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In the following article the author covers the process of counting the votes and the disclosure rules of establishment the election results in the Swiss Confederation. Switzerland along with other EU member states pays special attention to the determination of the election results. According to Art. 149 para. 2 Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation the elections to the National Council, which is one of two chambers of the Federal Assembly, are held according to proportional representation system. The Hagenbach-Bischoff system is used for allocating seats in National Council of the Swiss Con federation. However the above mentioned system for determining the quota of votes per each mandate creates ambiguous opinions among Swiss scientists and legal experts, which frequently comes up in discussions whether to modify it or not. In this article, the author also gives a brief description of the main political parties in Switzerland and statistics of seats allocation in 49 legislature of National Council following the elections of October 23, 2011. As a result, the author provides the full information on the process of votes counting and establishment of election results in the Swiss Confederation. The material presented in this article is particularly interesting and relevant in terms of improving the electoral legislation in the Russian Federation. The information presented by the author will be useful to all parties interested in electoral law.

This dissertation investigated the discursive construction of national identity amongst the Anglophone minority of Cameroon. More specifically, this work studied the linguistic strategies used by the leaders of the different political parties advocating the independence of the former British Southern Cameroons to construct Anglophone nationalism and advocate self-determination. To achieve this purpose, a total of fifteen (15) texts from three different genres, namely, letters, speeches and opinion articles were collected from the Internet and analyzed using the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (Wodak et al, 1999). Besides, this approach was combined with Corpus linguistic analysis so as to give a quantitative facet to the study. The analysis of the different texts under study revealed that the leaders of Southern Cameroonian nationalist parties articulate their identity construction discourse in two parts or topics, namely, the presentation of the Southern Cameroonian distinctiveness and the presentation of the independence fight as legitimate and legal. The presentation of distinctiveness of Southern Cameroons is achieved mainly by nomination and predication strategies, whereas the presentation of the independence fight as legitimate and legal is accomplished through sub-strategies such as quoting authorities, intertextuality, storytelling and topoi. These strategies were found to have been successful in bringing the Anglophone fight to the spotlight and in consolidating a sense of common heritage amongst Southern Cameroons

Die vom Bundesverfassungsgericht monierten negativen Stimmgewichte sind als Problem des Bundestags-Wahlrechts weiterhin ungelöst. Im Folgenden wird ein Lösungsmodell vorgestellt, das einige Vorzüge gegenüber den bisher diskutierten Vorschlägen aufweist. Das Verfahren besteht aus drei Schritten: Im Anfangsschritt wird eine anfängliche Sitzverteilung nach dem bisherigen Verfahren berechnet. Fallen dabei Überhangmandate an, so wird im zweiten Schritt – der Anpassungsrechnung - die Bundestagsgröße so lange schrittweise nach oben angepasst, bis alle in der Anfangszuteilung auf die einzelnen Parteien entfallenden Sitzzahlen in der Verhältnisrechnung ihren Platz finden und der Partei-Proporz wiederhergestellt ist. In der Endzuteilung werden die Sitze dann endgültig den Parteien und ihren Landeslisten zugeteilt. Die Analyse der Eigenschaften des Verfahrens zeigt, dass es zahlreiche Vorteile, aber – wie letztlich alle bisher diskutierten Lösungsmodelle – auch spezifische Nachteile gegenüber dem heutigen Wahlsystem hat. Diese Nachteile erscheinen jedoch im Vergleich zu anderen Lösungsoptionen als relativ geringfügig, und können im Übrigen in bestimmten Varianten des Verfahrens weiter abgemildert werden. ; The problem of negative voting weights, as addressed in a July 2008 decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court, still awaits resolution. An amendment of the Electoral Act is proposed that compares favorably with other proposals in the literature. The procedure operates in three steps: The initial step calculates an initial seat apportionment according to current rules. If the initial step leads to overhang seats, a novel second step keeps adjusting the house size of the Bundestag until all initial seats are accommodated by the proportional seat allocation among political parties. The third step finalizes the apportionment by updating the sub-apportionments to the parties' Land lists. The adjustment procedure would seem to come with major advantages, while its disadvantages appear to be minor.

