Term Limits

We extend the model of to a dynamic setting with no policy commitment. Two parties that compete for election must choose the level of provision of a public good as well as the tax payment needed to finance it. The cost of producing the good may be high or low and this information is not known to the voters. We show that there exists an equilibrium in which the party that does not want much of the public good use the inefficient (high cost) technology even though the efficient one is available. Using the low cost technology would, by informing the voters about the cost parameter, force it to produce an excessively high level of the good. Interestingly, this equilibrium is not symmetric, suggesting that a party with a strong taste for the public good is less likely to adopt a wasteful policy.

We extend the model of Schultz (1996) to a dynamic setting with no policy commitment. Two parties that compete for election must choose the level of provision of a public good as well as the tax payment needed to finance it. The cost of producing the good may be high or low and this information is not known to the voters. We show that there exists an equilibrium in which the party that does not want much of the public good use the inefficient (high cost) technology even though the efficient one is available. Using the low cost technology would, by informing the voters about the cost parameter, force it to produce an excessively high level of the good. Interestingly, this equilibrium is not symmetric, suggesting that a party with a strong taste for the public good is less likely to adopt a wasteful policy.

THE PRESENT GENERATION of political scientists possesses a wealth of knowledge about the logical structure of majority rule processes. Only thirty years ago Duncan Black began to publish a series of discoveries and rediscoveries about the properties of committee decisionmaking under majority rule.1 At almost the same time Kenneth Arrow proved a general result about the failings of col lective choice mechanisms which included majority rule as a special case.2 Anthony Downs insightfully applied these early findings to a political setting-that of free, two-party electoral competition3 In the 1960s Plott identified a set of necessary and sufficient (and restrictive) conditions under which majority rule processes produce stable outcomes.4 Sloss generalized this work.5 Meanwhile, in a

The claim that government is excessively bureaucratic can be interpreted as an assertion about inefficient factor proportions in the production of public go0ds. The rational choice theory of electoral competition is extended in this paper to include the election of representatives from separate districts, ombudsman activities by legislators, self-interested bureaucrats and production functions for public activities that have bureaucratic and nonbureaucrat. ic arguments. If• the demand for public goods grows exogenously through time, the model predicts increasingly inefficient factor proportions yet a growing advantage for incumbent legislators when they seek reelection.

This study reviews the participation of independent, non-partisan candidates in Africa. It examines the development of competitive elections on the continent between 1945 and 2005, a period which includes both decolonisation and democratic transition elections. It also focuses on the participation of independent candidates in these elections at both legislative and presidential levels. It further analyses the place of independent candidature in the continent's future electoral processes.

The movement of create medical information systems that is now taking place involves both progress in EMR (Electronic Medical Records)-computerization of records at hospitals and clinics, and also in EHR (Electronic Health Records) in which information is shared with individual regions. However, the geographical coming and going of people in modern society is extremely active. Naturally the places these people move to are not necessarily within the same region. For this reason, even if the basic unit for the health care supply system is in practical terms limited to the local level, if services are restricted to only one region, many persons may be unable to receive the benefits of health care cooperation. In this study, we constructed a mechanism for a medical cooperation system which links the EHR systems of individual regions and is able to create a one-patient, one-record system on the national level. In this paper, we will provide a report of this mechanism and of the 4-year operational trial.

The idea that the public expects more from its presidents than they are able to deliver long has been a mainstay of the presidential literature. When presidential scholars ask whether the expectations gap exists, they generally provide micro level explanations that focus on the relationships among various presidential characteristics and how these characteristics are perceived by the public. This approach makes sense if expectations are chiefly responsive to perceptions of the Presidency itself. Yet, recent research empirically identifies an expectations gap in public perceptions of Congress and the president. These studies provide a theoretical reason to believe that macro level political phenomena, or public perceptions of the broader governmental system, also may be determinants of the gap. These macro determinants might include general beliefs about the responsiveness, efficacy and trustworthiness of government. Using two national surveys conducted in 1998 and 1999, we test three related micro level explanations and two macro level explanations for the gap's existence. While we find support for micro level explanations, importantly, we demonstrate that macro level phenomena such as trust in government, perceptions of political efficacy, and individual political attitudes are important determinants of presidential, incumbent and weighted models of the expectations gap.

