Abstract: This article reviews the historic and contemporary challenges to women’s electoral representation in Ireland. After summarizing the cultural and institutional obstacles to greater female representation, this article analyzes candidate selection, especially in relation to the 2011 Irish General Election, a process that appears to be the significant hurdle preventing more women from attaining elected office. It also discusses the proposed legislation that uses quotas to ensure the major political parties in Ireland nominate initially at least 30 per cent of their candidates to be women. It is hoped that this measure will redress the historic and chronic underrepresentation of women in Irish electoral politics.

Abstract: We develop a model of electoral accountability with primaries. Prior to the general election, the supporters of each of two parties decide which candidates to nominate. We show that supporters suffer from a fundamental tension: while they want politicians who will faithfully implement the party’s agenda in office, they need politicians who can win elections. Accountability to supporters fails when supporters fear that by punishing or rewarding their incumbent for her loyalty or lack thereof, they unintentionally increase the electoral prospects of the opposing party. Therefore, accountability decreases with the importance that supporters assign to the elections, and it breaks down in two cases. First, a popular incumbent safely defects as she knows she will be re-nominated. Second, an unpopular incumbent defects because she knows she will be dismissed even if she follows the party line. These behaviors are labeled impunity and damnation, respectively, and are illustrated with case studies.

Abstract: Since the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which clearly endorsed measures to ensure the equal participation of women in decision-making, many nations across the globe have adopted and implemented laws requiring political parties to nominate gender-balanced slates of candidates. This symposium brings together new research on the fairly recent gender quota and parity reforms in Portugal, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain and the efforts of the European Union to promote them. In keeping with the single-case, comparative, and international gender quota literature, the articles stress the role of domestic and international actors/factors (political parties and elites, women's groups active inside and/or outside political parties, and international and European organizations) in the adoption of reforms as well as the reforms' specific provisions (placement rules and sanctions for non-compliance) and how well they fit in with the electoral system when assessing their impact. At the same time, t...

Abstract: Author(s): Baylor, Christopher Andrew | Advisor(s): Zaller, John | Abstract: My dissertation shows how two marginal social groups - civil rights activists in the 1940s and religious conservatives in the 1980s - achieved many of their goals by becoming core players in a political party. In each case, the group faced opposition within its chosen party but allied with friendly partisans to marginalize opponents and nominate politicians committed to their priorities. Trying to influence office holders whom the groups had no hand in nominating proved ineffective: office holders would promise benefits but do nothing that displaced core supporters or median voters. Mobilizing nonpolitical groups for political purposes was the road to success. In both cases, marginal social groups rather than politicians drove the process, creating transformed parties that would stand up for rather than straddle the issues they cared about.

Abstract: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 introduced the most sweeping reforms of financial markets since the Great Depression. Nestled among its numerous provisions was the amendment to section 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act expressly authorizing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to adopt rules for shareholders to nominate directors to the boards of reporting companies. Earlier, financial institutions had long lobbied the SEC for a rule providing shareholders access to the nominating process of publicly held corporations. Their cause gained momentum with a 2003 SEC staff report recommending that large, long-term holders, under very limited circumstances, should have the right to nominate a minority of the directors to be elected. After that report, a battle royal ensued, a pro-access chairman was terminated, and under the new SEC chairman the SEC side-tracked shareholder access and even curbed the institutions’ access to the proxy machinery as a means to authorize shareholder nominations to the board. Then, with the imprimatur of Dodd-Frank, the SEC acted, albeit timidly, to provide, in Rule 14a-11, a process for limited shareholder board nominations. In broad overview, Rule 14a-11 permitted a shareholder or group of shareholders that has held at least three percent of the voting power for over three years to nominate a maximum of 25 percent of the board. Institutions rejoiced, but only briefly. Rule 14a-11 never became operative. The rule was immediately challenged so that the SEC suspended its effect until the legal challenge to the rule was resolved. Ultimately the D.C. Circuit held that Rule 14a-11 was invalid due to the SEC’s failure to “consider, in addition to the protection of investors, whether the action will promote efficiency, competition, and capital formation” when adopting rules approved.

