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More hardships in store as citizens will no longer receive free utilities from next year.
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The next president will have reduced powers as country transitions to a parliamentary system
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Former Ukrainian leader denounces current Kyiv authorities, Europe for conniving at his downfall.
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This paper examines the institutional conditions of the Serbian society for existing of the competition of political ideas and visibility of different political options in the public sphere. In the first part, two phases of the Regulatory Agency for Elec tronic Media (REM) in Serbia are identified. First, period from its establishment in 2003 until the adoption of media laws in 2014, and second, from 2014 onward. In the first phase, REM almost exclusive ly dealt with election campaigns, despite having many other topics to regulate by adoption of bylaws (such as protection of minors, copyright and other). In its second phase, especially during the Presidential elec tion campaign in 2017, REM suddenly decided not to monitor the work of providers of audiovisual media services, but to react to complaints instead. The official ratio behind it was that there were no sanctions prescribed under the Law on Electronic Media, but also that the Law on Elections of Members of Parliament should deal with the media during electoral campaign. In the second part, the opposite interpretation of the Law on Electronic Media (LEM) is offered. Article 47, Para 1, Point 5. pre scribes that there should be “equal representation without discrimina tion to registered political parties, coalitions and individual candidates during the election campaign”. Further on, Article 28 of LEM introduc es measures for REM to enforce when providers of audiovisual services breach the rule of equal representation without discrimination. Those are rejection of the application for extension of the licence for offering of audiovisual services and not-issuing of the licence when in doubt that the provider of audiovisual services would not fulfil obligations related, among others, to equal presentation without discrimination of political actors during the election campaign. The final part of the research concludes that institutionalized conditions in Serbia do not allow competition of political ideas. It also determines that the role of the entire society, together with political elites, should be to strengthen independent institutions that monitor the work of the media, especially during election campaigns. To conclude, the proper regulation of media scene and imple mentation of such a regulatory framework has traditionally been com pleted when under pressure from abroad, only. The first drive was given by Council of Europe (CoE), for media laws passed in 2002 and 2003, as their adoption was one of the requirements for Serbia to become the CoE Member State. After Serbia has become the one, European Union has taken over the carrot and stick, so that major media documents, such as Media Strategy in 2011 or new package of media laws in 2014, were adopted as preconditions for Serbia to make a step forward on its European path. Therefore, shall we expect that the regulatory authori ty becomes a strong and independent Regulator, only when Serbia be comes close enough to its EU membership, so that such a body remains one of the prerequisites for Serbia to become the full member of the European Union?
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The aim of this paper is to identify the elements of the political image of the world that the electoral actors in Serbia have been trying to develop through mass political communication from the re-establishment of the multiparty system to the present day. The author of the paper decided to accomplish the given goal by examining the application of basic psychological mechanisms of forming and maintaining the image of the world in creation of electoral posters. The research was approached from the point of social psychology using a constructivist approach. The basic method used in the research is a qualitative content analysis. The selection of posters was preceded by the determination of the so-called situation context factors – the socio-political circumstances in which the posters were created, which is related to the character of the basic method of research. Election campaigns, understood as the final stage in the long-term strategy of the propaganda performances of political actors, were taken as the basic contextual framework for the interpretationof what the communicator sought to say through the posters. The analysis of the posters used in the election campaigns run in 1997, 2000 and 2016 was carried out. The results of the analysis showed that, regarding the application of psychological mechanisms in creation of the “image of the world,” the election poster in Serbia is complex. The conclusion is that the political “image of the world” of voters in Serbia created during the 1990s is similar to their current view of the political environment and that its basic characteristics are the identification with the state and pronounced stereotype of a strong leader.
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The author looks at the complex Austrian electoral system and its political implications for the party system and for the legislative and executive powers. With the reform of the electoral legislation in the Second Republic, which introduced preferential voting and closed and nonblocked lists, voters got the right to give a preference vote to one of the candidates on the list they voted for. This, however, did not bring significant improvements in terms of more personalized election and political representation. In almost thirty years (1959-1990), only one candidate was elected to Parliament thanks to preferential votes, and few have managed to do so since. The author believes that attempts at personalizing election and political representation have failed because the electoral system is fraught with institutes and mechanisms that do not encourage such personalization strongly enough, such as optional preferential voting, too high quota of preference votes for a candidate to be elected, "technical" difficulties in implementing preferential voting at province level, as well as voters' reluctance to overcome such difficulties. On top of that, political parties have got centralized and exclusive parliamentary election candidate selection procedures, where the party leadership plays a crucial role, thus encouraging candidates to give precedence to the party campaign, instead of using a personalized one.
