Our portraits of voters, their relationship to parties, and the behavior of elected party members have changed significantly within the last 10 to 15 years. Characterizations of dealignment and decreased importance of parties have been fairly rapidly replaced by a focus on party polarization. Voters are becoming more ideological and the debate is now about the relative role of ideology, religious attachment, views on immigration, and class in affecting party identification and voting. In a short period of time we have gone from concern that parties are not responsive or sufficiently different to whether polarization has become too great.

This volume, with contributions from some of the most noted scholars of political parties, brings together assessments of these changes to provide a comprehensive overview of current trends in the field. It serves as an excellent companion to courses on parties and elections, and a useful overview for scholars and students of American politics generally.

Four years after unification, Germany completed what has been called the "super election year": no less than nineteen elections, culminating in the Bundestag vote on October 16, 1994. Four years after unification, the elections of 1994 reveal the state of German Unity and the interplay of new forces in post-Cold War Europe. This book analyzes the elections for specialists as well as for students, placing them in the wider context of political and economic developments in Germany in the 1990s. An appendix with full data on previous Bundestag elections and relevant charts on party developments enhances the value of this volume which students, scholars and the general reader interested in German affairs will find indispensable.

Four years after unification, Germany completed what has been called the "super election year": no less than nineteen elections, culminating in the Bundestag vote on October 16, 1994. Four years after unification, the elections of 1994 reveal the state of German Unity and the interplay of new forces in post-Cold War Europe. This book analyzes the elections for specialists as well as for students, placing them in the wider context of political and economic developments in Germany in the 1990s. An appendix with full data on previous Bundestag elections and relevant charts on party developments enhances the value of this volume which students, scholars and the general reader interested in German affairs will find indispensable.

This comprehensive volume provides crucial insights from contemporary academics and practitioners into how positive interventions might be made into post-secular political spaces that have emerged in the wake of the economic, political, and social upheavals of the 2008 global financial crisis. The failure of liberal democracy to deal effectively with such challenges has led to scapegoating of the poor, immigrants, and Muslims, and contributed to the populist electoral success of, among others, the Leave campaign during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, and Donald Trump's Presidential campaign. These shocks have highlighted contemporary political spaces defined by what has been termed 'all the posts': postmodern, post-Christendom, post-liberal, post-political, and post-secular. This collection examines emerging attempts to understand and advance the cause of wellbeing within this context. The authors address a variety of key issues including: (re)configuring mythologies for the common good; deploying love and friendship politically; motivating new social movements; valuing the other; recovering displaced and devalued political narratives; finding alternatives to the previously dominant neo-liberalism; listening deeply for social transformation; and overcoming adversarial party politics. This book was originally published online as a special issue of the journal Global Discourse.

The study of patron-client politics is new to the study of Hong Kong political science. This book examines whether patron-client relations are critical to the electoral victory of candidates; how the political elites cultivate support from clients in order to obtain more votes during local elections; and tests the extent to which whether patron-client relations are crucial in order for candidates to obtain more ballots during elections.

Covering patron-client politics and public administration in Hong Kong; the electoral dynamics including the Chief Executive elections and the Legislative Council elections; the cooptation of key elites by using patron-client mechanism; the study of the committees and elites who have been politically co-opted; the appointment mechanisms that have played a crucial role in patron-clientelism; and finally the China factor in the entire processes and politics of patron-client politics.

Bruce Kwong finds that the better candidates cultivate patron-client relations, the greater their chance of winning the election; and the smaller the size of the electoral constituency, the greater the impact of patron-client relations. Finally, the book stresses the role of Beijing as a powerful patron shaping the Hong Kong Chief Executive and the latter's clients and analyzes the political implications and long-term consequences of patron-client politics in Hong Kong.