En este número, se presenta una aproximación inicial al estudio de las elecciones primarias presidenciales abiertas y simultáneas (PAS) realizadas en diversos países de América Latina durante los últimos 25 años. Se incluyen artículos breves que ofrecen diferentes enfoques sobre las elecciones primarias presidenciales en varios países latinoamericanos, con un análisis de sus particularidades, adaptaciones, excepciones y normativas, dentro de los distintos contextos en los que este mecanismo ha sido incorporado e implementado a lo largo de múltiples procesos electorales.

There is an optimism that a growing number of women in political office will reorient the focus of international politics towards more social and humanitarian issues. One basis for this optimism are arguments that women legislators hold distinct foreign policy preferences and act on them to affect changes in policy. However, we know little about gender differences in behavior of individual legislators on these issues. This study investigates the behavior of individual legislators of the United States, one of the most important actors in international politics, in the context of development aid. Analyzing a diverse set of legislative behaviors in the U.S. Congress, we find no evidence that women legislators behave any differently than men with regards to these issues. Beyond its contribution to our understanding of the making and future of American foreign policy, this study contributes to broader debates about women's representation and foreign policy.

In this article, structural issues with regard to the quality of the self-governance of the 35 Olympic sport governing bodies (SGBs) are analysed. First, this article presents empirical evidence on the lack of accountability arrangements in SGBs. In particular, the watchdog function of their member organizations is severely undermined by the general absence of objective criteria and transparency in the distribution of funding to members. With regard to checks and balances, arguably the most topical issue is the complete lack of independent ethics committees. Second, our survey demonstrates that most SGBs have institutionalized athlete participation. However, in the overwhelming majority of the organizations, they have not been granted a share of formal decisionmaking power. Third, with regard to executive body members, there is the rather anachronistic dominance of the European continent and also the preponderance of male officials. In addition, the general lack of term limits poses serious threats with regard to the concentration of power, which is evidenced for instance by the overall number of years SGB presidents are in office. The empirical evidence clearly supports the recent calls for improved governance in sport, according to which SGBs need to agree upon, and act in accordance with, a set of well-defined criteria of good governance. Only then will the self-governance of sport be credible and the privileged autonomy of these organizations justifiable.

We develop a theory of endogenous political entrenchment in a simple two-party dynamic model of income redistribution with probabilistic voting. A partially self-interested left-wing party may implement (entrenchment) policies reducing the income of its own constituency, the lower class, in order to consolidate its future political power. Such policies increase the net gain that low-skill agents obtain from income redistribution, which only the Left (but not the Right) can credibly commit to provide, and therefore may help o¤setting a potential future aggregate ideological shock averse to the left-wing party. We demonstrate that political entrenchment by the Left occurs only if incumbency rents are su¢ ciently high and that low-skill citizens may vote for this party even though they rationally expect the adoption of these policies. We also discuss the case where the left-wing party may have the incentive to ex-ante commit to not pursue entrenchment policies once in power. Finally, we show that, in a more general framework, the entrenchment policies can be implemented also by the right-wing party. The comparative statics analyzes the e¤ects of state capacity, a positive bias of voters for one party and income inequality on the incentives of the incumbent party to pursue entrenchment policies. The importance of our theory for constitutionally legislated term limits is also discussed. The theory sheds light on why left-wing parties or politicians often support liberal immigration policies of unskilled workers, are sometime in favor of free trade with less developed economies and of globalization more generally, or fail to reform plainly "dysfunctional"public educational systems damaging the lower classes.

