When voting turnout becomes contentious repertoire: how anti-ELAB protest overtook the District Council election in Hong Kong 2019

Under what conditions can voting turnout be transformed into a contentious repertoire? Based on the two case studies of the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement in Hong Kong, I compare how movement actors used the electoral arena to leverage their causes. I propose a new relationship between street and electoral politics – short-term mobilization that turns voting turnout into a contentious repertoire. I posit three necessary scope conditions for movements to perceive this electoral strategy as viable: (1) protest cycle precedes and/or overlaps with the electoral period, (2) election perceived to be competitive, and (3) closing of political opportunity window for street mobilization. I further argue that the tactics movements pursue in the electoral arena is conditional on the relationship between movement actors and political elites, and regime type. In democratic regimes where parties and elections are institutionalized and less volatile, movements are on a more solid ground to invest in a long-term electoral strategy with existing parties. Contrarily, electoral competition in authoritarian regimes tends to skew toward incumbent's advantage. Movement activists and political elites may seek short-term strategic mobilizations focusing on the election at hand rather than a long-term plan. This argument illuminates the common ground between collective action and voting, and thus bridging the two sets of literature for further engagement, as recent movements such as the Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement in the United States and Navalny's anti-Putin movement in Russia are mobilizing their supporters to take on the electoral arena.

The Evolution of Conventional Political Participation in Turkey

This chapter provides an explanatory framework of conventional political participation in Turkey. One core institution of democracy that seems to have withstood, to some extent, all the erosive influences upon it in Turkish politics has been the elections. Voters seem to be highly inclined to vote even when the standards of fairness of elections suffered in the last few years. Populist authoritarian practices of the 2010s in Turkey seem not to have diminished the importance of competitive elections, while the voter turnout continued to stay very high at over 80 percent in most elections, which is unprecedented among European, North American, and East Asian countries. At the same time, other forms of political participation, including contacting authorities and campaigning remain low. A comparative study of conventional political participation since the 1970s, promises to provide us insight into the nature of conventional participation in Turkish politics. Using statistical analyses, data collected through the Turkish Election Studies and International Social Survey Program annual surveys are analyzed to chart the evolution of different forms of political participation and the role of sociopolitical, cultural, and economic factors in shaping these forms. Survey research conducted since the 1970s indicate that under the influence of changing political opportunity structure and increasing political resources, not only voting turnout but also campaign related activism, mass–elite contacts, and participation in discussions to solve social, communal problems have also increased in the last four decades in Turkey.

The Specifity of the Local Government Elections in the Opolskie Province in 2018

The objective of this paper is to analyse the political activity of the local community of the Opolskie Province in the local government elections in 2018 and to identify the characteristic features determining its specificity. The attempt to identify the electoral specificity of the region will consist in presenting a characterization of the region in terms of its size and population as well as its administrative and social aspects. An analysis of the elements inseparably connected with the election process, such as geography, voting turnout, the number of electoral registers and candidates, the types of electoral committees, is equally important. And finally, comments on the election results are significant as well. The local government elections of 2018 were held in a specific atmosphere, largely related to the amendment of the election law. Undoubtedly, the most characteristic aspect for the Opolskie Region is its last position among other provinces with regard to size and population, but it should not be forgotten that it is a borderland region inhabited by a high percentage of the German national minority, which actively shapes the image of not only the local communities at every level, but also the entire Opolskie Region as such.

Voting turnout in Greece: expressive or instrumental?

The study analyses the micro-level determinants of voting turnout rates in Greece. In particular, we test for the effects of citizens’ socio-economic features, political participation, activism and trust as pointing to either an expressive or instrumental voting decision process. The analysis involves bootstrap logistic regression techniques and ESS data covering the 2002-2011 period. Evidence is found of instrumental voting in Greece as suggested by the effects of absolute and relative income and the effect of civic participation and trust variables. In addition, the profile of voters is differentiated in the pre- and during the crisis periods. The study makes a twofold contribution. First, the suggested analysis is unique for Greece, and thus it provides important information regarding citizens’ motives towards electoral participation. The second contribution relates to the study’s relevance to policy analysis and design. Results suggest that not only ideology but also the economic agenda might be an important predictor of electoral participation and consequently, legitimization and the quality of democracy in Greece.

