electoral defeat
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2022 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
SIMONE TONELLI

Abstract This study aims to deepen our understanding of social investment expansion proposing a political learning mechanism to link existing institutional and political explanations. When resources are limited, increased spending in social investment often comes at the expense of politically costly retrenchment of established social insurance policies. Previous studies suggest that this trade-off results in existing entitlements crowding out new policies, and that party ideology plays less of a role in determining social policy expansion. I argue that this is because parties face an electoral dilemma, as individual preferences for social investment and social insurance have been shown to differ between groups that partly overlap in their voting behaviour. Applying a policy diffusion framework to the analysis of childcare expenditure, this study proposes that policymakers learn from the political consequences of past decisions made by their foreign counterparts and update their policy choice accordingly. The econometric analysis of OECD data on childcare expenditure shows that governments tend to make spending decisions that follow those of ideologically similar cabinets abroad and that left-wing governments with a divided electorate tend to reduce childcare expenditure if a previous expansionary decision of a foreign incumbent is followed by an electoral defeat. The findings have implications for the study of the politics of social policy development.


2021 ◽  
pp. 249-260
Author(s):  
Peter Irons

This epilogue, written after the 2020 elections and the inauguration of President Joe Biden, first looks at the refusal of former president Donald Trump to accept his electoral defeat and his incitement of his hard-core supporters to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in the Senate chamber of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Their violent storming of the Capitol, resulting in five deaths, prompted the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to impeach Trump for “incitement to insurrection.” However, only seven of fifty GOP senators joined all fifty Democrats to convict Trump, short of the required two-thirds majority of sixty-seven. One major consequence of Biden’s victory was his pledge, in a document entitled “Lift Every Voice: The Biden Plan for Black America,” to focus on “rooting out systemic racism” in American institutions. The epilogue then looks at the impact of Trump’s (and his followers) racism on two major social and political issues: the greater infection, hospitalization, and death rates of Blacks from the coronavirus pandemic, and racial justice and police reform after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020. Attempting to arrest Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, Police Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for almost ten minutes while he was handcuffed and prone on the street. The jury verdict in Chauvin’s murder trial, unknown at this writing, will play a significant role in determining how Americans will support, or oppose, programs and policies to “root out systemic racism,” as President Biden has pledged to combat. The reign of White Men’s Law must end.


Author(s):  
Victor Hernández-Huerta ◽  
Francisco Cantú

Abstract The comparative literature on democratization has shown that election trust depends as much on subjective factors as on the objective conditions of the process. This literature, however, has thus far overlooked the consequences of candidates refusing to concede an electoral defeat. This letter argues that a disputed electoral outcome further inflames negative perceptions of electoral integrity among voters who supported a losing candidate. We bring support for this claim from a multilevel regression that includes data from the AmericasBarometer surveys on almost 100,000 respondents across 49 elections in 18 Latin American countries. We combine these responses with an original database of disputed elections in the region. The empirical findings demonstrate the eroding effect of challenged election outcomes on voters' election trust, particularly among those who voted for a losing candidate. The findings underscore an intuitive yet untested pattern: candidates' refusal to accept the electoral outcome is a strong signal among their supporters, increasing their distrust on the integrity of the process.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Timothy J McIvor

