Meddling in the Ballot Box

Meddling in the Ballot Box PDF Author: Dov H. Levin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197519911
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Why do world powers sometimes try to determine who wins an election in another country? What effects does such meddling have on the targeted elections results? Great powers have attempted for centuries to intervene in elections occurring in other states through various covert and overt methods, with the American intervention in the 2013 Kenyan elections and the Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections being just two recent examples. Indeed, the Americans and the Soviets/Russians intervened in one out of every nine national-level executive elections between 1946 and 2000. Meddling in the Ballot Box is the first book to provide a comprehensive analysis of foreign meddling in elections from the dawn of the modern era to the 2016 Russian intervention in the US election. Dov Levin shows that partisan electoral interventions are usually an "inside job" occurring only if a significant domestic actor within the target wants it. Likewise, a great power will not intervene unless it fears that its interests are endangered by an opposing party or candidate with very different preferences. He also finds that partisan electoral interventions frequently have significant effects on the results--sufficient in many situations to determine the winner. Such interference also tends to be more effective when it is conducted overtly. However, it is usually ineffective, if not counterproductive, when done in a founding election. A revelatory account that explains why major powers have meddled so frequently across the entire postwar era, Meddling in the Ballot Box also provides us with a framework for assessing the cyber-future of interference.

Meddling in the Ballot Box

Meddling in the Ballot Box PDF Author: Dov H. Levin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197519911
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why do world powers sometimes try to determine who wins an election in another country? What effects does such meddling have on the targeted elections results? Great powers have attempted for centuries to intervene in elections occurring in other states through various covert and overt methods, with the American intervention in the 2013 Kenyan elections and the Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections being just two recent examples. Indeed, the Americans and the Soviets/Russians intervened in one out of every nine national-level executive elections between 1946 and 2000. Meddling in the Ballot Box is the first book to provide a comprehensive analysis of foreign meddling in elections from the dawn of the modern era to the 2016 Russian intervention in the US election. Dov Levin shows that partisan electoral interventions are usually an "inside job" occurring only if a significant domestic actor within the target wants it. Likewise, a great power will not intervene unless it fears that its interests are endangered by an opposing party or candidate with very different preferences. He also finds that partisan electoral interventions frequently have significant effects on the results--sufficient in many situations to determine the winner. Such interference also tends to be more effective when it is conducted overtly. However, it is usually ineffective, if not counterproductive, when done in a founding election. A revelatory account that explains why major powers have meddled so frequently across the entire postwar era, Meddling in the Ballot Box also provides us with a framework for assessing the cyber-future of interference.

The Bullet and the Ballot Box

The Bullet and the Ballot Box PDF Author: Aditya Adhikari
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781685649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The Bullet and the Ballot Box offers a rich and sweeping account of a decade of revolutionary upheaval. When Nepal’s Maoists launched their armed rebellion in the nineties, they had limited public support and many argued that their ideology was obsolete. Twelve years later they were in power, and their ambitious plan of social transformation dominated the national agenda. How did this become possible? Adhikari’s narrative draws on a broad range of sources – including novels, letters and diaries – to illuminate the history and human drama of the Maoist revolution. An indispensible account of Nepal’s recent history, the book offers a fascinating case study of how communist ideology has been reinterpreted and translated into political action in the twenty-first century.

The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box

The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box PDF Author: Masaaki Higashijima
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dictatorship
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Modern dictatorships hold elections. Contrary to our stereotypical views of autocratic politics, dictators often introduce elections with limited manipulation wherein they refrain from employing blatant electoral fraud and pro-regime electoral institutions. Why do such electoral reforms happen in autocracies? Do these elections destabilize autocratic rule? The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box explores how dictators design elections and what consequences those elections have on political order. It argues that strong autocrats who can effectively garner popular support through extensive economic distribution become less dependent on coercive electioneering strategies. When autocrats fail to design elections properly, elections backfire in the form of coups, protests, and the opposition's stunning election victories. The book's theoretical implications are tested on a battery of cross-national analyses with newly collected data on autocratic elections and in-depth comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics--Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The book's findings suggest that indicators of free and fair elections in dictatorships may not be enough to achieve full-fledged democratization.

Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box

Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box PDF Author: Philip Cowley
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849548250
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED... ... what emotions really influence where your cross goes on the ballot paper? ... whether people are claiming to vote when they haven't? ... which party's supporters are the kinkiest in bed? In the run-up to the most hotly contested and unpredictable election in a generation, this exhilarating read injects some life back into the world of British electoral politics. Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box sheds light on some of our more unusual voting trends, ranging from why people lie about voting to how being attractive can get you elected. Each of the fifty accessible and concise chapters, written by leading political experts, seeks to examine the broader issues surrounding voting and elections in Britain. It is not just about sexual secrets and skewed surveys: it illustrates the importance of women and ethnic minorities; explains why parties knock on your door (and why they don't); and shows how partisanship colours your views of everything, even pets. This fascinating volume covers everything you need to know (and the things you never thought you needed to know) about the bedroom habits, political untruths and voting nuances behind the upcoming election. 'This book is such an utterly brilliant idea it is ridiculous that no one has thought of it before ... I cannot recommend it highly enough.' John Rentoul

