Polarization vs. Polarisation: Comparing Party Divergence in the US and Australia
Seminar
A defining characteristic of American politics over the past generation has been the growing ideological divide between the nation's two major parties. Measuring this polarization is straightforward, using roll call records from Congress where every vote is a conscience vote. Asking how Australian…
The European Union as a Normative Power? Some reflections on the literature on external perceptions of the EU
Seminar
The debate on the European Union as a Normative Power (NPE) has been running for more than a decade. At the same time, studies of the EU as a normative power have been conducted in three major research projects. These two lines of research have been running relatively independently of each…
The Mass Political Consequences of Economic Reform in Latin America
Seminar
Democracy works when citizens can hold policy makers to accounts. Nowhere is this connection between the governed and their representatives more evident than the economy. Citizens expect strong economic performance from incumbents, and executives who fail to live up to popular expectations will…
The Effect of U.S. Troop Deployments on Human Rights
Seminar
U.S. non-invasion troops deployed abroad often try to promote greater respect for human rights in the host country. The host country, having an incentive to retain the troop presence, may choose to comply with these requests. We argue that this effect will not be at play in states with high…
Why Elections Fail
Seminar
The spread of elections to all parts of the globe has been one of the most dramatic developments transforming our world during the twentieth century. Yet, as numerous reports have highlighted, the quality of contemporary contests commonly fails. Contentious elections undermine the legitimacy of…
What is a Free and Fair Election? Evidence from Russia
Seminar
Russian elections since 1991 have represented one of the most difficult cases for the comparative analysis of election processes. The most recent 2011-12 parliamentary and presidential elections were strongly condemned by many observers, including the OSCE monitoring team, and on that basis by…
Improving Cross-National Measurement of Legislative Power: Preliminary Results from an Expert Survey
Seminar
Speaker: Svitlana Chernykh is a Lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. She received her PhD in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to coming to ANU, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the…