Hasil untuk "Political institutions and public administration (General)"

Krishna Sharma, Khemraj Bhatt

Text-based measurement in political research often treats classi6ication disagreement as random noise. We examine this assumption using con6idence-weighted human annotations of 5,000 social media messages by U.S. politicians. We 6ind that political communication is generally highly legible, with mean con6idence exceeding 0.99 across message type, partisan bias, and audience classi6ications. However, systematic variation concentrates in the constituency category, which exhibits a 1.79 percentage point penalty in audience classi6ication con6idence. Given the high baseline of agreement, this penalty represents a sharp relative increase in interpretive uncertainty. Within messages, intent remains clear while audience targeting becomes ambiguous. These patterns persist with politician 6ixed effects, suggesting that measurement error in political text is structured by strategic incentives rather than idiosyncratic coder error.

Daria Boratyn, Dariusz Stolicki

Research on the causes of political polarization points towards multiple drivers of the problem, from social and psychological to economic and technological. However, political institutions stand out, because -- while capable of exacerbating or alleviating polarization -- they can be re-engineered more readily than others. Accordingly, we analyze one class of such institutions -- electoral systems -- investigating whether the large-party seat bias found in many common systems (particularly plurality and Jefferson-D'Hondt) exacerbates polarization. Cross-national empirical data being relatively sparse and heavily confounded, we use computational methods: an agent-based Monte Carlo simulation. We model voter behavior over multiple electoral cycles, building upon the classic spatial model, but incorporating other known voter behavior patterns, such as the bandwagon effect, strategic voting, preference updating, retrospective voting, and the thermostatic effect. We confirm our hypothesis that electoral systems with a stronger large-party bias exhibit significantly higher polarization, as measured by the Mehlhaff index.

Nicholas Caputo

Since 1887, administrative law has navigated a "capability-accountability trap": technological change forces government to become more sophisticated, but sophistication renders agencies opaque to generalist overseers like the courts and Congress. The law's response--substituting procedural review for substantive oversight--has produced a sedimentary accretion of requirements that ossify capacity without ensuring democratic control. This Article argues that the Supreme Court's post-Loper Bright retrenchment is best understood as an effort to shrink administration back to comprehensible size in response to this complexification. But reducing complexity in this way sacrifices capability precisely when climate change, pandemics, and AI risks demand more sophisticated governance. AI offers a different path. Unlike many prior administrative technologies that increased opacity alongside capacity, AI can help build "scrutability" in government, translating technical complexity into accessible terms, surfacing the assumptions that matter for oversight, and enabling substantive verification of agency reasoning. This Article proposes three doctrinal innovations within administrative law to realize this potential: a Model and System Dossier (documenting model purpose, evaluation, monitoring, and versioning) extending the administrative record to AI decision-making; a material-model-change trigger specifying when AI updates require new process; and a "deference to audit" standard that rewards agencies for auditable evaluation of their AI tools. The result is a framework for what this Article calls the "Fourth Settlement," administrative law that escapes the capability-accountability trap by preserving capability while restoring comprehensible oversight of administration.

Ольга Рузакова

The article is devoted to the study of the process of formation of ethical competence of logistics managers in the system of public administration of Ukraine. The problem statement is driven by the growing requirements for integrity and efficiency of logistics operations in public authorities in the context of European integration and post-war recovery. Logistics activities in the public sector, covering procurement, supply, and resource management, are most vulnerable to corruption risks, which requires managers to have not only technical skills but also stable moral and ethical guidelines. It has been established that in the current conditions of reforming the public administration system and increasing requirements for transparency of government activities, the issue of ethical competence of officials engaged in procurement and resource management becomes particularly relevant. The purpose of the article is to scientifically substantiate the model of formation of ethical competence of logistics managers through the integration of professional knowledge and axiological principles. The study uses a set of methods: system analysis, comparative method, structural-functional approach, method of generalization and abstraction. Analysis of recent research has shown that despite significant work in the field of general management ethics and logistics management, the issue of forming the ethical competence of logistics specialists in government bodies remains insufficiently addressed. In the presentation of the main material, the essence of ethical competence as a complex personal formation, including cognitive, activity-based, and personal components, is revealed. The structure of a logistician’s competencies is substantiated according to the "T9 Model", supplemented by a moral and ethical component: integrity, responsibility, and political impartiality. The role of ethical infrastructure, including codes of conduct and anti-corruption compliance, in minimizing risks at various stages of the supply chain is considered. Particular attention is paid to the methods of professional socialization and continuous ethical training as key tools for preventing professional deformation. The author proposes an original structural-functional model for the formation of ethical competence of logistics unit managers, which includes target, content, organizational-activity, and evaluation-result blocks. The results of the study prove that the implementation of a comprehensive anti-corruption policy and the development of ethical awareness of personnel are critical factors in increasing competitiveness and public trust in government institutions. The conclusions emphasize the need for a strategic approach to integrity management in logistics, which involves the synergy of digital transparency technologies and the axiological transformation of management culture. Prospects for further research lie in the development of specific methodological recommendations for assessing the level of ethical competence of logisticians in the public sector and creating industry standards of ethical behavior for this category of employees.

