Donald Trump won a significant victory in Iowa in 2016. Although Iowa was carried by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Trump won the popular vote in 93 of its 99 counties, 32 of which were carried by Obama in 2012. What explains this significant victory, in which a third of Iowa's counties were flipped? Through a mixed-methods approach, this volume demonstrates that Trump's electoral victory was shaped by three key factors: firstly, the electorate's desire for "change" in Washington, D.C.; secondly, Trump's successful appeals to both the Republican base and white, working-class voters who had previously supported Barack Obama; and thirdly, Iowa's conservative ideological tendency regarding immigration and race. While contributing to emerging literature on the 2016 presidential elections, this book also serves to aid educators with a published resource on Iowa's electoral politics.

This book investigates complex regressive dynamics in contemporary Western democracies. They include not only severe polarization in domestic politics, but also efforts by external autocratic powers to co-opt the increasingly digitalized political processes in the West. The discussion on democratic vulnerability and regression has rarely been historically and theoretically reflective. The aim is to fill this relative void by drawing on classical sources to inform about the political anxieties and agitations of our present time as the Western world moves towards new critical elections. The key concept of the analysis, a Thucydidean brink, refers to a critical point where the attraction felt towards an outside geopolitical competitor becomes stronger than the political affinity felt towards one's domestic political opponent. As political polarization, societal decomposition and the collusive tendencies grow in strength, political factions and political candidates in western societies can be(come) drawn to autocratic actors. Perhaps most alarmingly, the resulting nexus between democracies and autocracies can further intensify mutual regression and form downwards-sloping spirals that are not ultimately under any strategic control. This book draws from the experiences of recent elections in major Western democracies to illustrate the widening and deepening underlying regressive tendency.

The state of New Hampshire has played a pivotal role in Donald Trump's rise. This volume examines how the Granite State incubated Trump's political ambitions as early as the 1988 campaign cycle, how Trump's return to the state in 2014 presaged his 2016 candidacy, and how the state rescued his ambitions after his defeat in the Iowa caucuses. The book also examines how Trump lost the state to Hillary Clinton in the general election, and how the state has in many ways been a microcosm of national politics since Trump's election, as a Republican governor and legislature attempt to pursue their long-deferred agenda in the face of Democratic opposition and as Democrats racked up victories in special and off-year elections. Finally, this book examines what Trump's impact will be on the 2020 presidential primaries.

Politics and Government in South Africa introduces readers to all aspects of government and politics in South Africa, from local, to provincial, national, and on to international considerations. The perfect guide for students and general readers, this textbook explains how South Africa's key institutions are governed and interact with each other, and how important issues such as economics, gender, race, and class shape relations between citizens and government. Grounded in history and leading theories and debates, the book also brings in alternative perspectives from artists, writers, and popular culture, to demonstrate the diverse ways in which issues of politics and social justice are engaged with within South Africa. Written with the needs of students at the forefront, each chapter includes: Review and discussion questions Key terms and further resources Fun facts in a Did you know? section Supplementary sources and quotations in a The Past as Present section Interactive and engaging, Politics and Government in South Africa invites readers to consider what they would do in tackling issues such as land distribution, peacekeeping, South Africa's role in the African Union, and military engagement abroad. It is an essential read for undergraduate students studying Political Science, International Relations, and African Studies, and for anyone looking to develop a deeper understanding of South Africa.

The centuries-old paradox of voting is that majorities sometimes prefer x to y, y to z, and z to x - a cycle. The discovery of the sources and consequences of such cycles, under majority rule and countless other regimes, constitutes much of the mathematical theory of voting and social choice. This book explores the big questions posed by the paradox of voting: positive questions about how to predict outcomes and explain observed stability, and normative questions about how to hold elections, how to take account of preference intensities, the relevance of social welfare to social choice, and challenges to formal 'rationality', individual and social. The overall lesson is that cycles are facts, ubiquitous, and consequential in non-obvious ways, not puzzles to be solved, much less maladies or misfortunes to be avoided or regretted.

