In moving beyond the dichotomy between representative and participatory models of democracy, contemporary democratic theory has drawn out the crucial role of deliberation in the effective operation of democratic institutions. However, while various theorists show that deliberation is applied to democratic effect in an assortment of arrangements (such as interpersonal relationships, new social movements and international negotiations), there appears to be a hesitation in theorising the means to improve the deliberative functioning of currently existing representative institutions. This thesis argues that despite the many limitations of representative democracy, and of the mass media which act as its key deliberative forum, currently existing models of representative democracy still offer formal and practical opportunities for collective deliberation in rhetorical exchanges among citizens, particularly, but by no means exclusively, in the course of the election campaign. Consideration of recent democratic theory suggests that the quantity and quality of democratic deliberation in a range of particular situations may be assessed against a set of criteria: access, transparency, feedback and coordination. For citizens to make use of the deliberative opportunities raised by the election campaign requires, it is argued, the creation of a contemporary rhetoric. This thesis addresses that process by reviewing the roots of rhetorical practice and theory in tribal and bardic methods used to produce social cohesion, in the activities of the Sophists in Greek, and particularly Athenian, direct democracy and in the practical reason of Aristotle's seminal text. This thesis then proceeds to consider the rhetorical techniques, employed in two recent election campaigns, which overcame the preconceptions of academic and media commentators to produce "upset" results by successfully engaging, it is argued, the citizen-audience in a meta-narrative of rhetorical exchange. From consideration of these three case studies, an account of a rhetoric emerges as a technical and instrumental discipline. While a contemporary version of political rhetoric may be derived from campaign practices in the electoral context, that rhetoric is also capable of utilising the mass media for much broader deliberative purposes and the potential for marginal and critical political forces to apply these activities more widely is explored. Central to the development of new, deliberative accounts of rhetoric is a return to Aristotle to appreciate the ethical import of rhetoric. A contemporary approach to rhetoric, arising from an emerging account of citizenship as participatory, deliberative, global and "media-active" is considered.

In moving beyond the dichotomy between representative and participatory models of democracy, contemporary democratic theory has drawn out the crucial role of deliberation in the effective operation of democratic institutions. However, while various theorists show that deliberation is applied to democratic effect in an assortment of arrangements (such as interpersonal relationships, new social movements and international negotiations), there appears to be a hesitation in theorising the means to improve the deliberative functioning of currently existing representative institutions. This thesis argues that despite the many limitations of representative democracy, and of the mass media which act as its key deliberative forum, currently existing models of representative democracy still offer formal and practical opportunities for collective deliberation in rhetorical exchanges among citizens, particularly, but by no means exclusively, in the course of the election campaign. Consideration of recent democratic theory suggests that the quantity and quality of democratic deliberation in a range of particular situations may be assessed against a set of criteria: access, transparency, feedback and coordination. For citizens to make use of the deliberative opportunities raised by the election campaign requires, it is argued, the creation of a contemporary rhetoric. This thesis addresses that process by reviewing the roots of rhetorical practice and theory in tribal and bardic methods used to produce social cohesion, in the activities of the Sophists in Greek, and particularly Athenian, direct democracy and in the practical reason of Aristotle's seminal text. This thesis then proceeds to consider the rhetorical techniques, employed in two recent election campaigns, which overcame the preconceptions of academic and media commentators to produce "upset" results by successfully engaging, it is argued, the citizen-audience in a meta-narrative of rhetorical exchange. From consideration of these three case studies, an account of a rhetoric emerges as a technical and instrumental discipline. While a contemporary version of political rhetoric may be derived from campaign practices in the electoral context, that rhetoric is also capable of utilising the mass media for much broader deliberative purposes and the potential for marginal and critical political forces to apply these activities more widely is explored. Central to the development of new, deliberative accounts of rhetoric is a return to Aristotle to appreciate the ethical import of rhetoric. A contemporary approach to rhetoric, arising from an emerging account of citizenship as participatory, deliberative, global and "media-active" is considered.