Taisia Čebišová

Over the past decades, in most countries, public service has undergone the process of substantial reforms which met an adequate response in legal theory. The dual arrangement of employment relations resulting from the autonomous public law regulation of the public officials’ status as it was adopted in most European countries, has recently been put to question. The point is as follows: does the public service – the specific regulation of the public employees’ legal relations – belong to those outdated legal concepts of the 19th century that should no longer be preserved or, should it be re-introduced, as it is the case in our country? The author endeavours to give her answer to this question by pointing out the ways of resolving the legal problems connected with qualified and efficient performance currently required of modern public administration and its staff. This article was completed in spring 2001, when in the Czech Parliament a debate was launched on the bill concerning the Civil Service Act. Comments on some problems related to the proposed legislation are presented in this article, especially in Chapter 5, preceded by a short introduction into the legal concepts and terminology and the systems of public service adopted in the democratic countries (the situation, the trends, the European principles). Differentia specifica of public service can generally be based on criteria connected with institutions or with the public employees’ functions including the performance of public duties (public interests). In some definitions, those persons are considered to be public officials who perform their duties for “public administration proper” or sensu stricto only those who exercise public authority. The most pragmatic criterion consists in recognizing as public officials all those who are paid from public funds notwithstanding their legal status – whether statutory or contractual. According to the opinion of the European Court of Human Rights on current practice, either category of employees often perform equal or similar functions, and that is why it is appropriate to apply the functional criterion based on the nature of the employee’s functions and responsibilities. In the process of internationalization and subsequent globalization, the approximation trends show also in public administration which has remained a domain of sovereign regulation by the national states even in such supranational community as is the EU. It is the effect of the need to adjust the functioning and to some degree also the organization of public administration to meet the tasks arising from international and, in case of EU communitarian, obligations. A certain process of standardization, at least in terms of accentuation of basic common, elements and principles, can also be seen in the area of public service. In the post-communist countries, due to the efforts to achieve professionalism, to minimize political influences and to promote integrity of public service, the main stress is put on unification, stabilization and provision of strong legal guarantees, all this resulting in tendency to adopt some kind of modernized model of the career system. The basic principles of public service were most recently formulated by the Council of Europe (the status of public officials in Europe, Recommendation No. R/2000/6). The translation of these principles and a commentary are included in the present article. Chapter 5, dealing with the Czech public service de lege ferenda, includes an evaluation of the development of the public administration reform, an analysis of the constitutional regulation and the concept of a public servant’s status incorporated in the bill relating to the Civil Service Act. The bill promotes professionalism, political neutrality and stabilization of the civil service. It introduces public law status of a civil servant, sets conditions and requirements for recruitment, duties and rights of civil servants, their disciplinary responsibilities, etc. It provides for remuneration and compensations and establishes the social protection of civil servants. Doubts and objections on the part of experts and politicians are primarily concerned with the highly centralized civil service organization and a high degree of rigidity combined with inadequately open-ended nature of the proposed system. Both personnel management and public management are concentrated in the hands of personnel directors and the General Director of the civil service who is located in the Government’s Office. The specialization is one-sidedly promoted, not allowing necessary mobility and innovations. The proposed system is overprotective towards members of the present staff, who would be appointed to the new civil service without any evaluation nor examination. Apparently, the parliamentary debate indicates that the bill should be substantially revised before it is ready for acceptance. The studies on the prognoses of public service developments indicate mostly erosion of the career system as well as tendencies of the public employees’ status coming closer to general labour law relations. But it is too early to draw definite conclusions, especially as regards the speed of the future changes. The growing need to promote, both on the national and international basis, the means and ways of supporting public ethics and reinforcing the legal remedies in order to prevent or to punish unethical and/or illegal behaviour may lead to preferences generally given to models promoting traditional values. The era of building a “great architecture” of the civil service as an extensive, closed and rather rigid system has gone by. Nowadays it is very unlikely that public administration could avoid the processes spurred by modernization, exploitation of new technologies, free movement of labour, etc. It is important to ensure chat the Civil Service Act should not impede the possibilities of such development.

