Electoral System Change Research Articles

Zmiany i projekty zmian w polskim systemie wyborczym po uchwaleniu Kodeksu wyborczego

Polish electoral system in the process of change
 The article is the critical examination of changes in the polish electoral system after codification in 2011 year. Author analyses all changes in electoral law since 5 January 2011 and all draft bills which have been submitted to the Marshall of the Sejm in two last terms. The most important aims of the article are the answers the questions about reasons, premises and purposes of the changes and draft bills. Author also identify three types of changes in electoral system – adjustments, reforms and modernizations – and tries to show basic threats and problems connected with changes in electoral law.

Is Quota a Solution for Political Empowerment of Women? Some Reflections Regarding the European Union States and Romania?

Falling of communism in Eastern European countries brought in to the front stage the issue of transition to democracy, of the nature and model of democracy and equality for all. Romania had the same will of building a democracy inspired from the western typology and with an electoral system based on proportional representative, but with no special provisions or stimulants for women. This paper aims at analyzing the involving of women in politics, by studying, in a comparative approach, the legislation from Romania and the other members of the European Union, which succeeded the political empowerment of women, by introducing the “quota”. In Romania, it’s still in debate the change of electoral system, taking in to account a possible solution as “quota”, so more women in parliament. We use the quantitative analyses and the qualitative indicators in a comparative mode from the official documents and data basis from the legislatives of the European member states, European law, and OECD. We expect that the conclusions of this study to show us that “quota” is a constructive solution, especially for young democracy in transition such as Romania, which is still tribute to the old patriarchal culture and biases regarding the gender equality.

Electoral reform, situational forces, and political confidence: Results from a multi-wave panel

Political confidence scores have been attributed to two sources: one structural, the other situational. To reverse a loss in political confidence, New Zealand chose a structural remedy and changed its electoral system to include the election of Members of Parliament on the basis of proportional representation. This paper examines the impact of electoral reform on confidence by tracking a panel of individuals surveyed before, during, and after the implementation of proportional representation. We employ a hybrid-effects model to explore the importance of electoral system change and find that both structural reform and situational factors orthogonally shaped political confidence. Interaction terms indicate that the influence of electoral reform is moderated by considerations of party control of government, ideological commitment, and perceptions of economic conditions. Opinion change over time is much more evident at the aggregate than at the individual level.

Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef, the Shas Party, and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process

One of the prominent religious parties in Israel, intimately involved in political decision-making, has been the Shas party, led by the late Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef. This article examines four components of Rabbi Yosef 's political stance: (1) his view of Jewish religious law as a factor that moderates the force of changes of seemingly historical and revolutionary significance; (2) his opposition to radical messianism; (3) his desire to adopt independent positions; and (4) his role in the development of a Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox stream of Zionism.A bird's-eye view of the contemporary Middle East reveals the central role of religious parties in shaping the political agenda of the region. Israel is no different in this respect. While it is true that Israel is a nation-state founded by secular forces and that its secular elite is still strong, one cannot ignore two facts. First, religious parties play a leading role in Israeli governments. Second, religious parties' political positions have added weight in light of the fact that Israel is located on land to which deep religious significance is ascribed, both by the Muslim majority in the Middle East and by the Jewish majority in Israel. This fact, in and of itself, is enough to turn religious movements and their leaders into active participants in decisions of national significance. One of the prominent religious parties in Israel, intimately involved in political decision-making, has been the Worldwide Sephardic Association of Torah Guardians, an ethnic-based ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) party. It is better known to the Israeli public by its acronym, Shas.1Shas was founded in 1984 as an ethnic political home for Haredi yeshiva students and alumni of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern or North African) descent who felt discriminated by Ashkenazic (of Central or Eastern European origin) Haredi society. Since its inception in 1984, Shas has become a significant political-religious force in Israeli society. Its main electoral growth came in the 1990s. At its peak, Shas was the third-largest and third-most influential party in Israeli society. In recent years - due to changes in the Israeli electoral system, internal difficulties within the party, and the secular reaction to its influence - its electoral strength has declined. Nevertheless, Shas remains a significant political player in the Knesset and the government.Shas operates under the authority of its spiritual leadership, which directs the party and decides its path. From its inception, Shas's dominant spiritual leader was Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef (1920-2013), one of the leading authorities on halacha (Jewish religious law) in contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Thanks to Rabbi Yosef's charisma, vast Torah knowledge, and reputation as a halachic authority, no one within Shas circles disputed his word. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Shas has developed from a party formed to represent Mizrahi yeshiva students into a party whose agenda, ideology, and goals were directed by one man. This is evident in the dominance of his halachic approach in Shas educational institutions.The fact that Shas has an ultra-Orthodox outlook and depends on a hawkish constituency places it in the rightist camp of Israeli politics. However, at least one thing differentiated Shas from the other right-wing religious parties in Israel. Its spiritual leader, Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef, maintained an independent political stance and was prepared to make territorial compromises with Arab states in return for full peace. The fact that he offered a detailed justification for this position and did not rule out political cooperation with leftist parties, distinguished Shas from the veteran Ashkenazi Haredi parties as well. Whereas most Haredi leaders have tended to remain silent about regional political issues, speaking out only on rare occasion, Rabbi 'Ovadia Yosef was in the habit of reiterating his dovish views time and time again.This paper examines four components of Rabbi Yosef 's political stance: (1) his view of halacha as a factor that moderates the force of changes of seemingly historical and revolutionary significance; (2) his opposition to radical messianism; (3) his desire to adopt independent positions, and (4) his development of a Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox stream of Zionism. …

