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Title
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a joint press conference after their meeting in Helsinki
Creator
Trump, Donald, 1946-
Date
2018-07-16
Collection
G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
Description
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a joint news conference after their two-hour meeting in Helsinki. Putin reiterates that Russia never interfered in the U.S. 2016 presidential election and says he told President Trump he will look into the supposed twelve Russian spies indicted by the U.S. for election meddling. Trump is asked about Russia's role in election interference and says that although he has faith in U.S. intelligence sources, President Putin was...
Show moreU.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a joint news conference after their two-hour meeting in Helsinki. Putin reiterates that Russia never interfered in the U.S. 2016 presidential election and says he told President Trump he will look into the supposed twelve Russian spies indicted by the U.S. for election meddling. Trump is asked about Russia's role in election interference and says that although he has faith in U.S. intelligence sources, President Putin was extremely strong and believable in asserting that Russia had no involvement in U.S. elections. Putin also says that Russia has no compromising material on President Trump or his family. Putin's remarks are translated from Russian. Held in Helsinki, Finland.
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Title
Popular participation and political violence
Creator
Wallsworth, Gregory
Date
2016
Collection
Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description
The first essay “Protest: Onset and (De)Escalation” argues that the literature on Civil Conflict has reached a point of maturity in identifying the correlates of conflict; however, the risk factors for conflict are far more common than conflict itself. Even when underlying conditions appear similar, as for the countries impacted by the Arab Spring, diverse outcomes can arise. By modeling the escalation process and incorporating protest as a signal to the government and potential dissidents in...
Show moreThe first essay “Protest: Onset and (De)Escalation” argues that the literature on Civil Conflict has reached a point of maturity in identifying the correlates of conflict; however, the risk factors for conflict are far more common than conflict itself. Even when underlying conditions appear similar, as for the countries impacted by the Arab Spring, diverse outcomes can arise. By modeling the escalation process and incorporating protest as a signal to the government and potential dissidents in society, this paper shows how similar starting conditions can lead to protest, government concessions, or even civil war. This paper also contributes to understanding the relationship between repression and dissent. We argue that repression may reduce overall dissent, but cause dissent that occurs to become more violent. Finally, we examine some predictions of the model; this is done by complementing traditional conflict data from Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) with data on protest from the Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD). The analysis finds support for two key predictions in the model: the likelihood of a concession increases with protest size, and a non-monotonic relationship between protest size and the probability of escalation to conflict.The second essay “Electoral Violence: An Empirical Examination of Existing Theories” argues that recent studies of election violence have found that violence mars as many as 80 percent of African elections. However, the ways in which violence is used to influence elections are still unclear. Two theoretical frameworks have been suggested. The first argues that violence is targeted directly at core opposition supporters in an attempt to prevent them from voting. The second is more nuanced and argues that it is more feasible to deter unaligned voters with untargeted violence because they are less committed to vote for any particular party. A party could increase their vote share by excluding unaligned voters if they have a stronger advantage in core supporters than unaligned voters, because excluding unaligned voters places more weight on each party's core supporters. By combining survey data from the Round 4 Afrobarometer survey with event data from the Social Conflict in Africa Database, we compare the validity of these theories. First, we confirm that violence is associated with a reduced likelihood of voting. More importantly, we find important heterogeneity in this association. Supporting the first framework, voters with a strong political affiliation do cease voting if they personally fear violence. In support of the second framework, we find that unaligned voters are the only group significantly less likely to vote in the presence of violence, even without reporting a greater fear of violence. We conclude that both targeted and untargeted violence are potentially effective strategies, but untargeted violence appears to be more common. Finally, the third essay “Profiling in Violent Elections” argues that recent theoretical and empirical research on election violence has presented several potential ways in which violence may be used to influence the electoral process. A key differentiation between emerging theories, as highlighted in Wallsworth (2016), is whether violence is targeted directly at opposition supporters or indirectly at unaligned voters more likely to vote for the opposition. Wallsworth (2016) demonstrated that reactions to violence are consistent with both strategies. Targeted violence is associated with a lower likelihood of voting, and unaligned voters were the only group to react to indirectly targeted violence. One way to distinguish which theory is more viable in a given country is to unravel how successfully a potential perpetrator of violence could profile the opposition. This paper examines the viability of profiling, which characteristics may be used to profile, who appears to be targeted by violence, and how characteristics which correlate with an individual's political affiliation also correlate with their fear of violence.
