Believe in me: Parties’ Strategies During a Pandemic, Evidence from Ecuador

There is a growing interest to evaluate the political aftermath of the pandemic. We study how parties attract voters under the redistributive pressure created by COVID-19, looking into the 2021 Ecuadorian elections. We classify the messages that candidates sent, evaluate if and how candidates used COVID-19 to mobilize voters, and assess how voters reacted to them. We followed 858 virtual events and gathered more than 1’575.000 tweets from candidates and their communities. We find that candidates did not place COVID-19 at the center of their strategies but used it to connect with symbolic messages about the capabilities of parties and candidates. Twitter users had a limited engagement with COVID-19-related content. These findings nuance our expectations of the pandemic. COVID-19 was only an element rather than the core of electoral strategies. Our empirical approach can be easily extended to other cases where in-person events are still limited.

2021 State Duma elections: blogs, social networks, and party Identity in the virtual space

This article provides a comprehensive review of the modern Internet practices and virtual platforms in the sphere of politics aimed at promotion of different forms of voting technologies. The authors analyze public strategies of the political parties and candidates in the course of election campaign for the 2021 State Duma elections using the example of electoral constituency of St. Petersburg. The subject of this research is the use of digital means of communication that form virtual identity of the electorate during the 2021 State Duma elections. The object of this research is the representation of party ideologies and civic “symbolic politics”  on the Internet based on the example of the popular video platforms YouTube, Tik-Tok as well as the traditional social networks Vkontakte and Facebook. The goal lies in the analysis of interaction of public actors with the audience (followers) in the course of conducting the electoral campaign. The scientific novelty of this article is substantiated by systematic and structural analysis of the scarce elements of virtual identity of Internet users on the example of electoral strategies of representation. The conclusion is drawn on the growing trends of building the so-called symbolic politics “from the bottom” and emergence of numerous actors that create sociopolitical content in the virtual space. The research methodology employs the content analysis of virtual communication channels, relying on the classical theory of symbolic politics and political identity. This theory can be modified by separate aspects of digitalization of the political subfield, which the modern researchers consider as virtual reality.

Unit Economics of Russian Political Parties: Political Consumerism and Ideological Factor

The article uses the methods of unit economics to analyze inter-party competition in the Russian Federation on the example of the 2016 elections to the State Duma. The author concludes limited applicability of unit economics for the analysis of electoral strategies and prospects of both parliamentary and new parties. The current mechanism of state financing of political parties encourages them to drift in the direction of market or rental strategies.

Trust, Populism, and the Quality of Government

Why do voters elect politicians whose populist policies degrade the quality of government? Low social trust can account for this paradox: it undermines the collective action by voters that is necessary to elect politicians who support high-quality government. If all voters believe that every other voter will accept particularistic benefits in exchange for supporting poorly performing governments, no voter has an incentive to spurn those benefits in order to select politicians who promise high-quality government. By the same logic, low social trust prevents voters from sanctioning politicians who renege on their promises. Low political trust springs from social mistrust, yielding low-quality government and populism as optimal electoral strategies. New survey data from seven Latin American countries reveal that respondents who exhibit low social trust are more likely to prefer populist policies that reflect a low quality of government.

France’s Macron faces important election test

Significance Given the proximity to next year’s presidential election, President Emmanuel Macron and his main rival, National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen, view the regional elections as an important opportunity to test electoral strategies and build momentum. Impacts Seeking re-election could force Macron to mute his backing for the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). He will likely use the economic crisis to campaign for more flexible EU fiscal rules and further EU fiscal cooperation. Macron will intensify efforts to tackle climate change, but be careful to not anger the working classes or those living in rural areas.

Reevaluating the Role of Ideology in Chile

ABSTRACTVoters’ ideological stances have long been considered one of the most important factors for understanding electoral choices in Chile. In recent years, however, the literature has begun to call this premise into question, due to several changes in the Chilean political landscape: the current crisis of representation, the high programmatic congruence between the two main coalitions, the decline in the political relevance of the dictatorship, and the rise of nonprogrammatic electoral strategies. In addition to these transformations, Chile switched to voluntary voting in 2012. This article studies whether ideology still informs electoral choices in Chile in an era of voluntary voting. It implements a conjoint survey experiment in low-to-middle-income neighborhoods in Santiago, where voters would be expected to be less ideological. It shows that candidates’ ideological labels are crucial for understanding the electoral decisions of a large part of the sample, particularly among likely voters.

Learning at Home and Abroad: How Competition Conditions the Diffusion of Party Strategies

How do parties decide when to campaign on valence issues given high degrees of uncertainty? Although past studies have provided evidence of transnational emulation of parties' position-taking strategies, these findings do not directly apply to saliency strategies. Moreover, the exact diffusion mechanism remains largely elusive. Based on the issue saliency literature, this study develops novel theoretical propositions and argues that conscious learning enables parties to infer the relative utility of emphasizing consensual issues during an electoral campaign. The proposed theory gives rise to different expectations at the domestic and transnational levels because of the distinct logic of issue competition. By analyzing environmental issue emphasis in party manifestos, the authors find direct transnational dependencies and indirect spillover effects among the parties' saliency strategies. They identify conscious learning, rather than mere imitation or independent decision making, as the diffusion mechanism at work. Yet, in line with saliency-based theories, electoral competition mutes the diffusion of electoral strategies domestically.

The role of the party factor in the implementation of electoral strategies (by the example of local elections in 2020)

The author analyzes the dynamics of changes in the activity and participation of political parties in the implementation of electoral strategies and technologies by the example of local elections in 2020. In particular, a wide range of techniques implemented by regional organizations of political parties during the campaign was studied. It is found out that in the conditions of decentralization reform and the new Electoral Code of Ukraine lower party organizations were not only involved into the electoral process, but were also empowered to form representative local authorities and develop their political policies. It is stated that mandatory membership of party, open lists in local council elections and gender quotas in those lists became normative innovations for political parties. At the same time, it was found out that the party factor proved to be relevant also for the candidates for mayors, 80% of which were nominated by parties in regional centers. Having analyzed open data of the Central Election Commission the author ascertains that one fifth of the top candidates for mayors of regional centers were representatives of local political projects – parties, which activities are focused on specific regions or even communities. It is found out that because of reputational risks related to low rating of both the political forces as well as the institution of political parties in general there is a tendency to keep a distance from parliamentary parties. Political technologies used by parties in local elections are carried over from one campaign to another – bribery of voters, voting tourism, involvement of “clone” candidates, speculating on polls, ignoring sociological tools, manipulating party branding et cetera. Among other peculiarities there are the deepening of interparty competition, the struggle of the “first non-passing” and the “last passing” candidates in party lists, which indicates the deformation of communication component in the activities of political parties and the lack of stable party structure with defined roles and functions. Resolving these problems is a priority in the strategy of party organization and administration in the state.