Landing Votes explores the conditions under which democratic Latin American governments address persistent political and economic inequities. The book points out a surprising 'coincidence': nearly every extension of suffrage to the rural poor occurred at the same time as land reform. Politicians did not merely react to peasants' demands rather, they sought political power by extending the right to vote while redistributing land. The book concludes that party institutionalization enhanced the prospects for reforms by holding politicians accountable. More significant reforms occurred which benefited more of the rural poor where institutionalized parties competed for their votes. MARKET 1: Latin American Studies; Latin American Politics

Across Western Europe, the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath not only brought economic havoc but also, in turn, intense political upheaval. Many of the political manifestations of the crisis seen in other Western and especially Southern European countries also hit Spain, where challenger parties caused unprecedented parliamentary fragmentation, resulting in four general elections in under four years from 2015 onwards. Yet Spain, a decentralised state where extensive powers are devolved to 17 regions known as 'autonomous communities', also stood out from its neighbours due to the importance of the territorial dimension of politics in shaping the political expression of the crisis. This book explains how and why the territorial dimension of politics contributed to shaping party system continuity and change in Spain in the aftermath of the financial crisis, with a particular focus on party behaviour. The territorial dimension encompasses the demands for ever greater autonomy or even sovereignty coming from certain parties within the historic regions of the Basque Country, Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, Galicia. It also encompasses where these historic regions sit within the broader dynamics of intergovernmental relations across Spain's 17 autonomous communities in total, and how these dynamics contribute to shaping party strategies and behaviour in Spain. Such features became particularly salient in the aftermath of the financial crisis since this coincided with, and indeed accelerated, the rise of the independence movement in Catalonia.

The need for American presidential candidates and sitting presidents to connect with citizens has led to the adoption of diverse media strategies that include traditional news initiatives with established journalists, face-to-face interaction with small groups of supporters, and visits to traditionally non-political entertainment-based venues. The American Presidency and Entertainment Media: How Technology Affects Political Communication examines the recent embrace of entertainment forums for political purposes. Featuring interviews with White House insiders and late night talk show veterans, this book analyzes the major moments in the presidency's increasingly cozy relationship with entertainment-based television shows and the major factors leading individual administrations and campaigns to take chances to reach largely non-political audience. It offers a new theoretical underpinning for this phenomenon, predicts how future campaigns will operate in this regard as media technology and American political culture evolve, and connects the marriage of politics and televised entertainment to the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency.

Since 1952, the social bases of the Democratic and Republican parties have undergone radical reshuffling. At the start of this period southern Blacks favored Lincoln's Republican Party over suspect Democrats, and women favored Democrats more than Republicans. In 2020 these facts have been completely reversed. A Tale of Two Parties: Living Amongst Democrats and Republicans Since 1952 traces through this transformation by showing: How the United States society has changed over the last seven decades in terms of regional growth, income, urbanization, education, religion, ethnicity, and ideology; How differently the two parties have appealed to groups in these social cleavages; How groups in these social cleavages have become concentrated within the bases of the Democratic and Republican parties; How party identification becomes intertwined with social identity to generate polarization akin to that of rapid sports fans or primitive tribes. A Tale of Two Parties: Living Amongst Democrats and Republicans Since 1952 will have a wide and enthusiastic readership among political scientists and researchers of American politics, campaigns and elections, and voting and elections.

This book presents in-depth analyses of the wave of political protest and unrest that spread throughout Latin America between 2010 and 2015 in order to answer a question that has been challenging social scientists all over the region: why some countries have faced a divorce between their social movements and political parties while others have not? The contributions gathered in this volume intend to show that the logic of political representation in Latin America and its supposed "crisis" is not a common and constant feature for all region. Some countries like Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico seem to have experienced a process of autonomization of its social movements vis-a-vis its institutional political system. However, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay have not seen such a split between civil society and the political parties. Bringing together eight case studies of the countries mentioned and a general assessment of the situation in the whole region, this book presents some interesting findings that will contribute to the discussions about the political representation crisis in Latin America, providing valuable resources for political leaders, researchers, policy makers and social activists in the region.

