Download or read book Elections during emergencies and crises written by Toby S. James and published by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elections often have to be held in emergency situations. The Covid-19 pandemic was one of the most serious emergency situations that the world has seen. The rapid spread of the virus presented a huge humanitarian threat—but also an unparalleled challenge to electoral stakeholders globally seeking to protect electoral integrity during times of uncertainty. This volume identifies how the pandemic affected electoral integrity, what measures were put in place to protect elections and what worked in defending them. It brings together a comprehensive set of 26 country case studies to explore how elections were affected on the ground, what measures were put in place and what worked. These case studies are of elections which took place in the eye of the storm when practitioners and policymakers were operating under uncertainty and without the benefit of hindsight. To learn lessons in a more systematic way, this volume also provides a thematic analysis of electoral integrity during the pandemic using crossnational studies. This provides the big picture for policymakers, practitioners and academics looking back at the crisis. The volume therefore seeks to contribute towards the future development of policy and practice. However, it does so by using academic research methods and concepts which enable greater confidence in the policy lessons, as well as contributing directly to the scholarship on democracy, democratization and elections. The volume includes 11 areas of recommendation based on the evidence collected in this volume to protect electoral integrity in any future emergency situation.

Download or read book Democratic Resilience written by Robert C. Lieberman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how polarization threatens democracy and the sources of political and institutional resilience that can help sustain it.

Download or read book Adapting to the New Normal Political Parties During Lockdown and Social Distancing written by International IDEA and published by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In several countries, political parties are stepping up their digital presence in the online world. This creates opportunities for political parties to reach a wider potential audience or membership base. Digitalization has been an ongoing process in political parties across the globe, and the current pandemic is likely to accelerate this process. This Primer highlights some of the mechanisms that are being widely used and can be adopted by political parties to allow them to continue to function or operate in times of social distancing and other contexts where restrictions on social gatherings are being enforced. It also presents practical options for digitalization and developing an online presence that parties in different contexts can adapt and optimize to respond to such restrictions, and ideas to support the transformation efforts that parties are undertaking.

Download or read book Parliaments and Crisis Challenges and Innovations written by Jonathan Murphy and published by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parliaments in Crisis: Challenges and Innovations is the new Parliamentary Primer produced by the INTER PARES project, funded by the European Union and delivered by International IDEA. Written in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the Primer looks at how democratic parliaments play a crucial role in making good decisions and protecting citizens’ rights during a crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has deeply impacted how we are governed. Democracies have had to adapt to operating under extreme time pressure, without losing the advantages of transparency, citizen voice, and effective policy feedback loops, that make democracy the most effective and just governance system. Parliaments are the core democratic institution representing citizens throughout the policy cycle; in creating legislative rules that govern society, in ensuring that government implements legislated programmes effectively and fairly, in voting the use of taxpayers’ resources to pay for government services, and in ensuring the diverse views of citizens are heard at every stage. During a crisis, parliaments must carry out the same functions, but more rapidly, and in often adverse circumstances. This Primer focuses on particularly two aspects of parliaments’ responses. First, it looks at how parliaments ensured that emergency measures considered the needs of all parts of the population, and also that any emergency government powers were both limited in time and scope, and subject to parliamentary oversight. Second, the Primer examines how parliaments implemented innovative solutions to enable virtual functioning. The Primer concludes by exploring how parliaments can play a key role in reviewing how effectively government responded to the crisis, identifying lessons to be implemented in improved crisis and disaster planning.

Download or read book The Confidence Trap written by David Runciman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why democracies believe they can survive any crisis—and why that belief is so dangerous Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008. A global history with a special focus on the United States, The Confidence Trap examines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama. In The Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them—and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything—a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.

Download or read book Democracy in a Pandemic written by Graham Smith and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covid-19 has highlighted limitations in our democratic politics – but also lessons for how to deepen our democracy and more effectively respond to future crises. In the face of an emergency, the working assumption all too often is that only a centralised, top-down response is possible. This book exposes the weakness of this assumption, making the case for deeper participation and deliberation in times of crises. During the pandemic, mutual aid and self-help groups have realised unmet needs. And forward-thinking organisations have shown that listening to and working with diverse social groups leads to more inclusive outcomes. Participation and deliberation are not just possible in an emergency. They are valuable, perhaps even indispensable. This book draws together a diverse range of voices of activists, practitioners, policy makers, researchers and writers. Together they make visible the critical role played by participation and deliberation during the pandemic and make the case for enhanced engagement during and beyond emergency contexts. Another, more democratic world can be realised in the face of a crisis. The contributors to this book offer us meaningful insights into what this could look like.

