Reform Of Electoral System Research Articles

Unveiling the Apathy: Understanding the Causes of Student Disengagement in Student Governance

This study delved into the causes of student disengagement in any form of student-based governance of the University of Cebu College of Arts and Sciences Department's Student Body Organization (CAS-SBO) during the academic year 2023-2024. A descriptive phenomenological research design was employed, exploring participants' experiences in student governance, how these experiences influence their lack of total disengagement and the strategies that could revitalize their engagement and active participation in the said area. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with twelve students selected via linear snowball sampling, focusing on those with prior governance experience who did not participate in recent CAS-SBO activities. Thematic content analysis revealed nine emergent themes: (1) Lack of Connection, Inequality in Representation, and Faculty Intervention as essential experiences in student governance; (2) Student Unfamiliarity, Feeling Unrepresented, and Unmet Expectations as reasons for disengagement; and (3) Inclusive Activities, Addressing Electoral Disparity, and Empowered Leadership as potential strategies to increase engagement. Based on these findings, the study recommends regular CAS-SBO general assemblies, teambuilding exercises, leadership seminars, and the election of representatives for each degree program to foster more vital student involvement and improve representation. The study also suggests future research topics, including electoral system reforms and former CAS-SBO presidents' experiences.

Electoral System Reform in Malaysia: A Delayed Success?

The Election Commission (EC), Malaysia’s electoral body, is frequently chastised by the public for its lack of neutrality, manipulation of the electoral roll, gerrymandering practices in constituency delineation, and unfair media access to contesting parties. As a result of these weaknesses, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) manifesto for the 14th General Election (GE-14) promised to reform the country’s electoral system if they won the election. The PH Manifesto won 121 of the 222 contested parliamentary seats, capturing the people’s hearts. Hence, this article examined the electoral system reforms enacted by the PH administration from its election victory in May 2018 until the end of its term in February 2020. The article asserts that PH had successfully instituted four major reforms in the country’s electoral system, including placing the EC under the parliament, cleaning up the electoral roll, enhancing electoral transparency, and amending the federal constitution to allow Undi18 (Vote18) and automatic voter registration, despite its brief tenure in power. However, the electoral system reforms stalled following the collapse of the PH government due to the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government’s lack of commitment to continue this reform.

Electoral System Reform and the Politics of Policy Change

As women’s participation in the workforce expands, many countries seek to reform child care support by changing the gender division of labor. Japan also attempted universalistic child care support reforms, though these were not always successful. The electoral reforms of the 1990s prompted the major political parties to make universalistic reforms, and the major party leaders advocated similar ideas. Still, they failed to extend benefits to all children. Agreement on the expansion of funding was particularly challenging. By analyzing coalition formation within and among political parties, I show that the electoral reform led to stiff competition, which made it difficult for parties to agree. The change to a majoritarian electoral system not only intensified inter-party rivalry but also made it difficult to persuade intra-party groups that perceived a threat to their electoral success.

Beyond Undi18, youth empowerment in Malaysia now needs electoral system reform

"Beyond Undi18, youth empowerment in Malaysia now needs electoral system reform." The Round Table, 112(3), pp. 341–342 Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Malaysia’s Electoral System: Issues and Framework for Electoral System Reform

Elections are the foundation and inevitable elements of democracy. As an inevitable element of democracy, it imposes democratic country to fix its election to be free and fair. Moreover, fair elections also enable regimes change and the implementation of good governance and may significantly advance or impede long-term democratic development. In recent years, the Malaysian government has increasingly faced negative perceptions toward the electoral system. The negative perceptions toward the Malaysian election are influenced by the performance of the Election Commission (EC). The ignorance or failure of the government to improve the credibility of every election led to the demand for reform from civil societies and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to bring the election framework in line with the concept of an ideal election. Therefore, this article aims to explore the issues of electoral reform and to suggest a framework for electoral system reform in Malaysia. This research applies a qualitative method which is document analysis and interview. The result of this study found that issues on the electoral system includes all election cycle. The electoral system reform framework shows few elements on electoral cycle such as voter education, absentee voter, and empowerment of Election Commission (EC) need serious attention from the government. This research contributes in term of reform suggestion to increase the efficiency and election credibility.

