Around the Bloc: Tajik Referendum Removes Term Limits on President, Bans Religious Parties
‘Leader of the Nation’ Emomali Rahmon already enjoys legal untouchability for himself and his family.
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‘Leader of the Nation’ Emomali Rahmon already enjoys legal untouchability for himself and his family.
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Article refers to the ratio of the party and their constituents facing the problems of social stratification. The analysis underwent voters of elections to the European Parliament and election to the local governments 2014. There were considered five Polish parties: Platforma Obywatelska, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, Nowa Prawica of Janusz Korwin-Mikke. The respondents’ preferences were also examined in the relation to the place on the political scene declared by them and defining accordingly as left wing, right wing and centre. It was questioned whether differences in income between rich and poor in Poland are too large and whether the state should seek to reduce income inequalities of citizens. For the voters of most of the parties income differences were too high. The voter majority also believed that the state was to reduce the differences. The majority of opponents of the state involvement was only in the group of voters of Nowa Prawica. The views of voters slightly differed in the context of left and right division.
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Grim forebodings over the arrival of ultra-rightists in the Slovak parliament.
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Civil political competency, but especially public trust are the basis of development of the civil society. Level of civil political competency also influence the electoral behaviour. In a research made in the end of 2014 we asked about Polish people civil political competency and about chosen reasons when taking electoral decisions. The group who declares an absence in the election or not taking big care about their electoral decisions and also have lack of skills to determine on which place on the left-right line they are, give evidence of a very low level of civil political competencies. Less important for them are programs and future plans presented by the politicians and political parties and also how they realize them (or not). When taking an electoral decision on the local level, this group take a lesser degree of care then other voters about the local elections candidates (for mayors, council member etc.) memberships to the political parties.
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Competition in the elections makes it necessary for the participants to seek different ways of standing out from the others. One of the ways is to utilize the rule of the authority. The mechanism of the irradiation technique causes positive feelings to radiate from a person well-known to and respected byan electorate onto a less well-known person but connected with the former even through having a photo together. The aim of the paper is to show what position those polled took on the issue of using the rule of the authority in the election campaigns in 2014. The results of surveys conducted in the autumn of 2014 clearly show which party electorates are prone to be influenced by this type of advertising, whether by being directly told by the party leader which candidate should be voted for, or by the candidate’s photo together with the party leader or chairman.
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Growing professionalization and personalization of electoral campaigns have prompted political parties to concentrate on political image and negative campaigning. This tendency is mainly noticeable in TV advertisements. Presented article consists of two parts. The first one discusses the role of negative and image ads. The other part includes the results of research conducted by the author. The analysis shows that the vast majority of Polish electorate does not approve using of negative and image advertising. It can denote that voters are exhausted of permanent mutual attacks of two major Polish parties (Civic Platform, Law and Justice) and expect more issue-oriented politics.
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The article presents analysis of perceptions of electoral chances of celebrity candidates, and opinions about influence of celebrity endorsements on voters decisions among voters in the 2014 European Parliament elections and local elections in the same year in Poland.From 30% up to 50% of electorates of all except one party agree with the preposition that celebrities have bigger chances to win elections than traditional politicians. The only exception are voters of New Right of Janusz Korwin–Mikke. Up to 57% of electorates tend to agree with claims that celebrity endorsement have significant influence on voters decision. In this case neither party identification nor declared ideology is significant differentiator. These findings interpreted in terms of the low information rationality theory suggest that utilisation of celebrity in electoral campaings my serve as an important cue for a low information voters.
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For some time there is a debate on the term of office mayor sand presidents of cities. Subject of the article is to analyze views on democracy and indicators of democracy, including the local dimension in the context of the controversy over the long cadence reeves impact on the functioning of local government. The author also extends to public opinion polls on the issue of limiting the cadence of mayors. We are analyzing the arguments of supporters and opponents of limiting the cadence of executive power in municipalities, as well as the dilemmas associated with the consequences of such restrictions for the quality of democracy. Limiting cadence has as many supporters as opponents – both sides have serious arguments for their positions.
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The aim of the article was to present factors influencing voting behaviours of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship citizens during European Parliament elections in 2014, in the light of the conducted empirical research. The indicators that guided voters when casting votes to ballot boxes were analysed on the basis of a set of variables, such as: the attractiveness of election programmes and political parties, competences of candidates, the role of the Catholic Church during the election campaign, or the awareness of voters (self-reliance in making electoral decisions or its lack). The analysis and interpretations from the conducted research were preceded by a voting description of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, treated, on a electoral map of Poland, as a specific region due to its above average support given to candidates and parties of right-wing provenance. In the final part conclusions drawn from the analytical process were presented.
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The purpose of this article is to present the scope of authority of party leaders in selected Polish political parties. The study included the following parties: Civic Platform (PO), Law and Justice (PiS) party, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), Polish Peasants’ Party (PSL), Your Movement (TR), Right Wing of the Republic Polish (PR), the New Right (NP) and the Greens. The article addresses the problem of electing a leader of party. The importance of exclusive competence (the powers that belong only to a leader) of the leaders of the Polish party is analyzed. The leader of party may on their grounds decide in certain areas of action of the party. This applies in particular to internal structure, staffing party, the nomination of candidates for election as well as disciplining party members. In most of the subjected parties the leaders have a broad range of rights including the exclusive character. According to the author, some of these powers undermine democratic nature of the party structure.