Abstract In the public debate in the Netherlands the left-libertarian cultural revolution is increasingly denounced as the cradle of 'gedogen', i.e., refraining from legal action against rule violations, especially with respect to soft drugs. This assumes that primarily conservatives and constituencies of right-wing parties oppose the toleration of illegal activities. On the basis of a representative survey among the Dutch population (N=1.892) we have established that this assumption is untenable. Even though constituencies of right-wing political parties and conservatives are most likely to oppose toleration of rule violations in general, this does not imply that they also oppose most fiercely the toleration of specific rule violations. They do oppose rule violations by marginal individuals most often – i.e., unemployed workers defying their obligation to apply for a job and aliens remaining illegally in the Netherlands –, but they oppose the toleration of rule violations by official agencies least often – i.e., the toleration of noise pollution by airport Schiphol and the eavesdropping of police suspects without the formal approval of the examining judge. Hence, the connection between the Dutch 'gedoog' policy and the tolerant culture of the Sixties is wrong; there is no such thing as a general disapproval of tolerating refraining from legal action.

RESUMEN: Este artículo analiza los aspectos principales del sistema de partidos chileno. En primer lugar, se estudian los aspectos principales de los partidos políticos y su configuración histórica. En segundo lugar, se ofrece una breve descripción del derrumbe de la democracia y el papel de los partidos en ese cuadro. En tercer lugar, se presenta un bosquejo de la transición a la democracia y luego se examina el desempeño de cada conglomerado partidario en las primeras elecciones fundacionales. Finalmente se esbozan algunos de los desafíos que se le presenta al sistema partidario desde un punto de vista que enfatiza la noción de una democracia radical.ABSTRACT: This article discusses the main aspects of the chilean party system. Firstly there is a brief analysis of the main features of the political parties and their historical configuration. Secondly there is a short description of the breakdown of democracy and the role of the parties in it. Thirdly there is an outline of the transition to democracy with the election of Patricio Alwyn and then we examine the performance of each party in the founding elections after the autocratic period. Finally we conclude with some of the challenges facing the new borra chilean democracy, in particular with reference to a notion of a radical democracy.

What is the role of Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) in its sponsorship of the World Social Forum, and what is the signi?cance of this relationship to the struggles to build a more just social order? Some have criticized the pres-ence of the PT in the Forum, juxtaposing its partisan motives to the democratic impulses of the "multitude." This article challenges this reading by tracing the development of the PT in the last decade, bringing to light the ways the party's development challenges traditional narratives about leftist parties. In particular, this article discusses the way that the successful resolution of the challenges of governance in local and regional levels through "participatory solutions" has progressively transformed the party towards a party of radical democracy that values non-instrumental relationships to social movements and unorganized sectors of civil society. This radically democratic stance is represented in the way that the PT spon-sors, but does not control or seek to control, the WSF or its proceedings. Re-imagining the relationship between social movements and political parties is an urgent task in the struggle for global social justice and the PT serves as a useful model. Abandoning this relationship as implicitly suggested by advocates of the "multitude" would be to the detriment of the struggle for global justice.

It is not surprising that an era that saw the creation of much of the America that we know—its mass political parties, sustained capitalist growth, individualistic creed, modern labor, feminist and moral reform movements, and formalized racism—witnessed intense moral controversy. The Jacksonian period posed in its starkest form what Edmund S. Morgan has called the central "paradox" of American history—the "marriage" of slavery and freedom, each of them expanding by leaps and bounds, each doing so increasingly within its own sphere. This was a time when many Americans were seized, as never before, with an intensely self-seeking and accumulating spirit. It was also a period when Americans' collective national mission, suffused with benevolent dreams of "righteous liberty and opportunity that would surpass all worldly limits," was frequently invoked, sometimes in support of the claims of interest and law, and other times in ways that challenged authority justified purely in terms of selfish interest, positivistic application of the law, or coercive force. All this is to say that in the epoch from the end of the War of 1812 to the eve of the Civil War, moral dispute among different groups of Americans—parties and factions, classes, races and the national minorities, vested and emerging interests, masters and slaves, men and women—was often ferocious.