<p>This research sought to understand the nature of election-related conflict and what needs to be done to arrest the eruption of such conflict in Lesotho. It sought the opinions of selectively respondents who have been involved in the conflicts in different ways. The interviews and documented literature revealed that what constitutes a background to election-related conflict involves issues that are many and varied. Among others such issues include the following: weak political institutions, use of vulgar language by political leadership, and the weak economy that intensifies neo-patrimonial tendencies. The research concluded that all the factors associated with the eruption of illegitimate conflicts during and after general elections in Lesotho are a result of the politicians&rsquo / desire to retain or capture national resources to satisfy their selfish interests and those of their cronies. The conflicts could be minimised if the country&rsquo / s economy could be transformed to provide the politicians with alternatives of economic survival outside the structures of government. Furthermore, to minimise the conflict, the country should consider establishing electoral courts. These have the potential of speeding up the resolution of electoral grievances, in the process preventing them from graduating into serious conflicts.</p>

This dissertation analyzes voting behavior and presence of political cycles in India. While such exercises have been carried out extensively in the context of developed countries and established democracies, there have been few studies on similar behavior in developing countries and new economies. The focus on India in this study may provide valuable insight into this literature in an area that has been largely ignored. Our findings suggest that political manipulation of taxes, grants and expenditures are prevalent at both the national and sub-national levels; though they are tempered by the nature of partisanship. However, while these manipulations may be economically inefficient, they are politically very strategic as incumbents seem to focus on manipulating those items for which they can claim sole responsibility. Indian voters seem to be fiscal conservatives, as they penalize increases in most items of expenditures and generally reward reductions in taxes. Evidence of yardstick effects in taxes is also presented. We find that a higher degree of ‘clarity of responsibility’ also fosters stronger economic voting effects. Voters seem to be cognizant of the division of functional responsibility between the two levels of government (the center and the state) and they evaluate their performance independently. Also, we find results consistent with the notion that the central government is responsible for the overall health of the economy as voters seem to penalize the central incumbent for increases in inflation and reward them for steady growth while being indifferent to such outcome variables while voting for the state level incumbent. The policy implications of such findings are also briefly discussed. It is a matter of grave concern if incumbents tailored policies to provide them with the biggest political payoff. This may lead to differences in economic development across states and the incidence of expenditure and tax changes may fall unfairly on the most vulnerable people of the society. There are also important insights on assignment of responsibility and the ‘how’ of political interference which would aid us in building more comprehensive political economy models that are closer to reflecting reality than purely economic models commonly used today.

This paper examines the partisan shift that took place in American Presidential elections during the Vietnam War. Specifically, I examine the landslide elections of 1964 and 1972 and how race, gender, and American casualties played a part in the shift.

