Political Science Commons^™

A Conversation Between Tone-Deaf Rivals: A Phenomenological Study Of Lebanon’S National Dialogue, Amal A. Chmouny

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

National dialogue in Lebanon is an engaging practice vital in times of instability. This research addresses the complexities and challenges inherent in Lebanon's consociational political landscape through a qualitative analysis of the dialogue processes. Despite Lebanon's reliance on dialogues to navigate high tensions and conflict, this study finds that such dialogues still need to address the core issues, including enhancing security, unity, reform, transparency, and elections. The influence of Lebanon's confessional elites, deeply rooted in its sectarian divisions, further complicates the political efforts toward achieving comprehensive and equitable solutions. This study argues that national dialogues in Lebanon are a political …

Who Pays The Price For The Cost Of Voting: The Impact Of Voting Policies On Presidential Election Turnout, 1996-2016, Amelia S. Minkin

eJournal of Public Affairs

The gap between the percentage of registered White voters who cast a ballot and that of registered nonwhite voters in the 2020 United States Presidential election was approximately 13 percent. This trend varies widely across the United States due to state legislators having jurisdiction to craft, enact, and implement election and voting legislation. In 2022, 408 pieces of legislation that would have made it more difficult to register to vote, cast a ballot, or stay on the voter rolls were considered in 39 states and 11 made it into state codes across the country. Given the increase in legislation considered …

Felony Disenfranchisement And Voter Turnout: Randomized Trials In Iowa And Washington, Alexander Billy, J.J. Naddeo, Neel U. Sukhatme

Northwestern University Law Review

Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, we conducted large-scale randomized controlled trials in Iowa and Washington aimed at increasing voter turnout among newly enfranchised individuals with past felony convictions. Alongside national and grassroots partners, we designed and implemented experiments to ascertain the effectiveness of alternative outreach mechanisms, including targeted mailers and digital ads. We did not detect statistically significant or economically meaningful effects on voter registration or turnout; most observed effects were precise nulls. The absence of measured impact is likely attributed to low digital engagement with our online ads as well as extensive voter outreach already conducted by our …

Election Reform And Campaign Finance: Did Alaska's Top 4 Nonpartisan Primaries And Ranked-Choice General Elections Affect Political Spending?, Zachary Albert, Robert G. Boatright, Lane Cuthbert, Adam Eichen, Wouter Van Erve, Raymond J. La Raja, Meredith Rolfe

Political Science

Objective: Ranked-choice voting (RCV) is increasingly seen as a way to reduce political polarization and increase voter choice in elections, but little is known about its effect on candidate fundraising. In 2022, Alaska held its first election using a nonpartisan Top 4 primary followed by a ranked-choice general election. We analyze the effect of this new system on campaign financing practices in state legislative elections. There are many reasons to expect RCV to increase campaign spending, broaden the donor pool, and prompt donors to support candidates to whom they would not otherwise contribute. Method: We measure changes in fundraising over …

Political Indifference And The Withering Of Democracy In Alabama, Noe Alexander Aguado

Politics, Justice, Law, and Philosophy

Alabama’s 1901 Constitution was drafted to codify white supremacy by removing African Americans from the voter rolls. Alabama did not invent voter suppression, nor does it have a monopoly on policies that deny African Americans, minorities, and poor people the right to vote. This chapter provides examples of how and to what effect disenfranchisement has been used in Alabama and other communities throughout the United States. This chapter also chronicles Alabama’s unique constitutional feature that centralizes policymaking in the capitol – further suppressing democracy at the local level to the advantage of affluent interest groups entrenched in Montgomery. Consolidating policymaking …

The Twitter Blackout: Do Congressional Rules Influence The Cyberworld?, Carlos Gutierrez-Mannix, Thomas R. Gray

Political Science Faculty Publications

Intro

Communication is understood to be a pillar of democracy. Therefore, governments around the world enact laws which make it easier for politicians to communicate with their constituents. However, some governments also restrict this ability during campaign seasons as a way of unclogging the media. In the United States, congressional election blackout dates are periods in which politicians are not allowed to engage in mass unsolicited mailing of political advertising. Because the prohibition only applies to unsolicited media, we theorize that we should see the transition from one type of communication to another.

