A recurring theme in commentary on parliamentary (Lok Sabha) elections in India since the 1990s is that of “anti-incumbency”: at every election since 1991, voters have cut a swathe through incumbent members of Parliament by choosing to replace a large number of them with a fresh set of...

The method of Single Transferable Voting (STV) underpins electionsin several countries. The advantages claimed for STV are that, firstly, it allows each voter to express his/her preferences over all the candidates and, secondly, it takes account of each voter’s range of preferences in...

Spatial models of political competition are typically based on two assumptions. One is that all the voters identically perceive the platforms of the candidates and agree about their score on a "valence" dimension. The second is that each voter's preferences over policies are decreasing in the...

The first presidential election following implementation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 was also the first in the lifetimes of most Americans in which a minority of the voting-age population bothered to vote. While that outcome must be a source of embarrassment to many reform...

There is now a considerable body of literature on decentralization in diverse national contexts. Ascertaining factors that drive local accountability and performance have been the key concerns of these studies. Diverse ethodological instruments and approaches have been used—from large-n...

This paper discusses the problems and issues on the political failures in Bangladesh as well as identifies some possible solutions. The approach here is analytical mostly reviewing current news, reports and other related materials. A comparative study is also done between the present and...

The ruling political party or the ruling government has rights in drafting and implementing economic policies including the budget policy. In the case of Malaysia, as observed, the budget policy is associated with the long or medium term economic development plans that are drafted, current...

Election results are generally hard to predict, and India is no exception. This paper discusses the factors that are important in explaining the results of the 2009 parliamentary elections in India. Our results show that the voters prefer the candidates who have served in the parliament before,...

In late April 2013, Jim O’Neill retired as chairman of Goldman Sachs (GS). The 56-year-old British economist, among other accomplishments, left his mark on the still unfolding globalization story by coining the acronym BRIC, referring to the four rapidly developing nations—Brazil, Russia,...

This paper examines the response of voters to candidates who have reported that they have criminal charges against them, within the framework of a simple analytical model which assumes that criminal charges give rise to some stigma amongst the electorate, and result in a negative effect on vote...