<p>This thesis is a biography of John Ballance, New Zealand's first Liberal Premier. It examines his career as journalist and politician, from his arrival in New Zealand and Wanganui in 1866 until his death in 1893. Ballance is viewed from a number of different perspectives: as editor and owner of a 'frontier' town's newspaper, as a prominent Wanganui personality closely involved in promoting local development, as Member of the House of Representatives and, finally, as a national political leader. The first chapter looks briefly at Ballance's early life in the north of Ireland and Birmingham. Chapter two then discusses his arrival in Wanganui, the establishment of the Evening Herald, and his participation in the war against Titokowaru. The following chapter begins with an examination of Ballance's attitude to political and economic issues of the 1870s, in particular his opposition to the provincial system, and ends with his entering Parliament for the first time in 1875. A little over two years later he became Colonial Treasurer in the Grey Government (chapter four). Chapter five covers the period 1879 to 1884, and Ballance's only electoral defeat, in 1881. Chapter six examines the broad base of his liberal philosophy, and shows how its different strands are inter-related, all pointing to a democratic, secular society, with considerable emphasis on individual and national self-reliance. In 1884 Ballance re-entered Parliament, and became Minister of Lands and Native Minister in the Stout-Vogel Government. His activities and initiatives when holding these two portfolios are the subject of chapter seven. Chapters eight and nine lead up to the crucial election of 1890. Ballance, after some initial hesitation, accepted the leadership of the Opposition in 1889. Land reform predominated his campaign at the election. Chapters ten to twelve discuss Ballance in power (1891-93). His major problem was to secure and consolidate the new Liberal regime, in the face of opposition to government measures from the Legislative Council and an alleged withdrawal of capital from the country. Ballance's reaction was to pursue a non-borrowing, self-reliant policy, and to establish a Liberal Federation to organise support for the Government at grass roots level. The conclusion discusses the 'Ballance tradition'.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Timothy J McIvor

<p>This thesis is a biography of John Ballance, New Zealand's first Liberal Premier. It examines his career as journalist and politician, from his arrival in New Zealand and Wanganui in 1866 until his death in 1893. Ballance is viewed from a number of different perspectives: as editor and owner of a 'frontier' town's newspaper, as a prominent Wanganui personality closely involved in promoting local development, as Member of the House of Representatives and, finally, as a national political leader. The first chapter looks briefly at Ballance's early life in the north of Ireland and Birmingham. Chapter two then discusses his arrival in Wanganui, the establishment of the Evening Herald, and his participation in the war against Titokowaru. The following chapter begins with an examination of Ballance's attitude to political and economic issues of the 1870s, in particular his opposition to the provincial system, and ends with his entering Parliament for the first time in 1875. A little over two years later he became Colonial Treasurer in the Grey Government (chapter four). Chapter five covers the period 1879 to 1884, and Ballance's only electoral defeat, in 1881. Chapter six examines the broad base of his liberal philosophy, and shows how its different strands are inter-related, all pointing to a democratic, secular society, with considerable emphasis on individual and national self-reliance. In 1884 Ballance re-entered Parliament, and became Minister of Lands and Native Minister in the Stout-Vogel Government. His activities and initiatives when holding these two portfolios are the subject of chapter seven. Chapters eight and nine lead up to the crucial election of 1890. Ballance, after some initial hesitation, accepted the leadership of the Opposition in 1889. Land reform predominated his campaign at the election. Chapters ten to twelve discuss Ballance in power (1891-93). His major problem was to secure and consolidate the new Liberal regime, in the face of opposition to government measures from the Legislative Council and an alleged withdrawal of capital from the country. Ballance's reaction was to pursue a non-borrowing, self-reliant policy, and to establish a Liberal Federation to organise support for the Government at grass roots level. The conclusion discusses the 'Ballance tradition'.</p>


Significance Despite stepping down, Kurz will remain leader of the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (OVP) and the party’s parliamentary group leader. The Greens, which had threatened to bring down the government under Kurz, now appear placated and ready to work with Schallenberg. Impacts Declining support for Kurz and the OVP would likely benefit the far-right Freedom Party. Kurz's resignation will lead to pressure for more regulation on political campaign advertisements. The electoral defeat of Germany’s CDU and Kurz’s resignation will weaken the influence of the centre-right European People’s Party.