Mario Villagran

The choice of protest tactics in a social movement has often been analyzed based on the demands, participants, and internal characteristics of the movement. However, recent evidence highlights the context or setting in which the demonstration takes place as another key element in the process; Using structural equation modeling, studies have shown a link between high perceptions of injustice in the treatment received by authorities and a greater acceptance of non-normative and/or violent methods of protest. In line with this approach, this article aims to examine the extent to which another form of authority legitimacy -- such as political trust -- affects the overall justification for the use of violence by both protesters and the police. Using longitudinal data from Chile (2016 -- 2019), which captures the collective protests of the ``Social Outbreak'', three analytical approaches -- fixed effects, cross-lagged, and multilevel models -- demonstrate that declining political trust not only weakened public acceptance of police violence but also increased tolerance toward protesters' use of violent tactics. This relationship adds a new dimension to the analysis of violent protests, suggesting that low political trust in many modern states may be a contributing factor to the increasing radicalization of demonstrations in recent years.

Zhiyi Chen, Jinyi Ye, Beverlyn Tsai et al.

Despite widespread concerns about the risks of AI-generated content (AIGC) to the integrity of social media discourse, little is known about its scale and scope, the actors responsible for its dissemination online, and the user responses it elicits. In this work, we measure and characterize the prevalence, spreaders, and emotional reception of AI-generated political images. Analyzing a large-scale dataset from Twitter/X related to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, we find that approximately 12% of shared images are detected as AI-generated, and around 10% of users are responsible for sharing 80% of AI-generated images. AIGC superspreaders--defined as the users who not only share a high volume of AI-generated images but also receive substantial engagement through retweets--are more likely to be X Premium subscribers, have a right-leaning orientation, and exhibit automated behavior. Their profiles contain a higher proportion of AI-generated images than non-superspreaders, and some engage in extreme levels of AIGC sharing. Moreover, superspreaders' AI image tweets elicit more positive and less toxic responses than their non-AI image tweets. This study serves as one of the first steps toward understanding the role generative AI plays in shaping online socio-political environments and offers implications for platform governance.

Franziska Weeber, Tanise Ceron, Sebastian Padó

Public opinion surveys show cross-cultural differences in political opinions between socio-cultural contexts. However, there is no clear evidence whether these differences translate to cross-lingual differences in multilingual large language models (MLLMs). We analyze whether opinions transfer between languages or whether there are separate opinions for each language in MLLMs of various sizes across five Western languages. We evaluate MLLMs' opinions by prompting them to report their (dis)agreement with political statements from voting advice applications. To better understand the interaction between languages in the models, we evaluate them both before and after aligning them with more left or right views using direct preference optimization and English alignment data only. Our findings reveal that unaligned models show only very few significant cross-lingual differences in the political opinions they reflect. The political alignment shifts opinions almost uniformly across all five languages. We conclude that in Western language contexts, political opinions transfer between languages, demonstrating the challenges in achieving explicit socio-linguistic, cultural, and political alignment of MLLMs.

Omar Yaakoubi, Yassir El Guenuni, Nisrine Srainy et al.

Since the 20th century, quality has become a major strategic concern for both researchers and organizations, serving as a lever for performance and a key factor of differentiation in an increasingly digital environment. However, despite the development of e-government services, the exploration and evaluation of their success, particularly concerning civil servants, remains limited. The implications suggest that for the success of such systems, governments must prioritize satisfaction and trust for the users in their technology strategies. This paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, based on the PRISMA model, focusing on the relationship between quality and electronic services (e-services). Using the Scopus database, 626 articles were initially identified, of which 204 were selected following strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Covering the period from 2014 to 2024, the analysis highlights publication trends, journal distribution, author contributions, and keyword frequency. Special attention was given to 17 key publications, allowing for an in-depth exploration of the dynamics between perceived quality and the performance of e-services, using the VOSviewer tool. The findings reveal a strong interdependence between quality dimensions and the development of electronic services, particularly through technologies such as automation, intelligent interfaces, and interactive platforms. These elements play a crucial role in enhancing user experience, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.

