Type Of Electoral System Research Articles

Federalism and Women’s Representation: Do Federations have more Women Legislators than Centralized States?

Do national federations foster or inhibit women’s representation? In this article, we compare national legislative representation by women in federations and in centralized states. We analyze women’s parliamentary representation for all democracies between 1995 and 2010. Descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analyses, in which we control for quotas, a country’s type of electoral system, development level, the year the first woman was elected to parliament, the proportion of women in the workforce, and year of election, support the notion that federal states have approximately four percentage points more female legislators than do centralized states. In addition, our results indicate that federations have an indirect positive impact on women’s representation: first, they facilitate the adoption of gender quotas; second, they allow women to enter parliament earlier than unitary states.

Women’s descriptive representation in developed and developing countries

Today there is a wealth of research on women’s legislative representation and the factors contributing to it. For example, proportional representation in large multi-member districts and an egalitarian political culture are commonly associated with high rates of women’s representation. However, in the developing world findings are less solid and there is little consensus on the salience of various explanatory variables (for example, political culture or electoral system type) on women’s descriptive representation. In this article, I explore the possibility that the divergent findings that characterise the discipline stem from the different dynamics at work in developed and developing countries. My results indicate that development by itself has a positive and significant impact on the percentage of female representatives. Development also interacts with other variables (for example, women’s participation in the workforce and quotas) in determining the level of women’s representation.

Executive Type and Trade Protection in the 1990’s: Where’s the Pork?

Executive Type and Trade Protection in the 1990’s: Where’s the Pork? Nathan K. Mitchell, Eric A Booth, Billy Monroe Abstract Throughout the 1990’s the level of trade protection have decreased across most nations and this trend has continued to this day, however many nations remain more protectionist than others. Extending work done in the United States crossnationally, this study seeks to discern what institutional arrangements lead to higher levels of protection. By looking at macroeconomic and political institutions data from 1990 to 2000, this study develops a model of trade protection that suggests that presidential systems are overall less protectionist than parliamentary systems. The 1990’s are an important time period to study because this was the start of the rapid era of globalization and right before the financial problems associated with the later part of the 2000’s. The data show that parliamentary systems have higher tariff rates than other systems, but this is contingent on the type of electoral system. This study also finds evidence that strong executives with lots of policy tools are able to circumvent the legislature to provide “pork” on their own. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jirfp.v2n3-4a1

Women's participation in parliament: 'Glass ceiling' syndrome and party selection

The impact of 'glass ceiling' syndrome and party selection on participation of women in parliament and other political institutions are examined in this article. 'Glass ceiling' syndrome, which means invisible, but almost impenetrable border that women face in professional life, keeping them away from positions of influence and progress in career, is the main reason for the small number of women involved in politics. According to the focus of the research, there are three groups of barriers to women's political participation. Most researchers examine the influence of the political system, institutional and legal mechanisms, the question of their transparency and functional improvement. Significantly less frequent approach came from authors who are concentrated on the social and economic barriers, financial conditions and the broader social context. The third group consists of those who are considering the ideological and psychological barriers, patriarchal cultural patterns, traditional gender roles, self-confidence, ambition and women's desire to be involved in politics. Political parties are key actors in the process of discrimination against women, because they do not allow them to be selected in a number of political functions. There are many factors that determine that the issue of gender equality is variously interpreted in political parties. The most present are contextual and ideological factors, referring to a different definition of the status of women on the political agenda, the social climate in terms of gender equality and respect for human rights, the level of social development and political freedom. Then come organizational factors pertaining to the structure of parties, the manner in which the leadership is elected, whether there are internal women's pressure groups and lobbying, and are women leaders are visible on high positions in decision-making process. Finally, there are institutional-legal factors, which include the type of electoral system, the legal and constitutional framework and the prescribed quotas on national and / or party level.

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.