In this political history of twentieth-century Mexico, Gladys McCormick argues that the key to understanding the immense power of the long-ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) is to be found in the countryside. Using newly available sources, including declassified secret police files and oral histories, McCormick looks at large-scale sugar cooperatives in Morelos and Puebla, two major agricultural regions that serve as microcosms of events across the nation. She argues that Mexico's rural peoples, despite shouldering much of the financial burden of modernization policies, formed the PRI regime's most fervent base of support. McCormick demonstrates how the PRI exploited this support, using key parts of the countryside to test and refine instruments of control-including the regulation of protest, manipulation of collective memories of rural communities, and selective application of violence against critics-that it later employed in other areas, both rural and urban. With three peasant leaders, brothers named Ruben, Porfirio, and Antonio Jaramillo, at the heart of her story, McCormick draws a capacious picture of peasant activism, disillusion, and compromise in state formation, revealing the basis for an enduring political culture dominated by the PRI. On a broader level, McCormick demonstrates the connections among modern state building in Latin America, the consolidation of new forms of authoritarian rule, and the deployment of violence on all sides.

On November 8, 2016, American voters surprised the world by electing a rank outsider with no previous political experience, businessman and celebrity Donald J. Trump, to become the 45th President of the United States after one of the most divisive and contentious campaigns in recent history. In this short book, Peter Kivisto analyses how this happened, focusing on who Trump is and the narratives about him and his candidacy that evolved during the campaign, who his supporters are and what their worldview is, and the role of the media, right-wing Christians, and the Republican Party in making Trump's victory possible. The Trump phenomenon must be viewed as a manifestation of right-wing populism, a movement which has serious implications for democratic values and practices, and this book examines how it took hold in America to put one of the most controversial presidents ever elected into the White House.

Historic Firsts in U.S. Elections:Trailblazing Candidates in Gubernatorial, Congressional, and Mayoral Campaigns examines barrier-breaking figures across various types of elective offices and constituent groups. The moment in which historic firsts enter the electoral arena, and the unique campaigns that ensue, are shown to be symbolically empowering. These change agents on the campaign trail become lighting rods for more liberal policies, and their candidacies are tied to questions of representation, electability, and performance. The distinctive combinations of race, ethnicity, and gender identities represented here translate into voter excitement to go to the polls and participate in other ways. Original chapters by respected scholars and practitioners consider how recent breakthrough elections are similar to yet different from past elections for gubernatorial, congressional, and mayoral offices. The shadow of Donald Trump's wildly unconventional U.S. presidency looms over this groundbreaking analysis, linking local to national level politics. For students of politics across the curriculum, this book expands the theoretical capacity of intersectionality research and links it to voter mobilization and electoral success.

The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics offers the first and only handbook in the field of Canadian politics that uses 'gender' (which it interprets broadly, as inclusive of sex, sexualities, and other intersecting identities) as its category of analysis. Its premise is that political actors' identities frame how Canadian politics is thought, told, and done; in turn, Canadian politics, as a set of ideas, state institutions and decision-making processes, and civil society mobilizations, does and redoes gender. Following the standard structure of mainstream introductory Canadian politics textbooks, this handbook is divided into four sections (ideologies, institutions, civil society, and public policy) each of which contains several chapters on topics commonly taught in Canadian politics classes. The originality of the handbook lies in its approach: each chapter reviews the basics of a given topic from the perspective of gendered/sexualized and other intersectional identities. Such an approach makes the handbook the only one of its kind in Canadian Politics.

This book explores the emergence of identity politics and violence at the forefront of political life in an Indian state. Through a close reading of everyday politics in West Bengal, India, which until recently boasted of the longest-serving elected communist government in the world, the volume presents unique observations on Indian politics and its trajectories. One of the first ethnographic studies of religious polarisation and its interface with politics in West Bengal, this book: Offers a fresh perspective, both theoretically and empirically, by using longitudinal, multi-site ethnography, to explain the mechanisms by which identity issues have re-emerged; Studies key policy changes, political practices and series of invented traditions during periods of political transition; Examines intricate details of the micro-dynamics of the formulation and expansion of Hindu and Islamic fundamentalism and their political counterparts, which carry a capacity to push away secular, democratic forces from the existing political spectrum; Sheds light on the mechanisms of riots, its design, organisational bases and mechanisms of spread; Includes key observations from the 2021 elections in the state. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science, social and cultural anthropology, sociology and South Asian studies.

