This thesis Nonpluralistic political systems: the case of czech municipalities target problematic and occurrence of nonpluralistic political systems. Nonpluralistic political systems is little researched phenomenon and It cannot be reflected by any researche focusing mainly on this issue. Autors focusing on local politic in western systems don't deal with given problematic. My research in this work focuses on proving existence and relevance of nonpluralistic political systems on a case of czech municipalities. Research is not done on the whole Czech Republic, but only on sample of five czech districts, choosen according to municipal structure, demographic characteristic and socio-economic characteristic. Second part of my research focuses on analysis of participants of those systems, on nature of their candidacy and also on the fact, if participants of pluralistic and nonpluralistic systems are any different.

This diploma thesis deals with election campaigns in small municipalities in the context of the Czech Republic, respectively nine municipalities of Microregion of Jemnice, which were selected as a research sample. The work focuses mainly on the analysis of whether election campaigns in these municipalities can be met at all, or what form and character of they have. The subject of the research is also the question if we can meet a certain form of election campaign in those small municipalities where there are disputes about the development of the municipality. This qualitative case study mainly uses the deductive methodological approach, where the basic theoretical approaches and concepts of the researched issue are introduced, from which the specific goals related to the research of campaigns in the Czech municipal environment are proceeded. The analytical part of the thesis is based on an inquiry in selected municipalities of the mentioned microregion, where the semi-structured interviews with successful and unsuccessful candidates from the municipal elections last year, ie. 2018, were used primarily for data collection, analysis of public and virtual documents, community websites or newspaper and municipal newsletters, was used as well. The final part of the thesis then summarizes the partial...

This thesis deals with the possibilities of changing the electoral system to Czech municipal councils. It is an analytical case study with elements of a policy paper, i.e., a set of recommendations intended especially for legislators. The thesis has two main goals: (1) to identify and summarize aspects of the electoral system that experts call controversial and (2) to suggest possible solutions that would mitigate or eliminate these controversial variables. The work comes with three alternative solutions for changing the electoral system: (A) minor modifications to the existing system, which will facilitate the possibility of election because of preferential votes, and at the same time prevent local governments from performing electoral engineering by purposeful modifications of constituencies; (B) a variably mixed fusion system identical for all municipalities and (C) combination of two systems: unlimited vote for municipalities with less than 2,000 inhabitants and an open PR system for larger municipalities.

Diploma thesis sets itself a task to evaluate the using of voting right by foreign nationals in local elections in the Czech Republic. The thesis shows the approach of other member states of European Union to the voting right of foreign nationals in local elections, the legislative framework and the legal position of foreign nationals in the Czech Republic. The centre point of the thesis lies in the real experience of the foreign nationals and mayors or workers of municipal authorities with voting right in the local elections. Information gained during the research allows to study the practice of voting right. During the research there were discovered reasons why the foreign nationals participate or not in local elections. There were explained opinions of foreign nationals about the quality of information of their possibility to participate in local elections and about the conditions of voting right declared by state. Opinions and ideas of foreign nationals are compared with the opinions and experience of mayors or workers of municipal authorities and state institutions.

This study has looked at how the diversity of representatives’ backgrounds changed after the introduction of the Binominal parity vote in the French local elections. The aim was to contribute to our understanding of the impact of gender quotas in other dimensions than gender. Another aim was to explore the workings of the Binominal parity vote, which has a unique design and obligates candidates to run as pairs, constituting of one man and one woman. The diversity of each local council in 2011 and 2015 was measured with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). By looking at the changes in HHI, the study has shown that the diversity of representatives and candidates has increased in terms of age and profession, but decreased in terms of party representation. The exact workings of the mechanisms behind the changes have not been established, but some preliminary conclusions have been made. The relationship between the gender quota’s effectiveness and the change in diversity is strong, but statistically insignificant. Societal gender differences cannot be the sole driver of the changes, as the diversity increased among both women and men. If the increased district magnitude from one to two contributed to the increase in diversity, it was not through the strategic matching of representatives, as they are shown to be almost randomly matched.

The master's thesis deals with local elections in the Czech Republic from the point of view of electoral engineering. Theoretical part of the thesis is focused on the elections, electoral systems and variables of electoral systems. The main variables are electoral district magnitude, electoral formula, legal threshold and the number and character of tier districting. The thesis then describes issue of gerrymandering and malapportionment from the theoretical perspective. The next part of the thesis deals with legislative framework of the local government elections from 1989 including rules and problematic characteristics of current electoral law for electing members of municipality. Empirical part of the thesis analyses local elections in the Czech Republic and results of the elections between 1994 and 2014. In the last chapter, division of the territory into electoral districts is assessed with an emphasis on principle of equal weight of votes and degree of proportionality. Comparison was carried out by using two indices of proportionality, Loosemore and Hanby index and D'Hondt index.

States merge local governments to achieve economies of scale. Little is known to which extent mergers of county-sized local governments reduce expenditures, and influence political outcomes. I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of large local governments in Germany (districts) on public expenditures. In 2008, the German state of Saxony reduced the number of districts from 22 to 10. Average district population increased substantially from 113,000 to 290,000 inhabitants. I construct a synthetic counterfactual from states that did not merge districts for years. The results do neither show reductions in total expenditures, nor in expenditures for administration, education, and social care. There seems to be no scale effects in jurisdictions of more than 100,000 inhabitants. By contrast, I find evidence that mergers decreased the number of candidates and voter turnout in district elections while vote shares for populist right-wing parties increased.