Methods

To test this effect, we created …

Malaysia In 2023: Reconsolidation Under Pressure, Meredith Weiss

Political Science Faculty Scholarship

Prime minister Anwar Ibrahim steered his cobbled-together government through economic and sociocultural challenges in 2023, emerging stable but spooked. State-level elections in August sustained each party’s roster of states, but with declining margins for Anwar’s coalition. Fiscal pressures—high debt, declining revenues, rising cost of living, and a persistently weak currency—constrained room for maneuver, while state-level and societal cultural contests tested Malaysia’s multiracial, multireligious tolerance.

Fair Elections, Representation, And The Win-Loss Satisfaction With Democracy Gap, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

A substantial literature on public democratic satisfaction argues that system satisfaction is based on how the election transpires and the policy outcomes citizens anticipate from the electoral results. In a functioning democracy, citizens elect a government in fair elections and the election outcomes reflect the electorate’s views. Winners of both national and regional elections are regularly found to be more satisfied with their democracy than losers. This study shows that the perceived fairness and representativeness of the electoral results moderate this disparity by narrowing the satisfaction gap between electoral winners and electoral losers; this effect is concentrated in the evaluation …

The Effects Of Empathic Reactions To The Overturning Of Roe V. Wade On Campaign Participation And Voter Turnout: Evidence From The 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections, Cigdem Sirin, José Villalobos

Selected Works Temporary Series

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing the nearly 50-year-old landmark decision that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Several months later, voters turned out in record numbers for the 2022 midterms, though a widely predicted “Red Wave” vote did not materialize. There has since been speculation that overturning Roe v. Wade played a crucial role in the midterms, generating a “Blue Tsunami” or “Roevember” driven largely by young, pro-choice women voting out of self-interest. We posit instead that group empathy was the key motivational mechanism in the link between opposition to …

The Effects Of Empathic Reactions To The Overturning Of Roe V. Wade On Campaign Participation And Voter Turnout: Evidence From The 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections, Cigdem Sirin, José Villalobos

Departmental Papers (PS)

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing the nearly 50-year-old landmark decision that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Several months later, voters turned out in record numbers for the 2022 midterms, though a widely predicted “Red Wave” vote did not materialize. There has since been speculation that overturning Roe v. Wade played a crucial role in the midterms, generating a “Blue Tsunami” or “Roevember” driven largely by young, pro-choice women voting out of self-interest. We posit instead that group empathy was the key motivational mechanism in the link between opposition …

I'Ve Registered To Vote... Now What?, Gabriel Giberson, Jasmine Cintron Soto, Lauren Shelton, Hayley Piazza

Student Zines

This zine was created by students from the Center for Community Action and Research to support voter outreach during the 2024 presidential election.

No Excuses: The Effect Of Absentee Voting System On Voter Turnout, Tigerlily Harrington, April Johnson

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

The COVID-19 Pandemic caused a significant change in the way people voted 2020. Many Americans chose to absentee vote out of safety concerns. However, this process was not the same experience for all voters because some states require an excuse to absentee vote while others do not. This study analyzes whether there is a difference in voter turnout between states with no-excuse absentee voting and those without it. While reviewing voter turnout data for the 2016 and 2020 General Elections, this research finds evidence that turnout was higher in states with no-excuse absentee systems than those that require an excuse. …

When Ballots Are Blank: Write-In’S Serving Local Government And The Implications For A Healthy And Vibrant Democracy, Thomas J. Ruter

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Our democracy depends on having a supply of candidates running for elected office, but in some instances, no one wants to run. This phenomenological study asks what the effects on a healthy and vibrant democracy are if ballots are blank and the seat is filled through write-in or appointment. Rooted in democratic theory, this study explores small, rural city elections where write-ins won election. Understudied, local governments are responsible for decisions affecting the lives of millions of people each day. Workforce scarcity, the alienation of young Americans from politics, government bashing, nasty campaigns, threats of physical harm, and other barriers …

Minor Parties In America: National Failure, Some Localized Success, Eman J. Mohammad

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Leaning primarily on Duverger's Law, which credits minor party votes as wasted momentum, current research on institutional obstacles to minor party voting largely overlooks the influence of constituency size. This research reexamines the electoral hindrances that minor parties face when competing against the two dominant political parties. Specifically, I hypothesize there is a negative relationship between constituency size and minor party vote share. This thesis adopts an institutional approach to explain the success of minor parties in constituencies of varying size. In the empirical models, I will control for minor party organizational strength, state ballot access laws and whether states …