Anna Szwed-Walczak

Recenzja monografii autorstwa Jana Ryszarda Sielezina, pt. Wybrane zagadnienia z metodologii badań. Kontekst historyczny i aktualne problemy, która ukazała się w 2024 r. nakładem Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego.

Adetula Samuel Lanrewaju, Osho Augustine Ejededawe, Egbekun Elijah

The subject of enquiry is to ascertain the independence of Supreme Audit Institutions in mitigating financial fraud in Nigeria. Regular audits of public financial account are entrusted in the Office of the Auditor-General in Nigeria. In addition, the increase in wastages and ineffective governance by agencies of the public sector has brought enormous pressure on the supreme audit institutions. However, numerous challenges weakened the independence of Supreme Audit Institution (SAIs) to have effective performance in Nigeria. This includes insufficient funding, lack of knowledge and experience, the required enabling environment, adherence to international standards, appointment and promotion of Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) heads/leadership, among others. The argument of this study is anchored on the assumption that the process of appointing staff of the Supreme Audit Institution (SAI), deliberate under-funding of the institution and quality of external auditors hired can impair SAIs from carrying out their statutory duties effectively to achieve their set mandate. The study therefore is supported by agency theory and fraud triangle theory. Primary data source wasused as data for analysis. A survey approach was used, through the administration of questionnaires to the staff in the Office of the Auditor-General, Ministries, Agencies and Boards in the Ondo State Government. A population of (200) respondents were sampled. Data analysis approach used for the test of each null hypothesis was Chi Square (X2). The results showed that since Nigeria's democracy began in 1999 and has persisted unabatedly, public officers have engaged in a number of corrupt practices, for which SAIs have not done a creditable job of increasing public accountability. The study comes to the conclusion that the inability of SAIs in Nigeria to carry out their deterrent and prevention functions is the reason why corrupt practices among public officials continue to occur. To enable them to serve as public officers' watchdogs, SAIs in Nigeria should have more financial, political, administrative, and organizational autonomy.

Stefan Sylvius Wagner, Maike Behrendt, Marc Ziegele et al.

Stance detection holds great potential to improve online political discussions through its deployment in discussion platforms for purposes such as content moderation, topic summarization or to facilitate more balanced discussions. Typically, transformer-based models are employed directly for stance detection, requiring vast amounts of data. However, the wide variety of debate topics in online political discussions makes data collection particularly challenging. LLMs have revived stance detection, but their online deployment in online political discussions faces challenges like inconsistent outputs, biases, and vulnerability to adversarial attacks. We show how LLM-generated synthetic data can improve stance detection for online political discussions by using reliable traditional stance detection models for online deployment, while leveraging the text generation capabilities of LLMs for synthetic data generation in a secure offline environment. To achieve this, (i) we generate synthetic data for specific debate questions by prompting a Mistral-7B model and show that fine-tuning with the generated synthetic data can substantially improve the performance of stance detection, while remaining interpretable and aligned with real world data. (ii) Using the synthetic data as a reference, we can improve performance even further by identifying the most informative samples in an unlabelled dataset, i.e., those samples which the stance detection model is most uncertain about and can benefit from the most. By fine-tuning with both synthetic data and the most informative samples, we surpass the performance of the baseline model that is fine-tuned on all true labels, while labelling considerably less data.

William Franz Lamberti

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed various sectors and institutions, including education and healthcare. Although AI offers immense potential for innovation and problem solving, its integration also raises significant ethical concerns, such as privacy and bias. This paper delves into key considerations for developing AI policies within institutions. We explore the importance of interpretability and explainability in AI elements, as well as the need to mitigate biases and ensure privacy. Additionally, we discuss the environmental impact of AI and the importance of energy-efficient practices. The culmination of these important components is centralized in a generalized framework to be utilized for institutions developing their AI policy. By addressing these critical factors, institutions can harness the power of AI while safeguarding ethical principles.

Giulio Pecile, Niccolò Di Marco, Matteo Cinelli et al.

Social media platforms significantly influence ideological divisions by enabling users to select information that aligns with their beliefs and avoid opposing viewpoints. Analyzing approximately 47 million Facebook posts, this study investigates the interactions of around 170 million users with news pages, revealing distinct patterns based on political orientations. While users generally prefer content that reflects their political biases, the extent of engagement varies even among individuals with similar ideological leanings. Specifically, political biases heavily influence commenting behaviors, particularly among users leaning towards the center-left and the right. Conversely, the 'likes' from center-left and centrist users are more indicative of their political affiliations. This research illuminates the complex relationship between social media behavior and political polarization, offering new insights into the manifestation of ideological divisions online.

