Comparative Study Of Electoral Systems Research Articles

Increased Media Choice and Political Knowledge Gaps: A Comparative Longitudinal Study of 18 Established Democracies 1995-2015

ABSTRACT We investigate the often-stated, but disputed claim in the political science and political communication literature that increasing media choice widens inequalities in political knowledge. The assumption is that in a high-choice media environment, the politically interested will consume more news while the uninterested will avoid such content, leading, in turn, to widening differences in political knowledge. Although previous studies show that high media choice increases political knowledge gaps in the United States, comparative longitudinal evidence is currently lacking. To fill this gap, we draw on data from four rounds of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Overall, we do not find general support for the high-choice knowledge gap thesis. In most countries, there is no indication that inequality in political knowledge has increased over time. Building on recent insights from political communication research, we question key assumptions of the high choice knowledge gap thesis.

The Electoral Success of the Left in Latin America: Is There Any Room for Spatial Models of Voting?

Why have moderate electorates elected and reelected leftist governments in Latin America over the last twenty years? Scholars who rely on the classic Downsian logic of the median voter theorem have observed a process of ideological moderation among the most salient left-wing parties in the region. However, there have been no systematic attempts to evaluate the moderation thesis at the comparative level, either across Latin America or within cases over time. This article uses a directional model in the spatial modeling tradition to argue that the success of the left rests on the provision of clear leftist programmatic cues to voters. Data coming from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems for five Latin American countries during 1994 and 2014 show that left-wing parties won on left-wing platforms across the region, while an in-depth study on Brazilian elections reveals that leftist voters of the Workers’ Party in 2002 were driven by programmatic cues that largely disappeared during the 2010 elections.

Only in Queensland? Coal mines and voting in the 2019 Australian federal election

ABSTRACT Australians are deeply divided over the prospect of new coal mines. Heated political debates at the federal level between conservative Coalition governments and Labor and the Greens echo divisions in public opinion. New data from the 2019 Comparative Study of Electoral Systems show that almost half of all Australians agree the government should allow the development of new coal mines, although substantial divisions in support are apparent on the basis of social background, political orientations and party identification. Our social and political background findings are almost the mirror image of the correlates of accepting anthropogenic climate change. State-based differences are also apparent, with Queenslanders more likely than people in other states to support the construction of new coal mines. Yet, while in regional Queensland voting decisions may have been influenced by the prospect of increased employment, in general, voting in Queensland does not appear to be associated strongly with attitudes toward new coal mines. Simplistic binaries of acting to ameliorate climate change versus supporting the fossil fuel industry fail to account for the complexity of Australians’ views on coal mining and carbon emissions.

Gender differences in the impact of electoral victory on satisfaction with democracy

Dozens of studies have shown that individuals who voted for the winning party in an election tend to be more satisfied with democracy than those who did not. However, a number of recent studies—many using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)—demonstrate that this relationship varies according to individual- and election-level factors. In this paper, we introduce for the first time gender as a modifier of the effect of winning on satisfaction. We advance a theoretical argument about why gender, independent of its many correlates, should shape the extent to which electoral victory induces satisfaction. Specifically, we argue that the winning effect should be smaller for women than for men because of (1) gender-based differences in political socialization and (2) gaps in the symbolic connection with candidates and parties. Given this, we also expect that the gender gap in satisfaction is moderated by women's descriptive representation. To test our expectations, we use surveys from Modules I-IV of the CSES coupled with macro-level data sources. Results indicate a robust and precisely estimated gender-based disparity in the impact of winning on satisfaction, with its magnitude being comparatively small among women. This gap is smaller where women are well represented in the legislature, though the gender of the chief executive does not play a conditioning role.

