(Un)Natural Disasters: Electoral Cycles in Disaster Relief

Emergency spending is often exempt from campaign period restrictions and procurement guidelines, making it attractive for opportunistic politicians, but natural disasters are seen as outside political business cycles. However, droughts are frequent but challenging to measure, so politicians can leverage discretion for electoral gain. This paper analyzes electoral cycles, term limits, and partisan targeting around municipal drought declaration in Northeast Brazil. Two sources of exogeneity (rainfall shocks, electoral calendar) isolate the effect of non-climatic factors on drought declarations. I find that drought declarations, which trigger relief, are more likely in mayoral election years. Incumbents are more likely to win re-election if they declare a drought in the election year, during below or even above average rainfall. The results are consistent with interviews suggesting voters reward competent mayors and mayors trade relief for votes. This study highlights the interaction between distributive and environmental politics, which has increasing consequences due to climate change.

Mali’s transition looks likely to be extended

Significance Supporters of prolonging the transition period say it would give more time to address Mali’s structural problems, and an election held too soon could be unrepresentative given the widespread security problems. Opponents of an extension fear that the military-dominated transitional authorities will entrench their power during an open-ended period. Impacts An extension could open the door to lifting the ban on transitional leader Assimi Goita contesting future elections. External actors would likely condemn any change to the electoral calendar but might accept a limited delay. While Bamako focuses on elections, security in central Mali is deteriorating.

Political Budgetary Cycles in Autocratic Redistribution

While political budgetary cycles in democracies have been rigorously studied for the past several decades, surprisingly little is known about electorally motivated policy manipulation in authoritarian regimes. This study analyzes how dictators strategically change the priorities of autocratic policies to cultivate electoral dominance even when election results are predetermined. I argue that dictators spend more money on redistributive policies in election periods. Using budgetary spending data from 63 autocratic countries between 1972 and 2015, this paper presents cross-national evidence of the existence of an electoral cycle in autocratic redistribution. Analyzing Afrobarometer survey data from 18 African autocracies between 2008 and 2015, this study also finds that citizens’ evaluations of redistributive policy fluctuate according to the electoral calendar. These findings contribute to the literature on authoritarian politics by exploring macro- and micro-level mechanisms through which authoritarian rulers improvise policy manipulation to cultivate electoral dominance.

Bringing the boys back home: Campaign promises and US decision-making in Iraq and Vietnam

This article argues that electoral politics acts as an important constraint on presidential decision-making in war. Going beyond the existing literature’s focus on cases of conflict initiation, it outlines how electoral pressures push and pull presidents away from courses of action which may otherwise be deemed strategically optimal. Importantly, however, these electoral constraints will not just apply on the immediate eve of an election but will vary in strength across the electoral calendar. Together, this conceptual framework helps explain why presidential fulfilment of rhetorical pledges made on the previous campaign trail may be belated and often inconsistent. To probe the plausibility of these arguments, case studies of the closing stages of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are outlined, drawing on archival and elite interview material. These episodes demonstrate that electoral accountability can be a powerful factor affecting wartime decision-making, but its effect is non-linear, and not easily observed through a narrow focus on particular timeframes.

Mali’s embattled president will limp through his term

Significance Indeed, more than a year into his second term, Keita confronts not just endemic insecurity in the north and centre of the country, but also a complicated set of political challenges in the south. These challenges include graft scandals and the politics of selective investigations; rumblings of discontent among ordinary soldiers, their families and even some senior officers; and a highly politicised set of religious leaders. Impacts The indirect implication of Keita’s son, Karim, in some scandals will make him a focus of greater public scrutiny. Security crises in the north and centre, and political crises in the south, will prove mutually reinforcing. In this lull in the electoral calendar, political players are positioning themselves for 2023 and beyond.

The Influence of the National Political Scene on the Behavior of Local Politicians and Voters in Polish Local Elections in 2018

Polish local elections in 2018, many months before their commencement, became one of the main elements of the political discourse. Due to the specificity of the electoral calendar, for the first time since the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2015, voters had to assess the actions taken by the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) in the electoral act. Of course, this could only happen indirectly, precisely through local elections, which due to their specificity, are not able to fully reflect the balance of powers that operates on the national arena. However, also in this way voters could refer to national events. Expressing support for them by voting on PiS, or by showing negations of their actions by voting for groups remaining in opposition. The aim of the paper is to check whether, in the perception of voters, events on the national political arena determine the behavior of two types of participants in local elections: local politicians and voters.

Congo insecurity may grow as public order unravels

Subject Insecurity in eastern Congo Significance Generalised insecurity has gripped eastern Congo in early 2018. While no single event or specific dynamic has driven this destabilisation, a series of different trends suggest a deeper pattern of deterioration. Against the backdrop of increasing countrywide political protests in urban centres, the deteriorating security situation has had an impact not only on rural hotspots but also on larger cities once considered stable. Impacts New security problems may cause further delays in the electoral calendar. Deteriorating security may drive a further expansion and fragmentation of eastern Congo's armed groups. Local economies will face increasing strains, with currency instability, displacement and insecurity impacting on productive activities. Already overstretched neighbouring countries may struggle to absorb significant new refugee flows.

An Unexpected Journey

Whereas the shortening of the presidential term was a long-debated, largely consensual, institutional topic in the story of the French Fifth Republic, the matter of the reordering of the electoral calendar was a circumstantial result of the dissolution and proved very divisive. The chapter shows how, paradoxically, two reforms that followed logically from one another in the minds of reformers, and emerged around the same time, followed hugely distinctive logics in terms of emergence and adoption, were separated sequentially, and were supported by different coalitions each time. This is the case because the reforms were perceived as having different natures: a consensual reform for the five-year term, a divisive reform for the reordering of the calendar. Whereas the quinquennat was debated and adopted through a supermajoritarian process involving deliberation among the vast majority of the political elites, the reordering of the calendar followed a purely majoritarian logic.

Presidents on the cycle: Elections, audience costs, and coercive diplomacy

This study investigates an observable implication of audience cost theory. Building upon rational expectations theories of voters’ choice and foreign policy substitutability theory, it posits that audience costs vary over the electoral calendar. It then assesses whether US presidents’ major responses in international crises reflect the variability in audience costs in an analysis of 66 international crises between 1937 and 2006. Using out-of-sample tests, this study finds that tying-hand commitment strategies were more frequent closer to presidential elections, as expected from audience cost theory. It also finds that the fluctuation of audience costs over the electoral calendar is non-linear.