Electoral Behavior in the Russian Far East, 1995-2000: Contextual and Compositional Effects

A group of political scientists specializing in Russia's post-Soviet electoral behavior explores the question of whether genuinely regional effects of voting behavior can be discerned (and at what scale) by controlling for variations in compositional characteristics measured by aggregate social and economic data. The paper seeks to identify situations in which contextual effects may be operating, using a scale of analysis that is intermediate between regional (oblast)-level case studies and nationwide surveys—that of the Russian Far East macroregion. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O50, Z10. 4 tables, 40 references, 1 appendix.     

Russia's Electoral Geography: A Review

A noted specialist on the electoral geography of Russia reviews the existing body of work on the subject based on national elections, beginning with the RSFSR returns from the March 1989 voting for seats in the the USSR Congress of People's Deputies and extending to the presidential race of 2004. The author identifies major themes and methodologies relevant to a discussion of the political topography of Russia, before assessing the extent to which the country's emergent electoral landscape has been described. He emphasizes the importance of scale in interpreting the spatial patterns of electoral outcomes, as well as the social and economic correlates of voting across the regions. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O10, R10. 4 figures, 84 references.     

Location and Political Choice in Post-Unification Berlin: Explaining the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) Vote, 1999 and 2001

A paper examining the factors contributing to the growing electoral support for the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) in post-unification elections in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) uses detailed data for Berlin's electoral districts to elucidate the micro-geography of the East-West divide in the PDS vote. Using two methods of ecological inference, King's and entropy maximization, the authors show that the explanation of the PDS support in Berlin elections in 1999 and 2001 can be attributed to the "Mauer in den Köpfen" (wall in people's heads) that is coincident with the division of the city along the former Berlin Wall. This geographic division far exceeds any socio-demographic explanation of the PDS vote. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O10, R10. 9 figures, 4 tables, 98 references.     

Shades of Orange: The Electoral Geography of Ukraine's 2004 Presidential Elections

Two American geographers and noted specialists on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine describe and analyze the three rounds of Ukraine's pivotal and highly contested presidential elections in late 2004. In an effort to shed light on the underlying demographic and socio-economic correlates of the vote (e.g., age, income, urban/rural residence, language/ethnicity), the authors pay special attention to changes among the rounds, providing background to widespread allegations of electoral fraud in round two (first runoff). Finally, they summarize results of bivariate and multivariate regression analyses that reveal which among the various correlates contribute most to explaining differences in the vote. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O18, R10. 6 figures, 5 tables, 26 references.     

Redrawing the Political Map of Russia: The Duma Election of December 2003

Two experts on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia examine the disruption of the relatively stable pattern of political choice evident in the returns from the December 2003 elections to the Russian Duma. The paper documents major shifts, relative to three previous Duma elections, in turnout and the percentage share of vote among major parties and broad party groupings (liberal/reform, nationalist, KPRF/Agrarian, and centrist). Prominent among the latter are the resurgence of nationalist parties, the losses suffered by the communists, the virtual elimination of the reform parties from the national legislative scene, and the consolidation of power by the favorite party of the Kremlin. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O10, R10. 9 figures, 2 tables, 21 references.     

Shifting Electoral Geography in Russia's 1991 and 1996 Presidential Elections

This research note reexamines Russia's 1991 and 1996 presidential elections, focusing—unlike studies emphasizing stability of Russia's electorate—on differences in electoral geography in the two elections, with oblast-level vote totals for Boris Yel'tsin in 1991 and 1996 being only poorly correlated. Although Yel'tsin's performance in both elections was better in urban than in rural regions, the urbanrural divide in 1996 is shown to differ from that in 1991. Nonetheless, the Russian electorate is stable after 1993, regional voting patterns between 1993 and 1996 being both similar to each other and different from that in the 1991 election. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O50, Z10. 6 tables, 14 references.     

Poland Divided: Spatial Differences in the June 2003 EU Accession Referendum

Results of the June 2003 referendum on Poland's accession to the European Union are assessed by a noted American electoral geographer and a Polish historian, in terms of voter turnout, percentage "yes" vote, and percentage of eligible voters casting yes ballots. They then proceed to test the association between voting patterns and four basic variables that, according to pre-referendum surveys, would influence the patterns regionally: general east-west location within Poland (and proximity to the pre-existing EU border), rural-urban residence, occupation (in agriculture vs. industry/services), and unemployment/income levels. In concluding, the authors note possible implications for subsequent elections in Poland. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O18, R10. 2 figures, 5 tables, 35 references.     