The issue of presidential term limits is an important political norm on the African continent, but the effects of this on the institutionalization of the party systems have so far not been analyzed. The authors argue that the third presidential election represents a window of opportunity for politicians aspiring for the top position, leading to party fragmentation (fissions) and party mergers (fusions). Politicians pursue an office-seeking strategy, weakly connected to ideological priorities. The combination of leadership-centered parties, executive dominance, and the institutional rules for presidential elections encourage turbulence in the party system in the context of the third elections. The authors illustrate these processes with the case of Malawi's 2004 presidential and parliamentary elections, which led to a number of new party formations. After the elections, fusions of parties and coalitions among parties became alternative strategies for winning office.

Rep. 201 (K.B.). (Burrow's report of Donaldson v. Beckett begins on page 257. For the sake of accuracy, even when making a full citation to Burrow's Donaldson alone, this article's footnotes will cite "Millar v. Taylor, (1769) 98 Eng. Rep. 201, 257 (K.B.)," because that is where the report is located, and where it will be most easily found in electronic databases, even though the case was decided in the House of Lords in 1774.) Meanwhile, the version reported by Brown does not make the same error in counting the common law judges' advisory opinions but, like Burrow, omits the lords' speeches. See Donaldson v. Beckett, (1774) 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (H.L.). The Parliamentary History version (or Hansard) is more comprehensive than either Burrow or Brown because it contains concise summaries of the speeches by the lawyers, judges, and lords. See 17 Parl. Hist. Eng. (1774) 953. A version called here the "Anonymous Report" contains detailed first-person accounts of the speeches by the lawyers, judges, and lords. See THE PLEADINGS OF THE COUNSEL BEFORE THE HOUSE OF LORDS, IN THE GREAT CAUSE CONCERNING LITERARY PROPERTY (London, Wilkin, 1774) [hereinafter Anonymous Report]. The so-called Gentleman's Report appears to be the most complete version of all five legal reports of the case. It includes a report of written submissions by the parties to the House of Lords that is not included in the other accounts. See THE CASES OF THE APPELLANTS AND RESPONDENTS IN THE CAUSE OF LITERARY PROPERTY (London, Bew 1774) [hereinafter Gentleman's Report]. This article also gleans previously underappreciated details about Donaldson from eighteenth-century London and Edinburgh newspaper accounts found in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, the British Library in London (Colindale), and the Burney Collection of Newspapers. The Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) amassed a large collection of early British newspapers, now housed at the British Library and made available electronically by Gale. The Burney Collection of Newspapers, which was digitized and made searchable in 2007, contains more than 1,200 titles and nearly one million pages. 5 Literary Property, supra note 1.

In 187o, a black man named Hiram Revels was named to represent Mississippi in the Senate. Senate Democrats objected to seating him and pointed out that the Constitution specifies that no person may be a senator who has not been a citizen of the United States for at least nine years. Before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the Democrats argued, Revels had not been a citizen on account of the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Thus, even if Revels were a citizen in 187o, he had held that status for only two years. After three days of heated and highly publicized debate, the Senate voted to admit Revels. Modern constitutional law has entirely forgotten the Revels debate. In this Article, Professor Richard Primus recovers the episode and analyzes the Senate's proceedings as an instance of nonjudicial constitutional interpretation. He shows how examining our modern intuitions about the Revels debate can prompt us to endorse certain principles of constitutional interpretation, in particular the notion that the Civil War altered the antebellum constitutional regime and the idea that legislatures should be empowered to interpret constitutional provisions flexibly under certain conditions of transitional justice. Professor Primus then uses these principles to criticize the Court's 1883 ruling in the Civil Rights Cases.

Democracy is perhaps the most hackneyed political concept in modern discourse. For most sovereign states in Africa however, democratisation and its challenges have for long remained daunting. One instance of the bastardization of democracy in Africa is sittightism which has become the rule rather than the exception among African presidents since independence. At the end of their tenures which are normally spelled out in their country' s constitutions, most African presidents had employed all kinds of measures ranging from constitutional coups, intimidation of the opposition, refusal to conduct an election to outright refusal to quit office even after being elected out of office irrespective of the consequences. This paper critically examines the phenomenon of sit-tightism in Africa, and makes recommendations on how to remedy the situation and strengthen democracy in Africa.

