Around the Bloc: Macedonia Snap Elections Talks Fail
Macedonia remains in limbo as opposition leader rejects agreed date for snap poll, claiming the government is blocking electoral reforms.
More...We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Macedonia remains in limbo as opposition leader rejects agreed date for snap poll, claiming the government is blocking electoral reforms.
More...
ln this work the author presents the main determinants of the public's relationship towards the Croatian Democratic Union in the period from 1991 to 1999 registered in a longitudinal research of the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar in Zagreb. Based on its findings, some of the possible reasons why the party had lost the support of the voting majority at the 2000 elections for the House of Counties have been indicated. The results of the analysis conducted suggest that the main reasons are a significantly weakened voting position of the HDZ, with regard to the previous elections: l) the decrease of fundamental support to the party, as a consequence of the moral credibility and unfulfilled expectations of the public concerning the country's economic prosperity and growth of living standard; 2) the lack of a "big" social event wich would, except for its thrue importance for Croatia and its population, be also of great national and symbolic significance. Additional reasons are also possible (which probably had a minor influence on the election results), such as a certain dwindling of the electorate after the death of Tuđman, as well as a new way of articulating political alternative, as a result of election coalitioning of the most important oppositional parties at the time.
More...
The paper presents the research results of the main motivation on determinants of citizens' voting decisions at the Croatian presidentiai elections in 2000. It also portrays the specific reasons for voting for some of the leading presidentiai candidates. The research has shown that, in the elections observed, the voters' decisions were mostly based on the perceived elements of the candidates' programmatic orientations (those of a completely general and abstract significance, as well as their concretization in terms of the expected contribution to the realization of fundamental national goals). It was also considerably based on an assessment of their moral qualities. Due to the fact that these decision-making elements, as has been suggested by the results of the conducted analysis, were equally decisive in choosing all the leading candidates, it has been established that generally less important reasons of selection, ranked much lower in the hierarchical structure of dominant election motives, were much more useful in discriminating among the potential voters for specific presidentiai competitors. These are first and foremost certain personality traits, the candidate's party membership and the perceived relationship towards the policy of the formerly ruling party and former President of the Republic.
More...
ln this work the authors present the findings of the validation analysis of results concerning voting intentions at the 2000 presidentiai elections, gathered in two separate telephone surveys on the eve of the first election round and run-off. Based on the results of the analysis a general prognostic validity of the research was established in relation to the official electoral results and so was the influence of certain modalities of gathering and processing data on the validity of the results obtained. The results indicate that, in our current circumstances, the main issue of the validity of pre-election telephone surveysis connected with a relatively large proportion of noncommitment regarding voting intentions (in the research analysed it was 29.8 or 25.6%), thus making it necessaryto correct the original results through different reduction procedures. Therefore, correcting results in two steps has proven the most suitable method, based on additional questions on inclinations towards certain electoral options (this procedure has, in both electoral situations analysed, considerably improved the precision of results and reduced a certain partiality in their main distribution), while proportional conversion by simple elimination of non-committed examinees, has not given satisfactory effects.
More...
The text analyses party-preferences of Croatian citizens, divided into "left", "central" and "right-wing" political blocs with opinions on democracy and possibilities of political participation. The work is based upon data gathered in empirical research conducted on a representative sample of the adult Croatian population in November 1996. The manifest diversity of opinions on democracy and participation in political decisions was reduced to two general factors by factor analysis: the factors of democracy and political impotence. The results of the one-way analysis of variance among groups of potential voters of the "left" and "central" wing on the one hand, differ from voters of the "right" political wing on the other hand. The difference determined indicates that the voters of "the right" are more moderate in support of democracy and less impotent than the voters of the "left" and "central" orientation in political participation.
More...
The topic of the work is the refusal to respond to poll questionnaires as one of the key methodological problems in the realization of opinion polis and questionnaire-based social research in general. In addition to a survey of data on rejecting polis in Croatia and abroad, the paper describes some of the perceived characteristics of persons unwilling to participate in such questionnaires, designates probable reasons for rejection and their possible impact on the validity of research results and also depicts some attempts at overcoming this important methodological problem.
More...
Live-streamed council meetings are drawing huge interest in Ankara and Istanbul.
More...
News highlights: elections in Abkhazia; beards in Uzbekistan; Albania, Andorra, or Armenia?; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; and red stars in Sofia.
More...
Regional roundup: Moscow elections; Ukraine and Russia swap prisoners; Sarajevo LGBT parade; Tajik tourism; and Czech peas, global genome.
More...
Last weekend’s elections saw a familiar crew jostling for the top job in a territory which has thrown off most traces of Georgian control.
More...
In the news today: a posthumous victory for Sergei Magnitsky; Ukraine’s electoral code; a Chechen murder in Berlin; a (lucky) tank in Belgrade; and Mongolian fashion.
More...
Political leadership style and effectiveness depend not only on political system, but also on different interests of citizens and specialized marketing tools. The “age of manufactured images” and shift from citizenship to spectatorship make recognition and response to voters’ expectations crucial. According to Golemans’ [2000] business theory of leadership styles, leaders with high emotional intelligence who display authoritative, democratic, affiliative or coaching styles of leadership have greater chance of success than coercive and pacesetting leaders. The last two attain lowest sympathy and have negative impact on organizational climate. The aim of study was to find profile of ideal political leadership style, relating it also to real political leaders in countries of different democracy maturity (Poland vs. Georgia). The results show that however both Polish and Georgian voters praise affliative and coaching style, Polish voters expect to greater extent than Georgians, from their ideal president to be authoritative, democratic, affiliative and coaching. Moreover, differences on certain leadership dimensions perception were found. Pacesetting style is perceived by Georgians as part of leader’s communion, while part of leader’s agency. Nonetheless, real Polish and Georgian leaders are differently perceived in relation to ideal president’s style profile. Bigger differences are seen in case of Georgian politicians. The results give practical guides for image creation and candidates’ positioning, e.g. within political campaigns, and enrich discussion on leadership and its cross-cultural differences.
