The 2000 U.S. presidential election has once again rekindled interest in possible electoral reform including the possible elimination of the Electoral College. Most arguments against the Electoral College have either been based on ancedotal evidence from particular elections or on highly stylized formal models We take a very different approach here. We develop a set of statistical models based ...

What kinds of electoral systems can help democracy survive in countries split by deep cleavages of race, religion, language, or ethnicity? As is well-known, politicians in such “divided societies” often have strong incentives to “play the ethnic card” at election time, using communal appeals to mobilize voters. “Outbidding”—increasingly extreme rhetoric and demands—can offer rewards greater tha...

The author stresses that participation has an intrinsic value for the citizens. In addition, it is also important as a means of civic education, a process in which citizens learn civic values. A comparison of electoral participation in democratic polities shows great differences among them. The author argues that the level of voter turnout depends on a number of factors, such as the features of...

To understand what it means to design ‘persuasive technology’, one probably needs to understand it in relation to design in general. Using examples from a variety of areas of design discourse, the first part of the paper presents the idea that design is inherently persuasive. Following a discussion of what this might imply to the identification of ‘persuasive design’ as an emerging research are...

An assessment of Herman and Chomsky’s 1988 five-filter propaganda model suggests it is mainly valuable for identifying areas in which researchers should look for evidence of collaboration (whether intentional or otherwise) between mainstream media and the propaganda aims of the ruling establishment. The model does not identify methodologies for determining the relative weight of independent fil...

JON FRAENKEL At first sight, the Pacific Islands seem like a graveyard for institutional determinist theories regarding the impact of electoral systems on party polarisation. Maurice Duverger’s well-known ‘sociological law’ was that first-past-the-post electoral rules tend to deliver two-party systems. Proportional representation (PR) systems were more loosely associated with multi-party settin...

Studies of electoral law consequences typically treat electoral laws as exogenous factors affecting political party systems, even while acknowledging that political parties often tailor electoral institutions to suit their own distributional needs. This study represents a departure from that approach, directly examining one aspect of the endogeneity of electoral systems: the endogeneity of Duve...

During the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945), children were a major subject of propaganda images. Children had become significant figures in China when May Fourth intellectuals, influenced by evolutionary thinking, deemed “the child” as a central figure for the modernization of the country. Consequently, during the war, cartoonists employed alreadyestablished representations of childr...

The conduct of elections in Nigeria is generally associated with manipulation, which has often undermined the credibility and fairness process since country gained its independence. COVID-19 poses a very serious challenge to electoral process, considering nature disease, led promotion limited physical interaction as an approach mitigate transmission safeguard health people while at same time im...