This edited volume maps the development of the use of political campaigning and marketing techniques in countries of the former Communist Bloc over the last thirty years. Focusing on the shift from propaganda to political marketing, and from manipulation to persuasion, the book consists of a series of case studies of countries in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and the Balkans that outline the history, development and current state of political marketing in each country. The authors explore political parties and their behaviour ahead of elections, and show the changes in political culture and practices that parties have undergone in order to create more or less successful campaigns.

This book contributes to and expands on the major international Comparative Policy Agendas Project. It sets the project in context, and provides a comprehensive assessment of the changing policy agenda in Australia over a forty-year period, using a unique systematic dataset of governor-general speeches, legislation and parliamentary questions, and then mapping these on to media coverage and what the public believes (according to poll evidence) government should be concentrating upon. The book answers some important questions in political science: what are the most important legislative priorities for government over time? Does the government follow talk with action? Does government attend to the issues the public identifies as most important? And how does media attention follow the policy agenda? The authors deploy their unique dataset to provide a new and exciting perspective on the nature of Australian public policy and the Comparative Policy Agendas Project more broadly.

A New Statesman Book of the Year "America's greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy-the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate." -Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don't Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South's long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we've come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. "Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will." -Michael Kazin, The Nation "Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford." -Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement

An original and comprehensive study of the sociological and psychological forces driving individual choices in French Presidential elections. Based on a unique comparative analysis of four French presidential contests over the last two decades, this book presents a rigorous examination of long-term and short-term voter motivations.

This book examines the development of democratic thought in the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, with a focus on the movement's ideas about participatory democracy. It makes particular reference to two key periods: the 1980s 'people's power' movement and the subsequent years of policy formulation from 1990 when the ANC began to design and implement a system of participatory democracy alongside a representative government. Through the examination of historic documents and in-depth interviews with former ANC activists, government officials and those involved in policy development, the author explores the inspiration for the party's commitment to establishing participatory democracy. The book combines democratic theory and political and intellectual history to look at the role of popular participation as part of a broader trajectory of the ANC's democratic thought. It critically engages with concepts used in the party's participatory discourse with a view to deepening our understanding of how ideas have shaped the construction of South Africa's democracy.

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.

Proposes both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Straddles multiple subject areas, including political philosophy, political history, democratization, and populism.

This book calls for new attention to non-traditional forms of emancipatory tactics and welcomes to the fold all manner of ‘everyday’ expressions of anti-authoritarianism. Capitalism has taken the mask off. Elites feel less obliged to pursue strategies of popular legitimization. The traditional institutions of representative democracies are thus hollowing out and stand before us corrupted and broken. In this milieu, the prospects for a democratic entering of the state are seen as increasingly fantastical, and the Left is advised instead to adopt a more tactical posture. These expressions can run the gamut, from the more obviously theatrical antics of ‘The Yes Men’ to those of ‘black bloc,’ and other direct-action militant groups, already well-known from their interventions in the cities of Berkeley and Charlottesville. This volume addresses this problem via the concept of tactics. The point is less to prescribe an ideal range of tactics but rather to consider a broader range of resistances—from the struggles of indigenous peoples to those who seek refuge from gender or citizenship-based discrimination to those who seek to defend “black lives” from militarized policing. Tactics and Emancipation in the Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism will be a beneficial read for students and scholars of Critical Political Science, International Relations, and International Political Economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of New Political Science.

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 Handbook analyzes elections in the Middle East and North Africa and seeks to overcome normative assumptions about the linkage between democracy and elections. Structured around five main themes, contributors provide chapters detailing how their case studies illustrate specific themes within individual country settings. Authors disentangle the various aspects informing elections as a process in the Middle East by taking into account the different contexts where the electoral contest occurs and placing these into a broader comparative context. The findings from this Handbook connect with global electoral developments, empirically demonstrating that there is very little that is “exceptional” about the Middle East and North Africa when it comes to electoral contests. Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine all aspects related to elections in the Middle East and North Africa. Through such comprehensive coverage and systematic analysis, it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in politics, elections, and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Candidates and Voters extends our understanding of voting, elections, and representation by elaborating a simple theory of voting choice based on voters' interest in policy and in the suitability of candidates to hold elective office ('leadership valence'). Voters' choices must be understood in the context of the choices between opposing candidates they are offered on these two dimensions. Drawing on extensive analysis of US House races, Stone shows that although voters lack the information that many analysts assume they need to function in a democracy, they are most often able to choose the better candidate on the policy and valence dimensions. In addition, candidates, when they decide whether and how to run, anticipate the interests that drive voters. The book shows that elections tend to produce outcomes on policy and leadership valence consistent with voters' interests, and challenges skeptical views of how well the electoral process works.

