Monitors and Meddlers

Monitors and Meddlers PDF Author: Sarah Sunn Bush
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009204297
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Foreign influences on elections are widespread. Although foreign interventions around elections differ markedly-in terms of when and why they occur, and whether they are even legal-they all have enormous potential to influence citizens in the countries where elections are held. Bush and Prather explain how and why outside interventions influence local trust in elections, a critical factor for democracy and stability. Whether foreign actors enhance or diminish electoral trust depends on who is intervening, what political party citizens support, and where the election takes place. The book draws on diverse evidence, including new surveys conducted around elections with varying levels of democracy in Georgia, Tunisia, and the United States. Its insights about public opinion shed light on why leaders sometimes invite foreign influences on elections and why the candidates that win elections do not do more to respond to credible evidence of foreign meddling.

Monitors and Meddlers

Monitors and Meddlers PDF Author: Sarah Sunn Bush
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009204297
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Get Book Here

Book Description
Foreign influences on elections are widespread. Although foreign interventions around elections differ markedly-in terms of when and why they occur, and whether they are even legal-they all have enormous potential to influence citizens in the countries where elections are held. Bush and Prather explain how and why outside interventions influence local trust in elections, a critical factor for democracy and stability. Whether foreign actors enhance or diminish electoral trust depends on who is intervening, what political party citizens support, and where the election takes place. The book draws on diverse evidence, including new surveys conducted around elections with varying levels of democracy in Georgia, Tunisia, and the United States. Its insights about public opinion shed light on why leaders sometimes invite foreign influences on elections and why the candidates that win elections do not do more to respond to credible evidence of foreign meddling.

Monitors and Meddlers

Monitors and Meddlers PDF Author: Sarah Sunn Bush
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009204319
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Investigates how foreign actors influence citizens' trust in elections, and cases where outside intervention has enhanced or undermined election integrity.

Elections during emergencies and crises

Elections during emergencies and crises PDF Author: Toby S. James
Publisher: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)
ISBN: 9176716279
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 724

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Book Description
Elections often have to be held in emergency situations. The Covid-19 pandemic was one of the most serious emergency situations that the world has seen. The rapid spread of the virus presented a huge humanitarian threat—but also an unparalleled challenge to electoral stakeholders globally seeking to protect electoral integrity during times of uncertainty. This volume identifies how the pandemic affected electoral integrity, what measures were put in place to protect elections and what worked in defending them. It brings together a comprehensive set of 26 country case studies to explore how elections were affected on the ground, what measures were put in place and what worked. These case studies are of elections which took place in the eye of the storm when practitioners and policymakers were operating under uncertainty and without the benefit of hindsight. To learn lessons in a more systematic way, this volume also provides a thematic analysis of electoral integrity during the pandemic using crossnational studies. This provides the big picture for policymakers, practitioners and academics looking back at the crisis. The volume therefore seeks to contribute towards the future development of policy and practice. However, it does so by using academic research methods and concepts which enable greater confidence in the policy lessons, as well as contributing directly to the scholarship on democracy, democratization and elections. The volume includes 11 areas of recommendation based on the evidence collected in this volume to protect electoral integrity in any future emergency situation.

 PDF Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198895437
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description


Electoral Commissions and Democratization in Africa

Electoral Commissions and Democratization in Africa PDF Author: Nicholas Kerr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198895429
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Why do some countries hold elections that meet global democratic standards, while other countries do not? Electoral Commissions and Democratization in Africa makes a novel contribution to this question. In a departure from the typical story about the “boring” administrative tasks that electoral commissions carry out and their impact on international observers' assessments of election quality, Kerr aruges that electoral commissions provide valuable information that helps politicians and citizens resolve uncertainties about electoral fraud and administrative irregularities. Whereas previous research focuses on the institutional design of electoral commissions, this book privileges their actual performance and focuses on two attributes: autonomy and capacity. By serving an informational role, the autonomy and capacity of electoral commissions influences how citizens and elites think about and behave during elections. This includes whether political elites and citizens participate in elections, engage in electoral fraud and violence, accept electoral outcomes, and express confidence in elections. These attitudes and behaviors, in turn, influence whether elections meet democratic standards (election quality) and whether political elites and citizens regard election processes as acceptable (election legitimacy). This book brings together evidence from public opinion surveys, elite surveys, field research, and cross-national databases to give an unusually rich empirical exploration of the dynamics of elections and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990s, with a focused case study of Nigeria. Electoral Commissions and Democratization in Africa will be appealing to scholars and policymakers interested in democratization and elections. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged, as is interdisciplinary research and work that considers ethical issues relating to the study of Africa. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy and International Development, University of Birmingham; Peace Medie, Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics, University of Bristol; and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, University of Oxford.