Esta tesis doctoral sobre todo explora los efectos de la desigualdad de ingresos y otras formas de heterogeneidad —con especial consideración hacia diferencias regionales— sobre la voluntad individual de implementar planes generales de redistribución, y de formar parte de una unión política. En la primera parte, analizamos la heterogeneidad de las preferencias sociales en un modeloestándar de votación en el que los agentes eligen el parámetro de redistribución en una democraciadirecta. En particular, y de acuerdo con la evidencia experimental, suponemos que coexisten votantes egoístas, rawlsianos y utilitaristas. Caracterizamos implícitamente el único equilibrio políticode esta economía, y demostramos su existencia. Resulta que el nivel de redistribución en unaeconomía compuesta por votantes heterogéneos puede ser inferior o superior al caso egoísta. Porotra parte, mostramos que pequeñas variaciones en la proporción relativa de un determinado tipo de individuos pueden dar lugar a cambios muy importantes en el alcance de las políticas de redistribución, e igualmente ilustramos las consecuencias que ello puede tener en el contexto de laeconomía política de la formación de la nación. Por último, investigamos las implicaciones teóricas del modelo sobre el vínculo entre la desigualdad y la redistribución, y demostramos que produce diferentes predicciones con respecto al modelo estándar de votantes egoístas. En la segunda parte, se estudia la posibilidad de elegir entre la redistribución centralizada ydescentralizada en un modelo de economía política, asumiendo la heterogeneidad regional en relación tanto a la riqueza como a la identidad. Un sistema centralizado permite una beneficiosaredistribución entre regiones, pero también puede disminuir el grado de solidaridad en la sociedadcomo resultado de la lealtad al grupo. En este contexto, se observa que la maximización del bienestar total está estrechamente ligada a la minimización de la desigualdad, tanto dentro comoentre regiones. Analizando por separado dos casos particulares en una democracia directa —no desigualdad interregional y no lealtad al grupo— se destaca la existencia de un efecto escala y un efecto poolingde la redistribución centralizada, respectivamente. En ambos casos, la centralización Pareto-domina la descentralización. Por lo tanto, descentralizar sólo se justifica cuando ambasfuentes de heterogeneidad regional están presentes. A su vez, esto significa que el teorema de ladescentralización no se cumple en nuestro enfoque de economía política de la redistribución con lealtad al grupo. Por último, asumiendo transferencias voluntarias interregionales en la descentralización, mostramos que la centralización siempre domina la descentralización. En la tercera y última parte, se estudia el uso de la descentralización parcial como una forma de evitar el conflicto secesionista, asumiendo desigualdad interregional de riqueza y redistribución entreregiones. Si bien la descentralización permite a los gobiernos regionales de satisfacer mejor a laspreferencias locales, lo cual mitiga el conflicto, sino que también exacerba la desigualdad interregional, que a su vez contribuye al conflicto. Se demuestra que, a pesar de que un aumento de la desigualdad siempre alimenta el conflicto en ambas regiones, la probabilidad de una secesiónpuede aumentar o disminuir con la desigualdad, dependiendo de si la unificación es socialmenteeficiente o no. De ello se desprende que, por una parte, el rango de niveles de descentralización necesarios para que la solución pacífica (descentralizada) sea políticamente sostenible siempre seincrementa con la desigualdad. Mientras que por otra parte, el nivel particular de descentralizaciónque se lleva a cabo bajo la amenaza de un conflicto puede ser mayor o menor. Por último, mostramos que cuando la descentralización es un proceso irreversible, no puede impedir el conflictosecesionista para cualquier nivel de desigualdad. / This dissertation mainly explores the effects of income inequality and other forms of heterogeneity —and in particular at the regional level— on the individual willingness to implement general redistribution schemes, and to form part of a political union. In the first part, we introduce heterogeneous social preferences in a standard model of voting on a redistributive parameter in a direct democracy. In particular, and in accordance with experimental evidence, we assume that selfish, rawlsian and utilitarian voters coexist with given proportions. We characterize implicitly the unique political equilibrium of this economy, and prove its existence. It turns out that the level of redistribution in the heterogeneous economy may be either lower or higher than in the selfish one. Furthermore, we show that slight variations in the relative proportion of a given type may lead to very important changes in the extent of redistribution, and we illustrate the implications this may have in the context of the political economy of border formation. Finally, we investigate the theoretical implications of the model regarding the link between inequality and redistribution, and show that it yields different predictions than the standard model with self-interested voters. In the second part, we study the choice between centralized and decentralized redistribution in a political economy model assuming regional heterogeneity regarding both average income and group identity. While centralizing redistribution allows for a potentially beneficial pooling of national resources, it may also decrease the degree of solidarity in the society as a result of group loyalty. In this context, we show that total welfare maximization is closely linked to the minimization of inequality both within and between regions. Analyzing separately two particular cases under direct democracy —no interregional inequality and no group loyalty— we highlight the existence of a scale effect and a pooling effect of centralized redistribution, respectively. In both cases, centralization Pareto-dominates decentralization, from which it follows that the rationale for decentralization only arises when both sources of regional heterogeneity are present. In turn, this means that the Decentralization Theorem does not hold in our political economy approach of redistribution with group loyalty. Finally, allowing for voluntary interregional transfers under decentralization, we show that, due to free-riding, centralization always welfare-dominates decentralization with transfers. Furthermore, it is not even generally true that allowing for such transfers is welfare-increasing under decentralization. In the third and last part, we study the use of partial decentralization as a way to avoid wasteful secessionist conflict in the presence of income disparities between regions. Although decentralization allows regional governments to better target local preferences, which in principle mitigates conflict, it also exacerbates interregional inequality, which in turn may contribute to conflict. We show that, even though an increase in inequality fuels conflict in both regions, the probability of a secession occurring through conflict may be either increasing or decreasing in inequality, depending on whether unifying is socially efficient or not. It follows that, on the one hand, the range of decentralization levels such that the peaceful (decentralized) outcome is politically sustainable always increases with inequality, while on the other hand, the particular level of decentralization that is implemented under the threat of conflict may be either lower or higher. Finally, we show that when decentralization is an irreversible process, it cannot prevent secessionist conflict for any level of inequality.

