abstract: This dissertation seeks to show that the fate of emerging democracies is largely dependent upon the strategic behaviors of political militaries and their coup potential. Given the known issue of democratization's temporarily destabilizing effects, it first examines if such effects makes states vulnerable to coups. It finds clear evidence on democratization's destabilizing effects on coup risk. Such evidence is used to shed new light on the literature about the armed forces and coups in emerging democracies. To explain variation in the military's responses to democratization and consolidation against coup threats, it argues that how the armed forces were organized and controlled during the authoritarian periods influences whether emerging democracies are able to consolidate against coup risk. Second, it explores the declining coup risk and the trilateral relationship between Western democracy promotion, coup risk, and election violence in recently emerging electoral regimes, the so-called "illiberal democracies." It argues that vulnerability to Western leverage, coupled with an emphasis on multiparty elections, creates a political moral hazard problem for incumbents, permitting them to commit electoral violence during the emergence of mass electoral politics. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Political Science 2015

El comportamiento electoral es un tema de estudio bastante complejo dentro de las ciencias sociales y específicamente dentro de la ciencia política, pues llega a tomar en consideración no solo elementos políticos sino también sociológicos y psicológicos. La mezcla e interacción de factores que tienen lugar dentro del proceso de decisión electoral es lo que complejiza su estudio. Este artículo tiene por intención dar acercamientos a la comprensión del compor- tamiento electoral en el Perú a partir del análisis de las elecciones presidenciales en primera vuelta de 2006 y 2011. Buscamos la propuesta de un modelo que considere los elementos más importantes dentro del estudio del comportamiento electoral, a partir de lo que se ha estudiado y analizado sobre dicho tema desde las ciencias sociales. La identificación de los elementos clave a tener en cuenta nos permitirá un análisis más detallado y desagregado del comportamiento electoral. El artículo busca estudiar el efecto de un primer elemento del modelo propuesto: la influencia de las variables sociodemográficas y socioeconómicas en el comportamiento electoral de los votantes.

L’intervention du pouvoir judiciaire, pour arbitrer un scrutin en dernier recours, pose certains problèmes de déroulement dans la démocratie représentative, voire un paradoxe : le principe de la représentation démocratique par vote direct des citoyens peut être mis en cause par l’interprétation judiciaire de l’expression des voix. En même temps, l’intervention du judiciaire comme pouvoir indépendant constitue une garantie d’impartialité sur les résolutions politiques cherchant à renforcer la confiance des principaux acteurs sociaux et politiques sur l’administration électorale. D’autre part, le problème de la rationalité du politique versus la rationalité juridique reste confronté en permanence en cas de processus électoraux conflictuels. Celles-ci s’avèrent des approches indispensables bien que pratiquement antagoniques, du fait qu’elles poursuivent des intérêts proches, mais en soit très distincts. / The intervention of the judiciary power to solve a ballot in last resort, arise several problems concerning the progress of the representative democracy, and even a paradox: the principle of the democratic representation by an indirect vote of the citizens can be put forward by the judiciary interpretation on the meaning of the ballot's votes. At the same time, the intervention of the judiciary as an independent power constitutes a guarantee of impartiality for the political resolutions, seeking to reinforce the trust of the main social and political protagonists about the electoral administration. We are also faced with the problem of the political rationality versus the legal rationality, constantly put forward during electoral conflict contemporary processes as essential protagonists but nearly antagonistic ones, by the fact that they pursue close but distinct interests.

In what can rightly be said to be one of the most dramatic geopolitical shifts in modern times, the collapse of communist regimes in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union brought about dramatic changes in the entire region. As a consequence, wide ranging political, economic, and social transformations have occurred in almost all of these countries since 1989. The Slovak Republic, as a newly democratic country, went through the establishment of the electoral and party systems that are the central mechanisms to the formation of almost all modern democratic governments. The primary research purpose of this dissertation was to describe and explain regional variations in party support during Slovakia’s ten years of democratic transformation. A secondary purpose was to relate these spatial variations to the evolution of political parties in the post-independence period in light of the literature on transitional electoral systems. Research questions were analyzed using both aggregate and survey data. Specifically, the study utilized electoral data from 1994, 1998, and 2002 Slovak parliamentary elections and socio-economic data of the population within Slovak regions which were eventually correlated with the voting results by party in the 79 Slovak districts. The results of this study demonstrate that there is a tendency among voters in certain regions to provide continuous support to the same political parties/movements over time. In addition, the socio-economic characteristics of the Slovak population (gender, age, education, religion, nationality, unemployment, work force distribution, wages, urban-rural variable, and population density) in different regions tend to influence voting preferences in the parliamentary elections. Finally, there is an evident correlation between party preference and the party’s position on integration into European Union, as measured by perceived attitudes regarding the benefits of EU membership.