Download or read book Electoral Systems and Conflict in Divided Societies written by Ben Reilly and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-05-04 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper is one of a series being prepared for the National Research Council's Committee on International Conflict Resolution. The committee was organized in late 1995 to respond to a growing need for prevention, management, and resolution of violent conflict in the international arena, a concern about the changing nature and context of such conflict in the post-Cold War era, and a recent expansion of knowledge in the field. The committee's main goal is to advance the practice of conflict resolution by using the methods and critical attitude of science to examine the effectiveness of various techniques and concepts that have been advanced for preventing, managing, and resolving international conflicts. The committee's research agenda has been designed to supplement the work of other groups, particularly the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, which issued its final report in December 1997. The committee has identified a number of specific techniques and concepts of current interest to policy practitioners and has asked leading specialists on each one to carefully review and analyze available knowledge and to summarize what is known about the conditions under which each is or is not effective. These papers present the results of their work.

Download or read book The Fight to Vote written by Michael Waldman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praised by the late John Lewis, this is the seminal book about the long and ongoing struggle to win voting rights for all citizens by the president of The Brennan Center, the leading organization on voter rights and election security, now newly revised to describe today’s intense fights over voting. As Rep. Lewis said, and recent events in state legislatures across the country demonstrate, the struggle for the right to vote is not over. In this “important and powerful” (Linda Greenhouse, former New York Times Supreme Court correspondent) book Michael Waldman describes the long struggle to extend the right to vote to all Americans. From the writing of the Constitution, and at every step along the way, as disenfranchised Americans sought this right, others have fought to stop them. Waldman traces this history from the Founders’ debates to today’s many restrictions: gerrymandering; voter ID laws; the flood of dark money released by conservative organizations; and the concerted effort in many state legislatures after the 2020 election to enact new limitations on voting. Despite the pandemic, the 2020 election had the highest turnout since 1900. In this updated edition, Waldman describes the nationwide effort that made this possible. He offers new insights into how Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud—“the Big Lie”—led to the January 6 insurrection and the fights over voting laws that followed one of the most dramatic chapters in the story of American democracy. As Waldman shows, this fight, sometimes vicious, has always been at the center of American politics because it determines the outcome of the struggle for power. The Fight to Vote is “an engaging, concise history…offering many useful reforms that advocates on both sides of the aisle should consider” (The Wall Street Journal).

Download or read book Training and Professional Development in Electoral Administration Policy Paper No 28 May 2023 written by Erik Asplund and published by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). This book was released on 2023-05-29 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Training is an investment in the ability of the electoral management body (EMB) ability to perform its primary task, administering an electoral contest. Building the EMB workforce’s capacities reinforces and inculcates electoral administration values and principles, those of integrity, impartiality, transparency, efficiency, sustainability and service-mindedness. By contrast, poor or inadequate training hampers service delivery and increases the risk of errors that negatively impact the reputation of the EMB or the election outcome itself. This Policy Paper addresses two different but interlinked issues: how to build and strengthen the capacities of EMB staff and workforce (both technical and lifelong learning); and how to build institutional capacities for delivering both types effectively. The paper is supplemented with findings from: a survey conducted in 2021; a 2021 case study series on the institutionalization of electoral training and education; and a 2020 workshop. This paper provides recommendations for practitioners seeking to strengthen their training and professional development programmes, as well as highlighting recommendations for the electoral assistance community.

Download or read book Managing Emergencies and Crises written by Naim Kapucu and published by Jones & Bartlett Publishers. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the scale, frequency, and intensity of crises faced by the world have dramatically increased over the last decade, there is a critical need for a careful evaluation of knowledge of managing disasters. Managing Emergencies and Crises presents the experience of emergency management from a continental perspective by focusing on the emergency response systems, processes, and actors in the context of the United States and Europe. It explores the institutional, socio-cultural and political aspects of crisis response and management. Your students will examine questions such as: What does the experience of disaster response from Japan, Pakistan, Greece and Turkey to the UK and US tell us about the state-civil society cooperation in such environments? How effective are the existing prevention and preparedness mechanisms to protect societies against disasters? What specific roles are attributed to state, federal, international and private sector participants at a rhetorical level and how those actors actually carry out their ‘responsibilities’ and work with each other in the event of a crisis?

Download or read book Cybersecurity in Elections written by Sam van der Staak and published by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). This book was released on 2019-07-19 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information and communication technologies are increasingly prevalent in electoral management and democratic processes, even for countries without any form of electronic voting. These technologies offer numerous new opportunities, but also new threats. Cybersecurity is currently one of the greatest electoral challenges. It involves a broad range of actors, including electoral management bodies, cybersecurity expert bodies and security agencies. Many countries have found that interagency collaboration is essential for defending elections against digital threats. In recent years significant advances have been made in organizing such collaboration at the domestic and international levels. This guide tracks how countries are making progress on improving cybersecurity in elections. Based on an extensive collection of 20 case studies from all over the world, it provides lessons for those wanting to strengthen their defences against cyberattacks.