[ES] Este artículo analiza los aspectos principales del sistema de partidos chileno. En primer lugar, se estudian los aspectos principales de los partidos políticos y su configuración histórica. En segundo lugar, se ofrece una breve descripción del derrumbe de la democracia y el papel de los partidos en ese cuadro. En tercer lugar, se presenta un bosquejo de la transición a la democracia y luego se examina el desempeño de cada conglomerado partidario en las primeras elecciones fundacionales. Finalmente se esbozan algunos de los desafíos que se le presenta al sistema partidario desde un punto de vista que enfatiza la noción de una democracia radical. ; [EN] This article discusses the main aspects of the chilean party system. Firstly there is a brief analysis of the main features of the political parties and their historical configuration. Secondly there is a short description of the breakdown of democracy and the role of the parties in it. Thirdly there is an outline of the transition to democracy with the election of Patricio Alwyn and then we examine the performance of each party in the founding elections after the autocratic period. Finally we conclude with some of the challenges facing the new borra chilean democracy, in particular with reference to a notion of a radical democracy.

The similarities between postwar France and Italy are striking. Both countries are traditionally Catholic. Both emerged from the Second World War with vital Communist organizations enjoying widespread popular support—owing in large measure to the leading roles the Communists played in their national resistance movements during World War II. Since the war, both the French and Italian Communist political parties-—by themselves—could count on commanding between one-fifth and one-fourth of the vote. France and Italy also emerged from the war with significant Christian Democratic movements and parties—-much stronger than analogous groupings in prewar days. Both countries had threatening Communist movements powerful enough to make credible attempts at seizing power without the aid of Soviet troops. And in both countries the Christian Democratic movement was a major obstacle to Communist designs. In both countries Social Democratic movements reemerged, but inferior to the Communists in cohesionand poised awkwardly between massive Communist and Catholic subcultures. In both countries a substantial part of the labor movement was dominated, not by gradualists, but by Marxist-Leninists who challengedthe very legitimacy of the regime. Not surprisingly, the character of the opposition reflected deep traditions of civic alienation, skepticism, and apathy. Finally, both countries have suffered from an ill-developed history of democratic practices, and have been notably subject to governmental instability.

En Argentina, los primeros ensayos de voto directo en las elecciones internas de los partidos políticos tuvieron lugar en las décadas del treinta y el cuarenta del siglo XX. Con anterioridad, los candidatos eran elegidos por notables que imponían sus decisiones en las convenciones partidarias. En este artículo, se plantea analizar su implementación en Córdoba por la UCR y el Partido Demócrata, a partir de una coyuntura cuya relevancia trascendía los límites provinciales: las últimas elecciones parlamentarias nacionales antes del golpe militar de junio de 1943. La reconstrucción historiográfica muestra sus alcances así como las resistencias a la democratización en ambos partidos. ; In Argentina, the first attempts at direct vote in the internal elections of political parties took place in the thirties and forties of the twentieth century. Previously, candidates were elected by notables who imposed their decisions on party conventions. In this article, we want to analyze its implementation in Córdoba by the UCR and the Democratic Party, from a situation whose importance transcended provincial boundaries: the last national parliamentary elections before the military coup of June 1943. The historiographical reconstruction shows their scope and resistance to democratization in both parties. ; Fil: Tcach, Cesar Eduardo. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Estudios Avanzados; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina

Abstract:This work discusses the frequent disputes in Spanish politic and public opinion on the right to education and freedom of education guaranteed in the Spanish Constitution. If we made a rigorous and rational reading of article 27 of the Constitution can verify that it contains a number of elements that are essential to be able to reach agreements in this area. If political parties want to reach a Education Pact so that the educational legislation in Spain acquires greater stability, should not leave the path of consensus which toured to elaborate on article 27, which seeks a balance between the different political and ideological positions relative to the efficiency of education, guaranteeing the different dimensions of the right to education, especially the dimension of social right and the dimension of freedom. ; ResumenSe analizan en este trabajo las frecuentes disputas políticas y en la opinión pública española sobre el derecho a la educación y la libertad de enseñanza garantizados en la Constitución española. Si se hace una lectura rigurosa y racional del artículo 27 de la Constitución se puede comprobar que contiene una serie de elementos que son básicos para poder alcanzar acuerdos en este ámbito. Si se quiere alcanzar un pacto educativo para que la legislación educativa en España tenga más estabilidad, no debería abandonarse la senda del consenso que se recorrió al elaborar el artículo 27, que busca un equilibrio entre las distintas posiciones políticas e ideológicas en relación al sistema educativo, garantizando las diversas dimensiones del derecho, especialmente la dimensión de derecho social de prestación y la de derecho de libertad Summary:I. Education, subject of frequent political disputes. II. Dimensions of the right to education and the state's role. III. The object of education determined in the constitution and the intensity of its effectiveness. IV. Is a constitutional reform necessary in the field of educational rights? .Abstract:This work discusses the frequent disputes in Spanish politic and public opinion on the right to education and freedom of education guaranteed in the Spanish Constitution. If we made a rigorous and rational reading of article 27 of the Constitution can verify that it contains a number of elements that are essential to be able to reach agreements in this area. If political parties want to reach a Education Pact so that the educational legislation in Spain acquires greater stability, should not leave the path of consensus which toured to elaborate on article 27, which seeks a balance between the different political and ideological positions relative to the efficiency of education, guaranteeing the different dimensions of the right to education, especially the dimension of social right and the dimension of freedom.

This study begins with the observation that three similar states - Denmark, Norway and Sweden - have had different EC/EU policies, and that one of the foreign policy literature's most interesting approaches, domestic structures analysis, does not shed light on this variation. The goal of the study is to develop an understanding of the different policies by analyzing the question of EC/EU membership using an approach in which issue area, defined in terms of both substance and impact, is linked to policy process and policy choice. Substantive issue area is studied by analyzing parliamentary debates in the three countries. An issue area typology with four substantive categories - economic, political/ policy, international/security, and other — is used to classify arguments made in the debates. The analysis shows that the question was an economic and political issue in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the 1990s. It was a security issue in Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued that this variation helps explain variation in EC/EU policy. In particular, the findings support the argument that the importance of the substantive definition of the EC/EU question is related to the coalitional possibilities it creates. The size of the coalition has, in turn, an impact on policy process and outcome. When the coalitions are large, the process moves more quickly, and parliaments and political parties tend to be consulted or informed rather than active participants. The question of EC/EU membership is also analyzed using an impact typology in which questions are classified as generating one of three types of conflict: none, managed and unmanaged. The EC/EU membership question is classified on the basis of public opinion data and conflict or agreement within political parties. The analysis shows that there were three cases in which the EC/EU question created managed conflict: Denmark and Sweden in the 1960s and Sweden in the 1970s. In other cases, conflict was unmanaged. In an analysis of the importance of variation with regard to type of conflict, it is argued that the data support the hypothesis that the existence of unmanaged conflict is related to decisions to call referenda to decide the membership question. In the face of unmanaged conflict political elites were encouraged to give authority for decision making over to voters. This was, in turn, linked to the emergence of ad hoc organizations dedicated to influencing public opinion for or against membership. This study suggests that the issue areas approach can offer important contributions to the analysis of foreign policy. A challenge for future research is to analyze how issue areas and domestic structure interact to generate policy process and outcome. Central questions should include the relative importance of the two and analyses of the conditions under which one or the other is likely to dominate. ; digitalisering@umu

Issue salience and diversity direct a range of outcomes such as voting behavior and public policy. Studies, however, have yet to fully integrate theoretical or empirical expectations for the effect of issue salience on coalition stability. By focusing on the mechanism linking parties' preferences to policy-making, I propose that parties with more diverse platforms provide coalitions greater room to negotiate, whereas parties focusing on a small number of issues exacerbate ideological tensions. Issue diversity becomes important once parties exhaust opportunities to make the initial, easy policy compromises. Using evidence from 299 coalitions in 24 European countries, I find that issue diversity in parties' platforms moderates the effect of disagreement. Using a non-proportional hazard analysis, I find that the effect of issue diversity varies over the coalition's lifecycle. Governments with parties willing to negotiate over a larger range of issues decrease the risk that disagreements will result in coalition termination.