Understanding the Impact of Electoral Systems on Women's Representation

For some scholars, women’s legislative underrepresentation is, in part, explained by the choice of electoral system. The electoral system’s literature broadly concludes that proportional-representation systems promote gender equality in comparison to other systems (e.g., Matland and Studlar 1996; Matland 1998; Salmond 2006; SchwindtBayer and Mishler 2005; Vengroff, Nyiria, and Fugiero 2003; Caul Kittelson and Schwindt Bayer 2012). Recent research on electoral system reform casts doubt on the efficacy of institutions, finding that short-term changes in electoral systems do not necessarily lead to increased levels of women’s representation (Hinojosa and Franceschet 2012; Roberts, Seawright, and Cyr 2013). I argue that the expectation that electoral system reform will instantly increase women’s representation ignores the fact that electoral systems produce equilibriums that often take time to reach. Using a dataset of 98 democratic countries between 1955 and 2012, I show that electoral systems have both long-term and short-term effects. However, the effects of electoral institutions are greatest over the long term.

Abstentionism, Blank Vote and Invalid Ballot Papers: Evidences from Brazil and E.U.

Abstentionism, blank vote and invalid ballots are electoral phenomena that are statistically growing in many Countries but don´t receive much attention and when they do, they are usually treated with a strong negative bias. This article explore this issue and it is divided in three part: In the first part we analyze how the literature currently defines and treats abstentionism, blank vote and invalid ballot. We find out they are usually treated as a single and unique “non-vote area” and we propose a different approach based in a more detailed view, combining methodological individualism and imperfect rationality. In the second part we show the empirical relevance of this three types of electoral outcomes in EU parliamentary elections and in Brazilian presidential ones. In the last part, we notice a negative bias toward these electoral behaviors to which we oppose a different point of view. In this line, at the end, we propose some possible changes in electoral systems in order to better intercept voters will.

Explaining the determinants and processes of institutional change

Institutions used to be treated as independent variables, explaining a number of political outcomes. Having identified sources of institutional stability, political science has made considerable progress in providing insights into the determinants and the mechanisms of institutional change in general and into change in political institutions in particular. This was made possible by the combined efforts of three fields of study: works on electoral system change, regime change and some accounts on policy change. Authors working on institutional reforms have tried to answer two broad questions: the ‘why’ (the triggers that might explain the use of reforms and their motives), and the ‘how’ (the processes that can explain the final outcome of reforms). The existing theoretical accounts have enabled to identify several sets of incentives and obstacles to change: political crisis and instability and the state of the pre-existing institutional system. Some incentives and barriers to change are exogenous to the political actors conducting the reforms, while others are the result of endogenous interactions of actors within the system. Moreover, the research in this field has confirmed the existence of several barriers to change, the role of complexity and uncertainty in explaining the final outcome of processes of institutional change, and the importance of taking into account the type of reform and process leading to reform and non-reform.

Electoral Manipulations and Fraud in Parliamentary Elections

This study examines the mechanisms through which the ruling party won a plurality of votes using a combination of legal changes and manipulative practices during the 2012 parliamentary election in Ukraine. Legal changes in electoral rules—the replacement of proportional representation to a mixed system—helped the ruling party weaken the opposition parties. These changes enabled the ruling party to engage in manipulation and fraud during campaigning and on election day by suppressing competition, crowding out the races with “technical” parties and “clone” candidates, and manipulating the composition of electoral commissions. The change of electoral system also enabled outright fraud on election day. A combination of these techniques disrupted both the contestation and participation dimensions of democracy, effectively pushing Ukraine into a state of competitive authoritarianism.