Download or read book Elections in Times of a Pandemic Dilemmas and Challenges written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-03-04 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that unexpected and unpredictable situations can hinder the conduct of general elections around the world. The book is a comprehensive analysis of the organization of elections during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the theoretical perspective, it familiarizes the public with specific electoral solutions adopted during the pandemic in selected European countries (Italy, Germany, Lithuania, Serbia, Russia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Poland). The editors believe that this book will bring closer the specific solutions adopted in the considered countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide readers with a multi-faceted understanding of elections in emergency situations. Contributors are: Roman Bäcker, Ryszard Balicki, Piotr Chrobak, Rafał Dudała, Kamil Glinka, Maciej Górny, Maciej Hartliński, Marcin Jastrzębski, Izabela Kapsa, Agnieszka Kasińska-Metryka, Joanna Kielin-Maziarz, Jakub Klepański, Oliwia Kowalik, Krzysztof Koźbiał, Aleksandra Kuczyńska-Zonik, Natalia Kusa, Elżbieta Lesiewicz, Natasza Lubik-Reczek, Agnieszka Łukasik-Turecka, Paweł Malendowicz, Martinas Maluzinas, Radosław Marzęcki, Magdalena Musiał-Karg, Adam Pluszczyk, Agata Pyrzyńska, Marcin Rachwał, Joanna Rak, Kamila Sierzputowska, Krzysztof Skotnicki, Piotr Walewicz, Jacek Wojnicki, and Waldemar Wojtasik.

Download or read book Freedom in the World 2018 written by Freedom House and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 1040 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom in the World is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The methodology of this survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories.

Download or read book Preparing for the Next Foreign Policy Crisis written by Paul B. Stares and published by Council on Foreign Relations Press. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is vital that the United States devote more attention and resources to preventing and managing potential crises. This report is a distillation of the Center for Preventive Action's findings and recommendations for achieving this goal.

Download or read book Funny Weather Art in an Emergency written by Olivia Laing and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the finest writers of the new nonfiction” (Harper’s Bazaar) explores the role of art in our tumultuous modern era. In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century. Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, examining their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, reads Maggie Nelson and Sally Rooney, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time. We’re often told that art can’t change anything. Laing argues that it can. Art changes how we see the world. It makes plain inequalities and it offers fertile new ways of living.

Download or read book Comparative Electoral Management written by Toby S. James and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first comparative monograph on the management of elections. The book defines electoral management as a new, inter-disciplinary area and advances a realist sociological approach to study it. A series of new, original frameworks are introduced, including the PROSeS framework, which can be used by academics and practitioners around the world to evaluate electoral management quality. A networked governance approach is also introduced to understand the full range of collaborative actors involved in delivering elections, including civil society and the international community. Finally, the book evaluates some of the policy instruments used to improve the integrity of elections, including voter registration reform, training and the funding of elections. Extensive mixed methods are used throughout including thematic analysis of interviews, (auto-)ethnography, comparative historical analysis and, cross-national and national surveys of electoral officials. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners interested and involved in electoral integrity and elections, and more broadly to comparative politics, public administration, international relations and democracy studies. Chapters 1 and 4 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Emergencies and Crises written by Phillip M. Kleespies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Emergencies and Crises includes the most up-to-date and valuable research on the evaluation and management of the most challenging patients or clients faced by mental health providers-individuals who are at high risk of suicide, of other-directed violence, or of becoming the victims of interpersonal violence. These are cases in which the outcome can be serious injury or death, and there can be negative consequences not only for the patient, but also for the patient's family and friends, for the assessing or treating clinician, and for the patient's clinic or medical center. Virtually all mental health clinicians with an active caseload will see individuals with such issues. This Handbook is comprised of chapters by leading clinicians, researchers, and scholars in this area of practice. It presents a framework for learning the skills needed for assessing and working competently with such high-risk individuals. Chapters draw a distinction between behavioral emergencies and crises, and between emergency intervention and crisis intervention. The book examines the inter-related aspects of the major behavioral emergencies; that is, for example, the degree to which interpersonal victimization may lead an individual on a pathway to later suicidal or violent behavior, or the degree to which suicidal individuals and violent individuals may share certain cognitive characteristics. This resource is not simply a knowledge base for behavioral emergencies; it also presents a method for reducing stress and acquiring skills in working with high-risk people.