This study explores the effect of opportunistic election timing on the incumbent’s electoral performance. While the existing literature on parliamentary dissolution and election timing does not directly address this question, we show that the theoretical implications which derive from it lead to contradictory predictions about the ability of incumbent governments to benefit from strategically timed elections.
This roundtable at the Oxford Spring School in Social Science Research Methods features Ben Ansell (Oxford, co-editor of Comparative Political Studies), Geoff Evans (Oxford, editor of Electoral Studies), Vera Troeger (Warwick, co-editor of Political Science Research and Methods), and Joop Hox (Utrecht, president of European Association of Methodology).
National Identity Schemes are highly complex socio-technical systems in which many competing requirements from diverse stakeholders must be balanced. From a technical systems perspective, we review the objectives of such schemes, along with the resulting requirements, particularly the strong need to ensure appropriate levels of privacy and security. These objectives and requirements are addressed within the context of the broad range of threats against the system.
