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The socio-psychological features of elections with a weak content have been considered. The factors of interest of the electorate in such elections have been allocated. The main socio-psychological features of elections with a weak content, that determine the effectiveness of the use of political technologies have been noted. The causal typology of the features of elections with weak content, including formal, socio-psychological and political-technological features, has been presented. The process of effective information support of the election campaign has been analyzed and the conclusion has been made about the need for quality monitoring of candidates ' ratings in any election campaign. Conclusions have been drawn about the possibility of using the identified socio-psychological features of elections with low content in election campaigns. ; Рассмотрены социально-психологические особенности выборов со слабым содержанием. Выделены факторы заинтересованности электората в таких выборах. Отмечены основные социально-психологические характеристики выборов со слабым содержанием, определяющие эффективность использования политических технологий. Представлена каузальная типология особенностей выборов со слабым содержанием, включающая формальные, социально-психологические и политико-технологические особенности. Проанализирован процесс эффективного информационного обеспечения избирательной кампании и сделан вывод о необходимости качественного мониторинга рейтингов кандидатов в любой избирательной кампании. Сделаны выводы о возможности применения выявленных социально-психологических особенностей выборов со слабым содержанием в избирательных кампаниях.

A content analysis of more than 13,000 items on the main display pages in twelve daily newspapers finds that publications with a strong market orientation publish fewer items about government and public affairs and more items about lifestyle and sports than newspapers with a weak market orientation. But it also finds that content for the public sphere continues to dominate the main display pages of both newspapers that embrace market-driven journalism and those that do not.

The issues related to power, politics and change in weak states are approached by looking at the way in which elections are prepared for and electoral issues handled. The point of departure is a general model of the contextualised electoral process with a number of iterative steps or phases. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lesotho, Nepal and Mauritius are the cases selected for scrutiny, and the main focus is on the choice of seats allocation systems during the most recent attempts at democratisation. The five cases are characterised by rather different decision-making processes and each has chosen a different system for allocating parliamentary seats. The likely consequences for the degree of inclusivity and the prospects for the development of a consensual parliamentary style are discussed, but several parliamentary terms have to come to an end before final conclusions can be drawn. It is argued that donor interest in this particular topic has been unwarrantedly sparse, which is most regrettable. In the final section a few other elements of the electoral process cycle are discussed in order to allow the drawing of a few conclusions about election- and democratisation-related support in weak states. Adapted from the source document.

Democratic transitions, franchise extensions, and civil war settlements can often be seen as power-sharing agreements in which opposing factions try to use institutional structures to 'lock in' the terms of a settlement. But the commitment power inherent in institutions varies. When the institutional environment is weak and credibility is low, it is difficult for a powerful elite to tie its hands and give up power. This article studies a window-of-opportunity model in which an enfranchised elite faces a periodic threat. Institutional weakness is parameterized in terms of the elite's marginal return to trying to undermine a power-sharing agreement. The analysis shows that (i) bargaining breaks down if the overall institutional environment is too weak and why it does; (ii) equilibrium agreements share more power with the opposition when the institutional environment is weak; (iii) there is a non-monotonic relation between power sharing and how often the opposition poses a threat; and (iv) power sharing is path dependent.

This paper presents a content analysis of three Melbourne-based newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch during the 1987 Australian federal election. The study examined bias by comparing the amount of favorable space allocated to each political party by each of the three newspapers. A "profile approach" was also used where the three newspapers were examined over a range of different measures. There were three main conclusions reached as a result of this study. The election coverage in the 'Australian' was biased in favor of the Liberal-National Party Coalition. There was evidence of a mild pro-Labor Party bias in the 'Herald's' coverage. There was no evidence of proprietorial direction as to how the election was to be covered by the Murdoch press. This final conclusion was supported by the diversity of editorial opinion within Murdoch's newspapers. (.....)

Most electronic voting schemes aim at providing verifiability: voters should trust the result without having to rely on some authorities. Actually, even a prominent voting system like Helios cannot fully achieve verifiability since a dishonest bulletin board may add ballots. This problem is called ballot stuffing. In this paper we give a definition of verifiability in the computational model to account for a malicious bulletin board that may add ballots. Next, we provide a generic construction that transforms a voting scheme that is verifiable against an honest bulletin board and an honest registration authority (weak verifiability) into a verifiable voting scheme under the weaker trust assumption that the registration authority and the bulletin board are not simultaneously dishonest (strong verifiability). This construction simply adds a registration authority that sends private credentials to the voters, and publishes the corresponding public credentials. We further provide simple and natural criteria that imply weak verifiability. As an application of these criteria, we formally prove the latest variant of Helios by Bernhard, Pereira and Warinschi weakly verifiable. By applying our generic construction we obtain a Helios-like scheme that has ballot privacy and strong verifiability (and thus prevents ballot stuffing). The resulting voting scheme, Helios-C, retains the simplicity of Helios and has been implemented and tested.

Most electronic voting schemes aim at providing verifiability: voters should trust the result without having to rely on some authorities. Actually, even a prominent voting system like Helios cannot fully achieve verifiability since a dishonest bulletin board may add ballots. This problem is called ballot stuffing. In this paper we give a definition of verifiability in the computational model to account for a malicious bulletin board that may add ballots. Next, we provide a generic construction that transforms a voting scheme that is verifiable against an honest bulletin board and an honest registration authority (weak verifiability) into a verifiable voting scheme under the weaker trust assumption that the registration authority and the bulletin board are not simultaneously dishonest (strong verifiability). This construction simply adds a registration authority that sends private credentials to the voters, and publishes the corresponding public credentials. We further provide simple and natural criteria that imply weak verifiability. As an application of these criteria, we formally prove the latest variant of Helios by Bernhard, Pereira and Warinschi weakly verifiable. By applying our generic construction we obtain a Helios-like scheme that has ballot privacy and strong verifiability (and thus prevents ballot stuffing). The resulting voting scheme, Helios-C, retains the simplicity of Helios and has been implemented and tested.