Regional Elections and Political Stability in Russia

A noted American specialist on regional affairs in the Russian Federation presents and analyzes a compilation detailing the political orientation of Russia's provincial executives. The data represent electoral results and include information from 68 provinces (49 oblasts, 6 krays, 10 autonomous okrugs, and 1 autonomous oblast) and 21 republics through September 1997. The discussion covers Russian regional politics, the results of regional elections held in 1996, and an assessment of alternative futures. Tabular material identifies the names of chief executives, dates of most recent elections, party support, and results relating to incumbency. Journal of Economic Literature. Classification Numbers: H77, D52, P41. 3 tables, 25 references.     

THE GEOGRAPHY OF ELECTIONS OF USSR PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES BY NATIONAL-TERRITORIAL DISTRICTS AND THE NATIONALITIES ISSUE

A Soviet political geographer analyzes elections to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies (March 26, 1989), based on returns from nationality-based electoral districts from which one-third of all deputies were elected (see Soviet Geography, October 1989 special issue). Topics investigated include problems in the partitioning of electoral districts (including analysis of the tendency toward the under-representation of cities relative to rural areas), the number of candidates vying for each deputy seat in various districts, the backgrounds of winning and losing candidates, and the extent to which elected deputies mirrored the nationality composition of their respective electoral districts. Translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington, DC 20005.     

The Candidates of the Liberal Unionist Party, 1886–1912*

Historians have hitherto based discussion of the electoral performance of the Liberal Unionist Party on incomplete data regarding the candidates of the party, as published sources, including F.W.S. Craig's British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885–1918, the standard reference work, include a number of cases where the party label of a Unionist candidate (either Liberal Unionist or Conservative) is uncertain or incorrect. Utilising a wide range of primary and secondary sources, this article resolves a number of these cases, and thus creates the most accurate list of Liberal Unionist candidates available. The creation of this list allows for accurate analysis of the party's history, and the article makes some preliminary observations based on the data presented. Among these observations are that the Liberal Unionists comprised a consistent percentage of the overall Unionist Party in the house of commons, that the number of seats contested by Liberal Unionists remained steady through the January 1910 election, and that existing interpretations of the electoral pact between the Liberal Unionists and Conservatives may be flawed.     

Electoral politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

Australia’s constant experimentation with electoral system design, and its effects on voter behaviour, have been consistent themes in the Australian Journal of Political Science and its predecessor, Politics, for half a century. This article examines this research in the context of three areas: electoral institutions; election campaigns; and voter behaviour. Three distinct stages in the research are identified, starting with basic fact-gathering, then progressing to the application of rigorous methods and evidence to real-world questions. In the third stage, scholarly attention has been devoted to placing Australia within a comparative framework. An underlying theme in the research is Australian exceptionalism in electoral politics.     

Regional cleavages in African politics: Persistent electoral blocs and territorial oppositions

Do socio-economic cleavages shape electoral dynamics in African countries? Previous individual-level and party systems research on African politics has de-emphasized socio-economic factors, contributing to the common view that ethnic cleavages and short-term ethnic alliances define politics both locally and nationally. Focusing on Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi, we draw on methods in electoral geography to offer a spatial analysis of geographic patterns in constituency-level electoral returns over three decades that reveals the existence of persistent regional voting blocs that, in their temporal stability and multiethnic character, are not well explained by prevailing theory. The anomalies open the door to a reinterpretation national electoral structure and dynamics in the three countries that takes the geographic clustering of the persistent voting blocs as a clue to their etiology. We propose an interpretation that focuses on core-periphery cleavages in national electorates, following Lipset and Rokkan's (1967) classic model of territorial oppositions in countries undergoing political and economic integration and modernization. DHS data and proxies for regional economic activity support this interpretation. Socio-economic cleavages of the type explored in comparative political economy literatures on spatial inequality and territorial politics may be more salient in African electoral politics than previously thought.     

