Suchergebnisse

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.

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.

Draws on questionnaire data from 957 voters in the Canary Islands (Spain) to analyze the roles of personality, motivation, & sociodemographic variables in predicting voting behavior. Findings indicate that the motivations & personality traits most important to influencing voting behavior were dissatisfaction & concern or worry over the social structure, followed by familial worries, pacifism, conventionalism, & aversions to authoritarianism & dogmatism. The most significant sociodemographic variable was urban vs rural residence, with urban voters more resistant to change. 7 Tables, 31 References. Adapted from the source document.

The concept "partisan identity" has played a crucial role in studies regarding electoral/voting behavior, especially in the US. However, in Mexico studies in this area are scant, thus, the importance of this article. Partisan identity has been defined as a psychological link between an individual & a political party. This essay analyzes the development of partisan identity among Mexicans & how it might be related to the electoral realignment of 2 July 2000. Using data from three national post-electoral surveys from 1994, 1997, & 2000, the authors show that this was the most important variable in determining how the votes were cast in those three elections. They also examine how partisan identity developed over the past 15 years & its main components. The PRI has lost most members, & its followers tend to be among the oldest voters. On the other hand, most PAN sympathizers tend to be found in younger generations. This evidence supports the notion that the transition in Mexico is best understood as an intergenerational change. 5 Tables, 5 Graphs, 1 Appendix. Adapted from the source document.

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.

This work is part of a larger study whose objective is to build a standardized scale to measure the political participation of Mexicans. The objective of the first stage is to understand the meaning of political participation on the part of Mexicans. For this, the semantic network technique was used with three stimuli: political participation, government & democracy. The results show that for Mexican citizens, political participation means voting, which is also related with government &, in turn, with corruption. These results can be understood in terms of some aspects of the current Mexican political context. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

The article deals with participation in the 1986 to 2000 Spanish elections. A model which includes individual, political & institutional factors is presented. The analysis highlights the influence of ideology: people on the left are now more likely to abstain than people on the right. It is shown that this reflects a broader problem: ideology has become a less useful instrument for predicting the political behavior of leftist voters. Two different explanations follow. On the one hand, Spanish political debate has recently tended to focus on 'valence issues' rather than on 'ideological issues'. On the other hand, for leftist citizens who did abstain, the rightwing party was better suited for government than the socialist party. Tables, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.

Motivation factors that induce citizens to cast their votes in elections are a complex phenomenon that demands a multidisciplinary approach for its wide understanding. In this essay several theories & approaches are described to take into account from a holistic perspective the complexity of factors that fall upon citizens' motivation to get involved in politics, & specifically, in electoral processes. The author concludes that elections are complex processes in which voters' motivation is induced by a diversity of factors & circumstances. Therefore, no single theory can explain voters' abstention & citizens' involvement. 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

The general elections held in Spain in Mar 2000 shaped a novel political scenario since democracy was restored 25 years ago. It was the first time a Center-Right party achieved what experts & analysts had considered impossible only a few years before. The PP victory obtained by absolute majority, the decline in PSOE & IU voters, & high levels of abstention are the most prominent features of the year 2000 elections. An explanation of the above includes the PSOE's internal problems &, marginally, problems of the Left in general, especially the expediency of its messages in Spain & the European Community. Other explanations attempt to interpret the PP's victory at the polls expounding the party's achievements during the years it has been in the government. But most of the hypotheses evince the presumption that Spanish society is experiencing a change, specifically, in regard to the features, values, & guidelines that characterize its political culture. This article seeks to analyze the latter, reviewing indicators that are used to describe the political culture in order to see if there have been relevant changes in the way Spaniards perceive political objects. 3 Tables, 52 References. Adapted from the source document.

The article contrasts the validity of the model of interbloc punishment as a result of labor market precarity for the Spanish general elections of 2000. According to this model, labor market experiences in the flexible segment of the Spanish labor market are expected to generate discontent with the incumbent party and, thereby, facilitate trans-ideological voting. Using a restrictive definition of labor market precarity, which is operationalized as unemployment, the predictions of the model are tested on a representative sample of the economically active population drawn from the pre-electoral survey carried out by the governmental Centre for Sociological Research (study 2382). The model is supported by the evidence, which suggests that the Popular Party was punished by unemployed rightwing voters who were unsatisfied with their unemployment situation, as well as by unsatisfied unemployed voters who did not identify with any of the ideological blocs in the left-right spectrum. Confidence intervals around the predicted estimators for punishment effects are calculated using techniques of statistical simulation. Together with the results obtained in a previous analysis of the electoral impact of labor market precarity in the 1996 general elections, the results of the analysis of the 2000 elections suggest that the model of interbloc punishment is symmetrical, as it seems to work irrespectively of which party is in power. Tables, Graphs, References. Adapted from the source document.

This article tests the economic voting hypothesis for the 1996 & 2000 Spanish general elections. The simplest economic voting hypothesis suggests that other things being equal, a good economic performance will make voters support the incumbent. In contrast, I propose to test the existence of economic voting in Spain by systematically considering the political, economic, & sociological contexts in which elections take place. The model seeks to identify the different ways in which public opinion may be related to the state of the economy. The main results of the empirical analysis presented in the article suggest that the economy entered the ballot-box both in the 1996 & 2000 general elections in Spain. While the electoral punishment of the socialists in the 1996 elections was not exclusively motivated by economic reasons, the electoral rewarding of the conservatives was mainly motivated by the positive economic performance, which generated a general trend of optimistic economic expectations in Spanish public opinion. Tables, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.