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Kiev

"I've seen a lot of parks in cities, but never a city in a park."
Charles de Gaulle

Kiev, also known as Kyiv (Ukrainian) is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dniepr River. Learn russian language. The latest municipal estimate of the city population is of 2.7 million residents (April, 2007). Other much higher estimates are often published. For instance, the amount of bakery products sold in the city (thus including temporary visitors and commuters) gives a minimum of 3.5 million people (June, 2007).

Looking in the past on the political parties and elections in Unites States we can observe the huge change in the parties and individual candidates role. It has started with the elections of 1896, which we can call political realignment. Those elections are significant because of using for the first time populist ideology by Democrat candidate – William Bryan, and modern campaign techiniques used by Republican William McKinley. Elections of 1896 are significant in the election history because they started the transition period from party-centered system into candidate-centered system. Secondly, campaigns would be centrally managed. It means that consultants will be hired by party and there wont be this huge need to ire consultants as fas as possible to get the best one. Most probably there will be consultants working full time for the party, so there wont be a big fluctuation. It would allow to prepare long term electoral strategy. Of course the work will be done on the local level as well, but under centrally managed I understand that the whole planning process would be done by central management team and then some tasks and responsibilities would be delegated to the local party organization. So going to the details: whole design work will be done centrally and all local organization would be required to follow it, design would done in order to improve party visibility, fundraising will be done centrally and locally, but central team would be responsible for getting enough funds in general.

So to answer the question which system party-centered or candidate-centered creates healthier democracy we should concentrate on question in which system citizens participation and awareness is higher. From one hand site we have party-centered elections where campaign is focused more on issues and it required higher political knowledge to follow politics and make a good choice. But from the other hand in candidate-centered system we have “easier” access to offices and to become candidate. It is persons decision, which depends mostly on money and not on party leaders decisions. Then we have bigger transparency of candidate selecting process through primaries and finally in my opinion society interests is higher. Maybe people are not that much interested in politics, rather in candidate's personal life, but through getting interested in candidates they are getting involved in politics as well. Moreover in candidate-centered system very important role play grassroots work. Candidates have to mobilize a lot of activists in order to make a campaign, they are traveling much more and talking to people, the direct campaign is really the reason why I do think that candidate-centered elections create healthier democracy.