INVESTIGATING SEASONALITY AND SEASON OF BIRTH IN PAST HERDS: A REFERENCE SET OF SHEEP ENAMEL STABLE OXYGEN ISOTOPE RATIOS

Intra‐tooth sequential analysis of enamel δ¹⁸O is currently used to investigate birth seasonality in past animal populations, offering new insights into seasonal availability of animal resources, herd management and seasonality of site occupation. Reference data sets are still required to address two major difficulties: (1) that inter‐individual variability in the record of the seasonal cycle is affected by tooth size; and (2) that the season of birth cannot be directly estimated from the timing of tooth growth, because of a delay in enamel mineralization. We present a data set acquired on the lower second molar of 10 modern sheep from Rousay (Orkney) born within a few weeks of each other in April/May and submitted to the same environmental conditions until death. All sheep have recorded a sinusoidal pattern of δ¹⁸O variation spanning approximately a year. From the difference between the expected and the measured time sequence, the delay of enamel mineralization is estimated to be 5–6 months. The data set is then described using a model mainly based on a cosine function. The period, corresponding to the length of the M2 crown formed over a year, averaged 35.8 mm. A very slight variation of tooth growth rate with time and no attenuation of the isotopic signal towards the cervical margin of the crown could be detected in this data set. The lowest δ¹⁸O values, corresponding to the sheep's first winter, were tracked at a distance from the enamel/root junction that varied between 23.0 and 30.3 mm (x_min mean = 27.6 mm); the highest δ¹⁸O values, corresponding to the sheep's second summer, were between 6.3 and 11.6 mm (x_max mean = 9.9 mm). Most of the variability can be attributed to tooth size. When normalized on the period, x_min and x_max are 0.28 (± 0.05) and 0.78 (± 0.05) on average, meaning that the Rousay sheep have recorded the minimum and maximum δ¹⁸O values on average at 78% and 28%, respectively, of the end of the periodic cycle recorded in the second molar.     

Class,ethnicity, and voting behaviour in Australia∗

This paper assesses the importance of a range of social structural influences on Australian electoral behaviour, with specific reference to ethnicity and occupational class. The analysis is conducted on two levels. Firstly, aggregate level data is employed, using the 1976 census matched by federal electorate to the 1977 election results. Techniques from factorial ecology are used to construct conceptually unambiguous measures of constituency characteristics, and these are related to voting behaviour using multivariate techniques. Secondly, individual level survey data collected in 1979 are used to confirm the importance of the socioeconomic cleavage and urban‐rural divisions. They also indicate that ethnicity has an appreciable influence on electoral behaviour among those born in Mediterranean countries. Northern Europeans (mainly British) prove to be no different in their electoral behaviour than native‐born Australians, while the results for Eastern Europeans are inconclusive.     

Classifying electoral systems by input rules: Building on Blais and Rae through Australian experience

By revisiting the work of Blais and Rae, this article develops a new classification of electoral systems focused on input rules. An Unknown Winning Number family is distinguished from a Quota family with known winning numbers for most of the counting process. Branching family trees are developed and used to help explain some Australian experience with accentuated disproportionality in two electoral systems which have been omitted from otherwise path-breaking recent analysis (Taagepera, R. and Shugart, M.S. 1989. Seats and votes: The effects and determinants of electoral systems. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). These omitted systems are identified as effectively giving electors as many votes as seats available in a district. The input-rule family trees remind us that number of votes is an important component of electoral systems, although elusive and somewhat forgotten in much recent analysis. More conventional groupings of electoral systems are identified as output peer groups.

本文通过重读布莱斯和雷的著作,提出了一种强调输入规则的选举制度的新分类,即未知获胜票数系,以区别于为大多数计票过程所知的获胜票数配额系。该系及其分支有助于解释澳大利亚所经历的两种选举体制的某种不均衡性。这种不均衡性被本来可能具有开创性的最新分析（塔格佩拉与舒噶特的《席位与投票：选举制度的效果和成因》）所忽略。被忽略的制度有效地给予就一个选区既定席位而言尽可能多的票数。输入规则系告诉我们投票数是选举制度的重要组成部分,只是在最新的分析中没被正视,甚至被忽视了。选举制度更传统的分类被定为输出同类组。     

Alice's Unrepresentative Council: Cause for Intervention?