Abstract: Objectives The objective of this study is to explore President Obama's nominations to the lower federal courts and compare his patterns to those from George W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton using a typology established by Goldman in 1997. Methods Using data from 1993 to 2012 provided by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, we examine a series of cross-tabulations to make our comparisons. Results The data indicate that President Obama has nominated more women and minorities to the federal bench than either of his two immediate predecessors. Additionally, his nominees possess more moderate ideological preferences than the nominees from either Bush or Clinton. Conclusions These results demonstrate that Obama seems more concerned with racial and gender diversity rather than ideological preferences. Therefore, President Obama's claims of pragmatism and his desire to nominate individuals who reflect American society, often doubted by both political supporters and detractors, appear supported by the available data.

Abstract: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Twenty-four years ago, both the Democratic and Republican parties held their national conventions in cities of the American South. Democrats gathered in Atlanta to nominate Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts for president, and Republicans assembled in New Orleans to nominate George H. W. Bush of Texas. To mark the arrival of Democrats in his city--and mindful that Republicans would subsequently meet way down yonder--Bill Kovach, then editor of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, commissioned a series of essays on the southern condition by seventeen eminent historians, novelists, and journalists. Their essays were collected after the 1988 election in The Prevailing South: Life & Politics in a Changing Culture. "It has been a long time since the South has enjoyed the feeling of being really wanted and needed in the national business of electing a president," historian C. Vann Woodward wrote in the opening of his essay for the book. "But now, rather suddenly, and for the first time in history, both major political parties have held their presidential nominating conventions in the Deep South." The 1988 conventions had the aura of a historic milestone, and their sites seemed ready-made for the every-four-year exercise in political liturgy. Atlanta had decisively emerged as primus inter pares as the Southeast's major metropolis, with its international-hub airport, its tall towers standing sentinel along Peachtree, and its magnetic pull to in-migrants both black and white. New Orleans had long served as a convention-city, with its Vieux Carre at a dramatic bend in the Mississippi, its splendid restaurants, and its landmark domed stadium. Now, in preparing for the 2012 presidential election, both major political parties have again chosen cities in the American South for their national conventions. Republicans convene first in Tampa, and, a week later, Democrats meet in Charlotte. The 2012 conventions have a different feel--less about history, more about the politics of the moment. Until now, neither Tampa nor Charlotte would have readily come to mind as natural destinations for big political conventions. No doubt they were chosen in part because Florida and North Carolina will be "in play" as competitive states in the November general election. Whatever the politics of their selection, Tampa and Charlotte stand as exhibits of what the modern South has become; the region's center of gravity has shifted toward an array of recently developed, sprawling, muscular metropolitan areas that now increasingly define its economy, culture, and politics. While the South is often depicted as resistant to change, Woodward wrote in his 1988 essay that "change, in fact, has long been a central theme of Southern history, prodigious change of such degree and frequency as to become one of the region's several distinctive traits." The independent decisions of Republicans and Democrats to choose sites in the American South for their national conventions offer a fresh opportunity to examine the latest manifestations of what change has wrought in the life and politics of the region. FIVE BIG TRENDS In considering the condition of the South and how the region fits into the national political fabric of 2012, let's identify and examine five big trends: 1. Politically, the South is not an assembly of states, acting in unison, in the grip of one party. The region is not one South, undivided. 2. While its rural heritage and culture still exert a strong pull on the region's own self-image and on the nation's imagination, burgeoning metropolitan areas now decisively dominate the economy and increasingly propel the politics of the South. 3. Whither Texas? It has remained stubbornly Republican even as it has become a multi-hued state of whites, blacks, and Latinos, without an ethnic or racial majority. 4. The recessions of 2000-2010 delivered a stunning blow to the South, knocking the region off its fast track of progress. …

Abstract: Under the Localism Act, voluntary and community organisations can nominate an asset to be included on a list of ‘assets of community value’. This list is managed by the local authority.