Policy congruence and its impact on satisfaction with democracy

The relationship between what citizens want in terms of policies and what they get from political elites is considered one of the key aspects of representative democracies. Scholars have thus investigated thoroughly the state of citizen-elite congruence in advanced democracies and whether this relationship influences citizens' democratic satisfaction. These studies do show that citizens' assessment of their political system and especially their satisfaction with democracy are importantly influenced by the quality of representation and how close they are to their preferred parties or the government position. In the paper, we build on this literature and consider whether congruence between citizen preferences and policies influences citizens' satisfaction with democracy. This last stage of representation has mostly been overlooked in past research. To address this question, we make use of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (module 4). Policy congruence is measured based on respondent answers to a series of questions with respect to their preferences on public expenditure in eight policy domains. We also compare the effect of policy congruence to other conventional measures of congruence (e.g. party and government congruence). Our results indicate that this new measure of policy congruence has substantial effect on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and more so than previous measures of ideological congruence.

Is there cross-national evidence that voters prefer men as party leaders? No

To what extent does party leaders' sex influence how voters evaluate them? Despite a burgeoning literature on gendered biases and institutional barriers that women face in politics, this question has received little systematic attention. We address this question using the first large-scale cross-national analysis of voters’ party leadership evaluations. Using three waves of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) from 1996 to 2016, we find that voters evaluate female party leaders more positively than male party leaders. In addition, we find a gender affinity effect exists for female but not male respondents. These findings have important implications for the study of party leadership and women in politics as well as practical implications for political parties considering promotions and leadership contests.

How do voters perceive ideological congruence? The effects of winning and losing under different electoral rules

The degree of ideological congruence between citizens and their elected representatives is an important feature of democratic systems of government. A long tradition of literature has examined the ideological linkages between citizens and governments, often drawing attention to the differences (or lack thereof) in congruence across different types of electoral systems. Previous research has largely relied on aggregate-level measures of ideological congruence, such as the ideological distance between the position of the median voter and the government. We turn our attention here to how congruence relationships are perceived by individual voters, and how the perceptions of congruence may vary across electoral system types. This individual-level measure of ideological congruence is important in that individual-level, rather than aggregate-level, congruence has been shown to influence other outcomes such as citizen satisfaction with democratic performance. We expect electoral “winners” – those who voted for a party that entered government – to perceive greater ideological congruence between themselves and the government compared to electoral “losers”. We expect this effect to be stronger in majoritarian systems where political competition takes place primarily between two parties, than in proportional systems where electoral losers are more likely to receive a proportional share of representation. We test these expectations by estimating random-effects regressions of perceived individual-level congruence using data from 54 elections held in 23 democracies included in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). The results provide consistent support for our expectations. Electoral winners in all types of electoral systems perceive greater ideological congruence between themselves and the government, and this effect is stronger in majoritarian systems.

Affective polarization in multiparty systems

Affective polarization captures the extent to which citizens feel sympathy towards partisan in-groups and antagonism towards partisan out-groups. This is comparatively easy to assess in two-party systems, but capturing the pattern of affect towards multiple parties is more complex in multiparty systems. This article first discusses these challenges and then presents different ways of measuring individual-level affective polarization using like-dislike scores, a widespread measure of party sympathy. Using data for 51 countries and 166 elections from five modules of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, I then show that affective polarization adds to existing concepts as a way of understanding political participation and democratic orientations. Studying affective polarization outside the US could therefore have important consequences for our understanding of citizen perceptions of politics as well as citizen behaviour, but we need the appropriate measures to do so.

Does economic inequality undermine political equality? Testing two common assumptions

In recent years, scholars have expressed concern that democratic political systems are more responsive to rich citizens than to poor citizens under conditions of economic inequality. However, it is unclear whether economic inequality leads to unequal influence on government. Moreover, despite claims that proportional representation reduces inequalities in representation, there is no evidence that it does. I test these two prominent claims by connecting two types of citizens’ preferences to the composition of government in non-presidential systems using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) dataset. I find that rich citizens gain better representation in government than the poor more often than the reverse. However, I find no evidence of an association between economic inequality and inequalities in representation or that proportional representation influences income gaps in representation.

Where do hawks and doves fly when shots are fired?