Policy Dynamics In Young Democracies: Attention, Electoral Change, And Responsiveness In Ghana And South Africa, Christiana Bugri

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

My dissertation is a collection of three essays that assess the nature of government attention in young democracies. Theories of the policy process focus on policy dynamics in Western democracies with little application to non-Western democracies. This dissertation bridges this gap by studying policy dynamics in the neopatrimonial democracies of Ghana and South Africa. The dissertation sheds light on how the unique features of young democracies (centralization, clientelism, and powerful executives) shape government attention, responsiveness to public opinion, and the importance of elections in policy change. The first essay examines the dynamics of government attention and how the neopatrimonial nature …

Amid Senegal’S Most Tumultuous Year In Recent History, The Senegalese Diaspora In New York Grapples With The Uncertainty Of Their Home Country’S Political Future., Mark Banchereau

Capstones

On February 25th 2024, Senegalese voters will be heading to the polls to elect a new president. Often hailed as one of the most stable and transparent democracies in Africa, Senegal has seen a rise in political violence surrounding the sentencing of the main opposition leader Ousmane Sonko this year.

Link :

https://medium.com/@banchereau.mark27/e716d027c0f3

Incivility In 2022 Senatorial Elections, Mark Meyer

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

This honors capstone project will examine the effect of social media, specifically Twitter, on U.S. senate elections in 2022. It will track the tweets of personal and official campaign Twitter accounts from the end of the primary until election night in two “Toss Up” or highly contested seats in the 2022 senate elections. This project will examine the winner of the Republican and Democrat primaries only. All the tweets from the timeframe will be tracked and categorized by intention or use of the tweet. These categories will break down the tweet into what it was meant to do be it …

The Political Divergence Of Ohio And Michigan, Dominic D. Wells, David J. Jackson

The Journal of Economics and Politics

Ohio and Michigan are demographically similar states whose politics have diverged since 2016. This research aims to explain why these two Midwestern states have taken such different political paths in recent years. A comparative case study is used to examine a number of possible explanations. The results of this research show that institutional factors such as registration and voting laws, redistricting processes, and ballot measures have contributed to the political divergence of Ohio and Michigan. Further, data on policy preferences are compared to show that the differences between the states are not the result of different policy preferences among their …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald: Your Vote Matters, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Magazine edition of the College Heights Herald for the period October 4 - November 6, 2023.

• Anderson, Alexandria. Letter from the Editor – Elections
• Reed, Bailey. Every Vote in This County is Important – Daniel Cameron, Andy Beshear
• Phelps, Maggie. The Importance of Voter Registration
• Daniel Cameron on the Issues
• Andy Beshear on the Issues
• Di Palermo, Dominic. The Bowling Green Rock Band Academy – Musicians
• Costellow, Ali. Students & Campus Organizations Prepare for November Election
• Wilborn, Price. Wokeness Is Not a Bad Thing, and People Need to Stop Saying It Is
• Edmonds, Luke. A Kentuckian’s Guide to Legal Sports …

Latino Voter Participation In The 2018 And 2022 Midterm Elections, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction

This study analyzes Latino voting participation, comparing the US midterm elections of the years 2018 and 2022.

Method

The study is a descriptive and comparative analysis using data from the 2022 Voting and Registration Data from the US Census Bureau.

Discussion

The study found that nationally, only 37.9% of eligible Latino voters took part in the 2022 midterms, compared to 40.4% in the 2018 midterms. Despite this decline in the percentage of registered voters casting ballots in 2022, the percentage of Latinos registered to vote rose from 53.7% in 2018 to 57.8% in 2022.

