"MJESTO SJEĆANJA" ILI IZBORNA KAMPANJA? ANALIZA SADRŽAJA HRVATSKIH MEDIJA PRIJE PARLAMENTARNIH IZBORA 2015.

Author(s): Marko Mustapic,Ivan Balabanic / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 3/2018

After a brief theoretical consideration of the cultural memory and political communication in electoral campaigns, this paper analyses statements of politicians during the 2015 Croatian parliamentary campaign. The main goal of the paper is to establish the manner in which events and happenings from modern Croatian history and the various ‘collective memories' surrounding them were present in the media excerpts analysed. Research of excerpts from the leading Croatian media outlets (daily newspapers, TV stations, web portals) was performed through content analysis. The results show that excerpts including political communication about modern historical themes were present to a significant extent, and that discussions of these topics were most often provoked by the largest political parties, Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). On the level of general conclusion, it can be claimed that the electoral campaign largely became a "site of memory" where further political conflicts surrounding historical issues were generated, while discussions of solutions to numerous social problems were neglected.

"Ponovljeni" vanredni izbori 2016. godine. Šta se zapravo dogodilo?

Author(s): Zoran Stojiljkovic / Language(s): Serbian / Publication Year: 0

(Ne)poštovanje Kodeksa novinara Srbije u kampanji za predsedničke izbore u 2017. godini

Author(s): Dinko Gruhonjic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 40/2017

The paper presents a comparative analysis of several monitoring reports on the reporting of public media and commercial televisions with a national frequency during the campaign for the presidential elections in Serbia in 2017, with the aim of determining the extent and manner in which the Serbian Code of Journalists was violated. The monitorings, which, rather than being done by the competent state institutions such as the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM), were largely carried out by civil society organizations, unequivocally demonstrated that, in most cases, reporting was extremely biased in favor of the ruling coalition candidate Aleksandar Vučić. In addition to the fact that they violated the provisions of key media laws and reporting rules during the pre-election campaign, the editors and journalists of televisions also violated the Code of Journalists in various ways. The monitorings, on the one hand, have shown the inadmissible bias of the majority of public and commercial televisions, but, on the other hand, have also shown that there were commercial cable televisions that largely took account of a uniform reporting on presidential candidates. Most of the analyzed televisions did not, however, abide by the preamble of the Code of Journalism, which states that the reason for the existence of media is public interest, and the business, political and private interests of the publisher/media owner should not be an excuse or justification for violating the Code. Most of the monitoring has also shown that the provisions of the Code of Journalism have been violated regarding the truthfulness of reporting, independence from pressures, journalists’ accountability, and journalistic attention.

(Nie)utrwalenie się systemu partyjnego na poziomie regionu w okresie autonomii Województwa Śląskiego (1922-1939). Wybrane aspekty

Author(s): Maciej Marmola / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2015

Presented article describes the political scene of Silesian autonomy (1922-1939) in context of political science approaches concerning the possibility to form the regional party system. The analysis includes the specificity of sub-national elections, profiles of parties and their strategies in regional elections. The research indicates that in interwar Silesian Voivodeship there have been developed different set of parties than at nationwide level (with strong Christian Democratic Party and German parties). Nevertheless, the regional party system was not created due to dominant position of regional branches of nationwide parties in Silesian politics.

10th Majlis Election in Iran: Structural, Institutional, Legal, and Political Issues

Author(s): Abdol Moghset Bani Kamal,Bakhrullo Ashurov / Language(s): English / Issue: 14/2017

The 10th Majlis election was held in the Islamic Republic of Iran on 26 February 2016. The election witnessed a record number of disqualified candidates by the Guardian Council. Notwithstanding this, the pro-government candidates were well-received by the voters. President Hassan Rouhani’s foreign policy and the nuclear deal that had concluded with the international community, held a special place in the political debates during the election. This paper first analyses the importance of the 10th Majlis election in Iran in the light of President Rouhani’s foreign policy. Secondly, it explores the election process. This paper argues that elections in Iran suffer from four types of issues. First characteristic is closely linked with the theocratic nature of the Iranian political system. Second one is connected with the Iranian electoral system. Third one arises from the inefficiency of electoral institutions. Finally, those issues caused by the discriminative approach of the Iranian ruling elites towards certain political parties and ethno religious groups.

1973'ten Günümüze Yerel Seçim Sonuçları Temelinde Samsun'un Siyasi Yapısı

Author(s): Ali Arslan / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 10/2006

This study aims to analyses socio-political structure of Samsun at the basis of the results of Turkish Local elections since 1973 up to date. Documentary and historical research techniques will be used during the study.