This is a study of popular political behaviour both before and after the Great Reform Act of 1832, the impact of which has long divided historians, some heralding it as the dawn of a new age, others dismissing it as an irrelevance. Professor Phillips has built up an extensive computer database from all available sources of information about early nineteenth-century electors - including for example poll books, tax rolls, and parish records - thus creating a uniquely comprehensive set of files containing dozens of variables about thousands of voters that permit cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Using these techniques, he has undertaken the first systematic consideration of electoral behaviour in eight diverse English boroughs. He explores the nature of parliamentary representation in the pre-Reform era and assesses the effects of the 1832 Act, and shows that the unreformed electoral system permitted extensive popular political participation. Nevertheless, the Reform Act politicized the electorate to a degree not possible or even imaginable before, and his book establishes the role of Reform as the catalyst which shaped a new pattern of politics and launched the struggle for parliamentary democracy in Britain.

The Presidential Election of 2020: Donald Trump and the Crisis of Democracy places the election of 2020 within the context of the Trump presidency, a chaotic and tense time in American politics and a dangerous one. The election is analyzed in depth and its meaning for the state of American society is made clear. A major theme in the book is a critique of Donald Trump's leadership, his incompetence in office, his appeal to followers and the danger this has proven to represent. Among other things, he was accused of mental instability during his presidency. Yet he received the second highest vote total in American history, exceeded only by winning candidate Joe Biden's. Trump was impeached twice for his actions in office but both times not held responsible for what he had done by a Republican-controlled Senate. The election is placed in an on-going context. It was followed by strenuous attempts by Trump and associates to have states reverse their results and declare him the winner and by the Trump-organized seditious assault on the Capitol in which five people died. The objective was to force Vice President Mike Pence, who was chairing a Joint Session of Congress, normally a formality, to instead reject the Electoral College vote outcome. Pence would not do it. His life and that of Speaker Nancy Pelosi were threatened by the rioters. The threat of a coup, a new development in American politics, and one led by Trump and others who share his views, remains. Meanwhile President Joe Biden in his efforts to reconstruct America has introduced the most ambitious policy agenda since the New Deal.

Although democracy is, in principle, the antithesis of dynastic rule, families with multiple members in elective office continue to be common around the world. In most democracies, the proportion of such "democratic dynasties" declines over time, and rarely exceeds ten percent of all legislators. Japan is a startling exception, with over a quarter of all legislators in recent years being dynastic. In Dynasties and Democracy, Daniel M. Smith sets out to explain when and why dynasties persist in democracies, and why their numbers are only now beginning to wane in Japan-questions that have long perplexed regional experts. Smith introduces a compelling comparative theory to explain variation in the presence of dynasties across democracies and political parties. Drawing on extensive legislator-level data from twelve democracies and detailed candidate-level data from Japan, he examines the inherited advantage that members of dynasties reap throughout their political careers-from candidate selection, to election, to promotion into cabinet. Smith shows how the nature and extent of this advantage, as well as its consequences for representation, vary significantly with the institutional context of electoral rules and features of party organization. His findings extend far beyond Japan, shedding light on the causes and consequences of dynastic politics for democracies around the world.

This book explores the "Turkish paradox" - women's lower representation in local politics than in parliament. By analyzing life stories of 200 female municipal councilors and party representatives, it offers a comprehensive assessment of what makes local politics in Turkey particularly inaccessible to women. It places women's pathways within the cycles of exclusion, starting by political socialization, going through the candidate recruitment process and continuing after the election. The research presented here brings together gender studies and political sociology and offers novel applications of concepts including intersectionality and biographical availability. It covers all major political parties and diverse local configurations in Turkey, and reveals political strategies of women in conservative parties as well as the reasons behind the exceptionally high representation of women within the pro-Kurdish political parties. The book further sheds some light on the intricate relationship between women's political activity and regime change in the context of democratic backsliding.

This book explores how the United States institutions of democracy have affected a citizen's ability to participate in politics. The 2000 election and the ensuing decade of research demonstrated that that the institutions of elections vitally affect participation. This book examines turnout and vote choice, as well as elections as an institution, administration of elections and the intermediaries that affect a citizen's ability to cast a vote as intended. Kropf traces the institutions of franchise from the Constitutional Convention through the 2012 election and the general themes of how institutions have changed increasing, democratization and production federal growth over time in the United States.

