Electoral System Change Research Articles

THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION OF TURKISH WOMEN IN POLITICS (1980S TO THE PRESENT)

In Turkish modernization, important steps were taken under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk so that women could reach the level of contemporary civilized peoples. For this purpose, women who have lagged behind the society in education, training and social life, especially gender equality, have been granted political rights before some European countries. Turkish women, who obtained the right to vote and be elected in 1934, were included in the political life, and they went to the polls for the first time in the elections held in 1935. For many years, the place of women in political life has decreased due to many reasons such as the fact that political parties do not allow quotas for female deputies, democracy cannot be fully ensured within political parties, sexism, politics are seen as men’s work, women’s education problem, while the women’s movements have increased in the period from the 1980s to the present. Its power has increased due to reasons such as quota implementation based on changes in electoral systems. Although the number of women in politics has not reached a sufficient level even today, as the sexist approach in society and the obstacles placed in front of women are overcome, the effectiveness and success of Turkish women in political life will increase. Although it is difficult for women to take part in the male-dominated structure in politics, it is seen that women are not willing enough and they struggle less. It is possible to say that women have made important strides in the political arena in the Turkish society led by a female prime minister, Professor Tansu Çiller.

What Makes Party Systems Different? A Principal Component Analysis of 17 Advanced Democracies 1970–2013

AbstractParty systems, that is, the number and the size of all the parties within a country, can vary greatly across countries. I conduct a principal component analysis on a party seat share dataset of 17 advanced democracies from 1970 to 2013 to reduce the dimensionality of the data. I find that the most important dimensions that differentiate party systems are: “the size of the biggest two parties” and the level of “competition between the two biggest parties.” I use the results to compare the changes in electoral and legislative party systems. I also juxtapose the results to previous party system typologies and party system size measures. I find that typologies sort countries into categories based on variation along both dimensions. On the other hand, most of the current political science literature use measures (e.g., the effective number of parties) that are correlated with the first dimension. I suggest that instead of these, indices that measure the opposition structure and competition could be used to explore problems pertaining to the competitiveness of the party systems.

Proportional Representation and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from Electoral System Change in Europe

How much do electoral institutions matter for the rise of populist parties? Evidence on this question is mixed with some scholars arguing that the role of electoral rules is small. We provide new evidence for the impact of electoral system change. The United Kingdom's adoption of a proportional electoral system for European elections in 1999 provides a unique opportunity to study the link between electoral rules and the ascendancy of right-wing populist parties. Employing both synthetic control and difference-in-difference methods, we estimate that the electoral reform increased the vote share of right-wing populists by about 12 to 13.5 percentage points on average. During a time when populism was rising across Europe, the reform abruptly shifted populist votes in the UK above the European trend and above more plausible comparison cases. Our results also imply that caution is needed when empirical results based on partial reforms are extrapolated to electoral system change.

대한민국 임시의정원의 선거제도와 의원 구성 변화

대한민국 임시의정원의 선거제도와 의원 구성 변화

Alternative strategies to support women as political actors in the Pacific: Building the house of peace

With all its diversity, the Pacific region has consistently held the lowest regional ranking of women in national parliaments since 2012. International support for gender equality expects increasing women's political participation and leadership, fostering programmes primarily focused on electoral system change and individual empowerment for women political aspirants. These strategies have been effective in Western countries and in some parts of Africa and Latin America, but have largely failed to gain purchase in the Pacific. Interviews with women candidates reveal that women's entry into parliament is a cause for deep-seated conflict in at least some countries in the region. Neo-institutional approaches assume that the hurdles women face can be overcome by better institutional design and targeted support for women. We argue that institutions tend to continue post-colonial patterns of domination and a deeper approach to transformation based on peace-building strategies is required. We sketch how an ‘elicitive’ conflict transformation approach might be relevant.

Institutional Change in Advanced European Democracies: An Exploratory Assessment

Recent decades have seen a wave of institutional changes of the core democratic rules in advanced democracies. These changes include reforms of electoral systems; decentralization of power to sub-national governments; the creation or enhancement of direct-democratic institutions; a rise in public subsidies to political parties; and shifts in the balance of power between executive and legislature. Nevertheless, political science has developed a limited understanding of what explains institutional change in democracies that are already consolidated. This is partly due to the lack of comparative data on the subject, with most studies of institutional change focusing on a single country, or on a single type of reform (e.g. electoral system change). Our paper seeks to bridge this gap by presenting the preliminary findings of an international research project that compared seven dimensions of institutional change in 18 consolidated European democracies between 1990 and 2008, producing a unique dataset whose content has been fully verified by national experts. This dataset provides the empirical basis for evaluating the type and extent of institutional change in consolidated European democracies, as well as developing hypotheses about the motivations and calculations behind these reforms.