The troubles of Alice Springs have been widely discussed in the Australian media since The Weekend Australian published Nicolas Rothwell's (2011) feature article ‘Destroyed in Alice’ in February. Discussion has covered many things: violence, drugs, alcohol, sex, town camps, property crime, Aboriginal people coming in from outlying communities and the idea of another Commonwealth intervention. One topic that has not been mentioned is Alice's highly unrepresentative town council, built on a little-known electoral system used in Northern Territory local government called ‘exhaustive preferential’. This paper explains and critiques this electoral system and suggests that it is causing significant problems for both Alice Springs Town Council and other local governments in the Territory.1 ¹A version of this article was published in April 2011 in the Canberra Times monthly supplement The Public Sector Informant. Their by-line for the article was ‘A town like Alice needs an intervention’. View all notes It notes that the Northern Territory government is currently reviewing the system and is possibly moving slowly towards change. If change is not effected soon, it asks: is this electoral system cause for another Commonwealth intervention?     

Party responsiveness and voter confidence in Australia

Numerous studies have shown that Australians have little confidence in their political parties. This article presents the results of a study investigating whether the responsiveness of Australian parties to what their voters want drives this lack of confidence. It analyses two aspects of party responsiveness: programmatic responsiveness in electoral manifestos and perceived responsiveness that centres on Australian voters’ assessment of how well their parties meet their demands. The analysis finds that programmatic responsiveness has no significant influence. Instead, how Australians perceive their parties to be responsive has a modest effect on their confidence in those parties. The study suggests that, however, it is incumbency which has the most powerful effect on voter confidence.     

The Geopolitics of Terrorism: A Commentary on Flint and Radil's Approach

An American political geographer and prominent specialist in electoral geography presents a measured and informative critique of the preceding paper by Colin Flint and Steven M. Radil (2009) on "Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Situating al-Qaeda and the Global War on Terror within Geopolitical Trends and Structures." Among the issues explored are the extent to which the observed patterns of terrorism might differ depending on whether "international" or "domestic" incidents are the focus of attention, and whether fatalities associated with incidents might prove a better metric of terrorism's psychological impact than per capita incident frequency alone. A deeper issue debated in the critique involves the thorny question of whether a singular focus on relative economic deprivation (and on its variations between countries rather than also within countries) offers an adequate explanation for the incidence of terrorism given the complexity of cultural (including ethnicity and religion), social, economic, and political factors that motivate terrorist acts in diverse settings across the world. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: I390, O100, Y900. 32 references.     

City–suburban electoral polarization in Great Britain, 1950–2001

The degree to which residents of British inner cities and suburbs have diverged in their voting behaviour over the post-war period is analysed in this article. Examining aggregate election results by constituency, it is demonstrated that residents of inner cities and suburbs are indeed polarizing in their electoral choices. OLS regression analysis is conducted using constituency-level data to determine the relevance of intra-urban differences for understanding geographic variation in the vote in relation to those for region, size of conurbation and urban–rural distinctions. Results show that urban place of residence is particularly important for understanding the shifting geography of Conservative support. The implications of this research for electoral change in Britain are discussed.     

Turnout,preferential voting and vote flows in the E.U. election1

ABSTRACT

This article aims at focusing on four main features of the European elections that were held on 26 May 2019. Firstly, it analyses electoral turnout, both from a diachronic and a geographical point of view. Secondly, it presents electoral data and identifies winners and losers of the vote, not only by comparing 2019 E.U. results to 2014 E.U. results and 2018 political results, but especially focusing on the territorial dimension of electoral dynamics. Thirdly, it discusses flows of vote in five Italian cities (Brescia, Turin, Florence, Naples, Palermo), in order to give a clearer picture of how citizens (potentially) changed their electoral preferences from 2018 to 2019. Fourthly, it focuses on preferential vote, with the aim of distinguishing between parties characterized by ‘micro-personalization’ and ‘macro-personalization’. On many of these aspects, the 2019 European elections in Italy can be understood on the basis of the well-known ‘second-order election theory’. Yet, there are also interesting empirical findings that deviate from this pattern, among which the electoral success of the League – one of the two parties in government at the moment of the elections – merits further attention and can be mostly explained on the basis of government political action. That same electoral success, in addition, represented one of the causes that led to the end of the so-called yellow-green government in August 2019.