Temelleri klasik cumhuriyetçi düşünceye dayanan ve antik çağ uygarlıklarında dahi örnekleri olduğu bilinen görevde rotasyon ilkesi, seçimle veya atamayla gelinen makamlara ilişkin demokratik bir gerekliliği ifade etmektedir. Bu gereklilik, meşruiyetini doğrudan halktan alan ve önemli yetkilerle donatılmış bulunan kamusal makamlar bakımından çok daha belirgindir. Fevkalade yetkileri haiz bir başkanın halk tarafından seçildiği başkanlık sistemlerinde başkanın görev süresi ve yeniden seçilme imkânı ile buna yönelik sınırlamalar, bu itibarla, anayasa mühendisliğinin temel ilgi alanlarından birini oluşturmaktadır. Çalışmada başkanlık sistemlerinde anayasal görev süresi düzenlemelerine ilişkin teorik hususlar yanında, başkanlık sisteminin uygulandığı devletlerde görev süresi kurallarının anayasalarda ne şekilde düzenlendiği karşılaştırmalı olarak incelenmiştir. Bunun yanı sıra, başkanın görev süresine ilişkin anayasa kurallarının uygulamada gösterdiği özellikler, görev süresi manipülasyonları ve bu amaçla kullanılan hukuk-içi stratejiler çerçevesinde değerlendirilmiştir. Yapılan inceleme neticesinde anayasa hükümleri ile uygulamanın birbirine uygun düşmediği; otoriter eğilimleri olan güçlü liderlerin görev süresi sınırlamalarının üstesinden gelmek üzere çeşitli stratejiler geliştirdiği tespit edilmiştir. Anayasal demokrasiye yönelik tehditler karşısında etkili olması beklenen mekanizmaların ise çoğu durumda kendilerinden beklenen fonksiyonu yerine getiremedikleri saptanmıştır. Cumhurbaşkanı’nın görev süresine ilişkin düzenlemelerin Türkiye’deki tarihsel değişimi ile anayasa değişikliklerinin görevdeki Cumhurbaşkanlarına etkisine ilişkin uygulamada ortaya çıkan anayasal sorunlar –Cumhurbaşkanı Abdullah Gül’ün görev süresi ve Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’ın yeniden adaylığı– da çalışma kapsamında incelenmiştir.

One of the few stylized facts in international relations is that democracies almost never fight one another. We examine the sustainability of international peace between democracies and autocracies, where the crucial difference between these two political regimes is whether or not the leaders are subject to periodic elections. We show that the fear of losing office can deter democratic leaders from engaging in military conflicts. Crucially, this disciplining effect can only be at work if incumbents can be re-elected. This implies that democracies in which the executives are subject to term limits should be more conflict prone. To assess the validity of these predictions, we construct a large dataset on countries with executive term limits. Our analysis of interstate conflicts for the 1816-2001 period suggests that electoral incentives are indeed behind the democratic peace phenomenon: while conflicts in autocratic dyads are generally less likely than conflicts in autocratic and mixed dyads, this result does not hold for democracies in which the leaders face binding term limits; moreover, the likelihood of conflicts is higher in the executive's last mandate.

We develop a dynamic model of democratic politics in which both potential office holders and the electorate have heterogeneous ideologies. Voters have incomplete information about candidate ideologies, so they must use information from previous positions taken in office to make informed re-election decisions. We characterize the effects of term limits on the evolution over time of the ideological positions taken by office holders and derive the implications for voter choice and welfare. Contributions of our paper include:. We detail how pork provision by more senior incumbents interacts with term limits to affect electoral outcomes. Pork provision-transfers of resources from districts with junior legislators to districts with more senior legislators-induces voters to be more forgiving of extreme location by incumbents, especially incumbents in small or poor districts. Pork provision can explain why reelection probabilities in Congress exceed those for governors.-Term limits reduce voter welfare when all that matters are the ideological positions taken by the office holder.-Term limits may be advantageous when senior incumbents can extract benefits for their constituencies at the expense of districts with more junior representatives. Large or rich districts especially value term limits when there is substantial pork provision.. We characterize the welfare of all voters, not just the median voter.