1995-2015: Žene i politički život u postdejtonskoj Bosni i Hercegovini

Author(s): / Language(s): Bosnian / Publication Year: 2015

Gradeći i razvijajući program i organizacijski portfelj za ženska ljudska prava, brzo smo uvidjeli_e nedostatak intenzivnijeg i vidljivog tematizovanja ”ženske” istorije u Bosni i Hercegovini. Iako postoji veliki broj publikacija i nekoliko aktivističkih inicijativa koje obrađuju određene fragmente, pojave, periode ili regije, ne postoji institucionalizirano pamćenje niti se ono podstiče. Akademska zajednica je, nažalost, zakazala kada govorimo o ovoj temi. Istorija žena i njihov doprinos i dalje ostaju na marginama akademskog života.

2002 Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine. Events, Results, Consequences

Author(s): Tadeusz A. Olszanski / Language(s): English,Polish / Publication Year: 2003

On 31 March 2002, parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine. As expected, they were a major success for the centrist-rightist coalition focused around former Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko. The communists emerged significantly weaker from the vote, and the "party of power" achieved a poor result. Yet, due to the mixed electoral law (half of the deputies were elected in single-mandate districts), the latter block, firmly supported by President Leonid Kuchma, resulted as the main force in Parliament. The results of particular parties and blocks were as follows: Viktor Yuschenko's Block received 23.57% of votes and 112 seats, the Communist Party of Ukraine - 19.98% of votes and 66 seats, the "For One Ukraine" block - 11.77% of votes and 101 seats, Yulia Tymoshenko's Block - 7.26% of votes and 22 seats, the Socialist Party of Ukraine - 6.87% of votes and 22 seats, and the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) - 6.27% of votes and 24 seats. This shows how the mixed electoral regulations favour "For One Ukraine" and act against Yuschenko's block. One should note, however, that the latter gained the support of less than one quarter of voters.

2006 Seçimleriyle HAMAS’ın Filistin İçinde Değişen Konumu (2006-2010)

Author(s): Filiz KATMAN / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 28/2018

Actors in Palestine position themselves with respect to the developments in historical process, and also change their strategies based on this new position. Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) is one of actors evolving like that. Considering HAMAS’ position in Palestinian society, determining its role in the developments in Palestine, and analyzing the transformation process of HAMAS is the key to understand Palestinian issue. This paper elaborates the factors influencing transformation process of HAMAS, the winner of 2016 elections, from an organization rejecting the participation to the elections, the contribution to Palestinian national unity, and the negotiation process into an organization joining 2006 elections, reflecting a political will for Palestinian national unity and requesting an unconditional seat at the negotiation table, and it also elaborates how it is transformed in organizational level. When the transformation process of HAMAS is analyzed, its decision to participate in 2006 elections is an important turning point. In this paper, HAMAS’ decision to participate in 2006 elections as a political party, its performance in power within first four years and impacts of this on its position in Palestine after 2006 election triumph are elaborated.

2007 Bulgaristan Yerel Seçimleri Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme

Author(s): Seçil Öraz / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 15/2007

The 2007 local elections in Bulgaria, which went to gallop box six times since the regime change in 1989, was herald of the upcoming changes and new formations to ocur in the next years in this country. In these local elections, which were held after the country's EU membership, and under the targeted European conditions of transparency and justice, brought the DPS, political party of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, the third rank. This and other developments give clues of expectable results of the general elections to be held in 2009.

2007 Seçiminin Siyasal Değer Haritası: Siyasetçilerin Söylemleri Üzerine Bir Değer Analizi

Author(s): Aynur Köse / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 2/2016

In this study by focusing the relationship between politics and values, discourse of political actors are analyzed in the framework of values in the Turkish general election on July 22, 2007. Values are criteria that are used by people to understand themselves and the world which is directly related with the politics. It is important to review that which values are emphasized by the political actors, which values are referred to tell themselves and tell you what to do and also to criticize their opponents. Also by analysing the values, which political parties convince the voters in election studies, it will determine that which values in the election will gain and which values will lose. In the research which was conducted by qualitative content analysis, 10 basic and 56 subvalue analysis categories located in the Schwartz Value Scale were used. When values used by political actors and the relationship between these values are analyzed, it is found that AKP emphasize performances as a responsible power and has positioned himself by the rhetoric; “absolutely nothing is guaranteed to do what we did”. CHP and MHP engaged in the business of producing the project, has entered the race to create the impression of a government that serves the people.