This paper explores the diverging electoral impact of instigating high-hostility militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) on the votes shares of hawkish, right-wing and dovish, left-wing incumbents, respectively. More specifically, I propose that deploying troops electorally harms doves and benefits hawks. I test this hypothesis via two studies. Study-1 presents a macro-level analysis of an incumbent’s electoral performance in a dataset covering 389 elections in 27 democratic countries between 1950 and 2010. With the objective of capturing heterogeneity of individual voting behavior at the appropriate level, Study-2 scrutinizes cross-national survey results from Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) covering 19 elections in 6 democracies. Multilevel models across both studies concur that in times of conflict, voters become significantly less supportive of dovish, left-wing incumbents and slightly more so of hawkish, right-wing ones compared to times of peace. The results also suggest that doves lose particularly substantial support from their co-partisans and ideologically left leaners.

Economic inequality and electoral accountability: inequality and differences in economic voting across Western democracies

Theories on economic voting and democratic accountability are rooted in the reward–punishment hypothesis, stating that voters punish incumbent governments for economic decline and reward them for economic expansion. We argue that this accountability mechanism goes beyond economic performance indicators, as voters take into account a moral perspective about the economy as well. More specifically, we argue that when economic inequality is high, citizens’ social justice preferences are infringed upon, which could lower support for the incumbent. Moreover, as inequality leads to higher levels of conflict over economic resources, we should observe higher levels of economic voting in unequal contexts. Hence, we hypothesise that (1) economic inequality is negatively related to electoral support for the incumbent party (parties), and (2) the level of economic inequality moderates the effect of perceptions of economic performance on electoral support for the incumbent party (parties). We test our hypotheses using hierarchical models based on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the European Social Survey. While we do not find support for a direct effect of inequality on electoral support, our findings strongly support the second hypothesis: incumbents are punished more strongly for a bad economic performance when economic inequality in the country is high.

How individuals’ social characteristics impact the likelihood to waste a vote – evidence from Great Britain, Germany and France

ABSTRACT Which social characteristics of voters reduce the chances to waste a vote? Surprisingly, little is known about the commonalities and differences of citizens who do (not) make their vote count. In this article, we argue that levels of education and income, gender and age shape the likelihood to waste a vote through two channels: the voting motivation and the ability to correctly assess the viability of candidates. Drawing on data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we analyse voting behaviour in six elections in Great Britain, Germany and France between 2005 and 2015. Our analyses demonstrate that holding a university degree is not related to effective voting. Differences in cognitive capacities as a consequence of formal education are hence not decisive for voters’ ability to assess candidates’ viability correctly. Instead, our results show that many of those wasting their ballots are male and young voters who tend to knowingly decide to support candidates unlikely to win. Overall, these findings shed light on wasted votes as one of the factors that might balance and reinforce existing social inequalities in the political process.

Rightward Leanings and Nonstandard Party-Position Perceptions

Some individuals defy the consensus as to parties’ relative ideological positions, asserting that a party is more left-leaning than its rivals even when most observers have the opposite view. Such discrepancies undercut spatial models of politics. Rightward leaners’ tendency to use different, more self-anchored, bases for assessing ideology may make them especially likely to dissent in this way, as might their attention to distinct issues. Results from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems confirm that those on the political right are likelier to reverse typical left-right orderings, even on right-leaning or major parties. Evidence from the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study further shows that right-leaners’ nonstandard ordering extends to parties’ specific issue-positions—particularly, notably, on issues of higher salience to the left. Standard models of politics may accordingly apply less well to those who identify as being on the political right.

Party organization and satisfaction with democracy: inside the blackbox of linkage

ABSTRACT This article investigates the way in which party organizational resources and processes may affect perceptions of democracy, looking at the impact of parties’ top-down communication mechanisms and bottom-up internal processes. Our examination breaks new ground by pairing party organizational data from the Political Party Database (PPDB) with individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), and shows clear evidence of the link between parties’ organizational resource capacity and their ability to inspire satisfaction with democracy (the “top-down” path from party organization to democratic evaluations). However, it does not appear that the degree of intra-party democracy practised (the “bottom-up” path) has a similar impact – a striking negative finding, given the growing tendency towards plebiscitary democracy within parties. Overall, these results provide substantial evidence for the importance of party organization and agency in fostering the popular legitimacy of democratic political systems.

