This thesis analyses the transition to democracy in Peru and monitors the following development of the country after installing democratic regime. Since the democracy is the fundamental notion of this thesis, first of all it is defined and after is evaluated the current state of democracy in the world and more in detail in Latin America. The thesis shows that the transition to democracy in Peru was in many was similar to the others democratic processes in the region but also that it has certain specialities. In the end, the thesis evaluates the current state of democracy in Peru according to perception of the inhabitants of this country.

Study on how fair and balanced the three cable news networks were in their coverage of the 2012 presidential election.

In this analysis, I investigate the causes of early elections in four parliamentary democracies across the world: Great Britain, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand. While I consider a number of explanations for the decisions to hold early elections, I find most theoretical and statistical support for Smith's (2003; 2004) informational thesis. He maintains that governments look to future economic conditions when making their timing decision. This approach, however, also leaves open the possibility that other, non-economic factors can explain why prime ministers call elections earlier than is necessary. I argue that the degree of disproportionality, the measured gap between a party's vote share and seat share, is a key attribute to explain the early election decision. When prime ministers weigh their decision to dissolve government, they cannot assess the effect of changes in their support in the population as accurately when a high degree of disproportionality is present. Using survival analysis, I find some support for a comprehensive attributes and events approach. New Zealand proves an exception; governments tend to fail sooner when high levels of disproportionality are present. This appears to be a result of particular factors related to disproportionality as a political issue, leading to electoral reform in 1996.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006.

Mobile ad hoc networks consist of potentially moving, computing nodes that communicate via radio and do not have access to any fixed infrastructure. The knowl- edge about nearby nodes is a fundamental requirement and is part of many of the known solutions to problems in mobile and wireless networks including routing, broad- casting, distributed token circulation, etc. The existing solutions for this problem of knowing about neighbors are probabilistic. In this thesis, we give a first step towards a distributed, deterministic algorithm for finding out about the neighboring nodes. In particular, we focus on the problem of maintaining information about neighboring nodes in a one dimensional mobile and wireless ad hoc environment. Under some simplifying assumptions, we give an algorithm for the problem and a proof of correctness for the algorithm. We deal with efficiency in terms of both time and space. We prove a tight bound on the speed of propagation of the message when the nodes are sufficiently dense. We also consider the case when multiple clusters merge together. Our algorithm is space efficient in that the nodes do not include information about all the nodes they know in their broadcast message at all times. Nodes also store only the information about relevant nodes in their local store and purge information about nodes that have moved out of range. Our work shows that it is possible to solve the problem deterministically, and with reasonable values of the parameters, under some simplifying assumptions. Numerous interesting open questions remain in the area regarding how to relax the assumptions to make the approach more practical.

In a modern democratic society, election has become the most common way in which people participate in politics. Moreover, voting is the presentation and consequences of people¡¦s opinions. Therefore, during the period of election, all the information people saw or heard through the mass media might influence people¡¦s decisions of their votes, their attitudes, and their behaviors. Along with the strengthening of Taiwan¡¦s democracy, the political cultures in Taiwan have been changing. Meanwhile, the interactions between politicians and mass media and the distributions of powers have been changing. The relationships between the political systems and the news media are multiple and complicated. The reporters, the elementary gate keeper, are certainly the first target the candidates want to influence. The various ways of influence, either ¡§threatening¡¨ or ¡§seduction¡¨, create ¡§pressure¡¨ on the reporters when they report news relevant to the election. Thus, the motivation and purposes of this study were to investigate the strategies the reporters employed when they encountered pressure. This study made use of questionnaires to collect data. This study surveyed the reporters in the big Kaohsiung area (Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County) to analyze ¡§the strategies the reporters employed when they encountered pressure.¡¨ This study recruited 113 valid questionnaires. The results show that when the reporters reported news relevant to the 2004 legislators¡¦ election, the pressure the reporters in the big Kaohsiung area received was lobbying, followed by advertisements and other stress related to profits. The pressure from the news office was also common. As a result, the attempts to influence news about the election were multiple. As for the pressure from the gangsters, it was rare; less than 10 percent of the subjects had ever received such pressure. As far as the strategies employed, a high percentage of the reporters in the big Kaohsiung area adopted the strategy ¡§compromise¡¨, followed by ¡§direct confrontation¡¨ and ¡§ignorance¡¨. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that ¡§compromise¡¨ was the most frequent strategy adopted by the reporters when they received pressure from the news office. This finding illustrates that the key influence on the reporters came from the controlling power of the media organizations. When it comes to the advertisements and other stress related to profits, the reporters usually employed the strategies ¡§compromise¡¨ and ¡§cooperation¡¨; the percentage reached 80%. Such an overwhelming percentage demonstrates the serious interference from the departments of advertisements and businesses in news reports.

