Propensity to Corrupt Decisions of Pre-Candidates to the 2020 Brazilian Municipal Elections

- Objective: to analyze the propensity for corrupt decision-making by pre-candidates for mayor and councilor, analyzing the 2020 Brazilian municipal elections. - Theoretical framework: the study is theoretically based on the behavioral aspect of corruption, as deviant behavior, as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to corruption, which are subdivided into: propensity to unethical decision-making, individual self-control, moral identity, guilt, and disengagement moral. - Methodology: A quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive study was conducted. In the operationalization, a cross-sectional survey was used, with the data collected through a structured questionnaire applied to a valid sample of 115 pre-candidates for the 2020 municipal elections. The data analysis used univariate and bivariate statistical techniques. - Results: (1) a sample have low propensity for unethical decision-making, high individual self-control, high moral identity, low guilt, and low propensity for moral disengagement; (2) there is a significant and positive association between the variables of individual self-control with guilt, moral disengagement; and moral identity is shown to be positively associated with moral disengagement, and moral disengagement positively with the variable of having a previous elective position or not. - Originality: The main contribution of the research is the analysis of the theme on municipal legislators and executors, in the version of pre-candidates. - Theoretical and practical contributions: (1) low representation of women even as pre-candidates; (2) the sample considers the ‘other’ pre-willing politicians to make unethical decision-making, but not themselves; (3) sample with a high capacity for self-control, especially the part of the sample that did not have a previous elective position; (4) women have a higher degree of guilt than men, that is, they are less disposed to unethical decisions or corruption; (5) it can be said that the sample has a low propensity to deviant behaviors, that is, corruption.

The Structure of Municipal Voting in Vancouver

We offer a new interpretation of the structure of municipal electoral competition in Vancouver, focusing on the city’s high-profile municipal election in 2018. Using novel “cast vote records” – a dataset containing each of the 176,450 ballots cast in the city’s municipal election – we use a Bayesian multidimensional scaling procedure to estimate the location of every 2018 candidate and voter in Vancouver in a shared two-dimensional political space. We then match observed votes from the cast vote records to survey responses in the Canadian Municipal Election Study (CMES), a large election survey undertaken in Vancouver in 2018, using 96 CMES variables to interpret our two measured dimensions of electoral competition. We find evidence of a single primary dimension of competition, structured by left-right ideology, along with a secondary dimension dividing establishment from upstart parties of the right. Our paper supplies a new interpretation of Vancouver’s electoral landscape, clarifies our understanding of the role of left-right ideology in municipal electoral competition, and demonstrates the promise of cast vote records for research on municipal elections and voting.

Fostering the Political Participation of EU Non-national Citizens: The Case of Brussels

Political participation is considered an essential feature of democracy. The European Union (EU) aimed to foster political participation with the introduction of European citizenship, which gives the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal and European Parliament elections in whichever EU country the citizen resides. However, from the few figures available, registration and turnout rates among mobile EU citizens seem very low. In this article, we investigate the effectiveness of a proactive campaign in order to promote the participation of European non-national residents in municipal elections by focusing on a specific initiative: the VoteBrussels Campaign. Focusing on Brussels, and in the general on the Belgian case, offers us the opportunity to carry out a quasi-experimental design. Our findings suggest that a mobilisation campaign has a positive regionwide effect on the participation of mobile EU citizens.

Misje stabilizacyjne w badaniach opinii publicznej w Europie Środkowej na przykładzie społeczeństwa polskiego po 1989 roku

The purpose of this article is to analyse changes in public opinion polls about the participation of the Polish Army in stabilization missions after 1989. The research material consists of two parts. The first includes CBOS surveys from 1994 to 2016 and the second part includes a research project entitled “Political preferences. Attitudes – identifications – behaviour” carried out in 2018. After municipal elections in 2018, respondents answered questions prepared as part of a questionnaire based on a five-point Likert scale. The respondents answered the question: In your opinion, does Poland’s engagement in foreign stabilization missions ensure Poland’s security? and evaluated the statement: I support Polish involvement in foreign stabilization missions. The overview of CBOS surveys and questions within the project shows the analysis of the fluctuation of views on the participation of the Polish Army in the activities abroad. As a result of the research, it can be pointed out that the Polish public opinion undergoes numerous changes under the influence of the dynamics of the international situation, the feeling of threat and destabilization, as well as historical conditions.