2016 Lithuanian Parliamentary Elections: Implicit and Explicit Attitudes of Young Adults Toward the Political Parties

Author(s): Tomas Maceina,Gintautas Valickas / Language(s): English / Issue: 4 (88)/2017

Our study is directed toward the examination of attitudinal grounds of political decision-making among young (≤ 24 years old) Lithuanian voters in the national parliamentary elections. The focus is on their attitudes regarding politically specific evaluative dimensions (competence, honesty and leadership). To estimate the prognostic values of explicit/implicit attitudes toward different Lithuanian political parties, we asked participants to fill out a questionnaire and to perform three sets of ST-IATs respectively. Due to the low voting diversity among participants, an elaborate data analysis could only be conducted regarding two Lithuanian parties: the Liberal Movement (LRLS) and Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD). The results of our study suggest that explicit attitudes are more important than implicit attitudes in predicting voting behavior. We found that positive explicit and positive implicit attitudes toward the LRLS competence and leadership, respectively, predicted the decision to vote for this party (reference group: non-voters). On the same note, our findings suggest that positive explicit and implicit attitudes toward the TS-LKD honesty predicted the decision to vote for this party (reference group: non-voters). Positive implicit attitudes toward the party’s competence also predicted this decision. Finally, we found that political sophistication was an important factor by only considering explicit attitudes toward TS-LKD. Namely, the increase of explicit attitudes’ prognostic power on the decision to vote for TS-LKD was associated with the decrease of voters’ political sophistication (reference group: non-voters).

2016 metų Seimo rinkimų iššūkis partinei sistemai ir politologams: kaip numatyti žemės drebėjimą?

Author(s): Mažvydas Jastramskis / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 2 (86)/2017

This article strives to begin an academic discussion about the impact of the 2016 parliamentary elections on the Lithuanian party system. It was previously argued by political scientists that stabilization could be observed around the 2012 parliamentary elections. On the basis of renewed measures of electoral volatility (total volatility, party replacement and external volatility), the following is argued: the observed party system stabilization was more an exception than a trend. In 2016, the party system returned to the usual track: despite the deceptively small success of new parties, an increase in total and especially external volatility (signifying a weak institutionalization of the party system) was observed. If compared to the Western countries, such levels of electoral volatility point to an inchoate party system at best: 2016 was not that special, since earthquakes in Lithuanian elections are very common. Moreover, an updated map of party competition (based on the voters’ evaluations of the parties) space raises another challenge for previous research. It was previously accepted that traditional parties in Lithuania are quite successful in the integration of newcomers: hence, the party system sustains its patterns of competition from election to election, despite the high levels of volatility. However, the 2016 elections bring back the second dimension of competition, which now divides not only the newcomers and the surviving parties, but also the older populist parties vs. the election winner, the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union. Resting on these preliminary findings, the need to further investigate electoral behavior in Lithuania is obvious. The second part of the article discusses what questions are (again) raised for the electoral research after the 2016 elections. It is not an exhaustive list, but there is a clear need to advance knowledge in these aspects: the logic of electoral volatility at the voter’s level, the (changing?) role of the electoral system, the impact of the electoral campaign, the divide between voters and politicians. In the context of these unknowns, the current possibilities of both the party system stabilization and electoral forecasting (political scientists in Lithuania are sometimes criticized for their inability to do this successfully) are viewed critically. There is a parallel between seismologists and Lithuanian political scientists, as both an earthquake and earthquake elections are hard to predict. There is a three-body problem in Lithuanian elections: unstable interactions between the supply, demand and the electoral system lead to unpredictable election results. But precisely because of this there is a need for continuing research.

2016 Parliamentary Elections in Slovakia and the Political Parties of Ethnic Hungarians

Author(s): Iván Halász / Language(s): English / Issue: 19/2017

On Saturday 5 March 2016, Slovakian voters went to the polls again. Since the first free elections after the political changeover, this was the ninth occasion that citizens could express their will in this way. In Slovakia, formed on 1 January 1993, this was the seventh election for the 150-member unicameral Parliament (i.e. the National Council) in Slovakia. On the other hand, this was the third occasion since the 2009 schism of the political parties representing the Hungarian minority in Slovakia that each of them competed on its own (2010, 2012, 2016). Although there have been some minor amendments and corrections during the past quarter of a century, the election system of Slovakia has shown a remarkable stability since 1992. In other words, its fundamental rules have not undergone any significant modifications. It is still a proportionate election system in which voters can cast their votes for party lists nominated by the individual political parties and movements. The threshold of entrance is 5%, but it shows a growing trend in the case of electoral coalitions. Currently, the whole country is a single constituency, so each party drafts a national list.

