published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Not available / text

It is well recognized that the 1993 election campaign catapulted the Reform party into the national political scene, but our understanding of how this was possible is quite limited. Drawing on the work in cognitive psychology on attitude change, the work on the news media coverage of elections, and the political science work on election campaigns, this thesis locates the impetus for Reform's success in the dynamic flow of information about the party that was available in television news broadcasts and voters' likelihood of being persuaded by that information. This link is developed by an analysis that makes use of a content analysis of the 1993 campaign, the 1993 Canadian Election Study, and a merged analysis of the election and news data. The Reform party began the campaign as a minor component of the news coverage of the election, but the news media coverage changed dramatically. Reform was provided with more news access than its support indicated it deserved and that coverage focused on what became a major theme of the election; the welfare state and the role of government. Coverage of Reform underwent a further change as it both decreased and focused on cultural issues during the last two weeks of the campaign. Using a two-mediator model of attitude change, the analysis shows that people who were predisposed to agree with Reform's anti-welfare state message and who were likely to be aware of the news information, changed both their perceptions of the party and increased their support for the party. Further support for the impact of the media is derived from the analysis of voter response to the second change in news coverage. The analysis suggests that campaigns do matter, but that the size of the impact is dependent upon the underlying uncertainty associated with the parties and candidates, and on the degree to which the information flow of the campaign changes. The information flow contributes to both learning and priming among people who receive and accept new information. While voters respond reasonably to new information, the outcome will depend on what information voters are given and what information actually reaches the habitually unaware segments of the population.

This paper examines differences between what voters want from a campaign website and what political parties are actually providing on their campaign websites. A series of focus groups were conducted and the results of those discussions provided insight into what potential voters wanted from a campaign website. Analysis of the Conservative, Liberal, Bloc Quebecois, Green and New Democratic Party campaign websites was then conducted, and the results provided a glimpse at what the political parties were providing during the 2004 federal election campaign. The results of this research show that is a significance imbalance between what the political parties in Canada were providing and what the focus groups mentioned they wanted from a campaign website. The participants wanted more engaging and mobilizing features, while the campaign websites used during the 2004 election lacked these types of features. / vi, 130 leaves ; 29 cm.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-180).

This thesis studies the authoritarian dominant party system in Uganda during the 2016 general election. It focuses on how subnational competition within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) prolongs the tenure of its leader, 30-year incumbent President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. In three districts where the NRM has been historically strong - Kyenjojo, Kayunga, and Bugiri - the thesis traces three processes to this end: the decentralisation and localisation of accountability politics away from the regime and toward expendable local politicians (H₁); the relationship between local elite rivalry and the NRM's collective mobilisation for Museveni's simultaneous re-election (H₂); and how competitive electoral pressures on NRM MPs alter the national elite bargain in the president's favour (H₃). It concludes that in strong NRM areas, the fractious divisions that characterise intra-party competition are not a by-product of its near monopolistic domination of politics, but the very basis of that dominance. This emphasis on subnational intra-party competition brings a new variable into a literature on non-democratic survival that tends to focus on more narrowly coercive and clientelist regime strategies. The thesis presents this argument in a qualitative single case study driven by an open and inductive fieldwork component throughout the 2016 election period. Its three hypotheses are built on data from interviews (with voters and elites), ethnographic observations, official data, and secondary sources. This data is used in a process-tracing design before its conclusions are fortified by a subnational comparative analysis of the election results in the three case districts.

The topic of this thesis is the regional elections 2012 on example of South Bohemia region. In the theoretical part were described the regional administrative bodies and principles of regional elections. The practical part dealt with the analyses of the elections results and application of features of the second-order elections, which were described by Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt in the 70s years of the last century. In the theses was verified, that the government parties in the second order elections lose. These parties reached a minimum at mid-term of the legislative period and in this period lost a lot of their popularity. The most important aspect of second-order elections is that there is less at stake. This is the reason why the level of participation was lower in this type of elections. The last part of thesis deals with Theory of political coalitions. In the regional elections 2012 was established the minimal winning coalition, which included two left-wing political parties.

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Dans l’espace africain francophone comme ailleurs, les élections présidentielles, potentiellement sources de crise, sont contrôlées par les juridictions constitutionnelles. En se servant des crises électorales comme fil d’Ariane, force est de constater que des liens existent entre ces dernières et les juridictions constitutionnelles. Ainsi, les Cours constitutionnelles se retrouvent parfois à l’origine des crises électorales lorsqu’elles rendent des décisions partiales, en se mettant au service des autorités politiques ayant désigné leurs membres. Cependant, elles peuvent se montrer efficaces lorsque leurs décisions permettent de prévenir des crises électorales en gestation. Toutefois, cette efficacité peut être contrariée. En tout état de cause, lorsque les crises électorales sont manifestes, le juge constitutionnel se retrouve sans aucun doute engagé dans un processus de sortie de crise où sa présence s’avère utile. / In the francophone African area as elsewhere, the presidential elections, potential sources of crisis, are controlled by the constitutional jurisdictions. By using the electoral crises as an Ariadne’s thread, we are forced to admit that there are links joining those crises to the constitutional jurisdictions. Thus, constitutional courts can sometimes be the starting point of electoral crises, especially when they make biased decisions serving the political authorities who have appointed their members. Nevertheless, they can be effective when their decisions are able to prevent future electoral crisis in preparation. However, this efficiency at times happens to be thwarted. In any event, when the electoral crises are evident, the constitutional judge finds himself, without any doubt, involved in a crisis exit process where his presence proves to be useful.