This dissertation seeks to understand the distributive strategies of local politicians in India, a context in which a robust secret ballot is in place and villagers have information on the allocation of selective state benefits due to the high information context of village politics. Specifically, it seeks answers to three questions. Can local politicians in India identity voters' partisan preferences, which is a critical assumption of theory on clientelism in comparative politics? Does a context in which citizens have a great deal of information on the beneficiaries of programs implemented by local governments and villagers and politicians are personally tied to one another pose constraints on targeting strategies relative to work on clientelism, elite capture, and citizen candidate models that predict co ethnic targeting preferences? And do voters perceive that co partisanship vis a vis sarpanch affects their access to selective state benefits and services? To address these questions, I draw on a unique original survey of village council presidents (sarpanch) and citizens across 96 village council areas (gram panchayats) in Rajasthan, India. First, I argue that under a secret ballot, which voters overwhelmingly believe to protect the anonymity of their votes, the clientelistic logic that supports quid pro quo distributive politics does not hold. This has powerful implications for the role we should understand local leaders (who perform brokerage functions) to serve and whom we should expect sarpanch to target with antipoverty benefits implemented through the gram panchayat. I argue that if local politicians cannot identify the partisan preferences of uncertain voters, we should expect local politicians to target benefits in order to maintain their political constituencies, rather than pursuing a vote buying strategy to attract new supporters through a quid pro quo strategy. Second, I argue that the social and political context of the gram panchayat severely constrains sarpanch targeting behavior. In a context in which sarpanch and voters know each other and the latter can directly (or by rumor) observe who received visible and coveted selective benefits, and in which sarpanch and their kin are very likely to live in their village permanently, there is a powerful social cost to providing benefits to the non poor. At the same time, citizens accept that local elections have consequences, which means that some favoritism toward supporters, but not kinship or ethnic lines, is tolerated as long as the pro poor targeting norm is heeded. Finally, I check the validity of my argument on sarpanch distributive strategies by testing for the effect of co partisanship on voters' expectations of receiving selective benefits using a vignette experiment. I randomize partisan cues (Congress or BJP) based on prominent politicians identified by respondents themselves and find support for the claim that partisanship broadly affects access to state benefits. Empirically, I draw on a unique survey of sarpanch and voters across rural Rajasthan. The survey includes two behavioral measures that cross-reference voters within sarpanch surveys. I ask sarpanch to guess sampled voters' partisan preferences and ask them to allocate tokens across these individuals to affect a lottery with a cash prize. I also embed a survey experiment within the voter survey.

Se pencher sur « les élections que fait le peuple » dans la République de Genève revient à se fixer un double objectif. Il s’agit d’une part d’éclairer un des points obscurs de l’historiographie genevoise pendant les quelques trente dernières années du « long sommeil » du Conseil général, avant la crise de 1707 ; d’autre part d’approfondir des questionnements plus généraux concernant l’histoire du vote et de la procédure électorale sous l’Ancien Régime à partir du terrain genevois, qui est de ce point de vue d’une richesse exceptionnelle. Ces deux approches permettront de réinterroger le concept de formalité, qui a été souvent utilisé à propos de ces élections, en faisant varier les échelles et les points de vue.Sans occuper une place centrale dans le système constitutionnel genevois ni dans l’accession aux charges, les élections populaires gardent une importance autant théorique que pratique à Genève (1ère partie, à quoi sert-il d’élire ?). Si la légitimité vient d’ailleurs, que ce soit dans la théorie gouvernementale qui conçoit le pouvoir comme le patrimoine de certaines familles, ou dans l’opposition bourgeoise en 1707, qui veut avant tout restaurer l’exercice direct de la souveraineté par le Conseil général (vote des lois, de l’impôt etc.), et n’envisage à aucun moment un système représentatif, l’élection populaire crée néanmoins un lien particulier entre certains magistrats et le peuple (Ch.1). Si les résultats sont souvent prévisibles, ils ne le sont pas totalement et des enjeux demeurent si l’on y regarde d’assez près : le jeu est plus ouvert quand un poste de syndic est vacant et, si les syndics sortants sont toujours reconduits sur notre période, il est arrivé plusieurs fois que les citoyens menacent de « faire sauter les vieux » (Ch.2). Les multiples précautions qui sont adoptées dans la manière d’élire montrent aussi que ces élections populaires demeurent importantes, d’une façon d’ailleurs différente pour le gouvernement et pour les citoyens (2ième partie, comment élire ?). Malgré l’ordre aristocratique qu’affirment les préséances, la fiction de la souveraineté théorique du peuple doit être préservée par le rituel électoral (Ch.3). Si l’organisation spatiale du vote et la technique du vote auriculaire mettent les électeurs sous pression, les citoyens s’insurgent finalement contre ce système et obtiennent le vote par billet et l’isoloir, grande nouveauté dans l’Europe d’alors (Ch.4). Certains citoyens s’impliquent enfin d’une manière quelque peu particulière dans l’élection à travers les brigues, qui sont pour les brigueurs comme pour les brigués un grand moment de sociabilité, dont nous pouvons découvrir les différents acteurs grâce aux sources exceptionnelles que constituent les dossiers d’enquête des procès pour brigue (Ch.5). / By leaning on « The elections the people does » in the Republic of Geneva, we have set to reach two objectives. On the one hand, we wanted to shed light on a subject which has been largely overlooked by the scholarly literature concerning the 30 last years of the “long sleep” of the General Council. On the other hand, we wanted to raise larger questions about the history of voting and electoral proceedings in the Ancien Regime through the exceptionally well-documented case of Geneva. In crossing these two approaches, we will reinterrogate the concept of formality, which has often been used about these elections, and use various scales of analysis and points of view. Even if popular elections do not play a central role in the constitutional system or in the accession to offices, they still have a theoretical and practical importance in Geneva (1st part. What is the use of elections?).Though legitimacy lies elsewhere, both in governmental theory which considers power as the patrimony of certain families, and for the citizens in the opposition party in 1707 who want to restore the sovereignty of the General Council through the direct exercise of its powers (the vote of laws, of new taxes etc.) and never envision a representative system, popular elections still create a particular link between some magistrates and the people (Ch.1). Though the outcome of these elections is often highly predictable, it is not always so and we see that there are stakes if we look close enough: the game is more open when one of the seats for the syndicate is vacant and, though the incumbent syndics are always reelected during our period, citizens have threatened several times that they would “skip the old ones” (Ch.2). The multiple precautions adopted in the manner of electing also show that these popular elections matter, and in a different way for the government and for citizens(2d part. How to elect?). Despite the aristocratic hierarchy maintained by the order of precedence, the electoral ritual must preserve the theoretical sovereignty of the people (Ch.3). Though the spatial organization of the vote and the practice of the auricular vote put citizens under pressure, they finally rise against this system and obtain the vote by ballot and the voting booth, a great novelty in Europe at the time (Ch.4). Finally, some citizens are involved in the election in a quite peculiar way, by taking part in electoral cabals, which are a great social occasion both for cabal leaders and for bribed voters, and which we can discover in great details thanks to exceptional primary sources such as the investigation files in the trials for caballing (Ch.5).