Standing for Re-Election Under Different Electoral Rules: Evidence from the Romanian Legislature

What drives an incumbent legislator’s desire for re-election? Drawing on two MP surveys from 2003 and 2011, the paper seeks to answer this question. The bi-variate and multivariate statistical models focus on the explanatory power of a few individual variables: parliamentary experience and office, the decentralization of selection procedures, importance given to the parliamentary office, professionalization and career perceptions, while controlling for socio-demographic characteristics. Our results indicate that the political career perceptions and the importance given to the parliamentary office are the key motivations to seek re-election, but their strength varies according to the type of electoral system. Similarly, other mechanisms seem to work chiefly in the PR closed list system (e.g. professionalization of the legislature) or within the SMD setting (e.g. being a frontbencher and age).

U.S. Senate Elections before the 17th Amendment: Political Party Cohesion and Conflict 1871–1913

From 1789 to 1913, U.S. senators were indirectly elected by state legislatures; this electoral mechanism ostensibly girded U.S. senators against the instability of public opinion and insulated them from direct public pressures. The adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913 replaced this system with the direct election of senators. In this article, we use an original data set of recorded ballots for U.S. Senate elections in state legislatures from 1871 to 1913 to illustrate the dynamics of indirect elections. Our broad goal is to identify components of the process that shed light on who was elected to the Senate under this type of electoral system and how indirect elections fared as a mechanism of representation. We find significant evidence that under the indirect electoral mechanism, Senate elections were contentious, and winning majority control of the state legislature did not always ensure an easy electoral process. Specifically, the breakdown of caucus nominating processes, the size of majority coalitio...

Electoral turnout in Muslim-majority states: A macro-level panel analysis

AbstractHigh voter turnout gives legitimacy to the political system and strengthens the stability of a country. Since voter turnout matters, it is important to determine which factors boost electoral participation. While there is a vast literature on turnout focusing on institutional, socio-economic, and contextual indicators, there appears to be a shortage of scholarship on the relationship between religion and turnout. In our study, we evaluate the impact of the Islamic religion on electoral participation. Drawing on a large dataset that incorporates all legislative elections worldwide from 1970 to 2010 and controlling for compulsory voting, the electoral system type, the decisiveness of the election, the competitiveness of the election, the size of the country, the regime type and development, we find that Muslim-majority countries have lower turnout rates than majority non-Muslim countries. We also find electoral participation to be lower in countries where Islamic tenets are more strongly entrenched in politics.

Which type of democracy performs best?

Which type of democracy performs best? While some scholars argue that an electoral system with proportional representation combined with a decentralized system works best, and that the type of electoral system is crucial (Lijphart, 1999), others state that a proportional electoral system with a centralized (and hence not decentralized) system lead to better performance (Gerring et al, 2005; Gerring and Thacker, 2008). Still other scholars claim that decentralization is crucial, particularly in countries with deeply divided societies (Norris, 2008). In this article, we argue that Lijphart's earlier 1960s work needs to be combined with his more recent 1990s work, which results in an eightfold classification. This cube with eight different types of democracy not only enables us to compare the three rival claims in a systematic way, but is also a helpful tool for future studies focusing on types of democratic systems, and their origins and consequences. Our findings show that the type of electoral system is always crucial; the other two dimensions are crucial as well, though under different circumstances. In order to achieve the highest level of good governance, the best choice for the type of political system (centralization or decentralization) depends on the structure of the society (homogeneous or not). Centralization is best in homogeneous societies, while decentralization is best in heterogeneous societies. We recommend that future studies take into account all eight different types of democracy that can be distinguished based on Lijphart's theoretical arguments in earlier and later work.

Identifying Antecedents of the Strategic Game Frame

Although election news framing is a burgeoning area of research, empirical studies of what factors influence frame building remain rare, especially in non-Western countries. This study investigates the use of the strategic game frame and the relationship between that frame and system-level and organizational-level factors. The analysis focuses on the coverage of campaign news in six elite Bulgarian newspapers between 1990 and 2009. Results show that the type of electoral system, number of parties in government, and newspaper specialization are significant predictors of game frame use. The results are discussed in relation to framing research in Western Europe and the United States.

