Suchergebnisse

South Africa's first-ever democratic electoral contest was one of the most significant global events of the decade. From the ashes of a repressive, segregated, and racist state emerged—miraculously and relatively free of bloodshed—a multi-racial and potentially compassionate new nation. This book, based on a large-scale and non-partisan public information project, provides an unparalleled wealth of fascinating information about the political dynamics of South Africa and the way the election really worked. It represents the definitive statement on the process of democratization in the country. In the year prior to the April 1994 election, R.W. Johnson and Lawrence Schlemmer assembled a team of leading South African social scientists and political analysts to monitor the campaign, party organization, the media, voter education efforts, and the contest itself, and to conduct eight surveys of opinion about the election and about popular expectations for the future. Using this unprecedented information base, the authors scrutinize the course and context of the election and its results, examining the intricacies of the electoral process and the still-disputed count and revealing both voting irregularities and pervasive fear and intimidation. The book sheds new light on the course of the election, on the construction of a policy consensus, and on the political sociology of the country as a whole. It represents the surest guide to the post-election reality of the new South Africa

Although the Iraq crisis and the flood disaster largely determined the political agenda at the end of the 2002 federal election campaign, the economic situation was, once again, one of the most important themes in the context of the election itself. This article examines for the period of 1994 to 2002 whether, and in what measure, the electorate's perception of economic conditions played a role in voters' decisions. Empirical results show that judgements of the economic situation in 2002 were noticeably worse than prior to the last two national elections. Few East-West differences are recognisable in perceptions of current general and individual economic conditions. Differences in retrospective or prospective assessments of the economic situation have also fallen. Regarding the attribution of economic problem solving ability, considerable gains are noted for the CDU/CSU, while the trust in the economic competence of the SPD has decreased. Multivariate analyses show that in 2002 the influence of economic variables on individual voting behaviour was not very strong. Significant effects only occurred in West Germany. Besides the evaluation of the general economic situation, perceived economic competence had the most clearly visible electoral impact. (German Politics / FUB)

The paper focuses on a lesser-known political phenomenon observed in Slovenia since the country gained its independence in 1991. At every local election since then, non-partisan candidates and lists—often called independent in the media—have been gaining more votes and increasing support. By analyzing the results of the last five local elections, we manifested that there are three origins of the success of these non-partisan candidates and lists. We also try to ascertain whether non-partisan candidates and lists are truly a product of an anti-party political culture, climate and movements, or whether they are simply another way for political parties to gain political power at local levels of government.

This article investigates the electorally expressed ideology of Brazilian voters via ecological analysis at the municipal level between 1994 and 2018. Our purpose is to analyze the main conditioners of aggregated patterns of ideology measured at a high spatial resolution. We test four major explanations for the variation in ideology at the municipal level: the effect of incumbent alignments, social modernization, political pluralism, and social inclusion. We find that although the Brazilian electorate as a whole leans to the right, there has been a 'gravitational effect' exerted by presidential incumbents over local ideology, and during the PT years this was visible in municipal outcomes. However, the vast majority of municipalities tended to the right even during the period of PT national government. During the late Dilma Rousseff years there was a return to a more conservative vote-revealed ideology at the local level, with a sharper veer to the right in the 2016 municipal and 2018 federal elections under Michel Temer. Overall, when we examine local voting in PR elections, we observe that there was no durable electoral realignment in the period under study.

This article investigates the electorally expressed ideology of Brazilian voters via ecological analysis at the municipal level between 1994 and 2018. Our purpose is to analyze the main conditioners of aggregated patterns of ideology measured at a high spatial resolution. We test four major explanations for the variation in ideology at the municipal level: the effect of incumbent alignments, social modernization, political pluralism, and social inclusion. We find that although the Brazilian electorate as a whole leans to the right, there has been a 'gravitational effect' exerted by presidential incumbents over local ideology, and during the PT years this was visible in municipal outcomes. However, the vast majority of municipalities tended to the right even during the period of PT national government. During the late Dilma Rousseff years there was a return to a more conservative vote-revealed ideology at the local level, with a sharper veer to the right in the 2016 municipal and 2018 federal elections under Michel Temer. Overall, when we examine local voting in PR elections, we observe that there was no durable electoral realignment in the period under study.

This article analyzes voter turnout in the Czech Republic on a very detailed spatial structure and an extended yearly time series (1994–2018). Its main goal is to examine the spatial dimension of the disparities in voter turnout in local elections at the level of all (more than 6,000) Czech municipalities. To achieve this goal, global and local spatial autocorrelation methods are used. Municipality-level cartographic presentations then provide spatial evidence of highly stable patterns of electoral participation in Czech municipalities. In the long term, there is no substantial inter-electoral change of the clustering of voter turnout in the different municipalities, except for an overall decline of the homogeneity of the clusters with low or high electoral turnout. In short, the article provides an understanding of electoral turnout in Czech local elections that other approaches have not achieved.