2021 ◽  
pp. 132-173
Author(s):  
Megan Faragher

As contributors to Mass-Observation, Naomi Mitchison and Celia Fremlin emphasize the important, and often undervalued, role of qualitative analysis in the assessment of public opinion throughout their fiction. While the British Institute for Public Opinion often excluded women as both researchers and research subjects, Mass-Observation’s (M-O) structure was more open to input from women as both observers and subjects of observation. After she touted the political value of mathematics in her Greek-inspired short story collection The Delicate Fire, Mitchison uses her novel We Have Been Warned to imbue more skepticism about the egalitarian value of statistical analysis; the protagonist, Dione Galton, learns only too late that her own instincts about the rise of fascism in England, ventriloquized through the ghost Green Jean, were far more accurate than the polling cards she used to predict her husband’s eventual electoral defeat. Likewise, Celia Fremlin’s postwar novel, The Hours Before Dawn, validates the supposedly irrational fears of her protagonist, Louise Henderson, who must contend with patronizing experts in her effort to thwart the violent impulses of her new tenant Vera Brandon. Both novels, influenced by the authors’ experiences working for M-O, contend that quantitative analysis alone is insufficient to capture the complexity of women’s wartime experiences. This chapter argues that the contributions of M-O researchers and novelists like Fremlin and Mitchison present the possibility of a road untrodden in the history of social psychology research, as the fetishizaton of data over experience eventually drowned out the possibilities of more holistic and qualitative methods.


Author(s):  
Giuliano Bobba ◽  
Moreno Mancosu ◽  
Franca Roncarolo ◽  
Antonella Seddone ◽  
Federico Vegetti

Research in political behavior shows that citizens update their past perceptions and future expectations over several phenomena depending on whether their favorite party wins or loses the elections. This bias is explained by different psychological mechanisms triggered by individuals' attachment and trust in political parties. In this paper we investigate whether such a winner-loser effect conditions people's concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic. We leverage the occurrence of regional elections in six Italian regions in September 2020, right at the onset of the second wave of the pandemic in the country, to test whether supporting a candidate who won/lost the elections affects (1) people's fear to get sick with Covid-19, and (2) their expectation about the gravity of the upcoming second wave. Given that the public healthcare system in Italy is managed by the regions, we expect supporters of the losing candidate to lose trust in the region's ability to deal with the pandemic, hence increasing their personal concerns. We test this expectation using pre/post election panel data, and employing respondents from the other regions who voted at a concurrent referendum as a placebo group. Our results show that, while overall concerns tend to decrease from the first to the second wave, for elections losers they remain unchanged. This indicates that losing an election, albeit second-order, can affect citizens' outlook on future events in domains that are largely beyond political control.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-86
Author(s):  
I. L. Prokhorenko

The paper examines formation, evolution and political perspectives of the Spanish radical left-wing populist party ‘We Can!’ (Podemos) in the face of growing support for populism in the the Southern European countries as well as in the European Union in general. The author identifies the origins and country-specific characteristics of the left-wing populism in Spain and provides the general overview of trends in the country’s party system since the middle of the 2000s, including the growing axiological, generational, political and ideological cleavages in the Spanish divided society. Special attention is paid to the political portrait of the Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias and the prospects for development of political situation in the country after his resignation and subsequent electoral defeat in the Autonomous Community of Madrid in May 2021. As such, this case study can provide some useful insights on the nature of populism in the EU member-states in general. In particular, the paper shows that the fragmentation of traditional political systems and the impacts of the sovereign debt crisis per se do not provide a sufficient explanation for the growing demand for populist rhetoric and charismatic leaders, but rather they have exposed certain structural economic and social imbalances. It is exactly these imbalances which traditional political parties are unable to address that create a breeding ground for various left- and right-wing parties and movements. As a result, the author concludes that populism will remain an essential element of political landscape in Spain despite all scandals that accompany populist politicians as the case of Pablo Iglesias has clearly demonstrated. At the same time the author emphasizes that it is this clear and imminent threat posed by the populist movements that may eventually serve as an impetus for a renewal of traditional parties and of the country’s political system in general.


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