Freedom of the Press and Public Responsiveness

Public responsiveness to policy is contingent on there being a sufficient amount of clear and accurate information about policy available to citizens. It is of some significance then, that there are increasing concerns about limits being placed on media outlets around the world. We examine the impact of these limits on the public’s ability to respond meaningfully to policy by analyzing cross-national variation in the opinion–policy link. Using new measures on spending preferences from Wave 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, merged with OECD data on government spending and Freedom House measures of press freedom, we assess the role of mass media in facilitating public responsiveness. We find evidence that when media are weak, so too is public responsiveness to policy. These results highlight the critical role that accurate, unfettered media can play in modern representative democracy.

Retrospective Voting and the Polarization of Available Alternatives

AbstractGovernment cohesiveness is known to moderate retrospective voting. While previous work on this topic has focused on characteristics of the government, we build on the literature on clarity of responsibility and the literature on valence to argue that the extent to which government and opposition are ideologically distinct also moderates retrospective voting. Two alternative expectations follow from these two theoretical perspectives. While the clarity of responsibility framework leads to the expectation that a larger difference between government and opposition will strengthen retrospective voting, the valence literature presumes that retrospective voting is stronger when ideological differences are small. Using the data of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project, we find evidence that is in line with the clarity of responsibility framework: the higher the degree of ideological polarization between government and opposition, the larger the effect of retrospective performance evaluations on the vote.

“He’s not my prime minister!”: negative party identification and satisfaction with democracy

ABSTRACTAcross Europe and the United States, negative party identification – an abiding aversion to a particular opposing political party is on the rise. At the same time, satisfaction with democracy is down worldwide. In this article, we explore the potential connection between these two phenomena. We develop a theory that posits a relationship between negative party identification and satisfaction with democracy where institutional structures and outcomes can mitigate the deleterious effects of negative party identification. We test our theory by drawing on data from 25 parliamentary and semi-presidential countries in the third wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) from 2006–2011 to assess the cross-national effect of negative party identification on levels of satisfaction with the democratic process in one’s own country. We find that satisfaction with democracy declines among voters in multiparty systems when an “out-group” party holds the prime ministership. At the same time, larger vote margins and the nature of the governing coalition can mitigate the effects of negative party identification. Our findings have important implications for how institutions can reduce the potential effect of negative party identification on satisfaction with democracy.

Patrimonial economic voting: a cross-national analysis of asset ownership and the vote

ABSTRACT Our study examines the impact possession of assets (patrimony) has on the vote in 34 countries. We provide the first comprehensive test of patrimony on the vote cross-nationally. Using Module 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and hierarchical models, we show that asset ownership matters and has a direct effect on the vote in several countries. More assets increase the likelihood of supporting the right. In other nations, its effect is indirect or absent. Accounting for this macro variation, we show that patrimonial voting is stronger in liberal welfare states and in countries where the tax system does not limit incentives to invest. However, we find no evidence that patrimonial voting is conditioned by ideological polarization. Our research highlights that economic voting is multidimensional and that patrimony, especially in some countries, is a potent determinant of the vote.

AUTNES Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Post-Election Survey 2017 (AUTNES Edition)

Reduced edition for public use. Full edition available for scientific use. This is Open Access data based on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Module 5 and focuses on the Austrian National Parliamentary Election held on 15 October 2017. This survey is part of the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES).

The shape of utility functions and voter attitudes towards risk

The key concern of this contribution is how voters transform distances within a political space into voter utility, i.e. whether theoretical and/or statistical models of vote choice should employ linear or quadratic loss functions to adequately capture spatial utility: First, the selection of an appropriate distance metric is a key concern in the specification of theoretical and statistical models of vote choice. Secondly, these options transcend the domains of mere technical modeling choices, but address attitudes towards risk, and directly relate to voter reactions to widespread phenomena such as party ambiguity and/or voter uncertainty.The empirical analysis rests upon the rich data provided by the collaborative project “The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems” (CSES). Comparative data analyses across heterogeneous national and electoral contexts clearly demonstrate that voters are, on average, much less risk-averse than assumed by the vast majority of empirical and theoretical contributions. Instead, we find that voters in mass elections are by and large neutral towards risk and are not systematically repelled by party ambiguity and (candidate-induced or perceptual) voter uncertainty.