The inner decline of the Christian Democrat Party. Mario Segni and the origins of the referendum movement for electoral system reform

ABSTRACT The loudest and most senior voice to be found in the Christian Democrat Party in the 1980s in support of electoral system reform was that of Mario Segni; a voice so loud as to progressively become a destabilizing factor for the party. In support of a bipolar political system since 1976, Segni tabled a series of electoral reform bills seeking to implement majority rule reform measures both locally and nationally. The rejection of his proposals led him, in 1988, to abandon the parliamentary route and turn to an electoral reform movement that sought to implement change via referenda in June 1991.

Majority versus proportionality?

The study of electoral system reform is often focused on consolidated democracies. This special issue on electoral reforms in the Mediterranean region selects both consolidated democracies and moderate authoritarian systems. It analyses reforms under the aspects of how they deal with the dilemma between improving ‘governability’ by majoritarian instruments versus increasing proportionality of representation. While governability also depends on other factors, public debates are frequently structured along this dichotomy, which also affects the outcome of the reform process. The Mediterranean focus reflects the higher degree of reform activities in this policy area (for instance compared to the Nordic countries), which helps to focus on drivers, scope, direction, and vested interests of electoral reforms.

The Effects of Proportional Representation on Election Lawmaking: Evidence from New Zealand

ABSTRACT It is widely recognised that politicians are self-interested and desire election rules beneficial to their re-election. Although partisanship in electoral system reform is well-understood, the factors that affect partisan manipulation of other democratic ‘rules of the game’ – including election administration, franchise laws, and campaign finance – has received little attention to date. New Zealand is so far the only established democracy to shift from a non-proportional to a proportional electoral system and thus presents an ideal case to test the effects of electoral system change on the politics of election reform. This article examines partisan and demobilising election reforms passed between 1970 and 1993 under first-past-the-post and between 1997 and 2020 under mixed-member proportional representation. Moving to a proportional system has failed to diminish the amount of partisan election lawmaking, though voting restrictions have become less common. These results should caution against claims that reforming a country’s electoral system will necessarily curtail the passage of normatively undesirable election reforms.

Malaysian Electoral System Reform and the Challenges of its Implementation After the 14th General Election

Prior to the 14th general election (GE-14), electoral practices in Malaysia have been often criticised as being obscure and biased since it was plagued with issues such as dubious voter registers and ballot paper fraud. Therefore, in its manifesto during GE-14, Pakatan Harapan (PH) promised to reform this electoral practice to make it more independent, transparent, and fair. PH then won the GE-14 on the strength of this vow, forcing it to keep its manifesto pledge. However, implementing the said promise is not easy as most of the proposals involve amendments to the Federal Constitution that require the support of at least a two-thirds majority. The fact that PH lacks such a majority has raised the issue of whether or not the objective to reform the electoral system can be materialised. Thus, this article examines the aspects of electoral reform implemented by PH during its 22 months in power and assesses the challenges faced in implementing such electoral system reform. The concept of electoral reform was used as an analytical tool in this article. This article mainly obtained its data from secondary sources including books, journals, theses, official government documents and websites, while primary data were collected from unstructured interviews with authoritative informants. Findings revealed that among the important reforms of the country's electoral system that have been accomplished by PH are improving the standard operating procedures of elections, enhancing election rules that do not require amendments, amending laws that require simple majority support in the parliament, and implementing ‘high-impact’ electoral reforms that require amendments to the Federal Constitution. Moreover, it was also discovered that the main challenge to reforming the electoral system was the constraint of electoral rule amendments that require the approval of a two-thirds majority of parliamentarians. Other obstacles included politicians' unwillingness to accept a new electoral system culture, barriers to accessing data and information owned by other agencies, discrepancies between federal and state legislation, and financial constraints on improving existing hardware and systems necessary for electoral reform success.