Candidate image is an important predictor of voting behavior in congressional elections. Voters usually compare the qualities of both candidates and choose the candidate that they perceive to be best. The evidence provided indicates that incumbents have an advantage under normal circumstances, in establishing, reinforcing, and maintaining positive images of themselves in the minds of the electorate. The source of this advantage for incumbents is the result of privileges and the amount of time they can devote to campaigning. However, the decisive advantage of incumbency is money. Incumbents raise and spend a great deal more money than challengers. Incumbents are also able to utilize various mediaforms more extensively than challengers to build positive images among voters. Further evidence is provided to show that once images are established, incumbents fare even better, because these images become more stable and harder to change. Public financing of elections, not term limits, is probably the best way to make congressional elections competitive again. Incumbents win because Americans despise Congress but love their particular Congressman, who toils tirelessly to deliver services. Incumbents are entrenched by democratic choices, and Americans have a constitutional right to democracy, not good government.

A binary win/loss model is constructed and estimated on the results from 1990-2004 contests for open U.S. House seats. The results indicate that election outcomes are highly sensitive to the major-party candidates' campaign spending ratios, and increases in spending ratios are shown to translate into non-trivial increases the candidate's probability of winning, a result that holds for both Republicans and Democrats. The payoff to high levels of spending explains why it's so attractive for candidates to outspend their opponents by large margins. The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee for offering helpful suggestions, and we acknowledge the assistance of Bob Trost and Brent Boning. The usual caveat applies.

The 1994 elections at the national and state level resulted in significant changes all across the political landscape. In the following articles, University of Maine political scientist Matthew Moen and Bowdoin Professor of Government Christian Potholm analyze the nature of that change and its implications for Maine. Expectations and the 1994 Maine elections By Christian P. Potholm "Expectation is the enemy of prediction" wrote Ward Just, and his quotation aptly describes the Maine political scene during 1994. When the year began, conventional wisdom said that Senator George Mitchell would be easily reelected no matter who ran against him and that Maine's two congressional seats would continue to be held by Representatives Tom Andrews and Olympia Snowe, even though Snowe had faced serious opposition in 1990 and 1992. Democrat Joe Brennan, it was widely believed, would handily defeat a wide array of Democratic, Republican and Independent challengers.

This chapter discusses the introduction of a new financial regulatory regime in Sweden based on regulations managed by the Swedish central bank, the Riksbank. This chapter analyzes the political background and the game played by the Ministry of Finance, the central bank, and the banks, and how the regulations were created through these negotiations. The analysis contains a detailed discussion concerning the creation of the new regulatory regime and also addresses the important question: should we view the regulations as being forced on the banks from above, or as a process in which special interests were able to capture the regulatory apparatus for their own benefit? Keywords The Riksbank • Riksbank regulation • Banks • Insurance companies • Social Democracy In this chapter, we closely follow the initiation of the new Swedish financial regulatory measures in the first half of the 1950s. The political discussion and the creation of the Riksbank measures influenced all actors in the market. Although the banks played the major role in 3

Chronic effects of ammonia were studied in juvenile seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax (mean WEIGHT=11 g), exposed for 63 days to eight stable ammonia concentrations, ranging from 0.24 to 0.90 mg l−1 unionised ammonia nitrogen (UIA-N), respectively, from 6.1 to 22.3 mg l−1 total ammonia nitrogen (TA-N). Temperature (21.8 °C), pH (8.0), salinity (37.0 ppt), and oxygen concentration (over 80% saturation at the outlet) were maintained constant. Fish were fed using a self-feeder device, and they were starved during the last 8 days. Mortality of 28.9 and 42.6% occurred within the first 8 days at the two highest UIA-N concentrations, respectively, 0.90 and 0.88 mg l−1. From days 0 to 55, a 1.8fold increase in weight gain was observed under the 0.90-mg l−1 UIA-N condition, compared to a 3.4fold increase in the control. Weight gains were negatively correlated to ambient ammonia concentrations. Weight loss, or a transient period of growth stagnation, was observed from the onset of ammonia exposure to day 13 in seabass exposed to concentrations above 0.43 mg l−1 UIA-N. After day 13, weight gains were observed in all groups, indicating that the fish were able to adapt to increased ambient ammonia concentrations over time. By the end of the experiment, plasma ammonia levels were positively related to ambient ammonia concentrations, and oxygen consumption recorded in fasting fish was significantly dependent on ammonia concentrations. In seabass juveniles, the 0.26mg l−1 UIA-N concentration, under an average pH of 8.0, can be considered as a safe long-term limit conditions in seawater.

