This book examines the effects of preferential voting on intraparty electoral competition and voting behavior. Using data covering 19 countries and over 200 elections, this study sheds light on a somewhat neglected aspect of electoral systems. The author demonstrates that the ability of voters to influence the selection and deselection of MPs under preferential voting systems is not as important as is often assumed. Instead, their ability to shape the election of a given candidate depends heavily on the balance between party power and voter power. In this way, this book advances the understanding of the effect of preferential voting on intra-party dynamics, parliamentary turnover, and voter behavior. Based on a rigorous, data-led methodological approach, the book contributes to both the theory and practice of the study of electoral systems, and should be read by scholars, students and practitioners interested in preferential voting systems.

A lively account of the general election of 2008 and of its profound significance for Italy and beyond. It gets to grips with the complexities of Italian politics in an exceptionally clear way. Covering the background to the election, the campaign, the parties, voting and the outcome, it is comprehensive in approach and tells a fascinating "story."

When the 1952 presidential election campaign began, many assumed it would be a race between Harry Truman, seeking his second full term, and Robert A. Taft, son of a former president and, to many of his fellow partisans, "Mr. Republican." No one imagined the party standard bearers would be Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson II and Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower.. I Like Ike tells the story of a critical election fought between two avowedly reluctant warriors, including Truman's efforts to recruit Eisenhower as the candidate of the Democrat Party-to a finish that, for all the partisan wrangling, had more to do with the extraordinary popularity of the former general, who, along with Stevenson, was seen to be somehow above politics. In the first book to analyze the 1952 election in its entirety, political historian John Robert Greene looks in detail at how Stevenson and Eisenhower faced demands that they run for an office neither originally wanted. He examines the campaigns of their opponents-Harry Truman and Robert Taft, but also Estes Kefauver, Richard B. Russell, Averell Harriman and Earl Warren. Richard Nixon's famous "Checkers Speech," Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign, and television as a new medium for news and political commercials-each figured in the election in its own way; and drawing in depth on the Eisenhower, Stevenson, Taft and Nixon papers, Greene traces how. I Like Ike is a compelling account of how an America fearful of a Communist threat elected a war hero and brought an end to twenty years of Democrat control of the White House. In an era of political ferment, it also makes a timely and persuasive case for the importance of the election of 1952 not only to the Eisenhower Administration, but also to the development of presidential politics well into the future.

This book systematically maps the evolution of the party-voter nexus of the United National Party (UNP) and Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). In doing so, it argues that these parties rely mostly on a complex Web of patronage-based networks to mobilise electorates. They employ informal and highly dynamic, loosely knit networks as their organisational structures at the local level. They mainly focus on mobilising voters through local political actors rather than maintaining clear party bases and membership schemes. The study highlights the salience of personalities at the national as well as local levels in forming electoral support for the parties. These individuals exploit their economic, social, and cultural capital to mobilise the most efficient network that would strengthen their party during elections. The study also analyses the emergence of two new coalition centres from within these traditional parties, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), and argues that these parties, though portraying themselves as new, have in fact retained the overall logic of the party-voter nexus by appropriating the organisational schemes and structures of their predecessors.

This book explores the conflict between the Catalan project to become independent and the Spanish state's opposition to any attempt of secessionism. The volume addresses some of the key political and academic issues of contemporary European societies: nationalism, separatism and sovereignty. The banned referendum in Catalonia in October 2017 unveiled the existence of multiple crises, from territorial to economic and political. Indeed, the Catalan issue is about the crisis of sovereignty: who holds legitimacy to make decisions, and who is in power legally and politically? The book is structured according to three themes: sovereignty and its people, where the realignment to independence, populism and the definition of the demos are discussed; collective identities and actions, to account for the shaping of 'us', the importance of collective memory and the cross-alliances forged during the referendum; and internationalization, focusing on Europeanisation, international media and comparative constitutional perspectives.

An answer to the assault on voting rights-crucial reading in light of the 2020 presidential election The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is considered one of the most effective pieces of legislation the United States has ever passed. It enfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly in the American South, and drew attention to the problem of voter suppression. Yet in recent years there has been a continuous assault on access to the ballot box in the form of stricter voter ID requirements, meritless claims of rigged elections, and baseless accusations of voter fraud. In the past these efforts were aimed at eliminating African American voters from the rolls, and today, new laws seek to eliminate voters of color, the poor, and the elderly, groups that historically vote for the Democratic Party. Uncounted examines the phenomenon of disenfranchisement through the lens of history, race, law, and the democratic process. Gilda R. Daniels, who served as Deputy Chief in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and has more than two decades of voting rights experience, argues that voter suppression works in cycles, constantly adapting and finding new ways to hinder access for an exponentially growing minority population. She warns that a premeditated strategy of restrictive laws and deceptive practices has taken root and is eroding the very basis of American democracy-the right to vote!