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Wars are extreme events with profound social consequences. Political science, however, has a limited grasp of their impact on the nature and content of political competition which follows in their wake. That is partly the case due to a lack of conceptual clarity when it comes to capturing the effects of war with reliable data. This article systematises and evaluates the attempts at modelling the consequences of war in political science research which relies on quantitative methods. Our discussion is organised around three levels of analysis: individual level of voters, institutional level of political parties, and the aggregate level of communities. We devote particular attention to modelling the legacies of the most recent wars in Southeast Europe, and we offer our view of which efforts have the best potential to help set the foundations of a promising research programme.
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The paper examines distinctiveness of war veterans compared to general population in Croatia according to three important political phenomena: political participation, party preferences and ideological self-identification. Analysis of sociological survey conducted in 2015 shows that there is no difference in the level of political participation measured by voting turnout in 2011 and 2015 parliamentary and 2015 presidential level between Croatian war veterans and the rest of the public. On the other side, war veterans differ from the rest of the electorate, with other variables held constant, in terms of party preferences and ideological self-identification. Compared to non-veterans, war veterans are more inclined to vote for the right and center-right parties and position themselves to the right side of the political spectrum. The paper discusses these differences, as well as its roots and consequences.
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Dosad smo naglasili da rasprava o izbornim sistemima i njihovim političkim učincima ne teče bez poznavanja tehničkih pojedinosti o oblikovanju izbornih sistema. Mnoga nerazumijevanja i razlike u ocjeni rezultiraju pak iz nedostatka općeprihvatljiva konceptualnog okvira i jedinstvenog pojmovlja.
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Elections imply mass political participation, a type of collective decision through which preferences are being communicated to the political leaders The elections in Croatia were conditioned by the historical circumstances (changing the political set-up), as well as by the type of voting rights, election regulations, and persons involved in the electoral process. The outcome of the elections was such that the political spectrum in Croatia acquired a bi polar and asymmetrical shape within which the smaller political parties of the centre have only minor importance. The multy-party parliamentary elections in Croatia are an initial presupposition for the establishment of a democratic order which also means that they restore a legitimate topic of research to political science.
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The author briefly traces a possible direction in which European institutions might develop on the basis of existing traditions of federations of states and of bourgeois democracy of representatives. Assuming that the Community succeeds in integrating political processes on a supernational level and if Parliament should effectuate greater control and introduce legislative competences it might eventually grow into a House of Nations belonging to a representative body consisting of two houses, while the Council might become the House of States as it has already been suggested at an early occasion. In that case there would be nothing to prevent the Commission from assuming the functions of an executive body fully responsible to Parliament. Its present supernational character would be helpful at that point. Such changes would bring the federalization of Europe to its completion. For the time being only a minor number of proposals leading in that direction has been implemented. So far the member-states have not appeared to be ready to accept the European parliament as a legislative body of representatives in a full sense.
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The study of voting and elections as political institutions and political processes has had a long history in the political science of Finland. This can he testified by a plethora of results concerning various aspects of this research topic. The author discusses only one yet important and delicate question concerning election law. namely the system of proportional representation in the Finnish political system. It involves the manner in which parliamentary seals are distributed among political parties and its consequences for the stability and effectiveness of the representative government's activity.
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Research on transformation of German political arena has been quite intensive over the last years. Several general trends could be observed in last decades, but acceleration of more significant changes was seen especially in regard with the political consequences of migration and refugee crisis. The 2017 German parliamentary elections led to a confirmation of a new political reality in Germany and some unexpected results in modern post-war German history. As an outcome of the 2017 elections six political parties entered Bundestag in 2017. The winner, conservative Union of the CDU/CSU, achieved strongest electoral result with 32.9% of the casted votes, but both large parties (CDU/CSU and SPD) were politically weakened and experienced one of the lowest electoral results since their establishment. Fragmentation of political scene, weakening of traditional large political parties, success of new party (AfD), and the return of the traditional political party (FDP) into the German parliament, complicated political relations on the left side of German political spectrum and ruled out simple post-election coalition negotiations. These eventually led to the historically longest government building process of 4th Merkel's government that lasted 171 calendar days. Hence, the study provides an analysis of the campaign, outcome of the parliamentary elections, its interpretations in the context of German, European political development and their impact on German politics. The revival of the Great coalition was reflected in the promotion of some new domestic policies and a support for continuity of the German foreign and European policy. The recent dynamics led to a stabilization of internal situation in both CDU and CSU, ideological crisis of SPD, brought reinforcement of Green party and confirmed fragmentation of German political scene into six relevant political parties which will represent the most important political forces for the next German parliamentary elections.
