The 2002 House race in the newly created Fifth District of CT was unique in that the two moderate incumbents -- from the former Fifth District, Democrat James Maloney, & the now defunct Sixth District, Nancy Johnson -- challenged each other. The incumbent vs. incumbent race forced interest groups to choose sides, more often with Johnson than Maloney. Despite CT laws against the use of soft money, including national party money, the race witnessed the most money spent in CT history. Similar to other state races, the campaign tone was negative, there was national party soft money spent on issue advertising, & interest groups were involved in issue advocacy. Republicans devoted more money & effort to the ground war than previously. Johnson won the race with a good margin, & outspent Maloney with her large war chest & Maloney's inability to supplement his campaign with national party money. Tables. M. Pflum
The expansion of power by incumbent political leaders has become the subject of increased scholarly attention. In democracies, this is known as 'subversions by the ruling executive', 'executive aggrandizement', or 'autogolpe'; in autocracies, researchers study 'personalization', 'transition to personal rulership', or 'power-grabbing'. While the terminological landscape is rich, there is little conceptual agreement of what leader-driven power expansion is (and is not). Furthermore, we still lack broad data that allow us to investigate the phenomenon systematically across democracy and autocracy. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it offers a unified approach to study leader-driven power expansion – incumbent takeovers – across the political regime spectrum. Second, drawing from 11 datasets and original data collection and coding, we introduce a new, comprehensive dataset on 495 individual takeover events carried out by 279 political leaders in 132 countries in the period 1918–2019. We provide estimates of the takeover onset years, the time to takeover, the length of the takeover spells, and discuss the differences between distinct indicators, inter alia. Future research may leverage these data for a better understanding of the drivers of incumbent takeovers as well as the role of takeovers in regime change, civil wars, coups, and uprisings.
The expansion of power by incumbent political leaders has become the subject of increased scholarly attention. In democracies, this is known as 'subversions by the ruling executive', 'executive aggrandizement', or 'autogolpe'; in autocracies, researchers study 'personalization', 'transition to personal rulership', or 'power-grabbing'. While the terminological landscape is rich, there is little conceptual agreement of what leader-driven power expansion is (and is not). Furthermore, we still lack broad data that allow us to investigate the phenomenon systematically across democracy and autocracy. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it offers a unified approach to study leader-driven power expansion – incumbent takeovers – across the political regime spectrum. Second, drawing from 11 datasets and original data collection and coding, we introduce a new, comprehensive dataset on 495 individual takeover events carried out by 279 political leaders in 132 countries in the period 1918–2019. We provide estimates of the takeover onset years, the time to takeover, the length of the takeover spells, and discuss the differences between distinct indicators, inter alia. Future research may leverage these data for a better understanding of the drivers of incumbent takeovers as well as the role of takeovers in regime change, civil wars, coups, and uprisings.
The African party literature, especially research prescribing to the long-dominant ethnic voting thesis, has asserted that African party systems exhibit low levels of party nationalization. However, systematic research on nationalization across parties and party systems is still lacking. This study argues that the prospects for building nationalized parties vary substantially between incumbent and opposition parties. Incumbent parties, with their access to state resources, have been successful in creating nationwide operations, even in countries where geographical factors have been unfavorable and ethnic fractionalization is high. The analysis utilizes a new data set of disaggregate election results for 26 African countries to calculate nationalization scores for 77 parties and study the correlates of party nationalization. The results show that factors like ethnic fractionalization, the size of the geographical area, and urbanization affect party nationalization, but only in the case of opposition parties. Incumbent parties, on the other hand, generally remain nationalized despite unfavorable structural conditions.
The African party literature, especially research prescribing to the long-dominant ethnic voting thesis, has asserted that African party systems exhibit low levels of party nationalization. However, systematic research on nationalization across parties and party systems is still lacking. This study argues that the prospects for building nationalized parties vary substantially between incumbent and opposition parties. Incumbent parties, with their access to state resources, have been successful in creating nationwide operations, even in countries where geographical factors have been unfavorable and where ethnic fractionalization is high. The analysis utilizes a new data set of disaggregated election results for 26 African countries to calculate nationalization scores for 77 parties and study the correlates of party nationalization. The results show that factors like ethnic fractionalization, the size of the geographical area, and urbanization affect party nationalization, but only in the case of opposition parties. Incumbent parties, on the other hand, generally remain nationalized despite unfavorable structural conditions.
Nalar politik selalu megamini proposisi bahwa incumbent sebagai kandidat paling diuntungkan dalam kontestasi pemilukada. Meskipun demikian, incumbent tidak selalu dapat memenangkan pemilihan, sebab di beberapa tempat, incumbent mengalami kekalahan. Ada dua aspek yang dapat dilihat sebagai penentu kemenangan incumbent, yakni; faktor subjektifitas pemilih dan faktor objektivitas pemilih. Faktor pertama mencakup; persepsi, sikap dan perilaku positif pemilih terhadap incumbent bersangkutan. Faktor kedua mencakup; kebijakan publik, birokrasi, partai politik, dan ormas. Faktor pertama berfungsi sebagai yang mengkonstruksi faktor pertama.
In November 2017, Democrat Bill de Blasio was re-elected as the major of New York City against Republican candidate Nicole Malliotakis and the independent challenger Bo Dietl. Although many circumstances should be considered, such as their different levels of popularity, or their policies among many others, speech constitutes a crucial element for the final result. Thus, persuasive functions shown by the candidates should be examined closely. This article analyzes the rhetoric and figurative language of the contenders in the key moment of their campaign, their final debate, held on November 1st. The discussion is framed in the linguistic theories of Political Discourse Analysis (van Dijk, 1997, 2011, Fairclough & Fairclough, 2013), rooted in Aristotle's artistic proofs of rhetoric, through the examination of strategies following Charteris-Black's overview (2011), Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and the notion of Face (Goffman, 1956, 1967), polarization (van Dijk, 1993, Chilton, 2004), and euphemism and dysphemism (Allan & Burridge, 1991), with the aim to detect and compare incumbent versus non-incumbent strategies regarding political discourse. ; En noviembre de 2017, el candidato demócrata Bill de Blasio revalidó su reelección como alcalde de Nueva York frente a la republicana Nicole Malliotakis y el independiente Bo Dietl. Aunque sin duda muchas circunstancias influyeron en el resultado final, tales como sus diferentes niveles de popularidad o el contenido de sus programas, el discurso político juega un papel siempre decisivo. Por esta razón, se propone un análisis de las funciones persuasivas de los candidatos. En concreto, este artículo analiza el lenguaje retórico y figurativo de los candidatos en el momento clave de la campaña: el debate final, celebrado el 1 de noviembre, a la luz de las teorías del Análisis del Discurso Político (van Dijk, 1997, 2011, Fairclough & Fairclough, 2013), que hunde sus raíces en la Retórica de Aristóteles, a través de su revisión por parte de Charteris- Black (2011), la Teoría de Cortesía (Brown & Levinson, 1987) y la noción de imagen (Goffman, 1956, 1967), polarización (van Dijk, 1993, Chilton, 2004), y eufemismo y disfemismo (Allan & Burridge, 1991) para detectar y comparar las estrategias entre los candidatos según su condición de alcalde en funciones o de aspirante desde el punto de vista del discurso político.
