Search results for "Local election"

The Development of Democracy and Local Governance in Latvia

2006

The traditions of autonomous local governments in Latvia between the two world wars were interrupted in the Soviet period. The local council elections held in December 1989 were the first democratic elections in the postwar period. The elections were competitive, with more than one candidate running for each — post, and a majority system was implemented. Local government laws were passed in February 1990 when the Supreme Council of the Latvian SSR government adopted three separate laws on district, city and rural local governments. A short time before the re-establishment of the independent Republic of Latvia — a process in which the local governments played a great role (before Parliament …

Alterable electorates in the context of residential mobility

1988

In some circumstances, politicians set about altering the composition of their electorate with a view to increasing their chances of being re-elected. A hypothesis along these lines is formulated in the context of local elections and residential mobility. Although the hypothesis is general, an assessment of its validity implies auxiliary assumptions related to a specific spatio-temporal context. That is done with reference to conditions prevailing in post-war French metropolitan areas. In the empirical part of the paper, some of the implications are submitted to tests on demographical and political data. On the basis of the tests, and although alternative explanations of the findings are po…

Latvijos Savivaldybių rinkimų palyginimas su kitomis Europos šalimis

2013

Latvijos Savivaldybių rinkimų palyginimas su kitomis Europos šalimis. On 1 June, 2013 local elections in 119 local councils took place in Latvia. The elections of 2013 were first after completion of the administrative territorial reform in Latvia, average voter turnout was 46%, lowest since Independence restoration in Latvia. Just before the elections Minister of Regional Development and Local Government initiated debates over t he structure of councils and put forth a proposal to reduce the number of councillors in local councils. Some small changes in local government elections were made and the issue stays on a political agenda. The paper deals with local government election practices in…

Assessment of Socio-Economic Status Relevance for Latvian Electoral Participation

2016

In many countries, there is increasing concern about the decrease in the level of electoral participation in all types of elections. The situation in Latvia is not an exception. Despite the fact that the first scientific studies of electoral participation analysis date back to the 1940s–1950s, it is still relevant today to understand and explain the factors that affect the citizen’s choice (not) to participate in elections. The goal of this chapter was to find the factors that influence participation in elections in Latvia, and indirectly how it may affect local government and urban governance processes in the country. Using data from two elections in Latvia—local elections in 2013 and elec…

Romania: Regional Persistence in a Highly Nationalized Party System

2017

Romania has a nationalized party system whereby the effective number of parliamentary parties has gone down and the left-right dimension of political competition has become consolidated. Statewide parties manage to electorally homogenize the electorate through using a similar electoral system for regional and national elections and by holding regional elections just before national elections. However, in this chapter, we also find that regional parties are persistently present in some regions and some of them mobilize voters along an ethno-cultural dimension. These regional parties do not only have an important impact at the regional level by offering alternative policy options but they are…

Non-competitive Elections at the Local Level and the Incumbency Advantage of Mayors – Research Experiences from Poland

2021

The objective of this paper is an attempt to answer if non-competitive elections to commune councils in Poland may be the result of incumbency advantage of mayors. The author assumes, that the effects of incumbency advantage of mayors in influence not only the competition for the office of mayor, but also the entire local political scene. These effects may weaken the competitiveness of elections and lead to the cartelisation of local political scenes. In extreme cases, it may even cause the degeneration of political pluralism and lead to non-competitive elections at both the executive and legislative levels. The paper analyses relationships between the competitiveness of elections at the lo…

Apochis . apoichos

2010

Polish local democracy in crisis? Non-competitive elections and the supply of candidates for councillors

2022

Competitive elections are the basis of democracy; without them there is no freedom of choice. Elections without competition are associated with the façade nature of elections in undemocratic systems. There are, however, exceptions to the belief that in a democratic system every election must be competitive. We can also observe them in Poland, particularly in small communes with up to 20,000 inhabitants. They take two forms: non-competitive elections of commune leaders and councillors. The latter case is known in the literature under the legal term of filling seats without voting. In 2018, as many as 8% of Polish councillors obtained their mandate without votes. In 2018 compared to 2014, the…

Uczestnictwo mniejszości narodowych i etnicznych w polskim życiu politycznym po 1989 roku

2019

The participation of national and ethnic minorities in Polish political life after 1989 is one of the achieve-ments of democratic Poland. Tracing the history of minority participation in local and parliamentary elec-tions after 1990 makes it clear that this history is dominated by the German minority. However, this does not mean that other minorities did not participate in political competition at the local, regional or national level, but rather that their participation was clearly more modest compared to the German minority. Partici-pation in the political life of other minorities has mainly a local dimension, although these communities do not choose to participate in their own ethnic ele…

Partycypacja mniejszości niemieckiej w polskim życiu publicznym po 1989 r. – przypadek Śląska Opolskiego

2017

Artykuł jest próbą politologicznego spojrzenia na zagadnienie partycypacji mniejszości niemieckiej w polskim życiu publicznym w okresie pozimnowojennym. Autor uczestnictwo społeczności polskich Niemców analizuje na przykładzie udziału organizacji mniejszości niemieckiej w wyborach parlamentarnych i samorządowych oraz wykorzystywaniu możliwości wsparcia, jakie mniejszościom narodowym i etnicznym daje polskie prawo. Autor podzielił problematykę na trzy elementy. W pierwszym przybliża proces uzyskiwania podmiotowości przez mniejszość niemiecką po 1989 r. i włączania się tej społeczności w życie polityczne na poziomie lokalnym, regionalnym oraz ogólnopolskim – poprzez uczestnictwo w wyborach pa…