Normative Balance and Electoral Reform: A Finnish Puzzle and a Comparative Analysis

The Finnish electoral system has recently been changed to slightly increase proportionality, but nothing has been done to make cabinet alternatives more ‘identifiable’ before the election. This outcome poses a major puzzle for one important theoretical approach to electoral system change. This approach sees normatively ‘unbalanced’ systems as vulnerable to reform and would have expected a significant increase in the pre-electoral identifiability of competing cabinet options. The article explains the Finnish case by embedding it in a comparative model of normative tradeoffs in democratic design. Based on Finnish case evidence and a statistical analysis of 100 elections in 32 democracies (from 2001 to 2011), the article argues that the type of democracy exemplified by Finland is not normatively unbalanced. In particular, the lack of pre-electoral identifiability is compensated for by an unconstrained multidimensionality of partisan preferences. While it may be true that normatively balanced designs are more stable, there is more than one way to be balanced.

The Logic of Ministerial Selection: Electoral System and Cabinet Appointments in Japan

Does the kind of electoral system affect the type of members of parliament appointed to the cabinet in a parliamentary system? The literature on electoral reform has investigated many political consequences of changing an electoral system, but whether appointments to cabinets change too has not been investigated. Conversely, there have been many analyses of cabinet selection but they have not investigated any linkage to the type of electoral system. One reason for this is the lack of theory concerning how electoral systems impact party strategies for ministerial appointments. We suggest that the intervening factor is how parties balance their competing goals of vote-seeking, office-seeking and policy-seeking. If cabinet appointments provide an arena where parties balance these three goals, then we should observe a change in this balancing strategy, and in ministerial appointments, following the introduction of different incentives inherent in a new electoral system. To that end, we conducted an empirical test of Liberal Democratic Party cabinet appointments before and after the 1994 electoral reform. We demonstrate that the change in electoral system led the party to rebalance its priorities and consequently adapt its strategy for ministerial appointments.

Electoral System Changes and Voter Turnout: Reflections on New Zealand Local Elections

Voter turnout in local and general elections is a key element in measuring citizen participation. From 2004, New Zealand local elections were unique in that local councils had the choice of two different electoral systems: plurality majority and proportional representation. We have here the opportunity to study more about New Zealand local elections and changes in electoral systems. This article analyses the impact of the "Single Transferable Vote” electoral system in those councils that adopted it, comparing it to those councils which used "First Past the Post". This article explains how the STV electoral system has not increased voter turnout and was not the cause of low voter turnout in the 2004-2007 local elections. It might, however, offer voters a better way to choose their preferences.

Electoral Reform – Cui Bono? Attitudes of Romanian MPs to the Electoral System Change

Drawing on an original parliamentary survey, an analysis is undertaken of what motivates MPs elected in a closed proportional representation (PR) setting to consider changing this electoral system. Moves in this direction are quite rare and for this reason a case study of Romanian parliamentarians is proposed. Bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques are used to assess the impact of both power maximisation incentives and values. The main findings indicate that MPs were willing to replace the closed-list PR with a single member district alternative only when they perceived clear benefits for them (that is, re-election) or their party (that is, a positive impact, either at intra-party level or within the party system). These self-interested motivations are prioritised over nomination-related reasons and the possibility of a constituency-centred focus of representation.

Simulating the 2011 Referendum in New Zealand

On 26 November 2011, an indicative referendum was held in New Zealand with the aim of gauging public support for a change from the current parliamentary electoral system (mixed member proportional) to one of four alternatives. To understand the consequences (in terms of the seat distribution of parties in Parliament) of a change in electoral system, we created an online simulator several months before the referendum date. Several interesting research issues arose in this work, which in our opinion deserve greater analysis. We describe the assumptions made in order to create such a simulator, and their consequences.

Legislative Effects of Electoral Mandates

Data has been taken from the Hungarian National Assembly, where the mandate type (single member district (SMD) vs. party list or proportional representation (PR)) changes for a number of legislators each term, to explore whether and how such changes lead to changes in legislators’ voting behavior. When the electoral system under which a legislator was elected changes from PR to SMD, then the rate at which the legislator defects against the party line of voting increases significantly. Contrary to expectations, when the electoral system changes from SMD to PR, there is no significant change in the voting behavior of legislators. Additional robustness tests confirm these results. The lasting influence of reputations and habits may account for the asymmetric results.