Voting is a fundamental decision making instrument in any consensus-based society. It is employed in various applications from student body elections, reality television shows, shareholder meetings, to national elections. With the motivation of better eciency, scalability, speed, and lower cost, voting is currently shifting from paper-based to the use of electronic medium. This is while aiming to achieve better security, such that voting result reflects true opinions of the voters. Our research focuses on the study of cryptographic voting protocols accommodating a flexible ballot structure as a foundation for building a secure electronic voting system with acceptable voting results. In particular, we search for a solution suitable for the preferential voting system employed in the Australian Federal Election. The outcomes of the research include: improvements and applications of batch proof and verication theorems and techniques, a proposed alternative homomorphic encryption based voting scheme, a proposed Extended Binary Mixing Gate (EBMG) mix-network scheme, a new threshold randomisation technique to achieve receipt-freeness property in voting, and the application of cryptographic voting protocol for preferential voting. The threats and corresponding requirements for a secure secret-ballot voting scheme are rst discussed. There are significant security concerns about the conduct of electronic voting, and it is essential that the voting results re ect the true opinions of the voters - especially in political elections. We examine and extend batch processing proofs and verifications theorems and proposed applications of the theorems useful for voting. Many instances of similar operations can be processed in a single instance using a batch technique based on one of the batch theorems. As the proofs and verications provide formal assurances that the voting process is secure, batch processing offers great efficiency improvements while retaining the security required in a real-world implementation of the protocol. The two main approaches in cryptographic voting protocols, homomorphic encryption based voting and mix-network based voting, are both studied in this research. An alternative homomorphic voting scheme using multiplicative homomorphism property, and a number of novel mix-network schemes are proposed. It is shown that compared to the mix-network approach, homomorphic encryption schemes are not scalable for straight-forward adaptation of preferential systems. One important requirement of secret-ballot voting is receipt-freeness. A randomisation technique to achieve receipt-freeness in voting is examined and applied in an ecient and practical voting scheme employing an optimistic mix-network. A more general technique using threshold randomisation is also proposed. Combination of the primitives, both the homomorphic encryption and mixnetwork approach, yields a hybrid approach producing a secure and ecient secret-ballot voting scheme accommodating a exible ballot structure. The resulting solution oers a promising foundation for secure and practical secret-ballot electronic voting accommodating any type of counting system.

South Africa has been experiencing a number of violent strikes by trade unions in recent times. The issue is not only to hold unions liable for damage caused during strikes, but also to reduce the number of violent strikes. This study investigates if victims of such violence can hold trade unions liable for the violent acts committed by their members during industrial action. The Labour Relations Act, 66 of 1995 (LRA) makes provision for the dismissal of employees who commit misconduct during an unprotected strike. It also provides the remedy of an interdict and a claim for just and equitable compensation which can be made against the union, during an unprotected strike. It is further possible to hold the union together with its members liable for damages in terms of the Regulation of Gatherings Act, 205 of 1993 (RGA). The study argues that a strike or conduct in furtherance of a strike that becomes violent could lose protection and the trade union should consequently be held liable, in terms of the LRA and/ or the RGA, for damages caused by its members. This study investigates the position in Canada, Botswana and Australia to determine if there could be any other basis upon which to hold trade union liable for the conduct of its members. The study recommends that the common law doctrine of vicarious liability should be developed by the courts to allow trade unions to be held liable for damages caused by members during violent industrial action. Policy considerations and changing economic conditions and the nature of strikes in the Republic favours the expansion of the doctrine of vicarious liability to trade union member relationship. / Mercantile Law / LL. D.