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Certain to lose seats in the May elections, the European People’s Party delivers an ultimatum to Hungary’s ruling party.
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Zuzana Caputova is leading a field of old-guard pols with less than pristine reputations.
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The findings of the 2012–2017 election cycles observations show that the normative framework formally provides a solid basis for holding free elections, but that its incomplete implementation and the lack of oversight during the pre-election campaign generate an increase in the inequality of the election participants and call into question the achievement of conditions for fair elections. In fact, the conditions are the worst in the so-called side electoral arenas: 1) the financing of the pre-election campaign is not transparent, and the inequality of the participants regarding the available funds increases, with the participation of the ruling parties exceeding 70%; 2) in the media sphere, in terms of ownership there is a financial and personal connection between the privatised local media and the parties, while in the electronic media with the national frequency and the most influential daily and weekly newspapers there are “two-floor elections” with complete domination of the Serbian progressive party and its president, party camera phenomenon, functionary campaign and the lack of critical role; and 3) observers regularly record dozens of cases of misuse of public resources for party purposes. There is no genuine oversight over the election process, since the Supervisory Board envisaged by the law has never been formed, while the regulatory bodies such as the Anti Corruption Agency and the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media are becoming more passive, working under the influence of the ruling parties and without the ability to prevent their abuses in the electoral process. The only aspect of the electoral process that is not under the full monopoly of the ruling parties is the Republic Electoral Commission, but observers recommend its professionalisation, which would de facto transfer the control over its work from the hands of all parliamentary parties and electoral lists into the hands of the ruling parties.
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The author analyzes some of the reasons why social media did not significantly influence the results of the Serbian presidential elections held in April 2017 and why the influence was largely negative. The internal political and foreign policy factors are noted that contributed to the predictable outcome of the elections and frustrated anti-regime activism. Putting an emphasis on the activities of supporters of the opposition candidates on Twitter, the author presents their discourse and highlights the reasons for it leading to destructive polarization and, in essence, making the task of the candidate of the ruling coalition easier. Even when it comes to the most wired segment of the urban population, the abundance of insults and ugly words, often aimed not at the candidate of the ruling coalition but at regime’s supporters and other opposition candidates, was an important feature of the engagement that was more focused on raising social capital and reinforcing autoorientalist markers of distinction rather than on meaningful struggle for change. A set of factors is highlighted that contributed to the increasingly important social media social capital acting as an obstacle to democratization, effective political engagement and the badly needed change of political culture. In the specific nature and dynamics of the political scene shaped over the past decades and the anti-social flip-side of social media, the author finds the reasons for pessimism when it comes to the possibility of social media getting a more constructive role in the election campaigning in Serbia. The paper focuses on Twitter, the elite-tilted social network of choice in electoral campaigns worldwide, to examine the role of a set of key factors that both frustrated and contributed to negative effects of social media campaigning of the anti-regime activists. First, combination of strong distinction-reinforcing and auto-orientalist drives further marginalized and self-ghettoized oppositional activism, simultaneously provoking the strong anti-elitist and populist backlash, which favored the ruling coalition’s candidate. Second, the regime skillfully cornered both pro-Western and pro-Russian alliances and sentiments, leaving almost no space for meaningful campaigning to unimaginative opposition candidates, who saw Serbia’s future in autocolonial terms, as outsourcing of the state’s sovereignty in exchange for material and political benefits from either Russia or one of the Western metropolitan states. In given circumstances, opposition activists’ campaigning on social networks degenerated into a combination of sullied intra-oppositional “civil war“ and anti-political diary of insults, directed more at the regime impoverished supporters than at the regime’s candidate himself. What the resilient, authoritarian but not repressive regime might have felt as little more than a mildly irritating “white noise”, general public largely experienced as a narcissistic and vulgar enterprise detached from their concerns and aspirations.
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Ruling party wins local elections, but exit polls suggest opposition gains
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This article presents changes in the electoral system applicable to the local government elections. Elaborating the specificity of local government elections in Poland, the paper focuses on several important aspects: the existence of three different electoral systems for different levels in the local government elections, the influence of political parties and national policy on election campaigns, the specificity of regions and the need to adapt party programs, the perception of the figures elected in local government elections, the role and importance of electoral committees of voters. The influence and importance of the national policy in local government campaigns were pointed out, the campaign and electoral results of local government elections in 2018 were discussed.
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