Every two years, exit polls become the most widely analyzed, written about, and discussed data-set in the United States. Although exit polls are known for their use in predicting elections, they are in fact the best tool for explaining election results. Exit polls are taken from actual voters, whereas pre-election polls that tally people's intended votes tend to overstate the number of people who will actually go to the polls. Exit Polls: Surveying the American Electorate is a groundbreaking new reference work that explores for the first time the trends in longitudinal variables asked in the national Election Day exit polls from their beginning in 1972 to the present. The book documents comparable survey items that have appeared in multiple exit polls over time. Authors Samuel J. Best and Brian S. Krueger-both election commentators for CBS news and statistical experts-present more than 100 tables and 100 figures showing the changes in the American electorate and its voting patterns over time. This work represents the first time exit poll data has been combined to show trends over time. Chapter one: The Exit Poll Phenomenon provides a brief history of exit polls and chronicles how they evolved into their current arrangement. It explains how exit poll questions are developed, the sampling and weighting procedures used, the reporting protocols adopted, and the benefits and limitations of exit polls. Chapter two: Creating and Using Exit Poll Time Series describes how individual exit polls were compiled into a first of its kind cumulative data file and discusses the rationale for selecting specific survey items. The chapter explains the techniques used to merge the data and discusses the framework used to present the data in the subsequent chapters. Chapter three: Composition of Voters in Federal Elections focuses on changes in the demographic and ideological composition of the electorate over almost forty years, including gender, age, race, sexual orientation, education, income, religion, party membership, and military service. Chapter four: The Presidential Voting Preferences of the Active Electorate examines the presidential voting patterns of the various groups that make up the American electorate, from 1972 to 2010. Chapter five: The Congressional Voting Preferences of the Active Electorate examines the congressional voting patterns of the various groups that make up the American electorate from 1972 to 2010. Offering unique insight into the American electorate, this important new work is meant to serve novice and expert researchers alike. Libraries with holdings in American politics and government will want to acquire this one-of-a-kind resource.

All of America's crucial presidential votes -- arranged by state and by county within a state -- are collected in two unparalleled volumes. No other book set provides the accessible and easy to use information about presidential votes in every county in the nation for the past 80 years.

The first volume covers elections from Warren G. Harding's landslide in 1920 through Dwight D. Eisenhower's second term. Volume 2 begins with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and carries through the latest controversial national vote in 2000 that brought George W. Bush to the White House.

Both volumes are organized the same: the front section containing national summary tables of the state by state vote and Electoral College vote for each election. A chapter for each state follows, beginning with a summary of the statewide vote and Electoral College, a county outline map, and the county-by-county details of each election. Sizable votes for third party candidates are also provided, as are summaries of presidential primary elections.

For quick access to the most reliable data ever published on presidential elections, America at the Polls is in a class by itself.

Images of political leaders as everyday figures, involved in commonplace activities, now form an increasingly important aspect of electoral presentation. This text examines how and why selected political figures have embraced a populist agenda in a social context and addresses the scope and limitations of such an approach in the US and the UK.

Building on a comprehensive theoretical framework that draws on discursive and ideational approaches to populism, this volume offers a comparative mapping of the Populist Radical Left in contemporary Europe. It explores the novel discursive, political and organisational features of several political actors, as well as the conditions of their emergence and success, while being alert to the role of relevant social movements. Chapters feature case studies of the Greek party Syriza, the Spanish Podemos, the German Die Linke, Jean-Luc Melenchon and France Insoumise, the Dutch Socialist Party and the Slovenian Levica. Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of Labour in the UK and 'Momentum', the movement that supports him is also examined. A separate chapter is devoted to recent grassroots social movements that can be seen as instances of progressive populism, such as the 'squares movement' in Spain and Greece. This book fills a crucial gap in the literature on radical left politics and populism in Europe, contributing to the rapidly burgeoning field of populism studies.

