The (ir)relevance of electables

cmc-foundation.eu

If Jeremy Corbyn and socialist policies are so unelectable then how was he elected as Labour leader in 2015?

stat.columbia.edu

This paper both introduces and argues against the claim that criminal offenders should lose their voting rights because of their lack of civic virtue. It is firstly argued that this proposition is subject to the same kind of problems as the argument that offenders may vote disruptively. Using a comparison with reasons to exclude children from the franchise, it is then argued that offenders do not present a case of either cognitive nor moral impairment and that their exclusion does not serve to protect any relevant interest in democracy. Consequently, it is argued that the current practice of criminal disenfranchisement must find it explanation in other, perhaps undemocratic, ideas.

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2006

Despite their central role in the electoral process, constituency agents have been largely overlooked by political scientists and this article seeks to rectify the omission. It sketches the origins and development of the role of agent from the late nineteenth century and suggests that a serious re-think of the role took place in the 1990s. Survey-based evidence about the social characteristics of agents is presented confirming that they are largely middle-aged, middle-class, welleducated men. They are also becoming more experienced, offer realistic assessments of the impact of constituency campaigning and, arguably, many take a long-term view of how their party's support can be maximised.

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 2016), 2017

North Sumatra is a richly multi-ethnic province is made up of dozens of ethnic groups, both indigenous to the province and migrants or their descendants. Overall, groups indigenous to the province make up about 36 percent; the rest are migrants where the majority of them are Javanese. Although the city famous pluralism and openness, as well as money politics is rampant, primordialism sometimes a factor in local politics. In the mayoral election in 2010 in the city of Medan, for example, although most of the city's Muslims recently that Rahudman Harahap background questionable when it comes to honesty, there is a campaign that is very powerful and effective way to mobilize their support behind him, given that his rival in the second round mayor race is Sofyan Tan, an ethnic Chinese and Buddhist. Ethnic Chinese and, to a lesser extent, non-Muslims also rallied behind Tan, though not so openly (Aspinall, Warburton and Dettman 2011). As stressed throughout this paper, the choice of a system of Proportional Representation (PR) lists open intensive level of competition between the candidates, especially between candidates of the same party. One interesting result, in the field as in many other parts of the country, is the high level of turnover positions: for DPRD Medan for example, only 30 per cent of the successful candidates were established. Patronage is important, though it comes in many forms-not just the distribution of individual gifts and cash, but also long-term social assistance program that the candidate has in some cases been providing for years. As a result, it tends to only the wealthiest candidates-those who have significant personal assets they have, or can borrow or take donations from relatives or rich sponsorswhich has a strong chance of victory. Only a few candidates entered the political rivalry with clear ideas on development policies or government programs.

Reselection and deselection are often treated as mechanisms of direct democracy, at odds with any meaningful transfer of decision-making authority to others. This paper argues that the representative and direct dimensions of democracy may be complementary and that recall mechanisms in political parties can be used to reinforce their programmatic basis and to consolidate the reasons people have to associate with parties in the first place. The paper defends a principled use of reselection and deselection mechanisms in political parties, and answers four main criticisms that the view typically attracts: the constituency objection, the responsibility objection, the incentives objection and the efficiency objection.

Abakary Mayanja, 2020

Elections are a violation of democracy. Our once-in-five-years pilgrimage to the voting booth is a mockery of what democracy should actually mean. Democracy = demo (people) + cracy (rule). Rule by the people, not by a handful of representatives that people elect. There is a crucial difference. In modern societies, however, 'liberal' democracy hands over power to elected representatives, with very nebulous links between politics and ethics. With elections, we violate democracy in at least four ways. First, elections promote the worst form of competitiveness, made increasingly divisive and hostile by the increasing commercial and political stakes of winning. Just as commercialized sport has engendered terrible distortions like performance-enhancing drugging to enable staying ahead in the cutthroat competition, elections encourage the worst forms of bribery, corruption, intimidation and horse-trading. In Uganda, this competitiveness often plays itself out along historically-entrenched hierarchies and divisions, such as those of caste and of ideology (Right-Left being a universal one). Is it not a mockery of democracy that it takes a machinery of thousands of staff, police (sometimes the army) and volunteers to ensure that elections are peaceful, 'free and fair'? Second, politicians get elected even if they have only 20% of the vote with the rest of the electorate split amongst several opponents. This means that winners do not even represent the vast majority of people. The 'elector' is "one who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another's man's choice". But even for the fraction of the population that is 'represented' by the elected politician, there is no guarantee about their will being represented. This is partly because they hardly represent even the electorate that votes them in; look at the figures of the background of winning candidates during Article 102b of the Presidential age limit and

Parliamentary Candidates Between Voters and Parties, 2020

This book offers the first comprehensive, comparative and coherent perspective on parliamentary candidates in contemporary representative democracy. Based on the unique database of the "Comparative Candidate Survey" project which interrogated parliamentary candidates in more than 30 countries, it fills a significant lacuna by focusing on the thousands of ordinary candidates who participate in national elections. It examines who the candidates are in terms of their sociodemographic background and political career patterns, how they were selected by their parties, what their policy preferences are and whether these are congruent to those held by their voters, who they seek to represent and how they intend to do so once elected and what their visions are on representative democracy and party government. Last but not least, it investigates how they go about reaching out to their potential voters during the election campaign. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party politics, political elites, political communication, political participation, elections, theories of democracy and representation, legislative studies, voting behaviour and, more broadly, to European politics, as well as political and policy professionals throughout Europe.

Papua New Guinea: Government, Economy and Society, 2022

In this chapter we provide an overview of electoral and parliamentary politics in Papua New Guinea (PNG). We cover electoral quality and trends. We examine voter choices. And we study the dynamics of parliamentary politics. As we do this, we pay particular attention to the challenges faced by female candidates. We also look for evidence of improvements stemming from the two most significant changes to postindependence electoral and political rules in PNG: the introduction of limited preferential voting and the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates. Little evidence exists that these rule changes have brought improvements. At present, many challenges plague electoral politics and political governance in PNG. Yet there are some signs of potentially positive social changes. There are also good grounds to believe that other rule changes, such as the proposed introduction of Temporary Special Measures to ensure women's representation, can help.