Shruti Phadke, Tanushree Mitra

Increasingly online platforms are becoming popular arenas of political amplification in India. With known instances of pre-organized coordinated operations, researchers are questioning the legitimacy of political expression and its consequences on the democratic processes in India. In this paper, we study an evolved form of political amplification by first identifying and then characterizing political campaigns with lexical mutations. By lexical mutation, we mean content that is reframed, paraphrased, or altered while preserving the same underlying message. Using multilingual embeddings and network analysis, we detect over 3.8K political campaigns with text mutations spanning multiple languages and social media platforms in India. By further assessing the political leanings of accounts repeatedly involved in such amplification campaigns, we contribute a broader understanding of how political amplification is used across various political parties in India. Moreover, our temporal analysis of the largest amplification campaigns suggests that political campaigning can evolve as temporally ordered arguments and counter-arguments between groups with competing political interests. Overall, our work contributes insights into how lexical mutations can be leveraged to bypass the platform manipulation policies and how such competing campaigning can provide an exaggerated sense of political divide on Indian social media.

Kokouvi Kunalè Mawuena, M. K. N. Okey, Essohanam Pelenguei

This article explores the determinants of corporatization in Togo, focusing on access to credit, capital, and the domain of operation. Corporatization aims to enhance efficiency, transparency, and financial performance of public enterprises by aligning them with private sector practices. This transformation is influenced by various economic, political, and institutional factors. The theories used to analyze these determinants include public choice theory, which examines the principal-agent relationships between policymakers and public enterprise managers, and transaction cost theory. The article employs a Probit model to assess the marginal effects of different explanatory variables on corporatization using data from the 2018 General Enterprise Census (RGE) in Togo. The results show that access to credit has a positive and significant marginal effect, suggesting that improved credit access is associated with increased corporatization. Similarly, capital has a positive effect, indicating that an increase in capital correlates with a rise in corporatization. However, the domain of operation shows a negative marginal effect, potentially reflecting sectoral disparities or specific conditions that negatively impact corporatization. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of improving credit access and increasing capital to boost corporatization, while considering the specificities of different sectors. Policymakers and researchers should focus on targeted interventions to maximize the benefits of corporatization and attract foreign investments by creating a stable and regulated environment.

Volodymyr Dzeha

Background . The parliament in the modern political world is presented, on the one hand, as a compulsory element that is naturally incorporated into the political structure at any level of power, which allows to introduce clearly the institutional position it occupies. On the other hand, the work of a deputy involves publicity, which expands the possibilities of analyzing various aspects and areas of activities of people's representatives. However, the conditions of Russian-Ukrainian war significantly affect and change the work of the national parliamentarian. Methods . The methodological basis of the research is based on the synergy of general scientific, scientific-sociological and philosophical-scientific methods. The fundamental methodological elements of the study of parliamentary activity as a form of state administration are analysis, modeling, forecasting and study of statistical data. General scientific methods provide a collective characteristic of quantitative and qualitative indicators of the development model of parliamentarism in a country at war. The analysis is based on the materials of the scientific discourse of the last five years, which highlight management strategies and practices in this management cluster. For the current study, scientific works were selected from the leading scientometric databases of Google Scholar. Results . Studying the status of a people's deputy as a legal institution in the authorities, which determines the political and normative nature of the deputy's mandate, as well as accountability and controllability to voters, it is possible to distinguish three main types of responsibility. First, it is criminal responsibility, the key concept of which is a criminal offense. Secondly, political responsibility, which lies within the framework of the code concept is a "party program". It makes sense to trace political responsibility both to a party deputy who represents the interests of the people, while adhering to the party's political program, and to a majoritarian deputy who focuses on representative and legislative activities to implement his local program principles. Thirdly, the responsibility is moral, which comes down to the concept of "promise". This type of responsibility is characterized to a greater extent as subjective responsibility, which is derived from the personal qualities of the deputy, such as decency, understanding, compassion and attitude to the population's problems as his own. Responsibility is the most important moral and social-psychological quality of a person. At the same time, it acts as a mechanism of society's control over public-private relations, in the process of which a consensus is reached between personal and public interests. Сonclusions . The effectiveness of the work of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in the special conditions of martial law attests to the responsibility and stability of parliamentarians. The exercise of powers was characterized by the intensification of work in committees and factions, as well as during plenary sessions against the background of a constant reduction in the number of parliamentarians. At the same time, we don't always see the clarity of their work, there is also the neglect of national interests by some people's deputies. The organization of Ukrainian parliament work in the conditions of martial law has become coherent and effective. The rules of deputy ethics must be mandatory, have an expansive interpretation, regulating the behavior of deputies both on duty and outside of official activity

