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This paper aims to present a brief approach to non-voting in Catalonia. Its development will be half way between a case study and a wider reflection on the issue. That is to say that although focusing discussions and examples on the features of Catalan nonvoting, many of the subjects arosen and some of the hypotheses laid seek to have a much more general validity. The paper is structured in three sections: in the first one we will try to give a general diagnose of the subject by analysing Catalan non-voting from a comparative perspective, looking at differentiated behaviours depending on the election level and on responses to the political context. We will emphasize the unfinished character of the explanations of each of these phenomena. In the second section we will summarize some of the most basic evidences on the subject that have been pointed out by electoral geography and sociology in Catalonia, which will help us to define some of the necessary explanatory elements. Finally, the last section will contain some hypotheses and reflections. We shall present there the main components that we think should conform an explanatory model of non-voting, and will briefly discuss this behaviour's rationality and its political importance. ; Peer reviewed

La lectura reposada de Lazarsfeld nos devuelve, una vez más, al mundo de innovación, improvisación y sorpresa, en el que algunas de las teorías más conocidas fueron descubiertas y descritas. De "los líderes de opinión" sigue sin estar claro quien fue el progenitor de la idea. Sobre The People´s Choice seguimos sin saber por qué se realizó y la comunicación "en dos etapas" continúa siendo un hallazgo inesperado. La relectura de las obras escogidas, una vez más, nos lleva al concepto de "serendipity" como el motor de la investigación en comunicación de masas.

"Cartas favores y voto: aspectos de las relaciones político - elector"

This paper aims to explore empirically the potential influence that presidential electoral campaigns may exert on the development of voting decisions. Three dimensions of this problem are analysed: the most effective communication resources of a campaign considering the psychology of voting, the capacity of campaigns to produce changes on the voting decision & the role of pre-election opinion polls on voters' decisions. The obtained data indicate that in their reconstructed memory of the campaigns, the subjects give considerable importance to television messages & recognize that the campaign affects their initial voting decision. For a significant proportion of voters, the results of opinion polls published during the campaign do have an effect on voting decisions. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

On paper, Mexicans have universal suffrage, but the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) effectively usurped the political dignity of citizens in the 1970s & 1980s. For the PRI, the dignity of the citizen became the means to the institutional end, rather than the person being the end & the institution the means. Thus, the PRI put a barrier in the way of the historical march of extending voting rights to all persons. Efforts toward voting rights & citizenship are examined in the writing of scholars during the Renaissance. Before that point, those who could participate in policy making had to have rational capacities. This meant that women, slaves, etc, were excluded from policy making & citizenship. With PRI's rejection of women & workers & their rights in citizenship & a culture where political decisions are made by elites, political reform is vital. Adapted from the source document.

The article focuses on the impact of religiosity on electoral behavior in the context of the Spanish general elections of March 2002. Measured as the rate of church attendance, the analysis reveals that religiosity significantly did contribute to the explanation of the electoral choice in that election. This result runs against previous studies, which as a whole highlighted the steady decline of the influence of religion on voting in Spain. Two hypotheses are initially tested -and both were rejected as well: on the one hand, the possibility that the results were a consequence of new religious values in Spanish society; on the other hand, the eventual mobilization of the religious voting by Spanish political parties during the electoral campaign, On the contrary, the new strength of the religious vote is explained as a consequence of the reinforcing effect of religious identities on the preferences of a particular kind of voter: conservative individuals that, so far, had not supported the Popular Party. The analysis pays equal attention to the consequences of the disconnection between ideology & religion. Tables, Graphs, References. Adapted from the source document.

"Careful analysis of core characteristics of voting laws in Peru - such as secret, obligatory, and invalid - and their effects on voting patterns from 1980-94 in relation to political leadership, campaigning, electoral system efficiency, and the eligible voting population. Includes data for each election by department. Among other conclusions, expresses concern about declining rates of participation"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57

Voting patterns in the 1981-90 legislative elections; Galicia, Spain.

Taking as our starting-point the empirical literature on the electoral consequences of political scandals, our argument in this paper has two objectives. On the one hand, we provide an overview of the evidence on the magnitude of the effect of scandals on voting. We find that scandals do have a not negligible impact on the vote, but that impact does not give usually way to a very strong decline in the electoral support of the candidate affected by the scandal & in many occasions does not mean his or her electoral defeat. On the other hand, & most importantly, we identify the factors that condition the impact of a scandal on the voting behavior of citizens. References. Adapted from the source document.

A review essay on a book by Eva Anduiza Perea, Individuos o Sistemas. Las Razones de la Abstencion en Europa Occidental ([Individuals or Systems. Reasons for Abstention in Western Europe] Madrid: Centro de Investigationes Sociologicas, 1999).

This paper addresses one of the issues that is presently being debated in Mexican politics. It intends to demonstrate its complexity through the analysis of existing data & reflects on some of the characteristics which are more relevant to it eg, the internal effort it demands, the international implications it could face, etc. Adapted from the source document.