A Nation Of Meddlers

A Nation Of Meddlers PDF Author: Charles Edgley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429971222
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book examines the emergent meddling phenomenon with insightful and provocative descriptions about why meddling is so appealing and how meddling is packaged and marketed. It is a testimony to a life filled with accomplishment, loyalty, friendship, laughter, and love.

Monitoring Democracy

Monitoring Democracy PDF Author: Judith G. Kelley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400842522
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
In recent decades, governments and NGOs--in an effort to promote democracy, freedom, fairness, and stability throughout the world--have organized teams of observers to monitor elections in a variety of countries. But when more organizations join the practice without uniform standards, are assessments reliable? When politicians nonetheless cheat and monitors must return to countries even after two decades of engagement, what is accomplished? Monitoring Democracy argues that the practice of international election monitoring is broken, but still worth fixing. By analyzing the evolving interaction between domestic and international politics, Judith Kelley refutes prevailing arguments that international efforts cannot curb government behavior and that democratization is entirely a domestic process. Yet, she also shows that democracy promotion efforts are deficient and that outside actors often have no power and sometimes even do harm. Analyzing original data on over 600 monitoring missions and 1,300 elections, Kelley grounds her investigation in solid historical context as well as studies of long-term developments over several elections in fifteen countries. She pinpoints the weaknesses of international election monitoring and looks at how practitioners and policymakers might help to improve them.

Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication

Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication PDF Author: Daya Thussu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351985833
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication examines the rapidly evolving dynamics between global communication and geopolitics. As an intersection between communication and international relations, it bridges the existing gap in scholarship and highlights the growing importance of digital communication in legitimizing and promoting the geopolitical and economic goals of leading powers. One central theme that emerges in the book is the continuity of asymmetries in power relations that can be traced back to 19th-century European imperialism, manifested in its various incarnations from ‘liberal’ to ‘neo-liberal’, to ‘digital’ imperialism. The book includes a discussion of the post–Cold War US-led transformation of the hardware and software of global communication and how it has been challenged by the ‘rise of the rest’, especially China. Other key issues covered include the geopolitics of image wars, weaponization of information and the visibility of discourses emanating from outside the Euro-Atlantic zone. The ideas and arguments advanced here privilege a reading of geopolitical processes and examples from the perspective of the global South. Written by a leading scholar of global communication, this comprehensive and transdisciplinary study adopts a holistic approach and will be of interest to the global community of scholars, researchers and commentators in communication and international relations, among other fields.

The Mind Possessed

The Mind Possessed PDF Author: Emma Cohen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190295821
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The cognitive science of religion has made a persuasive case for the view that a number of different psychological systems are involved in the construction and transmission of notions of extranatural agency such as deities and spirits. Until now this work has been based largely on findings in experimental psychology, illustrated mainly with hypothetical or anecdotal examples. In The Mind Possessed, Emma Cohen considers how the psychological systems undergirding spirit concepts are activated in real-world settings. Spirit possession practices have long had a magnetizing effect on academic researchers but there have been few, if any, satisfactory theoretical treatments of spirit possession that attempt to account for its emergence and spread globally. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during eighteen months of fieldwork in Belém, northern Brazil, Cohen combines fine-grained descriptions and analyses of mediumistic activities in an Afro-Brazilian cult house with a scientifically-grounded explanation for the emergence and spread of ideas about spirits, possession and healing. Cohen shows why spirit possession and its associated activities are inherently attention-grabbing. Making a radical departure from traditional anthropological, medicalist and sociological analyses, she argues that a cognitive approach offers more precise and testable hypotheses concerning the spread and appeal of spirit concepts and possession activities. This timely book presents new lines of enquiry for the cognitive science of religion (a rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship) and challenges the theoretical frameworks within which spirit possession practices have traditionally been understood.

Meddlers Or Mediators?

Meddlers Or Mediators? PDF Author: Gilbert M. Khadiagala
Publisher: Republic of Letters
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Drawing from cases of mediated settlements in Eastern Africa, this book provides an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of African inteveners in civil wars against the backdrop of theories of negotiations and mediation.