¡§Strategic voting behavior¡¨ means that when there are three or more candidates competing in one certain election, voters, under rational consideration, think that their most favorite candidate has no chance of winning at all, and recognize that their voting for this candidate will cause their least favorite candidate to win; therefore, voters can only choose to vote for their second favorite candidate to avoid from their most undesirable outcome. In the 2000 presidential election, the three major contenders of Lien Chan, Chen Shui-bian, and James Soong were equally competitive, which created a context of strategic voting. This study therefore used ¡§strategic voting¡¨ as a main theme to investigate the voters¡¦ voting behavior in the 2000 presidential election. The present study analyzed data at both macro and micro levels. At the macro level, it was found that lots of KMT¡¦s votes shifted to the campaigns of either Chen Shui-bian or James Soong, which more or less demonstrated voters¡¦ low stability for partisan voting in this election, and to some degree was a result of voters¡¦ strategic voting behavior. At the micro level, it revealed that Lien Chan, who was considered the most competent, was always voters¡¦ second best choice before the election. That is, voters felt neutral towards Lien Chan, who was neither voters¡¦ most favorite candidate nor the least desired one, and additionally Lien Chan had long been the weakest in the poll, which made him the most likely to be abandoned. The result of the election also showed that among the voters who adopted the strategy of ¡§abandoning someone to save another¡¨, fewest chose to ¡§save Lien Chan.¡¨ Hence, voters did have ¡§strategic voting behavior¡¨ in the 2000 presidential election, and Lien Chan obviously claimed the highest percentage of voters¡¦ abandoned candidate.

This dissertation focuses on designing new structural election models and applying modern estimation techniques to quantify policy reform questions. All three chapters use models that are based on individual decision-making and estimate the parameters using a novel data set of U.S. House of Representative elections. These models provide new opportunities to analyze and quantify election policy reforms. The first chapter utilizes a unique compilation of primary election expenditures to see if general election voters value the primary nomination signal. While producing new results on the relationships between primary elections and general elections and between candidate characteristics and vote shares, this model allows me to show that campaign finance reform can have an unintended consequence. A limit on expenditures would have little effect on the competitiveness of elections and substantially decrease voter turnout in the U.S. House elections. In contrast, it is shown that a mandatory public funding policy is predicted to increase competitiveness and increase voter turnout. The second chapter examines why unopposed candidates spend massive amounts on their campaign. The postulated answer is that U.S. House of Representative candidates are creating a barrier to entry to discourage candidates from opposing them in the next election. This barrier reduces competition in the election and limits the voters’ choices. An unbalanced panel of congressional districts is used to quantify how an incumbent’s expenditure in previous elections impacts the probability of running unopposed in a later election. The third chapter estimates the value of a congressional seat based on the observed campaign expenditures. Campaign expenditures are modeled as bids in an asymmetric all-pay auction. The model produces predictions on how much a candidate should spend based on the partisanship leaning of each district. The predictions and observed expenditures are then used to estimate the value of a congressional seat. Along with analyzing how expenditures would change with new campaign finance reforms, this model has the capability of quantifying the effect of redistricting. After 2010 Census results become available, the majority of states will redraw their congressional districts changing the distribution of partisan votes. This model can be used to quantify the effect that the change in voter distribution has on campaign expenditures. / text

There has been much interest in assessing whether elections conform to an established standard of practice, especially in emerging democracies in the Balkans, the former Soviet Bloc, Africa, Asia, but more recently in established democracies such as the United States. Indeed, the conduct of many elections is routinely evaluated by observers from international and regional bodies and domestic and international non-governmental organisations.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-102).