6098 Sayili Türk borçlar kanunu’nda konut ihtiyaci (gereksinimi) sebebiyle tahliye

Author(s): Metin Pehlivan / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 4/2017

Many people in our country reside in their own property but also many other live by paying “rent” which means handing over a residence, property or vehicle by its owner to another person for a period of time in return for a certain price. There are articles on rental contracts both in the Turkish Law of Obligations (no. 6098) and in the Repealed Law on Real Estate Rentals (no. 6570). In Law No. 6570, specific articles are present for the regulation of both the leasing of real estates with roofs within the boundaries of municipalities and the leasing of existing real estates with roofs on piers, seaports and stations outside the boundaries of municipalities. In this paper, the subject of "evacuation due to need of residence" in Turkish Law on Obligations no 6098 will be examined by taking into account the subject of "evacuation due to need of residence" regulated in the article 7 of abolished law no 6570 as well.

A 2016-os szlovákiai parlamenti választás exit polljának magyar eredményei

Author(s): Szabolcs Mózes / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2017

The aim of this study is to analyze the exit polls of the parliamentary elections in Slovakia held in 2016 with regard to the ethnic Hungarian data. Around 83% of the ethnic Hungarian electorate voted for either the Party of the Hungarian Community (MKP - SMK), or the Most-Híd party, however, almost every sixth Hungarian voter supported one of the non-minority Slovak parties. Exit poll data showed that a relative majority of Hungarian votes was received by the MKP and a slight majority of Most-Híd voters were in fact ethnic Slovaks. The paper argues that in contrast with the estimations made by various analysts, in this election the MKP became the most popular choice among the younger and highly-educated ethnic Hungarian voters.

A case study of ageism in political debates: are social media a latent source of generational hatred?

Author(s): Lucie Vidovicová,Michaela Honelová / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

This paper discusses how negative stereotypes, cultural conflicts and tensions related to age and generational membership are used in election campaigns. The social media are presented here as a venue where the political values are discursively paired with age and generational membership and perpetuate risks of an increase in ageism and generational conflict in symbolic universes. It presents a case study of YouTube video political campaigning and Facebook site commentaries to draw a picture of negative connotations used to build the “we” versus “them” generational categories which may result in further deepening the ageist moods in Czech society.It further shows, how these discursive practices may influence the perception of intergenerational relations in our society, but it also argues that they may have only limited influence over the actual behaviour of both younger and older in elections and political representations. The conclusion calls for deeper understanding of connections between generational conflict, age, and voting behaviour.

A Comparative Analysis of Democratisation Process in Mexico and Poland

Author(s): Zoran Krstic / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2013

The object analysis of this paper is comparison of democratisation process that occurred in two countries- Mexico and Poland. Beside common political past and authoritarian nature- character of previous regime, those countries are different in almost every aspect: geographical position, history, culture and politics. The aim of this paper it to discover the similarities and differences of democratisation process as well as to find to which degree democratisation is a universal process. During the twenty century many countries with previously nondemocratic regimes transformed itself into democracies. That process simultaneously occurred on distant continents and concerned countries with totally different political and economical regimes. The main reason of studying transition is to uncover the conditions and paths that had led to political democracy. The main purpose of the paper it to analyse and compare democratisation process in Mexico and Poland in the context of wider democratisation theories. The period of reforms between the authoritarian regime and fully democratic state is called in literature democratisation or transformation and should be analysed on two levels. The first one, the institutional, concerns changes in political and economical system. The second one, the societal, relates to modifications inside society, the impact of institutional changes on political culture of both, ruling elite and opposition.

A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF PRECONDITIONS AND PREDICTED EFFECTS FROM E-VOTING IMPLEMENTATION IN UKRAINE

Author(s): Yana M. Sadykova,Mykola V. Starynskyi,Nataliia O. Horobetc,Yurii M. Zhornokui / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2018

The issue of implementing information technology in the electoral process remains a subject of discussion also in Ukraine. There is no clear position regarding the introduction of e-voting as an element of e-democracy. The analysis of the existing practice of introducing e-voting systems and identifying the possible effects can be the means for making decisions. For this analysis a parametric approach was chosen. Such an analysis is carried out on the basis of Estonia's data, which already introduced an e-voting system with an appropriate extrapolation of the received data concerning Ukraine. The predicted effects of implementing e-voting in Ukraine can be defined in increasing normative electoral load on the polling divisions while the actual electoral load is reduced and the level of trust and access to elections increases. The changes of the active participation of the population in political processes due e-voting introduction are not possible to evaluate at present.

A European Democracy: Why and How?

Author(s): Phillipe C. Schmitter / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

While democracy in Europe took a very long time to emerge and consolidate itself, the democratization of Europe has only just begun and remains a rather remote prospect. The competing national states that composed this part of the world were originally autocratic – with the historical exception of Switzerland, which somehow continuously managed to practice its peculiar form of democracy. Indeed, Western Europe became uniformly democratic only in the mid-1970s with the regime changes in Portugal, Spain, and Greece. And parts of the former Soviet Union have still to institutionalize the accountability of its rulers by way of competitive processes of representation.