenon of the Freedom Party: the Effect of Newness or the Beginning of a New Value Cleavage?

The article analyzes the reasons of success of the Freedom Party in the 2020 Seimas elections. The case of Freedom Party is particularly interesting as it did not appeal to the median voter like previous new parties, but took a clearly liberal stance on such vulnerable issues (in rather conservative Lithuanian society) as LGBT rights. The article examines several probable accounts of the success story of the party: the newness of the party, the value shift in the society and the realignment of the voters. The article employs the data of the 2020 post-election survey and other relevant data sets. The analysis revealed that the effect of novelty contributed somewhat to the success of the Freedom Party, but the main reason for its good performance was the ability to mobilize liberal-minded voters, the number of which increased significantly compared to the 2016 Seimas elections. The party was able not only to take advantage of the changing values of the new generation, but also to consolidate liberal-minded voters who were previously dispersed. The results of the analysis suggest that attitudes on the conservatism–liberalism dimension have become an important factor determining party preferences in Lithuania, while so far, the only significant cleavage in Lithuania was based on different attitudes towards Russia and the Soviet past.

Karakteristik Penagihan Secara Bertanggung Jawab Yang Dilakukan Oleh Layanan Pinjam Meminjam Uang Berbasis Teknologi Informasi

Over time, information technology-based lending and borrowing services emerged. This technology-based money lending and borrowing service is not much different from banks, both of which provide money lending and borrowing services. The difference is the emergence of legal subjects and new legal relationships. To find out the legal subject and legal relations in information technology based lending and borrowing services, researchers conducted legal research with Normative research type. Namely by examining and analyzing applicable laws and regulations, explaining and predicting future developments. This research results in the finding that information technology based lending and borrowing services differ from banks due to new parties called Organizers. In addition, the precautionary principle applied to technology-based lending and borrowing services is not the same. This is because the structure of banks with lending and borrowing services based on information technology is not the same.Keywords: Information Technology-Based Lending and Borrowing Services; Billing; Legal Relationship, Principles in Billing.AbstrakSeiring dengan berjalannya waktu muncul layanan pinjam meminjam uang berbasis teknologi informasi. Layanan pinjam meminjam uang berbasis teknologi ini tidak jauh berbeda dengan bank, dimana keduanya menyediakan jasa pinjam meminjam uang. Hal yang menjadi pembeda ialah munculnya subjek hukum dan hubungan hukum baru. Untuk mengetahui subjek hukum dan hubungan hukum dalam layanan pinjam meminjam uang berbasis teknologi informasi, peneliti melakukan penelitian hukum dengan tipe penelitian Normatif. Yaitu dengan menelaah dan menganalisis peraturan perundang-undangan yang berlaku, menjelaskan dan memprediksi perkembangan yang akan datang. Penelitian ini menghasilkan penemuan bahwa layanan pinjam meminjam uang berbasis teknologi informasi berbeda dari bank dikarenakan adanya pihak baru yang disebut dengan Penyelenggara. Selain itu, prinsip kehati-hatian yang diterapkan pada layanan pinjam meminjam uang berbasis teknologi tidaklah sama. Hal ini dikarenakan struktur bank dangan layanan pinjam meminjam uang berbasis teknologi informasi tidaklah sama. Kata Kunci: Layanan Pinjam Meminjam Uang Berbasis Teknologi Informasi; Penagihan; Hubungan Hukum; Prinsip Dalam Penagihan.