Cette thèse vise à améliorer notre compréhension de deux phénomènes importants dans les démocraties contemporaines: l'inégale représentation électorale de la population et la montée du populisme. Pour ce faire, elle explore empiriquement plusieurs expériences naturelles dans différents pays et contextes.Le premier chapitre explore l'impact de l'élection d'un politicien dynastique sur les politiques publiques. Il montre que les politiciens dynastiques ont des caractéristiques différentes des autres politiciens, et qu’ils gèrent leur budget de façon plus opportuniste.Le deuxième chapitre met l'accent sur les discriminations de genre dues aux électeurs, en exploitant une expérience naturelle lors des élections départementales françaises de 2015, lors desquelles les candidats ont dû se présenter par binômes paritaires. En utilisant le fait que l'ordre d'apparition est déterminé de façon quasi-aléatoire, il montre que les bulletins de droite où la candidate était inscrite en premier ont reçu moins de voix et ont eu moins de chance d’accéder au second tour. Cette discrimination est essentiellement due aux bulletins sur lesquels aucune information n'est indiquée, ce qui suggère qu’elle est de nature statistique.Le troisième chapitre étudie le lien entre les flux d'immigration et la montée du populisme. En utilisant comme expérience naturelle le démantèlement du camp de migrants de Calais en France entre octobre 2015 et octobre 2016, il montre que les municipalités qui ont accueilli un petit nombre de migrants de façon temporaire suite à cet évènement ont eu un taux de croissance du vote Front National plus faible entre les élections présidentielles de 2012 et 2017. / This dissertation aims at improving our understanding of two important phenomena in contemporary democracies: imbalanced electoral representation and the rise of populism. To do so, it explores empirically several natural experiments in different countries and settings.The first chapter explores the consequences of electing a dynastic politician on subsequent public policies. It shows that dynastic politicians have different characteristics compared to other politicians and that they manage their budget in a more opportunistic way.The second chapter focuses on gender-discrimination from voters in politics, by exploiting a natural experiment in the French départementales elections of 2015, where candidates had to run by gender-balanced pairs. Using the fact that the order of appearance of candidates on the ballot is as-good-as-random, it shows that right-wing ballots where the female candidate was listed first received lower shares of votes and were less likely to make it to the second round. This discrimination is driven by ballots on which no information is reported, which suggests that it is statistical.The third chapter studies the link between migration inflows and the rise of populism. Using as a natural experiment the dismantling of the Calais migrant camp in France between October 2015 and October 2016, it shows that municipalities which temporarily received a small amount of migrants following this event had a lower growth rate of Front National vote between the presidential elections of 2012 and 2017.

Expositorioes: Elena Conterno (Presidenta de IPAE) / Carlos Adrianzén (Decano de la Facultad de Economía) / Omar Awapara (Director de la Carrera de Ciencias Políticas) / Lucas Ghersi (Abogado Constitucionalista) / Análisis de los resultados electorales desde una perspectiva económica y política

Many scholars have noted the increasingly widespread combination of politically-relevant information and entertaining or sensational media formats and presentational styles over the past several decades, falling broadly under the umbrella term of ‘infotainment.’ However, in spite of this burgeoning infotainment literature very little research has been done on the nature and dynamics of infotainment within the Canadian context. This is especially true of research on infotainment within Canada’s traditional news media outlets. To being filling this gap, this study undertakes a mixed-methods content analysis of Canadian newspapers’ coverage of the 2019 federal election to evaluate the scope and nature of infotainment therein. Building off of a systematic review and mapping of the existing infotainment literature, this study develops a comprehensive conceptual and analytical framework for defining and evaluating infotainment characteristics within ‘hard news’ coverage. The quantitative and qualitative results are outlined in detail before being evaluated for their potential implications on citizens’ information processing and political knowledge, as well as some broader evaluations of potential implications for Canadian politics. These ethico-political considerations are developed by drawing on insights from a number of literatures, including political psychology and decision-making, strategic voting, and broader media and infotainment research.

In 2002, the North Carolina General Assembly made several changes to the system of popular elections for the state\'s appellate courts, including the removal of partisan labels from the ballot, starting with the 2004 elections. This particular change presents an opportunity for a natural experiment in which to observe any differences that may have appeared between how the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled before and after the reform, contributing to a line of literature on the impact of institutional arrangements (including selection systems) on judicial decision-making. The thesis examines whether any detectable differences appeared between judicial behavior and the decisional output of the North Carolina Supreme Court in its partisan era (1995-2004) and in its nonpartisan era (2005-2011). Based on analysis of several different characteristics of the Court\'s decisions and individual justices\' votes in these eras, I find no evidence to suggest that the nonpartisan system was associated with justices behaving in more "nonpartisan" ways. If there was any change, it was that during the nonpartisan era, the behavior of the justices was more in line with what would be expected of partisans than it had been in the partisan era. At least in North Carolina, changing the selection method of state supreme court justices from partisan to nonpartisan elections was not followed by less partisan behavior. / Master of Arts

The British Labour Party has spent eighteen years in opposition since 1979. During that time it lost four consecutive general elections to the Conservative Party. In 1997, however, it now looks set to win its first election since 1974. This thesis examines the Labour Party in opposition since 1979, using a theoretical framework informed by Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. Based on a dialectical notion of the structure and agency linkage, a two-tiered framework is constructed which at one level views a political party as consisting of a set of structures which can constrain and enable party leaders in their attempts to make the party electorally successful, and at another level the party is regarded as a collective agent in its own right, which in turn is subject to the effects of larger external structures. By comparing the strategies adopted by the Labour Party and its leaders since 1979, the thesis demonstrates that the apparent recovery in the Party's electoral fortunes has corresponded with an increase in the ability of agents to successfully negotiate structural constraints, whilst taking advantage of enabling structures. However, it is also clear that the transformation of Labour into an electorally viable party in 1997 is not solely the product of agency in the period since the last election; rather, it is the culmination of a longer-term process of party change. / Master of Arts

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