Incentive to deliver: authoritarian rule, proportional representation, and support for Russia’s ruling party

ABSTRACT We use electoral system change in Russia to identify the means by which a proportional representation (PR) system yields strategic electoral behavior that favors the ruling party in an authoritarian regime. Specifically, we argue that Russian regions enjoying greater representation via the ruling party in Russia’s first PR-only elections relative to the previously mixed electoral system should have been more likely to deliver votes in that party’s direction in the second PR-only election as a way to maximize their representation under the new rules. Using robust regression analysis, we demonstrate that regional experiences under the first PR-only election did influence the supply of votes to the ruling party and that this outcome holds when controlling for other explanations of vote delivery. With this finding in hand, we take a closer look at the representation of Russia’s regions over time to demonstrate how electoral system effects in authoritarian states are not simply the product of regime trajectory.

Maine ranked-choice voting as a case of electoral-system change

Ranked-choice voting (RCV) manufactures an electoral majority in a fragmented candidate field. For RCV to pass at referendum, part of a reform coalition must be willing to lose election to the other part of that coalition, typically an out-of-power major party. A common enemy enables this sort of coalition by assuring (a) the out-of-power party of sufficient transfer votes to win and (b) a winner that junior reform partners prefer to the incumbent. I test this logic against the November 2016 adoption of RCV in Maine. First, I show that the most recent, runner-up party overwhelmingly supplied votes to the ‘yes’ side. I also show elite endorsements tending to come from this party, albeit not exclusively. Then I show a drift in the mass of public opinion, such that reform partners could coordinate. RCV is likely to find favour where voter preferences are polarised and lopsided, and where multiple candidates split the larger ideological bloc.

Duverger's psychological effect: A natural experiment approach

A large body of work suggests that electoral systems influence the strategic calculus of voters and parties. But electoral rules are endogenous as they originate in the decision making process of voters and parties, making empirical analyses vulnerable to reverse causality and contamination effects. This paper studies a unique case where an electoral system change is exogenously imposed by a supra-national body. I exploit an EU ruling which forced the UK to adopt proportional representation (PR) for European Parliament elections. Using a difference-in-differences design, I estimate the causal impact of the reform on electoral outcomes. I find that the shift to PR leads to more “effective parties” and thus to a more proportional electoral outcome. In line with Duverger's law, the reform causally increased the number of newly entering parties. Existent small parties did not appear to exert more effort. The findings survive several robustness checks.

The Never-ending Story of Law and Electoral System in Lesotho

While electoral discontent has been the enduring feature of constitutional democracy in Lesotho since independence, disagreement over electoral system is a fairly recent phenomenon. When the country attained independence in 1966 from Britain, electoral system was not necessarily one of the topical issues of pre-independence constitutional negotiations. The major issues were the powers of the monarch, the office of prime minister, the command of the army and many more. It was taken for granted that the country would use the British-based plurality electoral system. This is the system which the country used until early 2000s when the electoral laws were reformed to anchor a new mixed electoral system. When the new electoral laws were ultimately passed in 2001, the country transitioned from a plurality electoral system to a two-ballot mixed member proportional system. By this time, electoral system had acquired prominence in politico-legal discourse in Lesotho. In the run-up to 2007 elections, bigger political parties orchestrated the manipulation of electoral laws which culminated in clearly distorted electoral outcomes. The manipulations motivated further reforms in the run-up to 2012 election which resulted in the single-ballot mixed member proportional system. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate how electoral laws have anchored electoral system reforms throughout the various historical epochs in Lesotho since independence. The paper contends that while the country has been courageous, unlike most of its peers, to introduce far-reaching electoral system changes, the reform of electoral laws has not been so helpful in attaining the higher objectives of political inclusivity, constitutionalism and stability in Lesotho.

