Turnout as the most frequent form of political participation is often supposed to be linked to a relevant degree of political information of citizens. Non-voting on the other hand, is often assumed to be a decision caused by indifference or uninformedness. These stereotypes notwithstanding, there may be good reasons for informed citizens not to cast a vote, just as uninformed citizens may have ...

The article provides an analysis of the starting positions and electoral prospects political parties on eve elections to State Duma Russian Federation 8th Convocation, which becomes especially relevant in context emergence new forces among participants election campaign. author investigated current trends development parliamentary non-parliamentary parties, relying methods observation, analysis...

The Westminster model is recognized the world over as delivering strong, stable one-party government with hung parliaments an anomaly. The recent UK general election has proved the exception to the rule, with 2010 providing the first hung parliament since 1974. Unlike the 1974 minority administration, 2010 saw the formation of a coalition government for the first time in over 70 years. Bringing...

Simple games are a powerful tool to analyze decision-making and coalition formation in social and political life. In this paper, we present relation-algebraic models of simple games and develop relational specifications for solving some basic problems of them. In particular, we test certain fundamental properties of simple games and compute specific players and coalitions. We also apply relatio...

Democracy was not a well known term for the Iraqi people till 2003, when the US and coalition forces begun a military action against the Iraqi regime at that time. After that, the new constitution in Iraq allows the citizen to elect the government, the local governments, and the parliament, every 4 years. For this reason, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) was established to manag...

Politically, Nordic Nazism and Fascism never amounted to much. The Nazi parties in Scandinavia never played any important role in political life. Only elements without significant influence wanted parliamentary democracy to be replaced by totalitarianism. In Sweden there was many small Nazi-parties, but even the biggest one, Nationalsocialistiska arbetarpartiet (NSAP/SSS), led by Sven Olof Lind...

For statistical as well as political reasons combined measures of electoral disproportionality and electoral thresholds are necessary in order to adequately summarize electoral institutions. With few exceptions, none of these quantities can be reliably inferred directly from the provisions of the electoral law, thus impairing “large scale” comparative studies. Through the use of sampling based ...

European elections have been described as second-order phenomena for voters, the media, but also parties. Yet, since 2009, there exists evidence that not only political parties assign increasing significance to elections. While initially ‘issue entrepreneurs’ were held responsible this development, latest campaigns raised question of whether mainstream are finally campaigning on issues. In arti...

In any full-grown democracy, parties must confront voters with real choices that matter. The European Union is often said to be devoid of these choices owing to minor policy differences between parties. The manifestos issued at European Parliament elections by party groups are often perceived as being bland and indistinguishable from each other. How correct is this perception? In this article, ...