Presidentialism and Voter Turnout in Legislative Elections

What is the influence of presidentialism on legislative turnout? Does it matter for electoral participation if the presidential and legislative elections are held on the same day or not? If any, what is the confounding impact of the electoral system type? This article uses a sample of more than 450 democratic legislative elections between 1990 and 2010 to evaluate these three research questions. Distinguishing three types of regimes: (1) parliamentary systems, (2) presidential systems with concurrent presidential and legislative elections and (3) presidential systems with non-concurrent presidential and legislative elections, we first evaluate the impact of each of these three system types on legislative turnout in a multivariate framework. We find that the first two regime types have higher turnout figures than the third regime type. In a second step, we examine whether citizens participation in any of the three system types interacts with the electoral formula in their country. Our results indicate that proportional representation has a moderate positive impact on turnout in presidential systems with non-concurrent presidential and legislative elections, a negative impact in presidential systems with concurrent legislative elections to the states two highest offices and no impact in parliamentary systems.

Expressive motives and third-party candidates

The electoral success of an extremist party usually attracts considerable attention. Yet, they rarely have an opportunity to directly influence policy as they are, more often than not, shut out of the policy-making process by mainstream parties. Extremist parties may, however, influence policy indirectly by inducing mainstream parties to adjust their electoral strategies. I consider a model of electoral competition between an expressive extremist party and two mainstream parties in first-past-the-post and majority runoff elections. The presence of an extremist party results in an equilibrium policy outcome that is further away from the extremist’s preferred policy but the magnitude of the effect is shown to depend on the type of electoral system.

Women’s Political Participation in the Province of Batangas

The study focused on women’s participation in electoral politics in the province of Batangas, their priority programs, the factors that impede their participation and the platform for action that Lyceum of the Philippines University-Batangas can propose to help increase women’s political participation in the province. Descriptive-correlational method was employed utilizing convenient sampling. Survey questionnaire and interview was utilized in data gathering. Respondents of the study are women politicians who won in the 2007 local election. Findings revealed that majority of women politician’s priority is health. They were recruited by political parties and their political experience is by being councilors in their respective areas. They believe that support of the community, family and personality are the factors for winning. Lack of financial resources and the type of electoral system as well as the lack of quota reservations are the socio-economic factors that impede women’s participation. On the other hand, the cultural and institutional factors include lack of party support including money and other resources and the lack of coordination and support from women’s organization and other NGO’s, how women are portrayed in media is believe to be the ideological and psychological factors that impede women’s participation in politics. Keywords - feminism, politics, election

When Two of the Same Are Needed: A Multilevel Model of Intragroup Ethnic Party Competition

Parties of ethno-regional minorities have been created in a large number of ethnically diverse countries, but sometimes one such party is not enough. While previous work has investigated the consequences of intragroup party competition, this study looks at the causes of internal political diversification of minority groups. In states with multiple levels of governments, intra-ethnic rival parties emerge if minorities are local majorities in certain regions. Intra-ethnic party competition is limited, however, through the national electoral system, and especially high legal thresholds can restrict minority parties. This results in complex interaction terms of the territorial settlement structure of ethnic minorities and different types of electoral systems. The empirical analysis relies on Boolean Algebra (csQCA) and on a new cross-national dataset of 19 postcommunist democracies in Europe, counting 123 ethnic minorities.

Personal vote‐seeking in flexible list systems: How electoral incentives shape Belgian MPs' bill initiation behaviour

AbstractIt is well known that different types of electoral systems create different incentives to cultivate a personal vote and that there may be variation in intra‐party competition within an electoral system. This article demonstrates that flexible list systems – where voters can choose to cast a vote for the list as ordered by the party or express preference votes for candidates – create another type of variation in personal vote‐seeking incentives within the system. This variation arises because the flexibility of party‐in‐a‐district lists results from voters' actual inclination to use preference votes and the formal weight of preference votes in changing the original list order. Hypotheses are tested which are linked to this logic for the case of Belgium, where party‐in‐a‐district constituencies vary in their use of preference votes and the electoral reform of 2001 adds interesting institutional variation in the formal impact of preference votes on intra‐party seat allocation. Since formal rules grant Belgian MPs considerable leeway in terms of bill initiation, personal vote‐seeking strategies are inferred by examining the use of legislative activity as signalling tool in the period between 1999 and 2007. The results establish that personal vote‐seeking incentives vary with the extent to which voters use preference votes and that this variable interacts with the weight of preference votes as defined by institutional rules. In addition, the article confirms the effect of intra‐party competition on personal vote‐seeking incentives and illustrates that such incentives can underlie the initiation of private members bills in a European parliamentary system.

