Comparative Politics Commons^™

Church, Mosque, And State: The Impacts Of Sectarian Politics On Lebanon’S Democracy, Tonia Attie

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

As Lebanon seeks to reform multiple sectors of the country, it is crucial to understand how its consociational government, centered on religious identities, interacts with its citizens. Electoral accountability is the process by which an electorate holds politicians liable for their actions while in office. While previous studies, such as Vincent Hutchings’ “Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability,” have shown how electoral accountability functions within traditional party systems based on political ideology, there is little research on how accountability mechanisms operate in confessional party systems based on religion. This paper posits that within countries with confessional systems, voters are less able …

Artificial Elections: How Artificial Intelligence Can Affect Elections And Decide Our Future, Ryan D. Granger

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in democratic elections, highlighting both its transformative potential and its associated risks. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of existing literature, the study explores how AI is increasingly integrated into political campaigns, election administration, and voter engagement. Key benefits include enhanced data analysis, personalized political messaging, and improved efficiency in campaign operations. AI also supports real-time fact-checking and more accurate vote tabulation, which can strengthen transparency and trust in electoral processes. However, the thesis emphasizes that these advantages are accompanied by significant challenges. AI technologies enable the rapid creation and dissemination …

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 …

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 …

Pursuit Of The Vote: Factors Utilized In Resisting Discrimination In Democratic Elections, Matthew Nicholson

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Suffrage movements make use of various social and political factors to pressure their governments to expand the scope of voting rights. Using McAdam’s political process model, I will analyze how disenfranchised groups’ use of nonviolent demonstration, appeals to international pressure, and appeals to religion, affects their success. This will also highlight patterns that emerge when groups are willing to instigate violence in pursuit of their goals. Most studies examine these variables in the context of the pursuit of independence or revolution, whereas this study focuses on groups wishing to remain within a system given their desired reforms. I will analyze …

Compassion, Respect And Governance: How Legislative Gender Quotas Influence Physical Integrity Rights, Daniel Partin

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

This paper addresses the substantive political outcomes of legislative gender quotas and considers the influence of gender quota rules upon the governmental respect for physical integrity rights that are observed within states.

Managing Indonesian Head Of Local Government Elections During The Covid-19 Pandemic Period, Aditya Perdana

Jurnal Politik

This paper analyses the Local Government elections (Pilkada) in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to its postponement by looking at three critical aspects in the electoral management framework decision-making process, service outputs, and service outcomes framed. Some findings of this paper are: first, decision making for conducting the Pilkada 2020 was politically uneasy; second, good quality of service outputs from Pilkada 2020 was signed by convenience dimension which can be captured by voter compliance on health protocols in the polling station; third, the best evaluation for service outcomes is coming from the high percentage of voters turn out …

Where The Grass Is Greener: Comparing Green Party Success In National Parliamentary Elections And The 2019 European Parliamentary Election, Naomi Tilles

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Why do Green parties perform better in European Parliament (EP) elections than in national parliament elections? Even in countries that use proportionally representative voting systems for both national and EP elections, many Green parties gained more than twice the proportion of EP seats in 2019 compared to the previous national election. Using national and EP election results, European Social Survey data, and Eurobarometer polling from the 2019 EP election, I test competing theories of Green party success. As EP voter issues become more salient and more voters believe that their vote matters to EU policy, I find that the “second-order …

Competencia Espacial Y Calidad Personal De Los Candidatos. Elecciones Presidenciales Entre 2006 Y 2018 En México, Luis Eduardo León, Julen Berasaluce

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

This research project presents a spatial competition model for Mexican presidential elections based on the effective number of parties and weighted and scalar polarization indices. The model makes it possible to construct a classification of candidates influences based on personality as an remainder unexplained by spatial ideological competition. In addition to classifying the candidates in the last three presidential elections by their personal influence, the authors offer predictions for future balloting based on change in ideological distribution. Suppositions of symmetrical ideological votes and a single dimension were used to build the model.

Legalizing Corporate Political Speech: How Citizens United Laid The Groundwork For Corporations' Right To Political Speech, Karen Sebold

Political Science Teaching and Learning

The right to political speech is essential for democracy, but should corporations have the same rights as individual persons? In this presentation, Prof. Sebold explains how the US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United determined that political speech extends to corporations and what that ruling may imply for US politics.