This paper investigates whether reputation-building strategies guide U.S. governors' state cigarette tax choices, and whether the federal cigarette tax influences such behavior. Using 1975-2000 data, we find evidence that governors in states with relatively important agricultural tobacco production and tobacco manufacturing, and which are densely populated by smokers, appear prone to reputation-building. Moreover, lame ducks are more prone to raise the state cigarette tax the lower the federal tax.

Background and Purpose. The assessment of physical therapist student competence in the clinical learning environment is valuable and necessary. However, educators and clinicians are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their chosen assessment tools and delivery platforms. The profession recently called for a pursuit of excellence that includes an analysis of performance evaluation practices and consideration of assessment tools. In line with this call, the purpose of this report was to disseminate one academic institution's exploration, implementation, and early outcomes of the transition from the Clinical Performance Instrument (CPI) to the Clinical Internship Evaluation Tool (CIET) for full-time student clinical performance assessment. Case Description. After identification of key stakeholders, the authors completed an initial exploration and comparison of CPI versus CIET, executed a pilot trial of CIET use, and implemented a transition from CPI to CIET for all full-time cl...

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We study the characteristics of self-selected candidates in corrupt political systems. Potential candidates differ along two dimensions of unobservable character: public spirit (altruism toward others) and honesty (the disutility suffered when selling out to special interests after securing office). Both aspects combine to determine an individual's quality as governor. We characterize properties of equilibrium candidate pools for arbitrary costs of running for office. As the cost of running vanishes, there is an essentially unique candidate pool, which is typically highly asymmetric: it consists of only the most dishonest individuals but a mixture of the most selfish and the most public-spirited ones. We explore how two policy instruments-the governor's compensation and anti-corruption enforcement-affect the expected quality of governance through candidate self-selection. We also examine the effects of incumbency and term limits on self-selection in a dynamic version of the model. * For useful comments and discussions, we thank Simon Loertscher, Kali P. Rath, and seminar participants at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and the 2007 Wallis Institute Conference on Political Economy at the University of Rochester. Bernheim also thanks the National Science Foundation for financial support (grants SES-0137129 and SES-0452300), and Kartik thanks the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for hospitality and financial support through the Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. and Annette L. Nazareth membership. Preliminary versions of some of the results in this paper were reported in Kartik's Ph.D. dissertation submitted to Stanford University.

Recent developments in dynamic game theory are applied to determine when two countries can sustain freer trade given that they determine trade policies non-cooperatively. Countries know their own level of protection, but not the other country's level of protection. Using import trigger strategies, cooperation (in the form of low tariffs) can be supported, although there are periodic reversionary (high tariff) episodes. However, if terms of trade trigger strategies are used, cooperation does not occur.

We develop a model of a contest between two political candidates who may care about their reputations separately from how they affect the election outcome. In the game's first stage, each candidate chooses to maintain his maximum reputation or to shirk to lower it. In the second stage, candidates undertake positive or negative campaigns. We allow the magnitudes of reputational effects of positive and negative campaigns, and the relative importance candidates place on reputation and winning, to vary. Under many parameter values, candidates shirk in order to either decrease negative campaigning in the second stage or to increase their probability of winning the election. This result persists even when some of the main assumptions of the model are relaxed.