Abstract: While the constitutional aspects of the president's recess appointment power have been scrutinized closely over the years (Herz 2005; Note 1957; Rappaport 2005), the question of a president unilaterally and temporarily installing a vice president through the Twenty-Fifth Amendment has received no full-length treatment in the academic literature. (1) Notwithstanding this scholarly inattention, the issue warrants close examination in light of the great importance the vice presidency has come to assume in American government (Goldstein 1982, 3); the gradual enhancement of the president's recess appointment power over the course of two centuries (Rappaport 2005, 1490-91); and the increasing regularity with which presidents have taken such actions in recent decades (Black et al. 2011, 577). Thus, the possibility of a vice presidential recess appointment represents a new frontier for the potential expansion of this presidential power; not unlike President Barack Obama's recent and novel exercise of recess appointment power during a pro forma session of the Senate (Office of Legal Counsel 2012, 4; see also Meese and Gaziano 2012). Upon review of both sides of the issue, this article concludes that the legal arguments in favor of vice presidential recess appointments fall well short of the mark and that such a step should not be attempted by a future president. Relevant Constitutional Text and History Under article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president makes appointments of senior executive branch officials, ambassadors, and federal judges subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. Section 2, clause 2 reads that "[the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States." When the Senate is in recess, however, the president has the authority to make "recess appointments." In this regard, article II provides that "[t]he President shall have power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session." As a result, not infrequently the president will unilaterally install an official during a Senate recess with the individual serving until the conclusion of the next session of Congress. At the same time, under section 2 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the president has authority to nominate a vice president subject to the approval of both houses of Congress. The Constitution in this instance requires that "[w]henever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both houses of Congress." At the outset, it bears noting that there is no judicial or political precedent to follow regarding whether the president may recess appoint a vice president. In U.S. history, only two individuals have ever been elevated to the vice presidency under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. President Richard Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to be his vice president in 1973 (Nixon 1975, 867-70), and President Ford in turn nominated Nelson Rockefeller to serve in the same capacity the very next year (Ford 1975, 28-30). Both Ford and Rockefeller were confirmed by both houses of Congress, and neither was nominated during a congressional recess. (2) Arguments against the President Having the Authority to Recess Appoint a Vice President Textual Differences between Article II and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment A comparison of article II and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment reveals that there are at least six textual reasons why the president cannot lawfully recess appoint a vice president. Taken all in all, these textual considerations reveal that the terminology of article II and that of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment are fundamentally different and that this divergence clearly demonstrates two distinct processes at work (Bloom 2009, 39; Harmelin v. …

Abstract: The purposed of this study was to look at models of the political leadership of the Ulama in Indonesia. The latest development of the contemporary politics in Indonesia was marked by the successful of Indonesian voters for the first times elect their president and vice president directly (1998). Since then, the government system gave the opportunity to private citizen to nominate themselves and stand as the head of government. However, if citizens planned to become a candidate, he must be registered as member from one political party or represent one of them. For example, there is Ulama who form a party called the “ Partai Bintang Reformasi” in the reformation period. In addition, there is the party that contains a lot of Ulama such as “Partai Keadilan Sejahtera” who chose to merge with the winning party and eventually many of those sitting in parliament. The models of political leadership in Indonesia will be analyzed through four types; Personality Attributes Model, Leader and Constituent Models, Contextual Factor Model, the Integrative Model. Although in an attempt to understand the behavior of the political leadership of the Ulama, the most appropriate model seemed the use of integrative models. The aim of this research was also to get the broader picture of what model is most widely practiced by the Ulama when they were assigned in government system, members of parliament and political party leaders, then the results will be also compared among the 3 groups of the samples. This study will be recruited some participants to answer the questionnaires and followed by depth interview session.

Abstract: Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas of California is widely remembered for her senatorial loss to Richard Nixon and his red-baiting tactics in 1950. She is also remembered for her extraordinary rise to Congress in 1944. While not disputing her talents, this article explores the gendered politics of accommodation that shaped her initial success. Douglas established political credibility by accommodating male partisans at some cost to local women leaders and she benefitted from an incumbent effect not unlike congressional widows. The Democratic Party, in turn, accommodated Douglas in a winnable district because of her symbolic value as a woman who could stand up against Republican women in Congress. By examining Douglas's campaign at both local and national levels and analyzing the accommodation politics that this campaign reveals, this article adds to the integrationist and separatist interpretations of women's partisan history and sheds new light on women's electoral success in a male-dominated political system.

Abstract: The struggle for the power to nominate candidates for office between party elites and rank-and-file partisans surfaced in the late 1700s. The battle endures today and superdelegates in the Democratic Party represent the contemporary political elites in the nomination process. Indeed, superdelegates played a decisive role in determining the outcome of the 2008 Democratic nomination campaign. In this paper, we examine the attitudes and decisions of superdelegates towards the candidates and their own role in the nomination process. We also examine the attitudes of rank-and-file Democrats towards the delegates and the nomination process. To study these two groups, we rely on survey data collected immediately following the 2008 primary season. Results from the surveys indicate that voters and superdelegates differ greatly in their perceptions of superdelegates, their roles and decisions, as well as the legitimacy of the nomination process in the Democratic Party. We conclude by discussing the implications of o...