Can Continuous Campaigns Cause Conscientious Citizens To Cower?, Melissa Hall

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The following study examines the relationship between campaign season length and voter turnout. Campaign season length is defined as the period between either the legal beginning of the campaign season as specified by the government or the announcement of the first candidate’s candidacy and the date of the election. Voter turnout is defined as the percentage of eligible voters that voted in the election. Eligible voters include all people of voting age in the country, regardless of whether they are registered to vote. There is no existing literature on the effects of campaign season length on voter turnout. My hypothesis …

History Of Military Interventions In Political Affairs In Pakistan, Hina Altaf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Military interventions in political affairs have hinder the process of democratization within countries like Pakistan. This single case study of Pakistan discusses why the military intervened into domestic affairs by discussing political, economic and social conditions within Pakistan after partition from India. This study shows that heavy reliance on the military post- partition decreased civilian authority and increased military supremacy. Moreover, this study also shows the shift from direct to indirect military intervention within Pakistan and concludes that the military will continue to influence political affairs indirectly if the elected civilian government threatens its interest.

Egypt’S 2011–2012 Parliamentary Elections: Voting For Religious Vs. Secular Democracy?, H. Ege Ozen

Publications and Research

This study investigates whether individuals’ attitudes towards democracy and

secular politics have any influence on voting behavior in Egypt. Based on data

from a survey conducted immediately after the Egyptian parliamentary elections

in January 2012, this study finds that Egyptians’ attitudes towards democratic

governance were quite negative around the parliamentary elections, yet Egyptians

still endorsed democracy as the ideal political system for their country. However,

empirical findings suggest that support for democracy has a limited impact on

electoral results. On the other hand, the main division in Egyptian society around

the first free and fair parliamentary elections was the religious-secular …

Why Have Youth From Different Neighborhoods Of Durban, South Africa Developed Different Opinions Regarding The Role And Importance Of Voting In The Current State Of South African Democracy?, Anthony L. Wagner

Student Publications

The field of political science has become increasingly interested in the electoral participatory habits of young people in recent decades, and in post-apartheid South Africa more specifically in light of the recent and ongoing #feesmustfall movement within the nation's tertiary institutions. Since 1994, South Africa has made a great deal of progress towards dismantling the apartheid system; however, vast inequalities remain and many, mostly black African communities have not yet reaped the rewards of a democratic South Africa. Using qualitative data gathered from three focus groups, this paper examines why youth from black African township communities of Durban, South Africa …

How Voters Hold The European People’S Party Accountable In European Parliament Elections, Douglas D. Page

Political Science Faculty Publications

The established consensus is that voters do not hold European Union leaders accountable for their management of the economy in European Parliament elections, which contributes to the EU’s democratic deficit. However, the existing research misses a comparison between those who feel that the national government is responsible for their economic situation and those who feel the EU is responsible. The analysis is based on surveys of the 28 EU members. I find that when one assigns more responsibility to the EU than the national government for national economic conditions, satisfaction with the economy increases the likelihood of voting for the …

Winning Well: Civil Resistance Mechanisms Of Success, Democracy, And Civil Peace, Jonathan C. Pinckney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Several recent studies indicate that revolutions of non-violent civil resistance lead to more democratic and peaceful political transitions than either violent revolutions or elite-led political transitions. However, this general trend has not been disaggregated to explain the many prominent cases where nonviolent revolutions are followed by authoritarianism or civil war. Understanding these divergent cases is critical, particularly in light of the problematic transitions following the "Arab Spring" revolutions of 2011. In this paper I explain why nonviolent revolutions sometimes lead to these negative outcomes. I show, through quantitative analysis of a dataset of all successful non-violent revolutions from 1900-2006 and …

The Pre-Emptive Election: How The Mass Media Determine Winners And Losers In Presidential Primaries, 1988-2012, Joshua Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The function of the mass media in the democratic process is crucial to an informed public and vital to a democratic system. One primary role of the media is that of gatekeeper between political candidates and the public. The influence the media has on the electorate is heightened during the primary process of presidential elections and even more so in the pre-primary season when a large majority of potential voters have yet to form opinions of candidates. The effects of the media in the pre-primary season of politics play out in significant relationships where media coverage results in measurable increases …

Trends. Hugo Chavez And Loyalty: What Venezuela Can Teach Us About Ourselves, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses and evaluates the actions of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who, after winning a procedurally fair, democratic election, chose members of his political team based on loyalty rather than expertise.

Public Opinion And The 1996 Elections In Russia: Nostalgic And Statist, Yet Pro-Market And Pro-Yeltsin, David S. Mason

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Between 1991 and 1996 Russia underwent a precipitous economic and social decline with decreases in production, gross national product, and wages, and increases in inequality, crime, and corruption. Most people experienced a decline in their standard of living, and many fondly recalled the security and stability of the communist era.