How COVID-19 affects voting for incumbents: Evidence from local elections in France

How do voters react to an ongoing natural threat? We address this question by investigating voters’ reactions to the early spread of COVID-19 in the 2020 French municipal elections. Using a novel, fine-grained measure of the circulation of the virus based on excess-mortality data, we find that support for incumbents increased in the areas that were particularly hit by the virus. Incumbents from both left and right gained votes in areas more strongly affected by COVID-19. The results are robust to a placebo test and hold across different methods, including regressions with lagged dependent variables, a differences-in-differences approach and propensity score matching. We also provide indirect evidence for two mechanisms that can explain our findings: an emotional channel related to feelings of fear and anxiety, and a prospective-voting channel, related to the ability of incumbents to act more swiftly against the diffusion of the virus than challengers.

Campaigning in Quebec Municipal Elections: When the Party Defines Door to Door Canvassing as “The Right Way” to Campaign

Electoral campaigns are one of the key moments in political life. Yet, there is little Canadian work on this subject when it comes to municipal elections. However, the international literature on campaigning provides an opportunity for useful questions on the transformations of this aspect of local political life by bringing together political sociology and electoral sociology. That being said in this context, we present the results of an exploratory case study of campaigning in a municipal political party in a Canadian city, more specifically situated in the Province of Quebec. Municipal political parties are usually considered as electoral machines. It is therefore important to study in detail the way these organizations conduct election campaigns. More specifically, we are looking to explore how municipal political parties influence the campaign by providing electoral techniques. To achieve this, we closely examine the door to door canvassing strategy, which hints at what the party considers a “good campaigning” standard and helps us observe the behaviours of candidates and the different ways they fulfill the party’s requirements. It is therefore not a question of measuring the effectiveness of partisan electoral devices but of understanding how the party produces campaigning norms and puts them to work. The results presented here offer an original insight into the internal workings of a municipal political party—something that has never before been documented in the Canadian context. First, they help to open the black box that is municipal political parties and to better understand their internal modus operandi. Second, the results illustrate that election campaigning is still fundamentally based on one-on-one encounters.

Stigmatized Campaign Practices and the Gendered Dynamics of Electoral Viability

What happens when a traditional source of political capital becomes a health hazard? Stigmatized electoral practices, such as vote buying, are a double-edged sword: While these strategies may signal candidates’ electoral strength, they may also entail reputational costs. In normal times, street campaigns are a non-stigmatized electoral practice. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, they imposed health risks. Employing data from a national survey experiment conducted in Brazil prior to the 2020 municipal elections ( N = 2025), we extend research on the employment of stigmatized campaigns and the gendered dynamics of electoral viability. We find that voters evaluate candidates who engage in face-to-face activities as less electorally viable and report lower intent to support them. These dynamics do not impact all candidates equally: Voters more harshly punish women candidates who conduct street campaigns than men, leading women to lose the advantage they have over men when both employ non-stigmatized campaign practices.

Burkina Faso: Military reshuffle will not win the war

Significance This comes as part of a general shake-up of the military leadership amid a litany of promises from Kabore and other officials that the country is revamping its counter-terrorism strategy and working to shore up morale among the security forces. Impacts Security issues may complicate plans for the scheduled May 2022 municipal elections. The poor pay and living conditions of soldiers on deployment may exacerbate human rights abuses and could lead to local mutinies. The ongoing trial for the 1987 murder of former President Thomas Sankara will help discredit many former regime figures.

Inmigración y derecho al voto Una investigación exploratoria en Santiago de Chile

The objective of our research is to analyze the causes and/or factors that influence the voting intentions of immigrants in the municipality of Santiago, Chile. To achieve this, we interviewed twenty immigrants who had the right to vote in two different periods. Before and after the October 2016 municipal elections. By doing this we were able to compare their answers having the elections as a pivotal point. We followed a content analysis of their answers to evaluate their discourses with regards to voting intentions. We conclude that the factors that influence immigrants’ voting decisions are multiple. We center our conclusions in the lack of information migrants have on their electoral rights, the lack of interest of candidates on migrants as a voting force, and the lack of recognition from the State of migrants as legal subjects. These reasons produce high political indifference on immigrants.