This book reveals the market research, strategy, branding and communication behind the unpredictable 2017 New Zealand election result which saw Jacinda Ardern elected Labour leader just 8 weeks before the election to become Prime Minister. Utilising rich data sources that include a 250,000 Vote Compass survey and interviews with key political advisors, it explores the alignment of the policy of National, Labour, the Greens and NZ First with party supporters, demographic segments and undecided voters. It also analyses the leadership communication and branding of the leaders Bill English, Jacinda Ardern and Andrew Little, as well as the advertising by minor parties ACT, the Greens, United Future and the Maori Party. The book provides advice for practitioners, such as: focus on being responsive, communicate delivery competence, differentiate in policy and advertising, build an energetic and charismatic leader brand and be flexible when planning.

Student political action has been a major and recurring feature of politics across the globe through the past century. Students have been involved in a full range of public issues, from anti-colonial movements, anti-war campaigns, civil rights and pro-democracy movements to campaigns against neoliberal policies, austerity, racism, misogyny and calls for climate change action. Yet student actions are frequently dismissed by political elites and others as 'adolescent mischief' or manipulation of young people by duplicitous adults. This occurs even as many working in governments, traditional media and educational organisations attempt to suppress student movements. Much of mainstream scholarly work has also deemed student politics as undeserving of intellectual attention. These three edited volumes of books help set the record straight. Written by scholars and activists from around the world, When Students Protest: Universities in the Global South is the second in a three-volume study that explores university student politics in the global south. The authors document and analyse how generations of university and college students in the Global South responded to issues such as problems in their own universities as well as standing up against violent military dictatorships, human rights abuses, oppressive poverty, foreign interference and the effects of neoliberal austerity regimes. Contributors to this this volume also reveal repeated moves by states and institutions to stigmatise and suppress student political action while highlighting how those students developed new kinds of political action further demonstrating why this rich and complex global phenomena is worthy of more attention.

This book provides a framework for understanding and analyzing Bernie Sanders's democratic socialism, its origins, its maturation, and its evolution between 1972, when Sanders ran for the Vermont gubernatorial election for the first time, and 2020, when he made his second presidential run. The core argument is that Bernie Sanders's characteristic brand of socialism evolved from the mould of late 19th century utopian radicalism to radical demands for state and corporate accountability in the 21st century, turning into a social movement for reparative justice that rose to national prominence in the wake of the Great Recession in 2008 and of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

This book interrogates the nature of elections and election violence in the African countries. It traces the causes of the governance menace to multiple factors that are not limited to poverty, unemployment, and media. The book documents how election violence cripples the nation-building process across many African countries. Consequently, it reveals that states have lost their manifest destiny of national transformation in Africa because they cannot guarantee that legitimate candidates, who should win elections, due to the widespread manipulation of violence at all levels of electoral engineering. The chapters rely on the cases and changing dynamics of elections and electoral violence in the different Nigerian states. It traces the origins of elections, the nature and patterns of a number of past elections as well as the roles of youth, judiciary, electoral umpire, social media, and gender on the changing nature of elections in Nigeria.

This book examines how opposition groups respond to the dilemma posed by authoritarian elections in the Arab World, with specific focus on Jordan and Algeria. While scholars have investigated critical questions such as why authoritarian rulers would hold elections and whether such elections lead to further political liberalization, there has been comparatively little work on the strategies adopted by opposition groups during authoritarian elections. Nevertheless, we know their strategic choices can have important implications for the legitimacy of the electoral process, reform, democratization, and post-election conflicts. This project fills in an important gap in our understanding of opposition politics under authoritarianism by offering an explanation for the range of strategies adopted by opposition groups in the face of contentious elections in the Arab World.

Student political action has been a major and recurring feature of politics across the globe throughout the past century. Students have been involved in a full range of public issues, from anti-colonial movements, anti-war campaigns, civil rights and pro-democracy movements to campaigns against neoliberal policies, austerity, racism, misogyny and calls for climate change action. Yet their actions are frequently dismissed by political elites and others as 'adolescent mischief' or manipulation of young people by duplicitous adults. This occurs even as many working in governments, traditional media and educational organisations attempt to suppress student movements. Moreover, much of mainstream scholarly work has deemed student politics as unworthy of intellectual attention. These three edited volumes of books help set the record straight. Written by scholars and activists from around the world, When Students Protest: Universitiesin the Global North is the third in this three-volume study that explores university student politics in the global north. Authors explore university and college student political action, especially over the past decade. It is just over fifty years since May 1968 when student protests erupted at Universite Paris Nanterre in France and then spread across the globe. Contributors to this book demonstrate that despite repeated attempts by states, power elites and institutions to suppress and even criminalise student political action, student movements have always been part of the political landscape and remain a significant and potent source of political change and renewal.