Electoral reform and the behavioural personalisation of voters: the impact of system change on the importance of party leader and party evaluations in New Zealand elections

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the effect of a change in electoral system on the relative importance of party leader versus party evaluations in the case of New Zealand national elections, in which an electoral reform from a majoritarian to a mixed system was instituted in 1996. Prior literature on the personalisation of politics suggests that differences in electoral system can affect the importance of party leader and party evaluations in voting choice whereby majoritarian systems exhibit stronger leader effects and mixed systems weaker effects. At the same time, more proportional systems are theorised to enhance party leader visibility and their consequent importance in voting choice. Drawing data from the New Zealand Election Study, the results provide partial support for the moderating effect of system change on the increasing importance of leader evaluations and decreasing importance of party evaluations. The introduction of MMP visibly reduces the importance of party evaluations, but the increasing importance of leader evaluations is to some extent independent of reform.

Parlamentarna vlada u Srbiji od 1888. do 1914. godine - između prava i politike

The paper analyses the institutions of modern constitutionality in the Kingdom of Serbia in the period since it became a parliamentary state by the adoption of the Constitution in 1888 until the end of the Great War which marked the end of its independent state development. The answer to the key question raised in the paper - what was the political regime of Serbia in that period - demanded the assessment of the parliamentary system established by the constitution of 1888 to be made after analysing the application of nominal constitutional solutions. The Constitution of 1888, as one of the most liberal constitutions in Europe, undoubtedly allowed the political life in Serbia to be in line with the standards of modern democratic European states of that time. On the other hand, the absence of certain social and political characteristics that constitutional theory deems necessary for the successful functioning of parliamentarism was in the contemporary Serbia the hindering factor in the construction of the liberal-democratic regime. It is precisely for this reason that the conclusion on whether the introduction of modern state institutions by the constitution of 1888 meant the establishment of a modern political regime in Serbia, stated in the paper, is based on the analysis of constitutionality and political institutions in the light of the relation between the nominal and the real. Under the powerful authority of the Crown during the rule of the Obrenovic dynasty, the Radicals experienced strong pressure from the monarchy. Starting from the so-called Timocka rebellion in 1883 until the May 1903 coup, they gradually gave up their program based on the idea of national sovereignty embodied through the Parliament with supreme power and comforted to the concept of parliamentary monarchy which promoted both the Liberals and the Progressives. The result was an agreement with the Crown and the other two political parties, giving birth to the Constitution of 1888. Only four years later, it was annulled by a coup d'etat provoked by the Crown, who had power still strong enough to resist the Radicals who persisted in building a party state, rather than a parliamentary regime. In the internal political life in Serbia after the annulment of the Constitution of 1888, until 1903, two main features were growing limitation of political freedoms with frequent coups, on the one hand, and a growing readiness of the Radical party for a compromise, on the other. The politics of compromise led by the Radicals chief Pasic resulted in separating and creating a new, Independent radical party in 1904. After the May coup the Constitution of 1888 was brought back to life with certain changes in electoral system which was tilted to the majority system as the Constitution of 1903, which returned the political system in Serbia in a parliamentary form. The several limitations that the parliamentary practice in Serbia experienced until the outbreak of the Great War were not the same during the whole period, but were enough to form a special model of the parliamentary system with the domineering Radical's interpretation of the principle of majority as its essence.

Political Constraints and the Limited Effect of Electoral System Change on Personal Vote-Seeking in Hungary

This article aims at capturing how the recent changes in Hungary’s mixed-member electoral system altered the candidates’ personal vote-seeking strategies. Based on the literature, one might expect that strengthening the role of the Single-Member District (SMD) tier increases the incentives for personalisation. By utilizing the data from two consecutive waves of the Comparative Candidate Survey, we show that contrary to these expectations the average level of campaign personalisation decreased from 2010 to 2014. Semi-structured interviews with nine campaign staff members confirm that the political constraints were more important in determining campaign strategies than the institutional setting. Our findings challenge the dominating effect of electoral rules on personal vote-seeking.

Attempts to Reform the Electoral System in Spain: The Role of Experts

Despite the remarkable stability of electoral rules in Spain over the last 40 years, electoral reform is an increasingly hot topic in this country. In this article, the authors examine the attempts of electoral system change registered in Spain in the last decade and analyze the prospects for reform in the near future.