Chris Rennard's long relationship with the Liberals, and later the Liberal Democrats, began when a compassionate Liberal candidate helped his disabled mother receive her widowed mother allowance. By his 20s Rennard was the most successful election campaigner his party has ever known. He helped the Liberal Party win power in Liverpool in the 1970s and campaigned for Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins in famous by-elections which helped the Liberal SDP Alliance to compete for power before its acrimonious collapse in the late 80's. He was then responsible for a series of spectacular by-election victories that rescued his party's fortunes and he oversaw a huge increase in the party's number of MPs and elected representatives. Liberal leaders Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy, Menzies Campbell and Nick Clegg would all rely on him as the party grew to the peak of its success. This volume of memoirs spans his first 30 years in politics (to 2006) and includes the highs and lows of his party during the leaderships of Paddy Ashdown (including his hopes for coalition with Tony Blair) and Charles Kennedy, (including the latter's enforced resignation after revealing publicly his problem with alcohol). There will never be a better inside account of a political party, or contemporary history of the Liberal Democrats. Winning Here is a record that shows how election campaigns are really fought and won and how party leaders change and parties develop. Similarly, there will never be a commentator better placed to tell this story.

This Handbook provides an overview of interdisciplinary research related to social choice and voting that is intended for a broad audience. Expert contributors from various fields present critical summaries of the existing literature, including intuitive explanations of technical terminology and well-known theorems, suggesting new directions for research. Each chapter presents an expository primer on a particular topic or theme within social choice, with the aim of making the material fully accessible to students and scholars in economics, political science, mathematics, philosophy, law and other fields of study. Topics covered include preference aggregation, voting rules, spatial models, methodology and empirical applications. Scholars, graduate students and even advanced undergraduates in a variety of disciplines will find this introductory and relatively non-technical book an indispensable addition to the field. Contributors: J.F. Adams, W.T. Bianco, A. Blais, P.J. Coughlin, K.L. Dougherty, D.S. Felsenthal, T.H. Hammond, C. Hare, J.C. Heckelman, R.G. Holcombe, C. Kam, M.M. Kaminski, M. Machover, B.C. McCannon, I. McLean, N.R. Miller, S. Moser, E.M. Penn, K.T. Poole, R. Ragan, D.G. Saari, I. Sened, R.A. Smyth, N. Tideman

The 2013 general elections in Zimbabwe were widely expected to mark a shift in the nation's political system, and a greater role for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. However, the results, surprisingly, were overwhelmingly in favour of long-time President Robert Mugabe, who swept the presidential, parliamentary and senatorial polls under relatively credible and peaceful conditions. In this book, a valuable and accessible read for both students and scholars working in African politics, and those with a general interest in the politics of the region, Stephen Chan and Julia Gallagher explore the domestic and international context of these landmark elections. Drawing on extensive research among political elites, grassroots activists and ordinary voters, Chan and Gallagher examine the key personalities, dramatic events, and broader social and political context of Mugabe's success, and what this means as Zimbabwe moves towards a future without Mugabe.

After the 2016 and 2020 elections, harsh critiques of polling were blasted everywhere: in news headlines, on social media and among colleagues and friends. But this rush to declare polling irrelevant is misguided-and dangerous. In Strength in Numbers, data journalist G. Elliott Morris urges readers to recognise how polling shapes and sustains democracy. He illuminates how public opinion polls provide a voice for citizens and influence such crucial matters as a party's selection of presidential candidates. He guides readers through a vibrant history of polling to provide insider context, explains how polls have been misused and misinterpreted and demonstrates how we have underestimated their potential impact. He also candidly acknowledges where polls have fallen short and charts a path for the industry's future where it can truly work for the people. Persuasively argued and deeply researched, Strength in Numbers implores all those who believe in democracy not to give up on polls, but to fully understand them.