Women's Parliamentary Representation in Africa: The Impact of Democracy and Corruption on the Number of Female Deputies in National Parliaments

Although many studies address the representation of women in parliament, few explore gender representation in Africa. Prior research on women's representation conducted in various areas of the world has emphasized the type of electoral system, quotas and the economic affluence of a country, as well as the state's political culture. In this evaluation these commonly used indicators are complemented by two factors that are not that frequently employed – a country's degree of democracy and its level of corruption. Besides quota provisions and the electoral system type of a country, both of these additional variables affect women's representation. Higher containment of corruption fosters higher percentages of women in parliament. In contrast, democratic states have fewer female members in parliament than non-democratic states.

Assimilation, contrast and voter projections of parties in left-right space

When voters place parties in their system along the left-right dimension, they often pull their preferred party closer towards them (assimilation) and push the opposition further away (contrast). This article asks a simple question: are such assimilation and contrast effects similarly powerful across different types of electoral system? I hypothesize that systems employing single-member districts will tend to strengthen assimilation and contrast because they mechanically reduce the number of parties, while shifting the focus of electoral competition away from the party and towards the candidate. Using data from 18 advanced democracies compiled by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and hierarchical modelling I find that contrast effects are indeed stronger in majoritarian systems, while assimilation effects appear similarly strong regardless of the institutional setting. These findings suggest that institutional design holds lasting consequences for how we perceive politics and, perhaps also, for our ability to effectuate democracy.

Women's parliamentary representation: are women more highly represented in (consolidated) democracies than in non-democracies?

Although there have been many studies that address the representation of women in parliament, there are few analyses that compare the current state of gender representation between democracies and non-democracies. Focusing on Africa, Central and South America, as well as Asia and the Pacific region, this paper evaluates whether democracies have more female deputies or whether female representation increases with the maturity of democracy. While controlling for the type of electoral system, quotas, women's participation in the workforce, a state's GDP, as well as its degree of corruption and Communist regime type, this cross-national analysis reveals that the variable democracy does not affect the representation of the genders in parliament. Women's parliamentary representation also does not increase with the maturity of democracy.

Who Lobbies Whom? Special Interest Politics under Alternative Electoral Systems

Why do some interest groups lobby politicians and others lobby bureaucrats? We theorize lobbying venue choices and intensity as a function of contract enforceability with policy makers, politicians, or bureaucrats. We argue that organizational structures of interest groups, in particular, whether they are centralized or decentralized, substantially affect their lobbying strategies because they are associated with different ability to monitor and enforce contracts with policy makers and punish them when they fail. We further demonstrate that the effect of centralized versus decentralized structure on venue choices is conditional on the types of electoral system: majoritarian, semiproportional (single, nontransferable vote: SNTV), or proportional representation systems. We test this argument using longitudinal survey data on lobbying which span two decades and cover around 250 interest groups in various sectors and issue areas in Japan. The results lend strong support to our argument about contract enforceability under alternative electoral systems.

Women in political arena: Insiders or outsiders?

This article focuses on two questions. Why are women underrepresented in democratic institutions and what are the barriers for their larger inclusion in political arena? Problems are analyzed from global perspective. Structural, cultural and political barriers are elaborated. The gender sensitive concept of representative democracy demonstrates legitimacy and difference in political processes. The hegemonic form of masculinity in all state institutions and procedures, in the election system, political culture and media, influences the exclusion of women on all levels of representation. Different theoretical concepts about gender representation in politics are analyzed. The author stresses greater influence of political factors - political culture, type of electoral system, party competitiveness, ideological differences, number of candidates, party and district magnitude, quota system - on women's representation in parliaments. The state of the art in representative bodies and in decision-making processes on the global level are analyzed in the third section of the article.