This groundbreaking work tells the true story behind Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 reelection, drawing upon never-before-published personal files to expose a nexus of patronage and power that changed America forever. FDR's 1936 reelection represented his greatest political triumph. Yet the election remains largely unstudied despite the fact that critical decisions by some of the most colorful-and controversial-characters in American history make it one of the most significant ever to take place. This landmark work, the first specifically about the 1936 election, highlights the key debates, events, and personalities that epitomized the conflicted, highly charged politics of the New Deal era. In telling its gripping tale, the book discloses the secret history of Roosevelt's New Deal. It uncovers the hidden roles that money, patronage, and power played in the campaign of 1936, underscoring the transition from the old-school politics of stump-speaking and glad-handing to a new world of professionalism marked by scientific polling, targeted advertising, and direct media. The book offers a new perspective on this critical period in American history through its use of previously unpublished private correspondence and internal memos from key players in the Roosevelt administration as well as from GOP chairman John Hamilton. These archival sources detail the nuts and bolts of running a presidential campaign during the Great Depression and reveal how money was manipulated to buy votes. Exposing the true story behind the making of modern America, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in FDR, U.S. history, politics, or the presidency. Presents the first published study dedicated explicitly to the presidential election of 1936 Incorporates never-before-made-public primary archival research from Roosevelt's own files (including his communication with such notorious big-city bosses as Frank Hague); from the files of his political "fixer," Democratic Party Chairman James A. Farley; and from the files of GOP Chairman John Hamilton Reveals the working relationship between Roosevelt and his key lieutenants, shedding new light on the administration of one of America's greatest presidents Exposes the role played by Farley in channeling New Deal money to shape partisan political outcomes by paying off debts, delivering on promises, rewarding allies, settling factional disputes, expanding party authority, and buying votes Analyzes key transitions in the evolution of the Republican and Democratic parties that brought them to their current values and ideologies Includes never previously printed period photographs that add personality to the colorful cast of characters brought to life in the text

Modern Political Campaigns brings together academic, practical, and interviews to help understand how professionalism, technology, and speed have revolutionized elections, creating more voter-centric races for public office. Dr. Michael D. Cohen, a 20+ year veteran of working on, teaching, and writing about political campaigns take readers through how campaigns are organized, state-of-the-art tools of the trade, and how some of the most interesting people in politics got their big breaks. The book takes readers through clear-eyed chapters on parties and elections, campaign planning and management, fundraising, independent groups, vulnerability and opposition research, data and analytics, focus groups and polling, earned, paid and social media, and field operations. Finally, the book revisits the Permanent Campaign in terms of modern approaches to winning elections raising questions about today's uniform preference for turnout over persuasion and what that means for our American democracy. Modern Political Campaigns will appeal to students and political activists interested in working in political campaigns. It is also a great read for anyone who wants to better understand the nuts and bolts of campaigns in practical terms from professionals, and the opportunities they provide all of us to be more engaged citizens and hold our leaders more accountable each Election Day.

This book presents an analysis of five anticorruption agencies (ACAs) from Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia, exploring the impact of organisational factors and leadership on their enforcement patterns during the first decade of the transitional reforms (2001-2012). Contrary to the conventional theory of agency insulation, the analysis reveals that the ACAs' de facto autonomy was not crucially shaped by their statutory independence, but rather by the reputational management of their leaders. The book draws on a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analysis to document these reputational strategies and how they shaped the ACAs' de facto autonomy. The findings also suggest that that the ACAs' organisational model - defined by the delegated mandate and powers (preventative vs suppressive) - represented a key variable that mediated under which conditions high de facto autonomy can be achieved. The book offers contributions to the study of anticorruption policy and ethics regulation, as well as the wider inquiry into drivers of agency independence, particularly in transitional contexts.

Why do people living in different areas vote in different ways? Why does this change over time? How do people talk about politics with friends and neighbours, and with what effect? Does the geography of well-being influence the geography of party support? Do parties try to talk to all voters
at election time, or are they interested only in the views of a small number of voters living in a small number of seats? Is electoral participation in decline, and how does the geography of the vote affect this? How can a party win a majority of seats in Parliament without a majority of votes in
the country? Putting Voters in their Place explores these questions by placing the analysis of electoral behaviour into its geographical context. Using information from the latest elections, including the 2005 General Election, the book shows how both voters and parties are affected by, and seek to
influence, both national and local forces. Trends are set in the context of the latest research and scholarship on electoral behaviour. The book also reports on new research findings.

