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The Sznajd model of socio-physics, with only a group of people sharing the same opinion can convince their neighbors, is applied to a scale-free random network modeled by a deterministic graph. We also study a model for elections based on the Sznajd model and the exponent obtained for the distribution of votes during the transient agrees with those obtained for real elections in Brazil and India. Our results are compared to those obtained using a Barabási–Albert scale-free network.

We investigate the lifetimes of governments in the original and a randomized one-dimensional Sznajd model. We find various scaling laws for the lifetime of the democracy and for the reigning time of governments in this model, depending on the system size N.

We propose a continuous process opinion formation model to study the dynamics of a multi-level relationship between voters, political parties, and facts in two-party democratic elections. In our model, opinions can take any real value between two extremes and an unaligned, moderate opinion state without a preference. Starting with a random opinion configuration, individual voter opinions evolve and change over time due to self-reflection, inter-personal communication, external media influence, and noise. Parties are influenced by their own ideologies, facts, and voters’ opinions. Elections are held periodically and the party that is closer in opinion to the majority of voters forms the new government. The government policy is then expected to be in proximity to the voter opinions and the policies of the currently ruling political party. We analyze the tension of opinions as a measure of how dramatically opinions can disagree within a given sample of voters and the success of the government and parties as the degree of coincidence between the policies and facts. Our model generates realistic quasi-periodic alternations between incumbents and challengers that are typical for two-party systems. Moreover, our model shows that relative to other voters’ strategies, conscious voting can lead to more successful governments of not only fact-oriented but also pragmatic and balanced political parties, irrespective of the strategies of the competing opposition parties. In addition, our simulations uncover several interesting features including less victories for strictly ideological or fact-oriented parties unless they include some aspects of populism or pragmatism. In this sense, our model can also describe situations where election outcomes are not necessarily based on votes for the current programs of competing parties and their placement on relevant issues, but instead result from voters’ dissatisfaction with the previous government and the votes against it.

The purpose of this paper is to present some simple properties and applications of dynamic games with discrete time and a continuum of players. For such games relations between dynamic equilibria and families of static equilibria in the corresponding static games, as well as between dynamic and static best response sets are examined and an equivalence theorem is proven. The existence of a dynamic equilibrium is also proven. These results are counterintuitive since they differ from results that can be obtained in similar games with a finite number of players.

The theoretical results are illustrated with examples describing voting and exploitation of ecological systems.

China is geographically distant from Central European states, but cultural, economic and political exchanges between the regions are increasing. As such, the perception of China in these societies is susceptible to frames and narratives that are either instrumentally or organically created by local political elites. This paper aims to scrutinize the narratives and frames employed in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland during their most recent election cycles. It identifies five basic types of frames employed in the selected countries: sovereignty, opportunity, the balance of trade, debt-traps and human rights. This paper then concludes by evaluating these thematic frames and summarizes the key similarities in public discourses concerning relations with China.

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, there has been an almost complete intellectual triumph of the twin principles of marketization (understood here as referring to the liberalization of domestic markets and freer international mobility of goods, services, financial capital and perhaps more arguably, labour) and democratization. A paradigm shift of this extent and magnitude would not have occurred in the absence of some broad consensus among policymakers and (sections of) intellectuals around the globe on the desirability of such a change. There seems to be a two-fold causal nexus between marketization and democracy. The first is more direct, stemming from the fact of both systems sharing certain common values and attitudes. But there is also a second more indirect chain from marketization to democracy, which is predicated via three sub-chains (i) from marketization to growth, (ii) from growth to overall material development welfare and (iii) from material development to social welfare and democracy. We examine each of these sub-links in detail with a view to obtaining a greater understanding of the hypothesized role of free markets in promoting democracies. In the later part of the paper, we examine the socio-economic outcomes governing the quality of democracy in a specifically Indian context.

Developed countries have provided different levels of protection to domestic economic sectors facing competition from imports. An analysis of the effective levels of protection in place in 19 developed, democratic countries found that from the 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century, higher levels of protection were present in countries where parties of the left had a greater proportion of the seats in the national legislature. These results indicate that parties of the left were more likely to guard against import competition. After 2004, however, this link disappeared, perhaps reflecting the disruptive effects of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the global recession that began a few years later.