Shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, Saturday Night Live, and even South Park represent an underresearched subfield of discourse about political communication and persuasion. These shows manage to reach audiences not traditionally known for high levels of political engagement and draw them in with their comedic framework. This thesis investigates the impact of televised political satire on public perceptions of presidential candidates and campaign issues and the direct result these impacts may have on presidential elections. This thesis first gives some background in the types of communication and personalities of the front-men and women of these shows and then moves into a historical account of how the exigence for this recent explicit hybridization between comedy and news emerged. It then analyzes how these comedians view their own role within media and politics. It provides a thick account of the liberalizing force televised political satire has been for the American political climate so far, and where it will likely lead us in the near future with the growth of new communication technologies.

Abstract The study aims to understand the policy development of elderly welfare subsidy. This issue was firstly proposed at end of 1991 during the election of Parliament Representatives. After 10 years development, by conducting propaganda, publishing reports and sharing experiences with local governments, the Legislative Yuan has finally established the Temporary Provision of Elderly Welfare Subsidy in May 2002 and the act is then legalized and nationalized. The related amendment has been continuing till today. Since 1991 the researcher has started the long and coherent observation; in between the history and literature analysis were applied in order to collect relevant documents. After ascertaining its historical periods and generalization, the esearch concluded that there¡¦s significant correlation between this policy development and the democratic election. As a result, simple democratic mold is taken as the theoretic foundation and the framework is then built up. The study result shows that the election plays an important role for the formation and development of elderly welfare subsidy. The mplementation guarantees certain economic safety for the silver citizens but some ¡§free-cost¡¨ measure did cause some fair and financial burden to the authority. It also gives a cognitive bias against social welfare. Yet the increasing silver citizens may cause financial burden to the government, the distribution of social welfare should then be well considered. A complete system of national pension has to be set up soon.

ABSTRACT The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the differences of the political advertising strategy in television commercials among three major candidates in the Year 2000 Presidential Election in Taiwan, including the video-style and relevance between the electoral adverting strategy and the performance. After analyzing the video-style of the three major candidates, firstly, I found they centered on projecting candidates¡¦ their own image. Secondly, they attacked the opponents¡¦ personal feature. My analysis concludes that the political advertising strategy in the Year 2000 Presidential Election in Taiwan can called ¡§compared strategy¡¨. Bian-camps consolidate his strength and supply his weakness with his TV. commercials. Soong-camps were directed to project his image; Lien-camps had no the consistency between the political advertising strategy and the spot. Last but not least, there is no conclusion for the proper amount of ads in campaign. Statistically speaking, in recent years, the mainstream idea for the content of the advertisements in U. S. is more issue-oriented, whereas the major idea in Taiwan is image projection. On the other hand, in Taiwan, the lengths of ads are getting shorter and shorter and the manipulations of the party symbols are as popular as it was in the past.

This research explores whether ¡§party identification, candidate orientation, ethnic identification and issue orientation,¡¨ the four intermediate variables of election, are correlated to the results of Taipei mayor elections in 2002 and 2006. The data in this research are mainly based on the interview broadly carried out to collect facts for ¡§the study on democratization through election¡¨ executed by Professors Huang Chi and Huang Siu-Twen in 2002 and 2005. It is with these data that this research compares the voting behavior of the voters in the two mayor elections in an attempt to find out the deviation of election for further studies. Each individual voter has of his own a variety of social backgrounds which inevitably form to some extent a connection with each of the four intermediate variables. In examination of the connection just mentioned, it is obvious that of all the voter¡¦s backgrounds the place of birth is probably the most potential and influential, and has a significant connection with each of the four factors. However, an evaluation of the connection between the voting preference and the four factors indicates that the four factors are apparently convincing in justification of the results of the second Taipei mayor election in 2006. In addition, a detailed analysis of the connections between voter¡¦s social backgrounds and his voting preference shows that the voter¡¦s place of birth plays an important role in making his voting preference. Other social backgrounds except the voter¡¦s educational level are slightly related to the voting preference in the Taipei mayor election in 2006. Based on the analysis mentioned above, it is understood that there are many variables which will influence the voting preference. Of all the intermediate variables, however, the four factors of party identification candidate orientation ethnic identification and issue orientation are perhaps most crucial and decisive. By means of the analysis and evaluation of the four factors functioning in the recent elections, it is discovered that the people here in Taiwan are relatively better educated and have made a tremendous progress in democracy. It seems that Taiwan has already developed into a nation of two-party politics.