In many recent democracies, candidates compete for office using illegal strategies to influence voters. In Hungary and Romania, local actors including mayors and bureaucrats offer access to social policy benefits to voters who offer to support their preferred candidates, and they threaten others with the loss of a range of policy and private benefits for voting the "wrong" way. These quid pro quo exchanges are often called clientelism. How can politicians and their accomplices get away with such illegal campaigning in otherwise democratic, competitive elections? When do they rely on the worst forms of clientelism that involve threatening voters and manipulating public benefits? Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral Clientelism in Eastern Europe uses a mixed method approach to understand how illegal forms of campaigning including vote buying and electoral coercion persist in two democratic countries in the European Union. It argues that we must disaggregate clientelistic strategies based on whether they use public or private resources, and whether they involve positive promises or negative threats and coercion. We document that the type of clientelistic strategies that candidates and brokers use varies systematically across localities based on their underlying social coalitions. We also show that voters assess and sanction different forms of clientelism in different ways. Voters glean information about politicians' personal characteristics and their policy preferences from the clientelistic strategies these candidates deploy. Most voters judge candidates who use clientelism harshly. So how does clientelism, including its most odious coercive forms, persist in democratic systems? This book suggests that politicians can get away with clientelism by using forms of it that are in line with the policy preferences of constituencies whose votes they need. Clientelistic and programmatic strategies are not as distinct as previous have argued. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

In this volume, researchers explore the effects of the 2016 US Presidential Election on the LGBTQ community from a wide variety of disciplines including communication, gender studies, nursing, political science, public health, psychology, cultural analysis, and social work. The research in this volume shows that the election had negative effects on the personal well-being, relationships, and families of LGBTQ people. The research also explains ways in which members of the LGBTQ community reacted to the election with hope, resilience, and positive relational outcomes. Moving topically from a discussion of the election and the LGBTQ community at the system level, the contributors move on to assess the effect of the election at both family level and the individual level as well. Representing qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodological approaches, this interdisciplinary volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in the 2016 US election, and those interested in the impact of politics on marginalized communities more broadly. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of GLBT Family Studies.

This book provides an innovative theoretical and empirical exploration of the political participation and democratic capability of people living in authoritarian states. Merging perspectives from sociology and political science, the book demonstrates that despite autocratic restrictions on opposition, there is often still leeway for people to express themselves as political agents and to develop democratic capability. The first two chapters problematise political participation and develop an interdisciplinary three-domain framework that allows for critical engagement with and appreciation of the contexts and varied ways in which participatory activities occur. This framework is applied to analyse six country case studies: Singapore, Jordan, Belarus, Cuba, Nigeria, and Vietnam. Drawing on a range of data sources and different analytical entry points, the book investigates the substantive opportunities people have in exercising political agency and the implications for democratic capability. The book concludes by summarising the emergent themes and examining the potential of applying this method of inquiry in other political contexts. Encompassing both governmental and societal practices, the book offers insights into state-society relations and their role in constructing political values and goals for participation, which people negotiate and mediate to inform their choices, modes, and forms of civic engagement. These insights present a broad approach towards the study of participation, with relevance for understanding political participation in various societies under non-democratic and democratic rule alike. This book will be useful for researchers and students interested in political dynamics and intersections with economic, cultural, and social aspects of development. It will also be beneficial for practitioners interested in participatory actions and social change.

Concerned citizens across the globe fear that democratic institutions are failing them. Citizens feel shut out of politics and worry that politicians are no longer responsive to their interests. In Hope for Democracy, John Gastil and Katherine R. Knobloch introduce new tools for tamping down hyper-partisanship and placing citizens at the heart of the democratic process. They showcase the Citizens' Initiative Review, which convenes a demographically-balanced random sample of citizens to study statewide ballot measures. Citizen panelists interrogate advocates, opponents, and experts, then write an analysis that distills their findings for voters. Gastil and Knobloch reveal how this process has helped voters better understand the policy issues placed on their ballots. Placed in the larger context of deliberative democratic reforms, Hope for Democracy shows how citizens and public officials can work together to bring more rationality and empathy into modern politics.

African Americans and the Presidency explores the long history of African American candidates for President and Vice President, examining the impact of each candidate on the American public, as well as the contribution they all made toward advancing racial equality in America. Each chapter takes the story one step further in time, through original essays written by top experts, giving depth to these inspiring candidates, some of whom are familiar to everyone, and some whose stories may be new.