Agenda Crossover updates our understanding of state delegations, exploring how they influence representation and responsiveness in Congress today. The theory of agenda crossover posits that members of the House and Senate have much to gain from monitoring the legislative agendas of other members of the delegation, especially those in the opposite chamber. Treul clearly demonstrates that individual members of delegations still utilize their fellow delegates in order to help them respond to constituents and enhance their own electoral success. It is argued that on certain issues - particularly the ones most relevant to a state's economy - members of Congress are willing to set aside partisan differences and work across the aisle. In this way, these bicameral connections between members of a state delegation - even across party lines - can, at times, trump the power of party in Congress.

A LITHUB BOOK OF THE DECADE. The US is one of the largest democracies in the world - or is it? America is experiencing an age of profound economic inequality. Employee protections have been decimated, and state welfare is virtually non-existent, while hedge fund billionaires are grossly under-taxed and big businesses make astounding profits at the expense of the environment and of their workers. How did this come about, and who were the driving forces behind it? In this powerful and meticulously researched work of investigative journalism, New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer exposes the network of billionaires trying to buy the US electoral system - and succeeding. Led by libertarian industrialists the Koch brothers, they believe that taxes are a form of tyranny and that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom. Together, they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars influencing politicians and voters, and hijacking American democracy for their own ends. Dark Money brilliantly illuminates a shady corner of US politics. It is essential reading for anybody interested in the future of democracy.

Many political observers have expressed doubts as to whether America's leaders are up to the task of addressing major policy challenges. Yet much of the critical commentary lacks grounding in the systematic analysis of the core institutions of the American political system including elections, representation, and the law-making process. Governing in a Polarized Age brings together more than a dozen leading scholars to provide an in-depth examination of representation and legislative performance. Drawing upon the seminal work of David Mayhew as a point of departure, these essays explore the dynamics of incumbency advantage in today's polarized Congress, asking whether the focus on individual re-election that was the hallmark of Mayhew's ground-breaking book, Congress: The Electoral Connection, remains useful for understanding today's Congress. The essays link the study of elections with close analysis of changes in party organization and with a series of systematic assessments of the quality of legislative performance.

The revised 2nd edition of this successful textbook explores Japanese politics in the postwar era from theoretical and comparative perspectives. After providing historical context, it offers an in-depth exploration of postwar political institutions, political reform in the 1990s, the policymaking process, and the politics of economic growth and stagnation. By delving into Japan's international relations, the book sheds light on Japan's security and foreign policies, and Japan's role in Asia. The textbook concludes by addressing what has changed since party alternation in 2009, the triple disaster in March 2011 and the global Covid pandemic. Themes and questions addressed throughout the text include: How and why did Japan modernize so successfully when so many other countries fell prey to colonialism and authoritarianism? What explains the Japanese economic miracle and its subsequent economic stagnation? What accounts for Japan's successful democratization? In the international realm, why has Japan achieved economic superpower status without achieving political superpower status? What is the future trajectory of Japanese politics? Connecting Japan to larger themes in comparative politics and linking Japan's history, institutions, policymaking process, and international relations to experiences and structures in other countries, this book is essential reading for students of Japanese or Asian Politics.

Fifty years ago, academics and policymakers throughout the world agreed that it was impossible for certain sets of historically antagonistic groups to coexist peacefully on a long-term basis. This book examines the system of consociation, which was identified by Arend Lijphart and ended that pessimistic consensus. Lijphart's specific observations concerning the impact of consociation are assessed quantitatively and qualitatively, facilitated through careful operationalization of his descriptions of consociation's four components: grand coalition, minority veto, proportionality, and segmental autonomy. Insights derived from a dataset representing the experiences of eighty-eight countries are examined further through case study analysis of the seven societies most often discussed in relation to consociation: Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Switzerland. The components of consociation are found to promote lasting peace in divided societies most successfully when combined with additional incentives for the encouragement of cross-cutting cleavages and shared loyalties.