Abstract: This article examines the historical underpinnings of copyright from the century's old Pre Gutenberg times when print did not exist and traces a timeline as to how the bricks of the first copyright legislation in the world - The Statute of Anne, 1710 were legislated into ...

This paper explores the similarity of the underlying economic problems that lead to the establishment of (a) independent central banks to operate national monetary policies and (b) independent regulatory agencies for telecommunications and other utility service industries. We show that, in both cases, the adoption of agencies independent of government results from the need to achieve credibility and a reputation for economically sound long-run behaviour while preserving significant discretion to handle unanticipated events. We show that this solution is superior to policy rules that are fixed in advance. Both for central banks and regulatory agencies, what is required are institutions that provide limited and accountable discretion within a clear policy framework, for example via high levels of accountability and transparency in their decision making processes. On the basis of a review of the empirical literature, we argue that central banks with superior governance arrangements, particularly on accountability and transparency, out-perform those with inferior arrangements and we discuss how this work might be extended to utility regulatory agencies.

explains it on the background of the framers' economic philosophy, and aptly proposes that the clause be called "the progress clause." See ROBERT A. GOLDWIN, WHY BLACKS, WOMEN, AND JEWS ARE NOT MENTIONED IN THE CONSTITUTION AND OTHER UNORTHODOX VIEWS 41 (1990). A third exception is an important article by Margaret Chon,

Perhaps the greatest strength underlying our nation's constitutional form of democracy has been the ability of citizens to exercise their voting rights freely. 1 Yet, even though the constitution generally prohibits laws which directly interfere with or usurp the right to vote, 2 this right may be effectively limited by other laws in a more indirect fashion. For example, if a voter's electoral choice is limited to only two candidates because election laws have denied ballot access to other legitimate non-frivolous candidates, the voter's ability and right to express his political preference may be severely undermined. 3 Typically, the Democrats and the Republicans always gain a ballot position in major elections and comprise the overwhelming 1. See Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17 (1964): "No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined." 2. See, e.g., Kramer v. Union Free School Dist. No. 15, 395 U.S. 621, 622 (1969) (invalidating on the basis of the equal protection clause a New York statute excluding certain school district residents, otherwise eligible to vote in a school district election, because they neither "(1) own (or lease) taxable real property within the district [n]or (2) are parents (or have custody of) children enrolled in the local public schools."); Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 670 (1966) (invalidating on equal protection grounds a Virginia poll tax conditioning the right to vote on the payment of a fee or tax); Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 89 n.l (1965) (invalidating on equal protection grounds a Texas constitutional provision permitting a member of the armed forces throughout the course of his or her military duty to "vote only in the county in which he or she resided at time of entry into service"). 3.

This thesis addresses why some African leaders have succeeded in extending their mandates while others have not. Specifically, the study focuses on societal factors that impose constraints upon leaders attempting to extend or abolish term limits, paying particular attention to the influence of urbanization, formal education, and the functioning of civil society organizations. Using a within-case methodology, the study investigates Blaise Compaore's twenty-seven-year rule in Burkina Faso, comparing his successful extension of his mandate in 2005 to his failed attempt in 2014. Comparative case analysis is used to determine what societal changes may have occurred between the two attempts. The analysis suggests that urbanization and the functioning of civil society organizations were factors important to the difference in outcomes. The factor of formalized education was not found to be important. In 2014, new grassroots, prodemocratic civil society organizations capitalized on urban demographic changes to mobilize prodemocracy opposition to Compaore. The organizations used a number of effective strategies to accomplish this, including civic education and pro-democracy consensus building. These insights offer potential guidance to democracy promoters as they search for opportunities to assist pro-democracy civil society organizations. 14. SUBJECT TERMS Burkina Faso, West Africa, Africa, comparative politics, constitutional change, term limits, constitutionalism 15. NUMBER OF PAGES 79 16. PRICE CODE 17. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF REPORT Unclassified

This paper considers the efficiency of the political market in the California State legislature. I analyzed the property tax limitation voter initiative, Proposition 13. I found that districts which supported Proposition 13 more strongly were more likely to oppose the incumbents regardless of whether the incumbents had the different preferences for property taxes from their districts. I also studied how legislators voted on the bills adopted after the passage of Proposition 13 to finance local governments. I found that legislators tended to follow the constituents’ will after they received the voters’ tax-cutting message expressed by the passage of Proposition 13.