Presented with illustrations and a detailed timeline, African Americans and the Presidency provides anyone interested in African American history and politics with a unique perspective on the path carved by the predecessors of Barack Obama, and the meaning their efforts had for the United States.

This book describes, explains, and reflects upon the 1996 presidential and congressional elections, devoting equal coverage to three phases of the political process: the major party nominations, the general election, and the subsequent government organization. In doing so, this study links elections and governance.

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a new vanguard in African American political leaders. They came of age after Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, they were raised in integrated neighborhoods and educated in majority white institutions, and they are more likely to embrace deracialized campaign and governance strategies. Members of this new cohort, such as Cory Booker, Artur Davis, and Barack Obama, have often publicly clashed with their elders, either in campaigns or over points of policy. And because this generation did not experience codified racism, critics question whether these leaders will even serve the interests of African Americans once in office.

With these pressing concerns in mind, this volume uses multiple case studies to probe the implications of the emergence of these new leaders for the future of African American politics. Editor Andra Gillespie establishes a new theoretical framework based on the interaction of three factors: black leaders? crossover appeal, their political ambition, and connections to the black establishment. She sheds new light on the changing dynamics not only of Black politics but of the current American political scene.

There is increasing awareness of growing similarities in political marketing practices around the world. Global political marketing is a comprehensive analysis of why, how and with what affect parties use political marketing in a range of political systems - presidential, parliamentary, two and multi-party, and established and emerging democracies.

Written by a team of 25 international expert authors, the volume explores the impact of systemic features such as the party and electoral system, analysing how parties use marketing through 14 detailed country studies. The book explores the notion that political marketing is used by parties to both sell and design political products, is by no means confined to the opposition, and that many opinions besides those of the voters are considered in product design, including ideological anchors, expert opinion and party members' input.

The authors also explore how other factors impact on political marketing effectiveness, such as the ability of governments to communicate delivery, stay in touch, the role of the media and party unity and culture. Finally the work discusses the democratic implications of market-oriented parties, highlighting the need for debate about the relationship between citizens and governments and the prospects for democracy in the 21st century.

Including a practitioner perspective as well as rigorous academic analysis, this collection provides the first global comprehensive overview of how political parties market themselves, it will be of great interest to all scholars of political marketing, parties and elections and comparative politics.

This edited collection explores a wide range of communication elements and themes, representing a variety of topics and methodologies. It focuses broadly on the role and function of communication within the context of the 2016 United States presidential election, with chapters devoted to topics including an overview of the election from a communication perspective, the nominations, strategies of campaign visits, the impact of gender in the campaign, the impact of WikiLeaks, front page election coverage, messaging and performance of third-party candidates, Trump's campaign announcement address, and Clinton's concession speech. This is an eclectic collection that makes a significant contribution to current understandings of the various roles of communication in the historic presidential election of 2016.

This book examines political activities in the key Latino barrio of five of the nation's principal cities during the 1990 elections: El Barrio of New York; Magnolia of Houston; Chicago's Pilsen; Boyle Heights in Los Angeles; and Calle Ocho in Miami.

Both in Greece in 2012 and Italy in 2013, it took two elections to form a government. A repeat parliamentary contest was required in Greece and the unprecedented re-election of the outgoing President of the Republic in Italy before a cabinet could be formed. Against a background of economic crisis and national austerity, both countries experienced 'protest elections' in which the overriding concern for an unusually large proportion of voters was not to choose a government but to express dissent. The outcome included record-breaking electoral volatility, the decline of bipolarism, the startling rise of challenger parties and the transformation of national patterns of government formation, including experiments with grand coalitions and technocrat-led cabinets. These developments sent shock waves through Europe and beyond, suggesting Southern Europe might be drifting towards ungovernability. The volume offers analyses of the key electoral contests at the parliamentary, presidential and local government levels, complemented by special studies of two key challenger parties, Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement in Italy and Golden Dawn in Greece. An introductory comparative overview traces the process of convergence between the political systems of Italy and Greece which appears to have been triggered by the economic crisis. This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