Stuffing the Ballot Box

Stuffing the Ballot Box PDF Author: Fabrice E. Lehoucq
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139434152
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Stuffing the Ballot Box is a pioneering study of electoral fraud and reform. It focuses on Costa Rica, a country where parties gradually transformed a fraud-ridden political system into one renowned for its stability and fair elections by the mid-twentieth century. Lehoucq and Molina draw upon a unique database of more than 1,300 accusations of ballot-rigging to show that parties denounced fraud where electoral laws made the struggle for power more competitive. They explain how institutional arrangements generated opportunities for executives to assemble legislative coalitions to enact far-reaching reforms. This book also argues that nonpartisan commissions should run elections and explains why splitting responsibility over election affairs between the executive and the legislature is a recipe for partisan rancour and political conflict. Stuffing the Ballot Box will interest a broad array of political and social scientists, constitutional scholars, historians, election specialists and policy-makers interested in electoral fraud and institutional reform.

Whitelash

Whitelash PDF Author: Terry Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108576516
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
If postmortems of the 2016 US presidential election tell us anything, it's that many voters discriminate on the basis of race, which raises an important question: in a society that outlaws racial discrimination in employment, housing, and jury selections, should voters be permitted to racially discriminate in selecting a candidate for public office? In Whitelash, Terry Smith argues that such racialized decision-making is unlawful and that remedies exist to deter this reactionary behavior. Using evidence of race-based voting in the 2016 presidential election, Smith deploys legal analogies to demonstrate how courts can decipher when groups of voters have been impermissibly influenced by race, and impose appropriate remedies. This groundbreaking work should be read by anyone interested in how the legal system can re-direct American democracy away from the ongoing electoral scourge that many feared 2016 portended.

The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Richard Franklin Bensel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521537865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
During the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans voted in saloons in the most derelict sections of great cities, in hamlets swarming with Union soldiers, or in wooden cabins so isolated that even neighbors had difficulty finding them. Their votes have come down to us as election returns reporting tens of millions of officially sanctioned democratic acts. Neatly arrayed in columns by office, candidate, and party, these returns are routinely interpreted as reflections of the preferences of individual voters and thus seem to unambiguously document the existence of a robust democratic ethos. By carefully examining political activity in and around the polling place, this book suggests some important caveats which must attend this conclusion. These caveats, in turn, help to bridge the interpretive chasm now separating ethno-cultural descriptions of popular politics from political economic analyses of state and national policy-making.

Lifting as We Climb

Lifting as We Climb PDF Author: Evette Dionne
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451481550
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. This Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book and National Book Award longlisted work tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement—when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle. Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Paul. The Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. The 1913 Women's March in D.C. When the epic story of the suffrage movement in the United States is told, the most familiar leaders, speakers at meetings, and participants in marches written about or pictured are generally white. That's not the real story. Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. Their battlefront wasn't just about gender. African American women had to deal with white abolitionist-suffragists who drew the line at sharing power with their black sisters. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. And they had to maintain their dignity--and safety--in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks. Lifting as We Climb is the empowering story of African American women who refused to accept all this. Women in black church groups, black female sororities, black women's improvement societies and social clubs. Women who formed their own black suffrage associations when white-dominated national suffrage groups rejected them. Women like Mary Church Terrell, a founder of the National Association of Colored Women and of the NAACP; or educator-activist Anna Julia Cooper who championed women getting the vote and a college education; or the crusading journalist Ida B. Wells, a leader in both the suffrage and anti-lynching movements. Author Evette Dionne, a feminist culture writer and the editor-in-chief of Bitch Media, has uncovered an extraordinary and underrepresented history of black women. In her powerful book, she draws an important historical line from abolition to suffrage to civil rights to contemporary young activists—filling in the blanks of the American suffrage story.

How to Rig an Election

How to Rig an Election PDF Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300280831
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
An engrossing analysis of the pseudo-democratic methods employed by despots around the world to retain control Contrary to what is commonly believed, authoritarian leaders who agree to hold elections are generally able to remain in power longer than autocrats who refuse to allow the populace to vote. In this engaging and provocative book, Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas expose the limitations of national elections as a means of promoting democratization, and reveal the six essential strategies that dictators use to undermine the electoral process in order to guarantee victory for themselves. Based on their firsthand experiences as election watchers and their hundreds of interviews with presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, election officials, and conspirators, Cheeseman and Klaas document instances of election rigging from Argentina to Zimbabwe, including notable examples from Brazil, India, Nigeria, Russia, and the United States—touching on the 2016 election. This eye-opening study offers a sobering overview of corrupted professional politics, while providing fertile intellectual ground for the development of new solutions for protecting democracy from authoritarian subversion.

Give Us the Ballot

Give Us the Ballot PDF Author: Ari Berman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374711496
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of 2015 A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2015 A Boston Globe Best Book of 2015 A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2015 An NPR Best Book of 2015 Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. Give Us the Ballot tells this story for the first time. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.