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Elections in consolidating democracies are often undermined by illegal electoral strategies such as vote buying and electoral violence. Previous research has focused on the mechanisms of political exchange and the systemic factors that contribute to vote buying or violence. By contrast, this dissertation addresses the broader questions of how politicians choose among different electoral strategies, how they target voters, and the implications for accountability and economic development. Among politicians, the structure of their social networks affects their choice of electoral strategy. In particular, vertical connections among politicians (such as ties among governors, mayors, and congressmen) facilitates individually targeted policies because the overlapping constituencies encourages collusion to target the same voters. By contrast, horizontal connections among politicians (such as ties among mayors of different towns) promote cooperation and information sharing, making group-targeted strategies such as pork barrel funding more attractive. Among voters, their position within village social networks determine whether they are targeted for illegal electoral strategies. Individuals with more social ties are disproportionately targeted for vote buying, while individuals with politically-relevant ties are targeted for electoral violence and intimidation. Understanding the politician and voter social network determinants of illegal electoral strategies is important for the design of policy initiatives to promote accountability and development-friendly electoral strategies

In this paper, we analyze how parties form electoral coalitions in multiparty systems with mixed systems of representation. We stress that these electoral systems are created in the attempt to balance governance & representation by assigning a portion of the legislature's seats on the basis of plurality (PL) & the remaining seats on proportional (PR) basis. This is operationalized through double-ballot-voting: a PL ballot for the allocation of the seats won by the candidates in single-member-college races & a PR ballot for the proportional allocation of the remaining seats among the competing parties. The aim of the paper is to formulate a general theory to describe the electoral incentives that mixed electoral rules provide to political agents in multiparty systems. Italian 1994 & 1996 national elections are used as a case study to test the validity of our theory. 10 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 60 References. [Copyright 2004 Elsevier B.V.]

"Following a process of interpenetration between parties and state, public funds are increasingly being used to further the organizational and electoral objectives of political parties. While the available literature has been mainly concerned with the regulated channels of party funding, much less attention has been paid to the informal channels of funding party activity from public funds. This paper develops this latter aspect, and looks at evidence collected from Romania, linking the ruling parties spending patterns to their political strategies. It analyses both the distributive politics of ruling parties and the informal dimension of political allocations of public resources. It is this paper's assertion that public funds are distributed through clientelistic channels, in an attempt to influence electoral results in Romania. This creates disproportionate advantages for the ruling parties, with a high potential of affecting negatively the nature of the democratic process." (author's abstract)

Taking part in an election, political parties implement their planned strategic activities, which involve making choices regarding competitive goals and maximizing the usefulness of the resources they have. A significant context of party strategies is political uncertainty. The paper discusses the importance of political uncertainty in three areas. First, political uncertainty is an instrument affecting the character of political competition. In the second area, the article presents its role as a factor of competition in the process of campaigning for votes. It also points out that political uncertainty may be a mechanism of institutionalizing new political parties. Some of the implemented party strategies, influencing the level of political uncertainty, assume possible electoral manipulations.

AbstractThe Swiss party system has changed considerably since the 1990s. With the increasing electoral success of the right‐wing populist Swiss People's Party (SVP), the simultaneous defeat of the center‐right and a relatively stable left, it has become more polarized. In what respect have these changes in the electoral arena affected legislative politics in parliament? This article studies the voting behavior of party groups in the Swiss lower house between 1996 and 2013 in six different policy fields. The findings point to a growing level of conflict in the Swiss parliament. Overall agreement among the government parties is reduced, especially at final voting stages of the parliamentary debate. Moreover, electoral politics have become more important for the parties' behavior in parliament: in policy areas that are at the center of their party program, the SP and the SVP are less willing to move away from their original policy stance, with the consequence of increasing isolation in parliamentary votes.