On specificity of organization and conduct of elections during the COVID-19 pandemic (certain aspects)

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly undermined the democratic values around the globe, which also pertains to elections. The subject of this research is some aspects of organization and conduct of elections of different level that were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the change of usual course of the electoral process and its separate stages. Relevance of the selected topic is evident, as the COVID-19 pandemic called into question the timely conduct of elections. The author set the task to examine the specificity of organization and conduct of elections at the time of pandemic in reference to the separate stages of electoral process that appeared to be significantly affected by the pandemic. Special attention is turned to postponement of the elections, which is directly related to the initial stage of electoral process – calling of the election. Emphasis is also place on the implementation of special regimes during pandemic. Another important legal issue is the question of voting – the primary stage of the electoral process. The article discusses special methods of voting applied at the time of pandemic, such as remote voting, postal voting, early voting, etc. Postponement of the elections during COVID-19 pandemic should be viewed as a new legal phenomenon in the practice of elections that is of massive scale and has direct impact upon the electoral process, its separate stages, guarantees of electoral rights, voting method, voting turnout, and election results. There is a need for development of detailed mechanism that would regulate postponement of the elections, namely in emergency situations, as well as include the corresponding provisions into the existing national electoral legislation in order to ensure genuine guarantees of conducting free and periodic elections. The acquired results can be valuable in improvement of electoral legislation, development of rules for conducting elections at the time of pandemic. Most effective foreign experience should be also taken into account in electoral practice of the Russian Federation.

Do inheritance rules affect voter turnout? Evidence from an Alpine region

We examine the relationship between inheritance rules and voter turnout. Inheritance rules are measured by entailed farms in South Tyrol: land properties whose inheritance is regulated by a law similar to the right of primogeniture. Using data for municipalities between 1998 and 2010, we show that voter turnout is high in municipalities with many entailed farms relative to population. The effect is based on local elections. If the number of entailed farms per 100 inhabitants increases by one standard deviation, voting turnout in municipal and provincial elections increases by around 1.27 and 1.43 percentage points (around 25 and 35% of a standard deviation). Our results suggest that entailed farm owners themselves are more likely to vote, and that entailed farms owners encourage other citizens of their municipality to participate in local elections.

Does electoral violence affect vote choice and willingness to vote? Conjoint analysis of a vignette experiment

Across many new democracies, voters routinely elect candidates associated with violence. Though electoral violence is common, there is little understanding of how it affects voting behaviour. This article examines how electoral violence affects turnout and vote choice. To this end, a vignette experiment is set in a nationally representative survey in Kenya, where electoral violence has been present since the 1990s. In the experiment, voters choose between two rival politicians. The experiment randomizes candidates’ attributes, their rumoured use of electoral violence and their record of reducing poverty. Conjoint analysis is used to isolate the effects of the candidates’ randomized attributes on turnout and vote choice. In contrast to the assumptions made in the literature on electoral violence, voters are less likely to vote for candidates rumoured to have used electoral violence, even when the candidate is a coethnic or a copartisan. This sanctioning effect, however, is not consistent across all voters. Victims of electoral violence and the poorest respondents are less likely to sanction candidates rumoured to have used violence, especially when these candidates have a good record of reducing poverty. The results show that voting turnout decreases when participants are asked to choose between candidates who are rumoured to have used electoral violence. These results are robust to including respondent and interviewer characteristics that might have affected participation in the experiment and how respondents voted. These findings explain why candidates using violence can win elections and why electoral violence has been difficult to eradicate in settings characterized by clientelism and instances of political discourse justifying the use of violence.

Does Internet usage inspire offline political participation? Analyzing the Taiwanese case

With the emergence of new information and communication technologies, scholars and politicians view the Internet as a means both to govern and to bring citizens, especially younger generations, closer to the political process. Given the tremendous impacts of the Sunflower Movement on Taiwanese politics, this paper sets out to dynamically examine whether and to what extent the Internet inspired offline electoral and non-electoral participations of Taiwanese young adults. While the younger generation's Internet usage for political causes significantly encouraged their voting turnout in the 2014 election, a similar effect was not detected in either the 2012 or 2016 presidential and legislative elections. The estimated statistics not only show the particular effect of the Sunflower Movement on young adults' voting turnout and participation in self-help activities in the 2014 election, but also reveal that the fast-changing and diverse Internet domain did not have a long-lasting influence on young citizens' political engagement in the offline world.