Change of Electoral Law as a Determinant of Local Society Political Life in Five Pomeranian Towns (2006–2014)

New electoral law has been in force in Poland since 2011. Analysis of the change of electoral law and electoral system is a key issue in this study and it includes earlier elec-tions. Thus study is focused on: political interest of Civic Platform (PO) in changing electoral system, and the political decision process with its effects for local communities.

Movement Parties in Taiwan, 1987–2016

This article examines the development of “movement parties” in Taiwan by applying the political opportunity perspective to understand how external conditions impacted their electoral path. We explain the rise and fall of movement parties by changes in electoral system, level of movement activism, and the permeability of the DPP.

The conflict of partisan interests and normative expectations in electoral system change. Hungary in 2014

The expanding literature on electoral reform has proposed a comprehensive approach towards electoral system change arguing that going beyond the simple logic of maximising gains for the dominant political elite allows for assessing normative drivers behind the change (Hazan-Leyenaar, 2014). Indeed, electoral systems tend to fulfil normative expectations like providing fair representation and stable government. More nuanced, practical concerns such as making elections cheaper or more intelligible are also regarded as their assets. At the same time these normative goals are intermingled with the rule makers’ political interests. The delicate balance between normative goals and strategic partisan goals becomes highly visible at the moment of electoral system change. Academic literature is divided on the importance of the normative versus the partisan background of electoral systems change. Rational choice literature argues for the supremacy of partisan interests in the formation (transformation) of electoral system design (Benoit, 2004; Colomer, 2005), claiming that seat maximisation is the parties’ main interest. Others (Shugart, 2001) focus on normative claims: if the electoral system does not bring representative demands to the surface or prospective government formation remains unidentifiable for the voters in the electoral process or the mandate majority counters the voters’ election majority the electoral system is unbalanced and would require modification on this normative ground.

The political consequences of changes in district magnitude

It is conventional political science wisdom that electoral systems have political consequences. In order to systematically examine these consequences, we focus on the effects of electoral reforms in Central and Eastern European democracies. By analysing the consequences of electoral system changes for party systems and disproportionality, we make use of a quasi-experimental approach by isolating a single treatment – the electoral law change – and controlling for all other variables. Along the lines of classical electoral research, we argue that the introduction of more permissive rules will result in an increase of electoral and legislative fragmentation and a reduction of disproportionality while more restrictive rules will have the opposite effects. The article’s genuine contribution to the debate in the field of electoral research is the introduction of a dynamic perspective. Once we clearly distinguish between mechanical and psychological consequences of electoral systems and analyse them simultaneously, we can develop different hypotheses on the temporal patterning of these effects and hypothesise on the variations of electoral rule change effects over time. While mechanical effects set in immediately and quickly wear off, psychological effects, which are based on learning processes and strategic coordination, develop over time.

Temptation of the “Powerful”: The politics of electoral reform in Central Europe in post-transitional period

Abstract The paper explores and analyses processes of electoral reforms in selected Central European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia) in post-transitional period. The qualitative analysis focuses “only” on the enacted changes in electoral systems and its purpose is not to evaluate the impact and political consequences of individual changes but rather to concentrate, through a theoretically-informed detailed contextual analysis, on the electoral reform process itself. It is therefore concerned with contextual factors affecting, underlying, initiating and/or controlling these changes. The paper identifies political elites as the main actors of electoral reform processes in selected countries, and it tries to explain both motivations of political elites for changing status quo electoral systems and other circumstances of electoral reform processes in Central Europe as well. The analysis also suggests that processes of electoral reform in post-transitional period in Central Europe are characterized by a tendency to less proportional electoral system designs, with the only exception of the Slovak electoral reform of 1999 (due to specific political constellation), while it did not discover any clear tendency regarding personalization of electoral systems.

Catalysts and barriers: Explaining electoral reform in Western Europe

Most accounts of electoral system change tend to consider it as being driven by purely partisan interests. Political parties are expected to change the electoral rules as a way to maximise gains or minimise losses. However, little work has been done on the question of why electoral reforms are so scarce in spite of these potential benefits. In this study, a wide range of both factors that may foster (‘catalysts’) and ones that may hinder (‘barriers’) the change of electoral institutions are investigated. A statistical analysis is performed of 16 West European countries from 1975 to 2005, covering 23 reforms of the proportionality of their electoral systems. It is found that procedural barriers are more effective for explaining the likelihood of electoral reforms than (most of) the catalysts. Additionally, there are indications that courts may play a more active role in triggering reform than previously thought.