What role does the concept of political knowledge have in democratic theory? What according to democratic theorists should the ordinary citizen know about politics? What do empirical studies about political knowledge teach us? And why should we care what people know about politics in the first place?
By asking these important questions, this book offers the reader a quick yet comprehensive overview of the steps that have been taken toward understanding the concept of citizen knowledge in democratic theory over the past several decades. The book summarizes and explains the essentials of a vast body of literature while the empirical studies offer data on a number of Western democracies. Furthermore, the reader is taken through the theoretical foundations of political knowledge from Ancient Greece to modern representative democracy. Clear and concise, the book offers a cutting edge insight into our current understanding of citizen knowledge in democratic theory.

The British general election of 1931 marked the culmination of a period of political and economic crisis, and has long been regarded as a watershed in twentieth-century British history. In the summer of 1931 a struggling Labour government collapsed; its leader, Ramsay MacDonald, stayed on to form a National government supported mainly by Conservatives and Liberals. Within six weeks the decision to call an election was taken, and in the ensuing contest the Nationals won an overwhelming victory. Labour was left with a rump of 46 MPs, a decade in opposition, and an enduring sense of betrayal. Andrew Thorpe argues that, while 1931 changed much, the general trends towards Conservative hegemony and two-party politics were little disturbed by the crisis. He traces the background to the events of 1931, and examines their implications in detail. His scholarly analysis is the first full-length study of the election to benefit from unrestricted access to contemporary documents, and will be of value to all students of twentieth-century British politics.

The book reappraises Neil Kinnock's policies, impact, legacy and leadership of the Labour Party 30 years on from his defeat in the 1992 general election. It offers comprehensively fresh perspectives and some first-hand accounts - some friendly, others more critical - from leading academics, journalists, politicians and advisors on various aspects of ideas, policy, elections and party management, including an interview with the man himself as he looks back on his experiences. This timely book will resonate widely with the current challenges to Labour's leadership and the enduring uncertainties on the future of the party. This book will be of key interest to researchers and students in the fields of political studies and contemporary history as well as the interested general reader.

Democracy is on the run, and elected governments are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. Legislatures are increasingly seen as unrepresentative. To give legitimacy to democratic government, experts argue that we need more democracy and more opportunities for direct citizen participation. Representative democracy needs to be complemented by forms of direct engagement, such as referendums, popular votes, the recall, citizens' juries, eDemocracy, etc. This is what we term Complementary Democracy. In this book experts from the worlds of practice and theory come together to explain - and occasionally critique - these complements to representative democracy. The volume provides an invaluable starting point for anyone who wants to know more about the new directions of democratic governance, and hopes to inspire those who seek to build stronger democracies.

This book explores how experienced party organisers in the UK work to recruit and to retain party activists for local campaigning. Local door-to-door campaigning is widely regarded as being a key element in a successful election campaign. However, for door-to-door campaigning to work, a large number of volunteer activists are required. The question then is: How can parties identify, recruit and retain such volunteer activists? Based on interviews with highly experienced campaigners, original party documents, the wider campaigning and volunteering literature, numerous informal conversations and the author's own experience of local campaigning over a 20 year period, this book provides an answer to that question. It shows how potential activists are identified, encouraged to become active and supported through their initial encounter with local campaigning. The author also shows how local parties can encourage activists to remain active by creating a 'retention enhancing campaigning environment' and what that involves.

On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama stood before the Illinois capital building and announced his potentially historic presidential bid. The next day, he was in Iowa Falls, campaigning. He was far from the first--Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, and Mitt Romney were already swarming the Hawkeye State, seeking votes behind every hay bale.
Why Iowa?
After all, in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential primary, both Iowa and New Hampshire have come under significant fire--as usual. Critics like Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) have charged that these early contests dominate the nomination process, yet are badly out of step with the ideology and demographics of the party and the country writ large. However, while New Hampshire has suffered a serious setback, Iowa has once again emerged as the first presidential primary contest, in part by arguing that its Precinct Caucus was a time-honored tradition that helped winnow the field with good old retail politicking and grassroots activism.
This debate comes to a head this coming Winter, when tens of thousands of Iowans will troop to libraries and churches, prepared for an hour or more of party business. Each of these party meetings, or "caucuses," will hold straw polls, the results of which will be broadcast around the world. One analysis found that the Caucus generates 143 times as much media coverage as other presidential primary contests, controlling for the date and size of the contest. In other words, being first thrusts the Iowa Caucus onto a towering public stage with extraordinary public interest.
Both of these factors--the normative public debate and the empirical public frenzy--demonstrate the need for a veryclose look at the Caucus, in all its warts and beauty. Grassroots Rules" was written to provide just such a study.