This book traces the beginnings of democracy in the three Himalayan kingdoms of Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan. Charting the mobilisations and political experimentations that took place in the former buffer states under monarchies to establish democratic regimes, this book investigates their varying degrees of success, and offers a critical commentary on the consequent socio-political histories of this region. The volume sheds light on the nuances of their different geo-political contexts of the three Himalayan states, while tracing the social origins of the movements. It also undertakes a close analysis of the political participation and leadership involved to understand their achievements and limitations. A comprehensive analysis of a hitherto unexplored chapter in South Asian history, it will be of an immense interest to scholars and researchers of international relations, modern history, sociology and social anthropology, politics, South Asian studies, area studies, especially Nepal and Himalayan studies, as well as policy makers and government think tanks.

African Americans and the Presidency explores the long history of African American candidates for President and Vice President, examining the impact of each candidate on the American public, as well as the contribution they all made toward advancing racial equality in America. Each chapter takes the story one step further in time, through original essays written by top experts, giving depth to these inspiring candidates, some of whom are familiar to everyone, and some whose stories may be new.

Presented with illustrations and a detailed timeline, African Americans and the Presidency provides anyone interested in African American history and politics with a unique perspective on the path carved by the predecessors of Barack Obama, and the meaning their efforts had for the United States.

How Democracy Survives explores how liberal democracy can better adapt to the planetary challenges of our time by evolving beyond the Westphalian paradigm of the nation state. The authors bring perspectives from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America, their chapters engaging with the concept of transnational democracy by tracing its development in the past, assessing its performance in the present, and considering its potential for survival in this century and beyond. Coming from a wide array of intellectual disciplines and policymaking backgrounds, the authors share a common conviction that our global institutions-both governments and international organizations-must become more resilient, transparent, and democratically accountable in order to address the cascading political, economic, and social crises of this new epoch, such as climate change, mass migration, more frequent and severe natural disasters, and resurgent authoritarianism. This book will be relevant for courses in international relations and political science, environmental politics, and the preservation of democracy and federalism around the world.

This volume analyses how the use of referendums affects the central functions and characteristics of representative democracy. It provides a balanced account of the interaction between referendums and representative institutions and actors, seeking to evaluate whether referendums supplement or undermine representative democracy. Considering both normative and empirical questions, the volume also examines the particular circumstances under which referendums strengthen or weaken representative democracy.

Providing a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches used in the study of referendums, this book is divided into three sections: Referendums and the Models of Democracy, The Demand of Referendums: Party Ideologies and Strategies, and Referendum Campaigns and Voter Behaviour. It features case studies on Ireland, Israel, Canada, California, Italy, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, the Nordic Countries, the Netherlands, Spain and the EU Constitutional Treaty. In addition to system-level evaluations of referendums, studies on the ideological attitudes of political actors and strategic use of referendums, the volume also provides analyses of referendum campaigns and voters? choices in referendums. Covering referendums on European integration, the volume also demonstrates how supra-national governance gives rise to the demand of referendums.

This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, political theory, comparative politics, and European studies.

Political parties, interest groups, and candidate campaigns all pursue similar goals in presidential elections: each entity attempts to mobilize voters. However, the regulatory environment often prevents these groups from coordinating their efforts. With participants playing by new rules mandated by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, the 2004 presidential election included previously unseen configurations and alliances between political actors. In some campaign situations, the resulting "dance" was carefully choreographed. In others, dancers stepped on each other's toes. In still others, participants could only eye each other across the floor. Dancing without Partners intensively analyzes the relationships among candidates, political parties, and interest groups under the BCRA's new regulations in the 2004 election cycle in five battleground states. The chapters assess the ways in which the rules of the game have changed the game itself-and also how they haven't. The result is a book that will be invaluable to researchers and students of presidential elections.