During campaigns, voters often learn that their party's candidate advocates policy positions that conflict with their own attitudes. These cross-pressured voters can either adjust their policy positions to be consonant with their party's candidate or voting for others. I use monthly NES Panel Data from 2008-2009 to examine how voters' beliefs change about a specific policy: the redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation during a presidential campaign. I test this by creating a Random Effects Ordered Probit Panel regression model of ten monthly waves of survey data before the 2008 presidential election. The study shows that over the campaign, voters' policy positions evolve on redistributive taxation policy; voters adjust their prior policy cognitive dissonance to be in agreement with their candidate. The results indicate that in the 2008 Presidential election, the electorate more often moved their policy beliefs to be in agreement with their candidate, rather than switch votes.

ABSTRACT The Usability Implications of Long Ballot Content for Paper, Electronic, and Mobile Voting Systems by Bryan A. Campbell In the 2008 United States presidential election over 131 million ballots were cast. A substantial fraction of those ballots, approximately 23 million (17.5%), were cast as absentee ballots either domestically or by overseas and military citizens (EAC, 2008). These numbers demonstrate that a demand exists in the United States for less centralized voting procedures. One potential solution, allowing voters to cast ballots on Internet-enabled mobile devices, could potentially increase voter participation, reduce election administration costs, increase election flexibility, and provide the ability for voters to interact with familiar technology. Two experiments were conducted to examine the efficacy of a custom-designed mobile voting system as compared to more traditional voting technologies such as direct recording electronic and paper ballot voting systems. The results from experiment one suggest that displaying long ballot content as a single scrollable list may have distinct negative consequences on the effectiveness of electronic voting systems. Further, experiment one showed that candidates appearing below the fold, or not immediately visible without additional action from the voter are at a higher risk of being mistakenly voted against. The results from experiment two are largely consistent with experiment one in that they showed that a scrollable review screen led to more voting errors and that those candidates below the fold were at a distinct disadvantage.

The Help America Vote Act, passed into law in 2002, mandated that all polling places provide privacy and independence to all voters. Given this, many jurisdictions have been forced into making a choice between providing traditional voting methods (such as paper ballots) and offering newer electronic voting systems. Electronic voting machines have been seen as the solution to many usability and accessibility problems, but very little literature exists to indicate whether this is the case among specific populations such as disabled, elderly, and non-English speaking voters. An audio accessible voting interface for visually disabled voters (CHILVote) was designed using specifications from both the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines and a largescale survey of blind individuals conducted by Piner and Byrne [in proceedings of The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting, pp. 1686-1690 (2011)]. CHILVote’s interface utilizes the given design guidelines and includes use of a male text-to-speech voice, a flexible navigation structure, adjustable speed and volume, and an optional review section. Relatively low error rates (M=1.7%) and high SUS scores (M=89.5) among blind subjects are consistent with previous findings. Error rates and satisfaction are not significantly different than those of sighted voters using both paper and DRE, and blind voters using a non-electronic interface. CHILVote significantly reduced the time it takes for blind subjects to vote, from 25.2 minutes (VotePAD) to 17.1 minutes (CHILVote). This is an improvement, but still over 2.5 times slower than sighted subjects voting on an identical ballot. The integration of accessibility into mainstream technology often has benefits beyond allowing more of the population access to a system. This research provides a comparison point and guidelines for future studies of accessibility solutions.

End-to-end verifiable election systems (E2E systems) provide a provably correct tally while maintaining the secrecy of each voter's ballot, even if the voter is complicit in demonstrating how they voted. Providing voter incoercibility is one of the main challenges of designing E2E systems, particularly in the case of internet voting. A second challenge is building deployable, human-voteable E2E systems that conform to election laws and conventions. This dissertation examines deployability, coercion-resistance, and their intersection in election systems. In the course of this study, we introduce three new election systems, (Scantegrity, Eperio, and Selections), report on two real-world elections using E2E systems (Punchscan and Scantegrity), and study incoercibility issues in one deployed system (Punchscan). In addition, we propose and study new practical primitives for random beacons, secret printing, and panic passwords. These are tools that can be used in an election to, respectively, generate publicly verifiable random numbers, distribute the printing of secrets between non-colluding printers, and to covertly signal duress during authentication. While developed to solve specific problems in deployable and incoercible E2E systems, these techniques may be of independent interest.