This book documents the history of China's attempts to undermine Taiwan's elections, offering additional insights into China's methods of influence in Hong Kong, the United States and Canada. Drawing from Chinese language primary sources and historical accounts, Taiwan is presented as a growing democracy that has had to endure constant threats to its way of democratic life from the People's Republic of China (China). Examining China's election interference operations and several previously undocumented instances of Chinese interference, chapters in this book not only cover traditional methods of influence such as diplomacy, economic policy, and military intimidation, but also an array of novel practices involving organized crime, religion, and the media. Conceptual and practical ideas have been developed for studying and combatting election interference, which will particularly appeal to policy makers and security professionals seeking to better identify instances of ongoing election interference and the motivations driving this phenomenon. Chinese Election Interference in Taiwan's National Elections will prove an innovative resource to students and scholars of international relations and Chinese studies, including history and politics.

This book considers how we reveal ourselves in the language we employ and the action in which we engage. Maria-Ionela Neagu argues that our conceptualization of the world via metaphor should no longer be taken for granted. On the contrary, it must be critically challenged and evaluated, steering argument towards a particular line of action. This book places political discourse at the crossroads of cognitive linguistics and transpersonal psychology to highlight the role of conceptual metaphors in and as arguments. Exploring the interface between argumentation theories and cognitive semantics, Neagu integrates the analysis of conceptual metaphors into the framework of practical reasoning, arguing that political discourse bridges the mental void engendered by people's needs and frustrations. This empirical investigation is centred on the corpus of the American Presidential debates in 2008, as well as Barack Obama's 'State of the Nation' (2009), and 'State of the Union Address' (2010, 2011).

The book identifies the impact of misinformation in the context of referenda. While the notion of misinformation is at the centre of current events and is the subject of several studies, it has rarely been addressed in the context of referenda or from a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective. This book fills this gap. Different legal orders have been chosen because of their extensive referendum practices (California and Switzerland); a recent legislative process on the issue of misinformation (Germany, France, and Canada); or recent experience with a vote during which it was considered that false information had been disseminated (Brexit, Catalan independence, and Italian constitutional referendum of 2016). By bringing together authors from the political and legal sciences, the book focuses on combining the expertise of researchers from different backgrounds and origins in order to propose innovative solutions. In this regard, the book is characterized by the fact that it does not aim to combat misinformation per se, but develops suggestions meant to guarantee the conditions of formation of the political will during referenda. The book will be an invaluable resource for legal scholars, political scientists, and specialists of political communication. Outside the world of academia, the book may draw the attention of policy-makers, practitioners, and journalists confronted with the challenges of misinformation or disinformation.

In light of the growing support for populist political actors, this book examines political party behavior and political positions towards the integration process in the European Union. It explores the correlation between eurosceptic success and mainstream party behavior. Presenting both an indepth empirical investigation of electoral campaigns and the politics of party leaders, as well as applying various theoretical models, the author analyses different eurosceptical trends and circumstances and dynamics of eurosceptic contagion. In particular, he addresses the following questions: Do Europe's mainstream parties maintain their standard discourse and policy positions unaltered, or are they forced to qualify their typical pro-integration stances when eurosceptic challengers are successful at the ballot box? Are some parties or party systems more susceptible to eurosceptic "contagion" than others? These are just some of the timely questions that are examined by the author. The book argues that political parties at the ideological center of their party systems use the electoral success of eurosceptic parties as indications of changes in the public's political preferences. In order to avoid losing voters to these parties, moderate parties will qualify their positions on the issue of EU integration. The author explores these dynamics and discusses their implications for the future of European integration.