Student political action has been a major and recurring feature of politics across the globe throughout the past century. Students have been involved in a full range of public issues, from anti-colonial movements, anti-war campaigns, civil rights and pro-democracy movements to campaigns against neoliberal policies, austerity, racism, misogyny and calls for climate change action. Yet student protest actions are frequently dismissed by political elites and others as 'adolescent mischief' or manipulation of young people by duplicitous adults. This occurs even as many working in government, traditional media and educational organisations attempt to suppress student movements. Much of mainstream scholarly work has also deemed student politics as undeserving of intellectual attention. These three edited volumes of books help set the record straight. Written by scholars and activists from around the world, When Students Protest: Secondary and High Schools is the first of a three-volume study. The authors document and analyse how generations of secondary and high school students in many countries have been thoughtful, committed and effective political actors and especially so over the past decade. This book also reveals moves by power holders to stigmatise, repress and even criminalise student political campaigns. While these efforts were sometimes successful, this volume shows that whether responding to problems within schools, or engaging the major public issues of the day, school activists have renewed and revived the political culture of their society, while also challenging long-held age-based prejudices.

This book investigates how political parties from 12 European countries used Facebook to inform, interact with and mobilise voters at the 2019 European Parliament election. Following a joint theoretical framework and method, the results of a content analysis of more than 14,000 Facebook posts are presented. Country specific chapters are followed by analyses of European parties' Facebook campaigning, the spread of populism and the use of Facebook ads by the parties. The final chapter compares all countries showing that campaigns are more strongly shaped by the national than by the European political context. Facebook is used for campaigning as usual; parties inform and persuade but neglect the platform's mobilisation and particularly interactive affordances.

Nigeria's democratisation efforts since attaining political independence from Britain have been tumultuous and have spanned over three successive republics. A persistent bug decimating Nigeria's democracy and repeatedly leading to military coups has been brazen electoral violence perpetrated by the nation's political elite. Nigeria's 2019 Democratic Experience analyses and explains what went wrong in Nigeria's experiment with democracy. Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and the world's seventh most populous nation, also contributes 70% of West Africa's population. She is sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer and has remained Africa's largest economy by GDP since 2014. The country has hundreds of diverse ethnic nationalities and languages grouped into 36 states (or federating units) and an independent federal capital territory. Though recognized as Africa's largest democracy, her democratisation process since the 1960s has remained tumultuous with massive electoral violence and political intolerance. This repeatedly compelled the military to intervene in the nation's political history in the years 1966, 1983 and 1985. It is these developments that provided the motivation for this volume to capture for posterity the conduct of the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria.

In his latest book, veteran socialist writer Kim Moody provides a masterful analysis of the political impasse which has shaped the rise of a new socialist movement in the United States: recurring economic and political crises, sharp inequality, state violence, and climate catastrophe proceed apace as the right ascends across the world, while the US political scene remains defined and dominated by two capitalist political parties. Moody situates the historic electoral campaigns of Democratic Socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as the growth of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, in this context, and incisively assesses the revived movement's focus on electoral strategies. Offering an important account of left attempts to intervene in the American two-party electoral system, Moody provides both a sobering historical corrective and an alternative orientation for the future, arguing that the socialist movement should turn its attention toward a politics of mass action, anti-racism, and independent, working-class organizing.

Political Rhetoric, Social Media, and American Presidential Campaigns explores how social media influenced presidential campaign rhetoric. The author discusses media use in American presidential campaigns as well as social media campaigns for Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. This book addresses how presidential candidates adapted their rhetorical performances for newspapers, radios, television, and the Internet. Scholars of rhetoric and political communication will find this book particularly useful.

Once a prominent feature of most theories on the structure and function of political systems, in recent years, social class or status has become one of the most neglected variables in research on contemporary American politics. This study analyzes the relationship between social status and referendum voting in an effort to refocus attention on social stratification in political science.

This book examines the significance of the 2015 elections in consolidating Nigeria's democracy, in the context of the difficulty of routinizing democracy since the attainment of nationhood in 1960 and the return to civil rule in May 1999, in particular. It offers a complete analysis of Nigeria's electoral process, outlining how the dynamics of limited changes in the constitutional, institutional, attitudinal and behavioural frameworks that underpin electoral competition played out in the elections. The authors further examine the conduct and outcome of the 2015 elections against the background of the pattern of electoralism that had been established since the return to democracy in 1999. In doing so, they draw attention to the dialectics of continuity and change that have been thrown up by the elections and how the lessons learned can be used to build a more enduring democratic system. The book will be of interest to students and academics of political science, development studies, democratisation and election studies, and African government and politics.

This book is about how opinion polls are reported in the media. Opinions polls are not reported in the media as unfiltered numbers, and some opinion polls are not reported at all. This volume demonstrates how opinion polls travel through several stages that eventually turn boring numbers into biased news in the media. The framework offered in this book helps to understand how some polls end up in the news coverage, and which systemic biases abound in the news media reports of opinion polls. In the end, a change narrative will be prominent in the reporting of opinion polls which contributes to what the general public sees and shares. The findings cover journalists, politicians, experts and the public, and how they all share a strong preference for change.