Computer Simulations of Elections, With Applications to Understanding Electoral System Reform

Computer Simulations of Elections, With Applications to Understanding Electoral System Reform

Who Answers for the Government? Bureaucrats, Ministers, and Responsible Parties

AbstractA key feature of parliamentary democracy is government accountability vis‐à‐vis the legislature, but the important question of who speaks for the government—cabinet ministers or unelected bureaucrats, and the institutional underpinnings of this behavior—receives scant attention in the existing literature. We investigate this question using the case of Japan, and data on more than four million committee speeches spanning distinct electoral and legislative institutional environments. We document how a party‐strengthening electoral system reform in 1994 facilitated a dramatic shift in the nature of government accountability to parliamentary committees: speeches by ministers increased, speeches by bureaucrats decreased, and discursive accountability between ministers and opposition legislators increased. Subsequent legislative reforms expanding junior ministerial roles and placing explicit limits on bureaucratic participation further reinforced the effects. These findings shed new light on the institutional foundations of responsible party government in general as well as its progressive development in Japan.

Signaling Democratic Progress through Electoral System Reform in Post-Communist States

The international community invests heavily in democracy promotion, but these efforts sometimes embolden leaders not interested in true democratic reform. We develop and test a formal model explaining why this occurs in the context of electoral system reform—one of the most important signals of democratic quality. Our formal model characterizes leaders as either truly reform minded or pseudo-reformers, those who increase electoral system proportionality in order to receive international community benefits while engaging in electoral fraud. We hypothesize that the international community will be more (less) likely to detect fraud when leaders decrease (increase) proportionality, regardless of whether there is evidence of numerical fraud. Using a mixed-methods approach with cross-national and case study data from post-Communist states, we find that the international community is generally less likely to detect fraud following an increase in proportionality and vice versa. We suggest that democracy promoters over-reward perceived democratic progress such that pseudo-reformers often benefit.

Territorial Conflict, Domestic Crisis, and the Covid-19 Pandemic in the South Caucasus. Explaining Variegated EU Responses.

Territorial Conflict, Domestic Crisis, and the Covid-19 Pandemic in the South Caucasus. Explaining Variegated EU Responses.

Support for electoral system reform among voters and politicians: Studying information effects through survey experiments

Does information about the consequences of proposals to change the Norwegian parliamentary electoral system influence voters' and politicians' attitudes towards the system? Is the willingness to accept change greater among voters/politicians who “lose” under the present electoral system? These questions are illuminated using empirical data from two identical survey experiments, with responses from both voters and politicians about 1) increased proportionality between parties (more seats for smaller parties) and 2) increased geographical proportionality (stronger representation for the more populous counties). The results show that being informed about the consequences of the proposals has a major effect on voters' and politicians' attitudes. This applies especially to the question of increased proportionality between parties, where feedback was particularly negative from respondents who were told that the proposal might weaken the larger parties’ representation and make it more difficult to establish viable governments. The responses to the question about increased proportionality between parties were also influenced by partisanship; politicians who belonged to or voters who voted for one of the smaller parties favour increased proportionality. We also find that there is limited support for the proposal to distribute parliamentary seats according to the number of inhabitants in the counties, and this support is further reduced when the respondents are informed that the measure will increase representation from the more populous parts of the country.

Tailor-Made for Canada

While reform of Canada's electoral system has not yet occurred, it has been an ever-present, ever-potent topic in Canadian political science since the middle of the 20th Century. While there are aspects of First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) to be admired, its fundamental flaws cannot be ignored; the system encourages parties to exacerbate sectionalism, leaves far too many voters unrepresented, and too often allows for uncooperative governments. Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP), a form of Proportional Representation (PR), possesses the best aspect of FPTP, local representation and accountability, and amends its most serious flaws. MMP represents all votes cast, attenuates sectionalism, and creates diverse legislatures that incentivize cross-party cooperation far more than FPTP does currently. Canada is nearly a perfect country for MMP, and this system should be implemented for our federal elections.

Who Answers for the Government? Institutional Reform and Ministerial Accountability in Japan

A key feature of parliamentary democracy is government accountability vis-a-vis the legislature, but the important question of who speaks for the government—cabinet ministers or unelected bureaucrats, and the institutional underpinnings of this behavior—receives scant attention in the existing literature. We investigate this question with the case of Japan, and data on more than 4 million committee speeches spanning distinct electoral and legislative institutional environments. We document how a party-strengthening electoral system reform in 1994 facilitated a dramatic shift in the nature of government accountability to parliamentary committees: speeches by ministers increased, speeches by bureaucrats decreased, and discursive accountability between ministers and opposition legislators increased. Subsequent legislative reforms expanding junior ministerial roles and placing explicit limits on bureaucratic participation further reinforced the effects. These findings shed new light on the institutional foundations of responsible party government in general, as well as its progressive development in Japan.