This dissertation analyzes several topics related to political life in ethnically divided societies. In chapter 2, I study the relationship between ethnic social conflict, such as protests, riots, and armed inter-ethnic violence, and bloc partisan identification. I find that protests have no effect on bloc support for political parties, riots increase bloc partisan identification, and that armed violence reduces this phenomenon. In chapter 3, I analyze the factors that influence the targeting of ethnic groups by ethnic parties in social conflict. I find some empirical evidence that conditions favorable to vote pooling across ethnic lines reduce group targeting by ethnic parties. In chapter 4, I analyze the effects of ethnic demography on ethnic party behavior. Through a qualitative analysis of party behavior in local elections in Macedonia, I find that ethnic parties change their strategies in response to changes in ethnic demography. I find that co-ethnic parties are less likely to challenge each other for power under conditions of split demography. In fact, under conditions of split demography, I find that co-ethnic parties have political incentives to unite behind a single party because intra-group competition jeopardizes the group's hold on power.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Iuri Pitta - PDF Final 2.pdf: 1480195 bytes, checksum: e120301e40e33e8fa3ae8d04f2f8c55d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-06-22 / O Programa Bolsa Família (PBF) tornou-se uma das políticas públicas mais estudadas e debatidas no Brasil tanto por seus resultados como carro-chefe da rede de proteção social quanto pelos efeitos políticos a ele atribuídos. Criado por Medida Provisória em outubro de 2003, o Programa tem um desenho institucional singular que envolve uma dinâmica de relações intergovernamentais mais complexa do que a dicotomia centralização versus descentralização, fruto da própria trajetória dos programas de transferência de renda condicionada no país. Ainda que as principais decisões e regulações se concentrem no nível federal, o Bolsa Família prevê aos governos locais papel determinante na gestão dessa política pública. Ademais, a instituição do Índice de Gestão Descentralizada fez surgir um importante instrumento de indução para o bom funcionamento do Programa, reduzindo eventuais práticas clientelísticas ou discricionárias na execução dessa política pública. Nesse contexto federativo e institucional, nosso intuito com esta pesquisa é mostrar como a qualidade da gestão local do Bolsa Família afeta os efeitos do Programa nas eleições municipais, e dessa forma suprir uma lacuna existente na literatura, cuja produção deu maior atenção às disputas presidenciais. Com base em dados relativos aos mandatos entre 2009 e 2012 e à votação ocorrida neste ano e tendo como lentes teóricas o neoinstitucionalismo e a escolha racional na arena político-eleitoral, desenhamos uma pesquisa de métodos mistos, estratégia metodológica que vem ganhando espaço nos campos da ciência política e da administração pública, para investigar as associações entre o desempenho da gestão local do PBF e o sucesso eleitoral dos incumbentes municipais. Diferentemente do observado nas disputas presidenciais, em que candidatos incumbentes tendem a uma melhor performance eleitoral conforme aumenta o número de beneficiados pelo programa de transferência de renda, no nível local esse incremento apresentou efeito negativo. Em contrapartida, a melhoria na qualidade da gestão foi um fator de elevação das chances de sucesso eleitoral dos prefeitos que buscaram um segundo mandato nas eleições municipais de 2012, indicativo de que o Programa Bolsa Família tem sido bem-sucedido também em seu desenho institucional. / Bolsa Família Program has become one of the most studied and debated public policies in Brazil both for its results as the flagship of the social protection network and for the political effects attributed to it. Created by Provisional Measure in October 2003, the Program has a unique institutional design that involves a dynamic of intergovernmental relations more complex than the dichotomy centralization versus decentralization, a consequence of the trajectory of the conditioned income transfer programs in the country. Although the main decisions and regulations are focused at the federal level, Bolsa Familia provides local governments with a decisive role in the management of this public policy. In addition, the institution of the Decentralized Management Index (Índice de Gestão Descentralizada) has created an important induction tool for the proper functioning of the Program, reducing possible clientelist or discretionary practices in the execution of this public policy. In this federative and institutional context, our intention with this research is to show how the quality of the local management of Bolsa Família affects the effects of the Program in municipal elections, and fill a gap in the literature, whose production has given greater attention to presidential elections. Based on data related to the period between 2009 and 2012 and by the theoretical lenses of new institutionalism and rational choice in the politicalelectoral arena, we designed a mixed methods research to investigate the associations between the performance of local management of the Program and the electoral success of municipal incumbents. This is a methodological strategy that has been gaining ground in the fields of political science and public administration. Unlike the presidential elections, in which incumbent candidates tend to perform better as the number of beneficiaries of the income transfer program increases, at the local level such increase had a negative effect. On the other hand, the improvement in the quality of the management was a factor of improvement of the chances of electoral success of mayors who sought a second term in the municipal elections of 2012, an indicative that Bolsa Família Program has also been successful in its institutional design.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 1901, three German American candidates ran for the office of mayor in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The winner, Henry Berghoff, had emigrated from Germany as a teenager. This thesis examines the election discourse in the partisan press for signs of ethnic tension. The first chapter places Fort Wayne in historical context of German immigration and Indiana history. The second and third chapters investigate the editorial pages for evidence of ethnic tension. I also reference a few articles of an editorial nature outside of the editorial pages. The second chapter provides background information about the election and examines indications of the candidates’ ethnicity and references to the German language papers. The third chapter considers the editorial comment about Germany, the intertwining of ethnicity and the issues, and ethnic name-calling. In order to identify underlying bias for or against Germany and to better understand the context of the references to German ethnicity, the fourth chapter explores the portrayal of Germany in the Fort Wayne papers.