Votes For Survival

Explores the critical role citizens play in sustaining clientelism, despite threats of structural changes, institutional reforms, legal enforcement and partisan strategies.

Explores the critical role citizens play in sustaining clientelism, despite threats of structural changes, institutional reforms, legal enforcement and partisan strategies.

Imagine a country where the right to vote is not guaranteed by the Constitution, where the candidate with the most votes loses, and where paperwork requirements and bureaucratic bungling disenfranchise millions. You're living in it. If the consequences weren't so serious, it would be funny. A concise handbook designed as a fact-filled companion to the forthcoming PBS documentary starring political satirist and commentator Mo Rocca, Electoral Dysfunction illuminates a broad array of issues, including: the Founding Fathers' decision to omit the right to vote from the Constitution—and the legal system's patchwork response to this omission; the battle over voter ID, voter impersonation, and voter fraud; the foul-ups that plague Election Day, from ballot design to contested recounts; the role of partisan officials in running elections; and the antidemocratic origins and impact of the Electoral College. The book concludes with a prescription for a healthy voting system crafted by leading voting-reform experts, whose agenda for change includes a call for universal voter registration and unform national standards. Published in the run-up to the 2012 election, Electoral Dysfunction is for readers across the political spectrum who want their vote to count.

"Most autocracies today hold elections. Yet the role of autocratic elections and the behavior of voters and parties in these regimes often appear puzzling. Through the use of simple formal theory, quantitative analysis, and historic narrative, this book develops a broadly comparative theory of the survival and demise of "electoral autocracies" and the strategies they use to resolve intraparty conflict, divide and deter elite opponents, and win political loyalty from the masses. The book illustrates the theory with an analysis of the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.

AR 608-20 04/22/2014 ARMY VOTING ASSISTANCE PROGRAM , Survival Ebooks

How do parties survive when newness is their only selling point? This scholarly volume explores the most successful group of new political parties in Central and Eastern Europe: centrist anti-establishment parties (CAPs). These parties often claim to be neither 'left nor right', strongly criticize the political establishment, and instead promise 'corruption-free' politics. Initially extremely successful, many CAPs do not survive more than a few consecutive electionswhile others do endure. As the first book-length study on this type of party, Sarah Engler explores this question and focuses on CAPs' electoral strategies after their first elections. It derivesthree strategies of survival that lead to more sustainable electoral support: a reframed protest strategy, an anti-corruption strategy, and a mainstream strategy. Combining quantitative data from an original expert survey with qualitative evidence from elite interviews with MPs, party officials and anti-corruption experts, the author demonstrates that CAPs only survive when they abandon their initial strategy of pure protest. While strategic change is necessary for partysurvival, several failed attempts at transformation show that it is not sufficient. Ideology, seemingly irrelevant to CAPs' initial successes, eventually determines CAPs' fates. Engler also examines howthese findings have implications for other European countries.Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit:www.ecprnet.eu .The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor ofPolitical Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

Strategic choices allow small parties to balance their interests and achieve success

Winner, 2024 Anna Julia Cooper Outstanding Publication Award, Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics Poor Black women who benefit from social welfare are marginalized in a number of ways by interlocking systemic racism, sexism, and classism. The media renders them invisible or casts them as racialized and undeserving “welfare queens” who exploit social safety nets. Even when Black women voters are celebrated, the voices of the poorest too often go unheard. How do Afro-descendant women in former slave-holding societies survive amid multifaceted oppression? Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour offers a comparative analysis of how Black women social welfare beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States defy systems of domination. She argues that poor Black women act as political subjects in the struggle to survive, to provide food for their children and themselves, and challenge daily discrimination even in dire circumstances. Mitchell-Walthour examines the effects of social welfare programs, showing that mutual aid networks and informal labor also play important roles in beneficiaries’ lives. She also details how Afro-descendant women perceive stereotypes and discrimination based on race, class, gender, and skin color. Mitchell-Walthour considers their formal political participation, demonstrating that low-income Black women support progressive politics and that religious affiliation does not lead to conservative attitudes. Drawing on Black feminist frameworks, The Politics of Survival confronts the persistent invisibility of poor Black women by foregrounding their experiences and voices. Providing a wealth of empirical evidence on these women’s views and survival strategies, this book not only highlights how systemic structures marginalize them but also offers insight into how they resist such forces.