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

The three-year arrangement under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) for SDR 32.38 million (US$44.9 million, or 10 percent of quota) was approved on July 20, 2016 and extended to end-2019 on December 7, 2018. The first four reviews under the ECF were completed on time. The arrangement supports the government’s reform agenda—as outlined in the Afghanistan National Peace and Development Framework (ANPDF)—to lay the foundation for higher growth and job creation and catalyzes donor funding. The security situation remains difficult alongside the ongoing U.S.-Taliban peace talks, which have improved prospects for a long-awaited political settlement. So far, the talks have focused on an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Taliban guarantees that Afghanistan will not be used as a base for terrorists. While the talks have so far excluded the Afghan government, the U.S. has insisted that any final deal would require “intra-Afghan” consultations and the Afghan government sign-off. Presidential elections have been postponed a second time, to September 28, 2019, partly to allow for electoral system reform. The November 2018 Geneva donor conference launched a World Bank-led effort to support the authorities in formulating a post-peace settlement economic development plan.

Le concept de vulnérabilité et l’inclusion politique des personnes ayant une déficience intellectuelle

Electoral system reforms in liberal democracies have allowed people with intellectual disabilities, historically stripped of their citizenship, to exercise their political rights. Inspired by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, many national governments have extended the principle of the universal right to vote to persons with intellectual disabilities, despite some institutional resistance. Different approaches in ethics and political theory have offered justifications for these electoral reforms, but they are divided on the question of the skills required for the exercise of political rights and the constraints imposed by the intellectual abilities of certain people. The concept of vulnerability developed by Martha Fineman approaches the question differently by emphasizing the relational and collaborative dimensions of the citizenship institution.

연동형비례대표제와 주권의 재구성: 한국 선거제도 변화에 대한 정치철학적 고찰

지금 우리가 선거제도를 개혁하고자 한다면 논쟁의 핵심은 사표를 줄이고 정당의 비례성을 높이는 차원이 아니라, ‘사실상의 대표’를 넘어 ‘실제의 대표’를 어떻게 구현할 것인가에 있다. 정치적 대표성의 주된 근거를 지역에 둘 것인지, 아니면 서로 다른 계층, 성별, 연령, 직업에 둘 것인지, 각각의 중요도를 어느 정도로 배분할 것인지의 문제에 대해 먼저 논의해야 한다. 이처럼 정치적 대표의 원리를 어떻게 세울 것인가를 먼저 구성하고, 그에 따라 선거제도와 권력구조, 정당의 공천제도 등을 그 원리에 따라 설계해야 한다. 이것은 촛불 이후에 국민주권의 대표방식을 어떻게 재구성할 것인가의 문제다. 중요한 질문들은 다음과 같다. 정치적 대표를 선출할 때 그들이 대표해야 할 책임성의 근거를 어떤 유권자성(constituency)에 둘 것인가? 지역인가, 계급인가, 정체성인가, 가치의 주장인가? 정치적 대표들은 그 유권자성으로부터 얼마나 자유로워야 하나? 선거제도의 유의미한 변화는 이러한 질문에 답하는 과정을 통해서만 가능하다.

Taiwan's Road to Marriage Equality: Politics of Legalizing Same-sex Marriage

AbstractIn May 2017, Taiwan's Constitutional Court reached a landmark decision that marriage should be opened to same-sex couples within two years, making Taiwan potentially the first country in Asia to realize marriage equality. How can we explain the success of the LGBT movement here? I argue that explanations based on cultural proclivity, public opinion, and linkages to world society, are inadequate. This article adopts a “political process” explanation by looking at changes in the political context and how they facilitate the movement for marriage equality. I maintain that electoral system reform in 2008, the eruption of the Sunflower Movement in 2014, and the electoral victory of the Democratic Progressive Party in 2016, stimulated Taiwan's LGBT mobilization, allowing it to eventually overcome opposition from the church-based countermovement.