Yurii Verlanov, O. Verlanov

In the article, we aimed to answer the question: what are the peculiarities of corruption in Ukraine? This is a difficult task that cannot be solved within the framework of one article, especially since the problem of corruption is quite widely represented in numerous theoretical and empirical studies. Both theoretical concepts and models, as well as the results of the analysis of the experience of individual countries and groups of countries, have a significant benefit for generalizing ideas about the factors of corruption and ways to reduce it, creating the basis for the development of an effective policy to combat it. The difficulty is that each country has significant differences in the scale, structure, and forms of corruption. This is generally determined by such factors as: the trajectory of the country's development, the size of the economy, the state of the institutional environment, the nature of the political system, cultural and historical experience, etc. The characteristics of corruption in the general and national contexts showed a broad specification of the participants in corrupt actions, which reflects the multidimensional nature of corruption. Its concealment due to the threat of punishment, as well as the permanent development of its schemes and mechanisms, is presented in the typology of corruption. Even though the Index of Corruption Perceptions in Ukraine shows positive dynamics, the country lags behind its neighbors: Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova, and among the countries that are candidates for EU membership, it is in 6-7 place. It is shown that the level of corruption in Ukraine significantly depends on the GNI per capita and the level of civil liberties, while it is not affected by the degree of human development and government efficiency. The role of local elites, which caused the formation of destructive corrupt social networks over a long period of time, should also be attributed to the national characteristics of corruption. This problem has not yet been adequately reflected in the scientific literature. Supplementing the conceptual model of corruption with components related to counteraction factors: the severity of punishments and public condemnation, and their analysis showed that the punishment of corruption in the country is weakened, and in the social environment there is a paradox of tolerance, when the denial of corruption is accompanied by participation in corrupt actions.

Oussama EL MRABET

تسلط هذه الورقة البحثية الضوء على تدخلات القضاء الدستوري لضبط عيب عدم الاختصاص السلبي أو ما يصطلح عليه بالإغفال التشريعي للمشرع، وهذا التدخل في جوهره يتخذ أبعادا متعددة؛ منها ما يرتبط بمبادئ وقواعد على مستوى القمة، من خلال حث المشرع-القانوني على ممارسة كامل اختصاصاته؛ حيث إن مراقبة عدم الاختصاص السلبي تشكل نقطة انطلاق للقاضي الدستوري لفحص جودة التشريع من حيث الشكل (الوضوح والدقة)، والمتن (احترام الشرعية)، وأبعاد أخرى على مستوى القاعدة، تقدم كضمانات قانونية المقدمة للأفراد-الملزمين من خلال سن وصياغة قواعد قانونية تتسم بالوضوح، الدقة، المفهومية، وإمكانية الولوجية؛ حيث إن ابتداع القاضي الدستوري مجموعة من القواعد المرجعية بمثابة تذكير للمشرع باختصاصاته، وفي الآن نفسه، بمثابة نقد للقانون في أفق إقرار جودة التشريع الضريبي.  

Danilo Di Mauro, Marco La Bella

Instruments of “electoral engineering” such as compulsory voting, incentives and simultaneous multi-level voting, have become pretty common in contemporary democracies, especially in areas with low turnout rates. Simultaneous elections – i.e. the practice of establishing an election day when different governments (usually at local and national level, or including referendums) are elected – implies a reduction of costs for the institutions and increased empowerment for voters. However, these kinds of measures do not address the deep sentiments of disaffection for political institutions that often lie at the origin of non-voting. Moreover, simultaneous elections with different voting rules might confuse voters, thus increasing the number of invalid votes or no-choice. In order to examine the advantages and the threats of simultaneous elections, this study focuses on the recent case of the Italian general elections of 25th of September 2022, during which also the elections of the president and the regional assembly of Sicily were run simultaneously. This represents a regional context where atavistic disaffection and high volatility have marked the turnout rate of the last thirty years. By looking at the results of national elections within municipalities through a difference-in-difference strategy, we observe a slight increase in turnout rate in Sicilian municipalities. However, the number of both null and blank votes is significantly higher in Sicilian towns, suggesting a threatening effect of simultaneous voting.