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The article deals with an interesting - from the marketing perspective – form of electoral rivalry, realised with the participation of politicians described as the “substitute candidates”. It was taken into consideration that while discussing the issue of “substitute candidate” it is necessary to settle two key questions: which politicians and based on what criteria could be classified as such candidates and what strategic grounds convince rivalry subjects to choose such campaign option. Assuming that the notion “substitute candidate” could be analysed from at least two different points of view: actual substitution or apparent substitution, some issues of creating the electoral campaign and realising the campaign with the participation of “substitute candidate” can be pointed out: from the candidate selection stage, through the stage of creating and developing the candidate’s image, to the stage of implementing project. Moreover, some conclusions from the electoral campaign preceding the presidential elections in Katowice were presented.
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A territorial division of a country constitutes the basis of a current organization of the communal life; hence its stability is a fundamental condition of an effective administration in a local, regional as well as statewide scale. Therefore, political parties that are involved in drafting the law as well as are entitled to accept or reject acts shall perform for the benefit of general public, but for particular reasons.
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Taking part in an election, political parties implement their planned strategic activities, which involve making choices regarding competitive goals and maximizing the usefulness of the resources they have. A significant context of party strategies is political uncertainty. The paper discusses the importance of political uncertainty in three areas. First, political uncertainty is an instrument affecting the character of political competition. In the second area, the article presents its role as a factor of competition in the process of campaigning for votes. It also points out that political uncertainty may be a mechanism of institutionalizing new political parties. Some of the implemented party strategies, influencing the level of political uncertainty, assume possible electoral manipulations.
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Presented article is aimed at examining the emotional attitudes to candidates for the president of Poland among pro-systemic and anti-systemic voters in 2015 presidential election and showing the influence of campaign TV ads on these groups of Polish electorate. The research conducted by author reveals that anti-systemic electorate is less interested in politics and more likely to be influenced by electoral TV spots. The study also confirms the relation between emotional attitudes to political actors and political preferences. According to the results of experiment anti-systemic voters expressed more positive feelings towards candidates from out of the political mainstream, and the other way round, the pro-systemic electorate rather liked the candidates presented by parliamentary parties.
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The article addresses the dependency between the level of institutionalization present in the Spanish party system, electoral accountability and assigning responsibility. The primary research objective of this article is to determine the extent to which electoral volatility is present in Spain, both at the aggregate and individual level, which is a measure of the degree of institutionalization reached by a party system. Next, the dependency between electoral volatility and fluidity of elites at the electoral and parliamentary level is analysed. This allows for an answer to the question of whether there is a problem in Spain with assigning responsibility, having regard to the fact that the presence of extensive electoral volatility among both voters and political elites makes it difficult to speak of effective accountability.
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The aim of the article was to present electoral activities diversification as well as political preferences of the citizens of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship in years 1989-2014. The measure of the conducted analyses were the results of parliamentary and European Parliament elections, by means of which it was possible to indicate recurring cyclicality of right-wing political sympathies of the citizens of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, as well as noticable, with regards to the whole country, election turnout. The primary part of the conducted analysis was an attempt to answer the question of what determined the change of political preferences and if contemporary electoral activity and political sympathies reflect historical and cultural determinants.
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Ukraine’s president promised to break the oligarchs’ stronghold on power. A new generation of politicians wants that promise kept.
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Euroscepticism became one of the prominent themes of political actors’ research in the last decades based on the strengthening position of Eurosceptic parties within the EU and national political arenas. Such development was further strengthened by the EU-enlargement in 1995, 2004 and 2007 and also with the recent development (global and European financial crisis, migration crisis). The aim of the article is to analyse the development and programme standpoint of the Czech liberal-conservative political stream. We use the concept of Euroscepticism, presented in the works of Szczerbiak and Taggart, and Kopecký and Mudde as the theoretical framework, and develop this concept based on Petr Kaniok’s new typology. In the first part of our analysis we discuss the development of the Eurosceptic faction within the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), and changes in the party’s position towards the EU. We also understand the Eurosceptic faction within the ODS, with Václav Klaus as its supporter and think tanks related to him, as the incubator for the establishment of the Party of Free Citizens (SSO) in 2009. In the second part of the analysis we focus on the party’s programme and its position within the European political arena. Our analysis also includes a discussion about most visible proclamations of the party leaders, against the EU and the European integration process. Our analysis is framed with the general debate about the liberal-conservative party family and its development at the EU level.
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The research on hybrid regimes has advanced in the recent years but there is still a gap with respect to a question of their (in)stability. There are researchers asserting that hybrid regimes are only a transitional regime type while others insist on their stable (persisting) character. The aim of this article was to explore the causes of the incumbents' electoral (in)stability in hybrid regimes in Latin America. For that purpose, an instructive comparison of 18 cases of national presidential elections – eleven of incumbent victory and seven that led to a victory of the opposition - was carried out in the years between 1990 and 2014. The text assessed the validity of the two main sets of hypotheses. The first highlighted the strategy on the part of the opposition forces and the second referred to the context in which the opposition political forces operate. The analysis concluded that while the unification of the opposition as the main strategy to win elections did not appear to be a prominent factor in the explanation of hybrid regime stability, the contextual variables – strategy on the part of the incumbent and the previous performance of the candidates’ platforms in local elections – seemed to bear some explanatory power. Results obtained in this analysis are handicapped by a relative small sample of data but present a promising venue for future analysis. Future research can confirm our result on a bigger sample or compare our theory with other explanations about electoral (in)stability in hybrid regimes.
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New Hungarian electoral rules have been widely criticized mainly by the Venice Commission and Hungarian NGOs. The Constitutional Court also examined some of the institutions of the new electoral system and in certain cases it established unconstitutionality while in other cases it did not turn the law down. Nevertheless, when seeing legal background and taking a constitutional dialogue perspective some controversies can be found also in cases in which the Constitutional Court did not established constitutionality.
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