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Title
The dictator's dilemma at the ballot box : electoral manipulation, economic distribution, and political order in authoritarian regimes
Creator
Higashijima, Masaaki
Date
2015
Collection
Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description
This dissertation explores the causes and consequences of authoritarian elections. When holding an election, the authoritarian leader faces a dilemma: In order to maintain his rule, he needs to win big in elections. Yet, the manipulation of election results risks losing some of the informational benefits of authoritarian elections - credibly showing regime strength and knowing the distribution of political support from the citizenry. Under the constraint of the electoral dilemma, the...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the causes and consequences of authoritarian elections. When holding an election, the authoritarian leader faces a dilemma: In order to maintain his rule, he needs to win big in elections. Yet, the manipulation of election results risks losing some of the informational benefits of authoritarian elections - credibly showing regime strength and knowing the distribution of political support from the citizenry. Under the constraint of the electoral dilemma, the authoritarian leader designs authoritarian elections. The manners in which elections are designed, then, have important implications on post-electoral political order in autocracies. Specifically, this study asks the following three questions. (1) Under what conditions do authoritarian rulers refrain from using serious electoral fraud such as election violence, electoral cheating, and the manipulation of electoral law? (2) When do authoritarian leaders decide to change their electoral system from Single-Member Districts (SMD) systems to Proportional Representation (PR) systems? And, (3) when do authoritarian elections backfire on dictators in the form of protests and leadership turnover. In this dissertation, I argue that the power distribution between the dictator and political elites determines to what extent the dictator manipulates authoritarian elections. "Strong" dictators, who can mobilize regime supporters by using their financial resources in efficient ways, do not have an incentive to manipulate elections by resorting to extensive electoral fraud and maintaining SMD systems that may bias election results in their favor. By refraining from serious manipulation of election results, dictators can take advantage of elections to overcome the shortages of information under authoritarian rule. On the other hand, "weak" dictators, who lack financial resources or face strong oppositions, need to rely more on electoral manipulation because revealing their de facto weakness through election results may lead the elections to exert destabilizing effects on the political order. In order to test this theory, I conduct cross-national statistical analyses and comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. My empirical analyses demonstrate that autocrats with rich financial resources are more likely to refrain from extensive electoral fraud and shift electoral systems from SMD to PR. I also show that if the dictator fails to manipulate elections strategically when dealing with the electoral dilemma, then authoritarian elections may backfire on him. If the dictator employs excessive electoral fraud, then he is more likely to face popular protests because political elites are unable to make sense of de facto strength of the regime. On the contrary, if the autocrat fails to use sufficient levels of fraud, then election results may reveal the weakness of the dictator, leading to leadership turnover via a post-electoral coup or an opposition's victory at elections.
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Title
Money and power in Uganda's 1996 elections
Creator
Muhumuza, William
Date
1997-06
Collection
African Journal of Political Science
Description
Though Uganda's 1996 election appeared satisfactory, this was only in form; the intriguing influence of money, material considerations, and deliberate use of the power of incumbency to influence the outcome of the elections corrupted the electoral process and distorted its outcome. This phenomenon which I have called "monetisation of elections", debased the principles of liberal democracy, and condoned corruption as a political virtue. This development could easily subvert the democratisation...
Show moreThough Uganda's 1996 election appeared satisfactory, this was only in form; the intriguing influence of money, material considerations, and deliberate use of the power of incumbency to influence the outcome of the elections corrupted the electoral process and distorted its outcome. This phenomenon which I have called "monetisation of elections", debased the principles of liberal democracy, and condoned corruption as a political virtue. This development could easily subvert the democratisation process and create grounds for a legitimacy crisis.
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Title
Stem lokaal
Date
1974
Collection
Leftist Political Posters Collection
Description
Poster shows a black and white scene of twelve cartoon men at a polling station. Six men are lined up to go behind a curtain to vote. The last men stares in alarm at the line of five men exiting the voting booth to the left of him with tape over their mouths and eyes wide. The hand of an unseen character is just beginning to pull back the curtain to exit the voting booth. Political cartoon of voters being silenced.
Title
Stem niet laat van je horen
Date
1974
Collection
Leftist Political Posters Collection
Description
Poster shows a black and white drawing of a large, transparent jar full of rats and election ballots. There is a hand dropping a ballot into the jar. The rats are labeled for different groups: labor unions, speculators, and political parties (both left and right). They are chewing up ballots marked with the acronyms of various political parties in the Netherlands: PVDA, CPN, AAP, ARP, PPR, KVP, and CHU.