Suchergebnisse

This study examines the mechanisms through which the ruling party won a plurality of votes using a combination of legal changes and manipulative practices during the 2012 parliamentary election in Ukraine. Legal changes in electoral rules—the replacement of proportional representation to a mixed system—helped the ruling party weaken the opposition parties. These changes enabled the ruling party to engage in manipulation and fraud during campaigning and on election day by suppressing competition, crowding out the races with "technical" parties and "clone" candidates, and manipulating the composition of electoral commissions. The change of electoral system also enabled outright fraud on election day. A combination of these techniques disrupted both the contestation and participation dimensions of democracy, effectively pushing Ukraine into a state of competitive authoritarianism.

There is a popular assumption that off-cycle subnational elections should be better governed and more peaceful than general elections. This position is premised on the notion that limited geographical and demographical scope of such elections offers the national electoral body, security agencies and other key actors in electoral governance the opportunities to concentrate resources and energies in a given jurisdiction for maximum efficiencies. These have encouraged advocacy to unbundle the Electoral Management Body, namely the Independent National Electoral Commission by decentralising electoral governance. However, this assumption has not been subjected to adequate academic scrutiny. This study, therefore, examines comparatively, records of violence in off-cycle subnational elections conducted in Edo, Kogi and Ondo States between 2019 and 2020, and those of Nigeria's 2019 general elections. The study is descriptive by design, with data largely extracted from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and analysed using mixed method.

Countries of the Western Balkans (WB) – former federal units of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Albania have undergone a lengthy and complex process of democratisation from late 1980s. Free and fair elections are among the cornerstones of democratic consolidation. Even though the institutional setting for electoral management differs greatly across the globe, during the Europeanisation process it was widely recommended to transitional societies to set up independent electoral management bodies in other to guarantee fair electoral conditions, with standards mostly promoted by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe (VC) and International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). Based on this influence, all the countries of the WB have established electoral commissions that are to great extent formally independent from the executive, with the intention of being less prone to electoral meddling. This is enhanced by regular election monitoring in the region by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the process being followed and evaluated by both the European Union institutions and member states as part of fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria to join the EU. This paper gives an overview of the institutional setting of electoral management in the WB that was created following the model of independent bodies and outlines main features of their design.

Countries of the Western Balkans (WB) – former federal units of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Albania have undergone a lengthy and complex process of democratisation from late 1980s. Free and fair elections are among the cornerstones of democratic consolidation. Even though the institutional setting for electoral management differs greatly across the globe, during the Europeanisation process it was widely recommended to transitional societies to set up independent electoral management bodies in other to guarantee fair electoral conditions, with standards mostly promoted by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe (VC) and International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). Based on this influence, all the countries of the WB have established electoral commissions that are to great extent formally independent from the executive, with the intention of being less prone to electoral meddling. This is enhanced by regular election monitoring in the region by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the process being followed and evaluated by both the European Union institutions and member states as part of fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria to join the EU. This paper gives an overview of the institutional setting of electoral management in the WB that was created following the model of independent bodies and outlines main features of their design.

Election remains the most peaceful means of instituting and institutionalizing democratic government. Liberal democratic theorists argue on the primacy of election as an essential element of democracy. Since the commencement of the Fourth Republic, Nigeria had conducted six successive elections to deepen democratic rule. However, election postponement is fast becoming a recurring decimal in the political landscape. Taken 2019 General election as a unit of analysis, this paper examined the implication of election postponement on the future of democracy in Nigeria. Data were generated from secondary sources, including Textbooks, Journals and Internet, to provide information on the concept of Democracy and 2019 elections. These were subjected to descriptive and content analysis. 2019 Election postponement had cost Nigeria political, economic and social fortunes. It had undermined the integrity of the electoral process resulting in voter apathy. Nigeria lost billions of naira as a result of shutdown of businesses. It resulted in additional financial burden in the conduct of the election. The paper recommends that Nigeria's Electoral Management body needs to be re-engineered to be able to cope with responsibility of conducting election on schedule. Private institutions should be strategically employed to engage in election logistics such as handling of sensitive materials and on-time delivery of these materials. Also, there is need to give a thoughtful consideration to electronic voting, that should take care of the logistics problem of conducting election in Nigeria.

This comprehensive volume brings together contributions and diverse opinions from leading and emerging South African and international scholars to assess the quality of democracy and the electoral process in South Africa over the past ten years, with particular emphasis on the 2004 elections. The book speaks to a broad range of topics, all linked through the electoral theme, which get to the heart of many issues in contemporary South African politics. It offers an absorbing analysis of the evolution of the party system and party campaigns; tracks changes in public opinion and voter motivations; assesses the political implications of socio-economic change; depicts the evolution of parliament and the electoral system; probes the often tense relationship between media and government; and analyses the institutionalisation of the Independent Electoral Commission. Electoral Politics in South Africa serves as an essential sourcebook for information on the elections, the parties and their campaigns and as an authoritative contribution to careful electoral process analysis.

The results of Ghana's 2012 and 2020 elections were challenged in the nation's Supreme Court. Even though the court processes in both cases did not alter the election results, they nevertheless exposed monumental flaws in the electoral processes. The flaws in the 2012 electoral processes were exposed at the Supreme Court and featured in the final judgment of the court in a manner that allowed the Electoral Commission to initiate moves towards electoral reforms. However, the challenges of the 2020 elections, though exposed at the courts, were never featured in the final judgment of the Supreme Court. This paper discusses the implications of the 2020 election petition for the future of electoral reforms in Ghana. It argues that the rigid application of the letter of the law by the Supreme Court and the relegation to the background of the thorny issues of electoral challenges in the 2020 elections, would render the quest for further electoral reforms difficult. This would then make the future of any attempt to fine-tune the electoral processes quite bleak.