This paper addresses the issue of inter-jurisdictional cooperation when incumbents are pure rent seekers. Asymmetric fiscal needs bias yardstick competition as in Allers (2012). While incumbents gain control over the political yardstick competition by cooperating, this bias leads to asymmetric rent share. Cooperation is also intrinsically unstable. Furthermore, incentives, such as matching grants or economies of scale, may enhance cooperation, but will not increase political accountability.

Although numerous get-out-the-vote field experiments have identified the effects of particular mobilization tactics (e.g., canvassing, phone calls, direct mails) on voter turnout, we do not yet have a full understanding of the causal effect of overall mobilization. We study this by leveraging a natural experiment in Japan, in which the timing of a municipal election is as-if randomly assigned. The results show that almost concurrently held municipal elections boost these municipalities' voter turnout in prefectural elections by one to two percentage points. We argue that some unique settings in Japan allow us not only to mitigate omitted variable bias but also to attribute the estimated effect only to mobilization, rather than the effects of cost sharing and psychological stimulus.

This article focuses on alternatives to leaders’ constitutional term limits which failed to protect democracy in innumerable countries as they did not reduce incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Such a reduction can achieve a super-majority thresholds escalator for incumbents’ re-election. Research has found that setting super-majority thresholds for leadership offices improves the quality of leadership. However, leaders’ autocratic entrenchment poses the worse problem of democratic leadership quality. Setting escalating super-majority thresholds for an incumbent’s re-election would bar autocratic entrenchment by reducing her/his incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Both ordinal and exponential escalator versions prolong the tenure of successful high-moral effective leaders beyond two terms, allowing them to use accumulated trust credit to advance radical changes, while incumbents who fail to achieve a super-majority
threshold are replaced. However, the ordinal version lacks a terminal term, thus it may not prevent autocratic entrenchment, while the exponential version with its terminal term that ensures succession while escalating super-majority thresholds mitigates the exponential growth of leaders’ power resources with tenure. After an incumbent fails to re-elect, a second voting round without her/him will give the winner a clear mandate to rule. Suggestions for further study of barring leaders’
entrenchment by exponential escalating super-majority thresholds are offered.

In federal democracies the Congress has a central role in the distribution of benefits across provinces and also a significant influence in promoting regional development through taxes, subsidies and regulations. Traditionally, the political economy literature has focused on the quantity of legislators per capita to explain the distribution of benefits but leaves aside the quality component. We present a model where legislators’ quality plays a role in the dispute of limited federal benefits. We demonstrate that although quantity is important, at the margin quality does matter. We also show quality indicators of the political representation for the Argentinean case.

This article focuses on alternatives to leaders' constitutional term limits which failed to protect democracy in innumerable countries as they did not reduce incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Such a reduction can achieve a super-majority thresholds escalator for incumbents' re-election. Research has found that setting super-majority thresholds for leadership o ces improves the quality of leadership. However, leaders' autocratic entrenchment poses the worse problem of democratic leadership quality. Setting escalating super-majority thresholds for an incumbent's re-election would bar autocratic entrenchment by reducing her/his incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Both ordinal and exponential escalator versions prolong the tenure of successful high-moral e ective leaders beyond two terms, allowing them to use accumulated trust credit to advance radical changes, while incumbents who fail to achieve a super-majority threshold are replaced. However, the ordinal version lacks a terminal term, thus it may not prevent autocratic entrenchment, while the exponential version with its terminal term that ensures succession while escalating super-majority thresholds mitigates the exponential growth of leaders' power resources with tenure. After an incumbent fails to re-elect, a second voting round without her/him will give the winner a clear mandate to rule. Suggestions for further study of barring leaders' entrenchment by exponential escalating super-majority thresholds are o ered.