Simulating the 2011 Referendum in New Zealand

On 26 November 2011, an indicative referendum was held in New Zealand with the aim of gauging public support for a change from the current parliamentary electoral system (Mixed Member Proportional) to one of four alternatives. In order to understand the consequences (in terms of the seat distribution of parties in Parliament) of a change in electoral system, we created an online simulator several months before the referendum date. Several interesting research issues arose in this work, which in our opinion deserve greater analysis. We describe the assumptions made in order to create such a simulator, and their consequences.

Changing the rules of the game: Determinants of successful electoral system change in Central and Eastern Europe

This article explores the conditions of successful electoral system change. It develops four hypotheses on the conditions of the successful implementation of proposals to modify electoral laws. The first hypothesis reflects partisan self-interest and assumes that larger parties are better able to impose their preferred electoral institutions. The second and third hypotheses presume that electoral system design is motivated by instrumental considerations that can either reflect consensual or majoritarian visions of democracy. A fourth hypothesis draws on the timing of reforms and states that successful reform is possible only in relative temporal proximity to extraordinary historical circumstances. A macro, quantitative comparative analysis shows that both the control of larger seat shares and high levels of fragmentation in conjunction explain the successful implementation of electoral laws in 11 new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. This result is corroborated by four case studies.

Closed-list proportional representation in Russia

This work considers how a ruling party in an increasingly authoritarian regime utilizes legislative electoral system changes. It argues that the placement of former district deputies on the list of Russia’s ruling party after the move to a PR-only system reflected an interest in expanding its presence in the countryside as well as the attractiveness of the ruling party to the former district deputies themselves. It submits that both the party’s willingness to place former district deputies on its list and the willingness of the deputies to accept positions should vary by previous party affiliations, yielding predictable patterns in the aggregate. In terms of list ranking, it finds that the ruling party’s district deputies received significantly better placement than previously independent deputies, but not better placement than district deputies who made the list but had competed under a different party label in the previous election.

Impact of Candidate Selection Systems on Election Results: Evidence from Taiwan before and after the Change in Electoral Systems

AbstractA central challenge for scholars of party politics is to explain parties' electoral success or failure. Campaign strategies, candidate personalities, electoral systems, parties' issue emphasis and policy positions all receive extensive coverage in the literature. One variable that has been neglected is the role of nomination systems in election results. This is surprising considering how politicians often blame candidate selection failures for disappointing electoral outcomes and then reform nomination mechanisms in the hope of improving future election prospects. In this study I examine the relationship between nomination systems and electoral results in Taiwan before and after the change in electoral systems. I show that candidate selection methods have played an important role in shaping Taiwan's party system under the old and new electoral systems.

'Big Bang' Elections and Party System Change in Scandinavia: Farewell to the 'Enduring Party System'?

This article analyses the performance of the political parties in each of the 103 general elections staged in the five Nordic states between 1944 and 2011. It follows the work of Jan Sundberg by initially focusing on the three ‘pole parties’ that emerged from the struggle between labour and capital (Social Democrats versus Conservatives) on the one hand and between rural and urban economies (Agrarians versus Conservatives) on the other and considers the continuing validity of his conclusion that there has been ‘a remarkable stability among the three pole parties’. This leads Sundberg to characterise Scandinavia as ‘an enduring party system’. Whilst the evidence continues to point to significant ‘core persistence’, there have been a number of ‘big bang’ elections and a striking rise in support for parties in the ‘Others’ category (presently over two-fifths of the active electorate in Norway and Finland and over three-fifths in Iceland). The central question therefore is: What does the significant growth in this category indicate about the nature of electoral party system change in Scandinavia? The argument advanced is that significant core persistence (based on the pole-party vote share) should not conceal significant support for new parties, support which has vested the party systems on mainland Scandinavia with increased polarisation and an added dimensionality.

Electoral-system change in Latvia and the elections of 2010

Latvia’s highly distinctive proportional electoral system owes its origins to Latvia’s 1922 Constitution and the new democracy’s electoral legislation of 1919 and 1922. Latvia’s unique feature lies in its preference system, offering the voters the opportunity to judge each candidate on their party’s list. Although the system appears to maximise responsiveness to voters’ preferences, in practice this promise remained unfulfilled and the representative quality of parliament was questionable. This was in large measure because of the capacity of candidates to stand in multiple constituencies. In 2009 amendments to the electoral law altered this key provision. This change clearly made a difference, but it could not resolve fundamental problems of Latvia’s political process in general and its political parties in particular.