Browsing by Subject "elections"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Open Access
    A Critical Examination of Zambia's Democratic Performance since 1991
    (2021) Banda, Mabvuto; Akokpari, John
    A qualitative research approach and the reliance to a large extent on existing literature are used in this study to demonstrate Zambia's stagnant position in becoming a true democracy. While the country is seen as a beacon of peace in Africa, reflected in the peaceful transfer of power after elections, police brutality is rampant. Those with divergent views are not spared and suffer at the hands of police using the Public Order Act in instances of ‘breach of peace' and as an excuse for maintaining ‘public order'. Zambia continues to have a poor human rights record, reflected in the perpetration of violence against its citizenry with impunity by government officials and the political elites. Alleged cases of corruption rarely end in convictions despite overwhelming evidence of illegal practices. The Electoral Commission of Zambia and the judiciary are often accused of being biased towards the political establishment. A failure to appear autonomous has not only negatively affected their operations but has created negative perceptions and a loss of public confidence in these critical institutions. This, in turn, has resulted in the further undermining of democracy, as these important agencies are seemingly ineffective in ensuring that Zambia becomes a true democracy.
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    Open Access
    The Institutions of Representative Democracy
    (2004) Nijzink, Lia; Piombo, Jessica
    This paper charts the development of the two institutions most central to the nature of representative democracy in South Africa: the electoral system and the National Assembly.2 It reviews how developments since 1994 have shaped the institutional context in which political parties operate and compete for power. The paper first considers how the National Assembly has developed over the past ten years, reviewing the performance of parliament and its role in the consolidation of democracy. The second part of the paper focuses on the electoral system, reviewing the debate around electoral reform and discussing changes that have been introduced since 1999. In the conclusion, we suggest what the implications of these institutional developments are for the future of representative democracy in South Africa.
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    Popular attitudes toward the South African electoral system
    (Taylor & Francis, 2004) Mattes, Robert; Southall, Roger
    This article is based on a survey of popular attitudes towards the pure list system that is South Africa’s proportional representation electoral system. While the reported findings are broadly positive there are some notable exceptions, located disproportionately among racial minorities and also among sizable numbers of black respondents. Pure proportional representation is unlikely to produce the values that the respondents say they most want from a voting system. The significance of the survey’s findings is analysed and reasons are advanced for making changes to the electoral system. The government has opted to retain the status quo for the time being but in the longer term this could be negative for South Africa’s democracy.
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    Open Access
    Rethinking Rhetoric: An investigation of political persuasion online. A case study of Mauritian electoral interviews livestreamed on Facebook
    (2020) Suddason, Kelvin; Ndlovu, Musawenkosi
    The live-commenting feature Facebook Live offers a unique look into how persuasion operates online. By giving citizen-users, or the viewertariat (see Anstead & O'Loughlin, 2011), the opportunity to comment on live political performances, Facebook Live presents a worthy site of investigation into how traditionally-powerful performer-persuaders (electoral candidates) now face off with traditionally-excluded masses of audience-persuadees (citizen-users). The livestream then becomes a mediated space of contestation, where the boundaries between persuader-persuadee and performer-audience fades, where, this study proposes, persuadee becomes persuader, rendering, in the process, the traditional persuader less persuasive, and thus less powerful. The study sought to understand how electoral persuasion operates online in Mauritius by using the Facebook livestreamed interviews of three candidates (incumbent, long-time, and first-time candidate) running in the December 2017 By-Election. A combined rhetorical and content analysis was conducted on candidates' representative claims (see Saward, 2006) and the viewertariat responses to these claims. This study finds that candidates employ a self-centred rhetoric, focusing on their ‘candidateness' rather than their representativeness, which, this study proposes, has ramifications on how candidates approach politics in contemporary Mauritius. The study also finds that the viewertariat is actively engaged in counter-persuasion, constructing their own (re)representative claims and exchanging primarily with other viewertariat members and lurkers (see Hill & Hughes, 1997). The viewertariat exhibits horizontal persuasion which, this study discusses, dilutes the vertical persuasion employed by candidates. The overall findings lead to the conclusion that rhetoric as a theoretical framework must be extended to adequately capture the persuasive dynamics in online electoral public spheres. A new theoretical framework is finally proposed, with the tripartite distinction between performer-text-audience rearranged to include performer-persuasive text-viewertariat-lurkers, and complemented with an argument as to the growing conceptual obsolescence of the ‘audience' in studying rhetoric online.