Using geo-referenced terror events and ethnicity information, this article seeks to explore if and how elections contribute to violence in Iraq. Analyzing the December 2005 and March 2010 parliamentary elections and the January 2009 governorate elections, I assess whether partisan and/or ethnic...

According to the responsible party, parties are assumed to present prospective policy programs on to which voters make their choices. The voters are assumed to vote for the party whose policy program is closest to their own policy preferences. The elections are in this context reckoned as a...

State electoral votes and state competitiveness are central to most popular and academic conceptualizations of geographic presidential campaign strategy. And yet, the true influence of state size and competitiveness on campaign strategists' decisionmaking remains inadequately understood. This...

Do political parties benefit electorally from a personal vote cultivated by their candidates? How do these benefits vary across electoral systems? This paper explores these questions, so far underaddressed despite their importance, through a comparative analysis of parties' electoral gains from...

While national election campaigns have become increasingly personalized, it is unclear to what extent this trend has been replicated at the local constituency level. Using surveys of both candidates and voters in the 2007 Australian federal election, this paper examines the personalization of...

This paper focuses on the dynamic interaction among electoral system changes and the electoral strategies of parties in Italy and Japan (1994-2009). In the first section, some key changes in electoral rules are outlined. The second section focuses on the pre-electoral strategies of parties and...