More...
This article explains the process of change in the political representation of Alevi Kurds in Turkey since the country held its first competitive election in 1950. It applies process tracing methodology to identify the dominant trends in Alevi Kurds’ political representation and highlights how the mode of their political participation evolved over time. The discussion presented here develops an explanation that connects the effects of key events and processes that shapes the outcome of this complex political phenomenon. The strong appeal among Alevi Kurds of the Turkish socialist movement and the political parties that are associated with the secular republican regime is discussed before the impact of the rise of Alevi and Kurdish movements on the Alevi Kurds’ political representation is assessed. The barriers Turkey’s restrictive political and legal order place on Alevi Kurds’ political representation are also highlighted.
More...
The work focuses on the pre-election campaign in Slovakia in 2016 after the outbreak of the migration crisis. The migration crisis has significantly affected the shaping of pre-election programs, but has also influenced pre-election slogans and the expression of political party representatives. The media played an important role in representing the attitudes of political parties, but also in perceiving the migration crisis. Through the media, the political parties represented their attitudes to the migration crisis, but also to the quota mechanism. The aim of the discourse analysis is to point out the campaign of selected political parties that have used the issue of migration as their mobilization act. For the research were selected parties Smer-SD, SaS (Freedom and solidarity) and We are a family - Boris Kollár.
More...
This article analyzes the determinants which have an infl uence on the process of spreading i-voting as public innovation. The basis for their interpretation was the Everett M. Rogers’ diff usion of innovation theory. The review of terms: innovation, public innovation, diff usion of innovation and i-voting found in source literature has been made. The attributes of i-voting were a basis for interpretation of its acceptance. This article points out how important role in this process plays the important attributes of innovation and its connection with number of external factors such as political, social and cultural.
More...
The federal elections of 2017 led for the first time since WWII to the entrance of a right-wing political party, namely, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to the German federal parliament (Bundestag). Prominent explanations of the success of the AfD were given in the sociological works of Wolfgang Heitmeyer and in the political economy of right wing populism as developed by Philip Manow. I analyzed, from the point of view of modern theory of arguments, the methodological nature of these explanations. I showed how to approach methodologically the structure of arguments and reconstructed the general structure and specific social science features of arguments employed in these explanations.
More...
The elections to the Hungarian parliament in the Slovak constituencies were mostly dramatic before World War I. They were accompanied by various machinations, intervention of the armed forces, the persecution of Slovak candidates and their voters. Such was the course of the elections in the east of Slovakia, where the weak national awareness of Slovaks living there and the sociopolitical conditions were very unfavourable for the development of activities in the national spirit. The article places the main emphasis on approaching the efforts of Ivan Pivka and Ľudovít Medvecký to obtain a parliamentary seat in the Hungarian parliament in 1906, who were nominated by the Slovak National Party (SNS) for the Giraltovce district.
More...
The City as an Onion? Case Studies of Electoral Geography in Prague and Warsaw. Electoral geographical research into urban territories shows a distinction in voting behaviour between a city centre and its surroundings. A recent exploratory study of the electoral geography of Prague found that distance from the city centre was the variable that best explained the spatial variation of votes, which might follow a concentric pattern and, thus, it recommended seeking a theoretical explanation in urban sociology, e.g. in the Burgess model of the city. Following this recommendation, I compared spatial patterns of voting behaviour in two cities – Warsaw and Prague. Using component analysis, I reduced the number of analysed variables to one for each city representing the main spatial polarisation. In Prague, voting behaviour showed a distinction between the city centre, inner suburbs and outer suburbs. While the city centre and the outer suburbs were conservative, the inner suburbs tended to vote for the left. This partially follows the Burgess model. On the other hand, the electoral geography of Warsaw showed a different structure. In this article I pre¬sent a way of visualising urban electoral data in maps that avoid distortion caused by varying polygon size.
More...
The article presented deals with the analysis of electoral reform in Georgia. As a result of the 2017–2018 constitutional reform Georgia has fully shifted to parliamentary system of government, and the process of choosing an electoral system is currently under discussion. Since the restoration of independence, Georgia’s electoral system has undergone many changes, with a consistently mixed electoral system being used during this period. This system has consistently ensured the creation of a strong one-party parliamentary majority, often a supermajority. This article discusses the electoral history of Georgia and the main positive and negative aspects of the current system. Significant attention is paid to the ongoing discussions between the government and the opposition in Georgia, and the main useful arguments of the proportional electoral system. The article finally presents some conclusions about the changes in the electoral system.
More...
Voting is a widespread practice in the modern world’s democracies. The classification of electoral systems is not as self-evident as it may seem, because they can be categorized according to many different principles, so the choice of which one to highlight is to a great extent a matter of subjective judgment. District magnitude (the number of seats per district), voting for individual candidates or for party-lists, choosing the majority principle or proportional representation, and the proportionality of outcomes are just a few of the basic and well known criteria used to classify electoral systems. The first aim of this paper is to put forward a different and less known criterion for approaching and classifying electoral systems: the ballot structure (labelled after Douglas Rae), which seems to be one of the important dimensions of any electoral system, because it concerns whether voters can express their ranked preferences for candidates across political parties. The special effects of preferential voting systems on democracy and party systems can be monitored in the case of Australia. The second goal of this study therefore is an empirical analysis of Australian federal elections with their own peculiarities.
More...