In this paper we discuss the electoral behavior of the 7th Legislator Election in single-member districts. The system impacted the election essentially. According to Median Voter Theorem by Anthony Downs, the candidates become imperious to look for support from the median voters rather than the partisans. And the candidates manipulate the elections with moderate campaign strategies. Base on Downs¡¦ theory, in this paper we extended the analysis by considering conditions such as the properties of electoral districts and candidates¡¦ status to clarify the electoral behavior in the election.

<p>Participation in Nigerian elections is an interesting issue. This study is aimed at comparing the 1999 elections with 2003 elections. There is more participation in elections, organized by the Civilian government than that of the Military government. Nigerians feel freer and secure to participate in elections organized and conducted by the civilian government be-cause it is more democratic than the military government.</p><p>The part identification model, and a sociological approach were tested in relation to Nige-rian elections. The Sociological approach influences voter’s decision during elections. Democratic government in Nigeria has much to do for it to be consolidated. The issues of Political Rights and Civil Liberty have to be properly addressed</p>

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate how non-profit engagement influence voting in school election, but also how the school has influenced the pupils to vote and if there are any differences between a big and a small town.</p><p>The methods which have been used for this study are quantitative and qualitative, both questionnaires and interviews. To be able to see differences between a big and a small town the study was carried out in one school from each category of town.</p><p>By examine the empirical material and analyse it with theories which are used for this study we have come to the conclusion that there are no obvious differences between pupils in the big town and the small town. Pupils in both schools were pretty engaged in associations, though had the pupils from the small town some higher level of engagement. Moreover, both schools had a high participation for the election. The result of the study showed that there were no noticeable tendencies on if the pupils choose to vote depending on engagement in associations.</p><p>Furthermore, both schools were very engaged in the school election indeed. The small town school did not give a connection between the school’s engagement and the pupils’ willingness to vote. However the big town school had a greater connection between the school’s engagement and the pupils’ willingness to vote.</p>

Theol. seminary, Diss.--Princeton, 2002. / Includes indexes.

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

My dissertation contains three chapters studying the strategic allocation of resources in political environments. Chapter 2 asks if redistricting is the result of partisan gerrymandering or apolitical considerations. I develop a statistical test for partisan gerrymandering and apply it to the U.S. Congressional districting plan chosen by the Republican legislature in Pennsylvania in 2001. First, I formally model the optimization problem faced by a strategic Republican redistricter and characterize the theoretically optimal solution. I then estimate the likelihood a district is represented by a Republican, conditional on district demographics. This estimate allows me to determine the value of the gerrymanderer's objective function under any districting plan. Next, I use a geographic representation of the state to randomly generate a sample of legally valid plans. Finally, I calculate the estimated value of a strategic Republican redistricter's objective function under each of the sample plans and under the actual plan chosen by Republicans. When controlling for incumbency the formal test shows that the Republicans' plan was a partisan gerrymander. In Chapter 3 I introduce a new and novel electoral reform that continues to allow redistricting but changes the incentives to do so. This reform ensures that parties earn seats proportional to their performance at the polls without substantially changing the electoral system in the U.S. In order to evaluate the reform's impacts, I model and solve a game that incorporates the redistricting decision, candidate choice, state legislative elections, and policy choice. Unsurprisingly, strategic redistricting biases policy in favor of the redistricting party. In the environments studied, the new reform never increases policy bias, and often reduces it. Political campaigns often require the strategic allocation of resources across multiple contests. In Chapter 4 I analyze these environments in terms of the canonical Colonel Blotto game, beginning with the most basic of Blotto games: Two officers simultaneously allocate their forces across two fields of battle. The larger force on each front wins that battle, and the payoff is the sum of the values of the battles won. I completely characterize the set of Nash equilibria to any such game and provide the unique equilibrium payoffs. This characterization comes from an intuitive graphical algorithm which I then apply to several generalizations of the game. I completely characterize the set of equilibria and provide the unique equilibrium payoffs to Blotto games with battlefield values that vary across players and games with general resource constraints. I also use my approach to solve the Blotto games on more than two battlefields with asymmetric battlefields and force endowments. / text