Vive La Différence?: Is There A Gender Gap In Campaign Strategy And Spending, And Does It Matter?, Paul S. Herrnson, Charles Hunt, Jaclyn J. Kettler

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Record numbers of women were elected into office in the US in recent years, and campaign financing may have contributed to their successes. This raises two questions: Is there a gender gap in campaign strategy and spending? And if there is, does it have an impact on election outcomes? Using a new dataset that includes itemized campaign expenditures for the almost 3,500 candidates who contested a House election between 2012 and 2020, we report little evidence of a gender gap in candidates’ campaign spending, but we find some differences in the effects of communications spending on women’s and men’s electoral …

Demographic Structure And Voting Behaviour During Democratization: Evidence From Malaysia's 2022 Election, Sebastian Carl Dettman, Thomas B. Pepinsky

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Malaysia’s fifteenth general election (GE15) was a milestone in the country’s democratization process, with new parties and political movements competing with established political coalitions. In this paper, we investigate how Malaysia’s cleavage structure—a central feature of Malaysia’s prior authoritarian regime—shapes electoral competition in a newly competitive political environment. We find that the “race paradigm” (Milner, Embong, and Tham 2014) remains central to explaining party strategy and coalition behavior in GE15, but that more democratic competition has increased the salience of regional differences—both between peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia, and within peninsular Malaysia itself. Our analysis reveals the structural foundations of …

Issue Salience And Ownership In The 2019 And 2021 Canadian Federal Elections, Maxime St-Jean

Reports

This report uses the 2019 and 2021 Canadian Election Study (CES) to explore how political issues and social cleavages are perceived by the electorate in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. We focus more specifically on three dimensions: first, what issues were most important in electors’ minds (which we refer to as issue salience); second, which parties were seen as best able to handle various issues (which we refer to as issue ownership by parties); and finally, the social bases of party perceptions.

Local Candidate Roots And Electoral Advantages In Us State Legislatures, Charles Russell Hunt, Stella Rouse

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A growing literature has revealed a notable electoral advantage for congressional and gubernatorial candidates with deep local roots in their home districts or states. However, there is a dearth of research on the presence and impact of local roots in state legislative races. In this paper, we close that gap by demonstrating the consistent and significant electoral impacts that state legislators’ local roots have on their reelection efforts. We use data capturing a representative cross-section of state legislative incumbents (N = ~5,000) and calculate a novel index measuring the depth of their local roots modeled after Hunt’s (2022, Home …

Direct Election, Bureaucratic Appointment, And Local Government Responsiveness In Taiwan, Sara A. Newland

Government: Faculty Publications

Does local democracy induce better service to citizens? While elected officials can be punished at the ballot box if they fail to address citizens’ needs, appointed bureaucrats may have policy knowledge that enables them to better serve citizens. Employing a multimethod design, this paper uses variation in local political institutions in Taiwan to assess the relative merits of direct election and bureaucratic appointment for local government responsiveness. While democratic institutions are often thought to induce responsiveness, I find that in Taiwan, with its historically strong bureaucracy and relatively new democratic institutions, the picture is somewhat more complicated. Elected and appointed …

New Americans And The New Right: Hispanic Voting Trends In The Trump Era Of Politics, Emmanuel Keppel

Political Science Honors Projects

In 2020, Donald Trump lost re-election to Joe Biden by around 4.5% nationally. Despite losing in his re-election bid, Trump was able to make surprising inroads with Hispanic voters, reaching the highest Republican totals with Hispanic voters in decades. This trend held true across nearly every Hispanic neighborhood in the country. From large Hispanic-majority cities such as Miami to isolated pockets of Hispanic voters in New England, there was a consistent rightward trend. Moreover, this trend largely continued into 2022, with most Republican candidates in the midterm elections matching Trump’s numbers. This paper will take an in depth look at …

The Greek Advantage: Implications Of Greek Affiliation On Student Government At The University Of Mississippi, Lila Osman

Honors Theses

Greek life is a prominent group at the University of Mississippi, especially when it comes to membership in the Associated Student Body (ASB). ASB is the student governing body at the University so it is important to analyze its membership to understand how reflective it is of the entire university campus it represents. This research answers the question: “How and to what extent does Greek affiliation affect candidates for student government at the University of Mississippi?” Through two mixed methods surveys, one sent to members elected to ASB in the spring 2022 election cycle and the other to the general …

C-Dem 2023 Partners' Meeting Notes, Consortium On Electoral Democracy

Meeting Notes

No abstract provided.

C-Dem 2023 Partners' Meeting Agenda May 5, Consortium On Electoral Democracy

Meeting Notes

No abstract provided.

C-Dem 2023 Partners' Meeting May 5 Powerpoint Presentation, Consortium On Electoral Democracy

Meeting Notes

No abstract provided.