Abstract: This paper explores empirically the relation between party's procedures to nominate candidates, such as primaries, and quality of government Using a panel data of Latin America countries, I find robust evidence that the quality of government is higher during the mandate of primary-nominated presidents The empirical strategy exploits within country variation and controls for relevant covariates at country and party level Using an instrumental variable approach with determinants of primary adoption produces similar results The findings are consistent with primaries increasing incentives among candidates to improve policy design, and suggest that party institutions matter for governance

Abstract: In recognition of the high standard of papers submitted to the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, the editorial board in collaboration with the Nordic Congress of General Practice proudly announce the Paper of the Year award. The winner of each year will be granted participation free of charge to the Nordic Congress of General Practice in Tampere 2013, and will be given a specific time slot in relation to the plenary sessions in order to present the Paper and the research it constitutes. The candidates will be found among all first authors of papers published in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care in 2011, and among those published in 2012. It is possible to nominate first author candidates who have published the Paper of the Year in the Scandinavian Journal Primary Health Care in 2011 and in 2012, respectively. The nominations should be sent to the national colleges. A specific focus is put on the nominations from each of the Nordic societies who should nominate the first authors who they believe should be honoured with the Paper of the Year award, and do a presentation to a full audience at the Nordic Congress in Tampere 2013. Each of the Nordic colleges will nominate four candidates. The final decision of who is going to be assigned first author of the Paper of the Year award in 2011 and 2012, respectively, is judged by the full editorial board of the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care. The decision is based on explicit criteria: Impact, Application, Usability, Dissemination, Originality, Methods, and Presentation. The final decision will be made in May 2013 and the two winners will be contacted immediately by the Nordic Federation of General Practice. Deadline for sending nominations to national colleges is 1st February 2013. Deadline for the national colleges to send in nominations to the editorial board is 1st April 2013. For further advice and information about the award please contact The Editorial Office at www.sjphc.org The two winners will also be invited to participate at the traditional Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care Symposium at the Nordic Congress.

Abstract: The single transferable vote (STV) is a system of preferential voting designed to minimize wasted votes. In STV, a constituency elects two or more representatives per electorate. As a result the constituency is proportionally larger than a single member constituency from each party. Political parties tend to offer as many candidates as they most optimistically could expect to win; the major parties may nominate almost as many candidates as there are seats, while the minor parties and independents rather fewer. STV initially allocates an elector’s vote for her most preferred candidate and then, after candidate have been either elected or eliminated, transfers surplus or unused votes according to the voter’s stated preferences (ties disallowed). The paper deals with different STV counting methods so that one can compare among them and analyze advantages and drawbacks of them. Since in STV ties are disallowed, so that tie-breaking in STV is important and are discussed in some details. In STV manipulation of voting is sometimes possible and this paper has taken an attempt to give a clear concept of STV manipulation.

Abstract: Most interpretations of ideal point estimates such as nominate scores treat the revealed space as an ideological space. This paper projects the ideal points of ideological pundits into the same estimated space and find evidence that the space is jointly generated by ideology and some other force, orthogonal to ideology as it is defined by the pundits. This second force is most likely party, although it probably includes other forces as well. On the grounds that ideology may be influencing party leaders to adopt its divisions, and that party and ideology are more correlated today than in the 1950’s, this paper begins to disentangle which force was responsible for the increased association. Preliminary evidence suggests that ideology draws party toward itself.

Abstract: Over the course of the twentieth century, the Democratic and Republican parties have reversed positions on racial issues This reversal is credited to a variety of factors, chief among them strategic decisions on the part of party leaders competing for votes An original dataset of the opinions expressed by political thinkers in leading magazines and newspapers is used to develop a measure of ideological positions parallel to nominate scores for members of Congress Results show that the current ideological pattern, in which racial and economic liberalism are aligned together, emerged among political intellectuals at least 20 years before it appeared in congressional voting The finding is consistent with the view that ideology shapes party coalitions

Abstract: UNAVAILABLE