Impact Of Electoral System Research Articles

Support for ranked choice voting across party and race: results from a national survey experiment

ABSTRACT This paper presents results from a series of survey experiments testing the effects of various arguments on relative evaluations of ranked-choice (RCV) and choose-one ballots. We examine data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), allowing for comparisons across racial groups. Reformers have emphasized the voter’s ability to have their vote transferred to a lower-ranked candidate as a positive aspect of the system. However, we find that an explanation of RCV’s vote-transfer properties does not increase public support. Furthermore, when given a choice between the single and ranked voting methods, a majority within each racial group prefers the single vote. However, Latino, Asian American, and MENA respondents express a stronger preference for RCV than white respondents. Democrats also evaluate RCV more favorably than Republicans. Furthermore, communicating that RCV helps elect more women and people of color increases support among Democrats but not Republicans across most racial groups. This is consistent with other findings around growing partisan differences in views toward diversity and descriptive representation. Finally, a message emphasizing voter confusion has little impact on public support for RCV. Arguments about the impact of electoral systems are found to influence public preferences more than descriptions of those systems’ key properties.

Electoral Incentives and Geographical Representation: Evidence from an Italian Electoral Reform

Candidate‐centered electoral systems create incentives for MPs to cultivate a personal vote among their constituents, which in turn should strengthen geographical representation. However, existing research has missed the theoretical distinction between the selection and incentives effects of electoral systems. Electoral rules influence who successfully runs for office (selection) and MPs' behavior once they have been elected (incentives). Focusing on the 2005 Italian electoral reform from a mixed to a proportional system, this article assesses the effects of the electoral system change on reelected MPs' attention to local issues in parliamentary questions and bills. The dual source of variation in electoral incentives (mixed system and reform) provides a unique opportunity to disentangle the impact of incentives and selection on MPs' behavior. Contrary to expectations, the results indicate that MPs formerly elected in single‐member districts (SMDs) did not significantly decrease their attention to local issues after the reform. This suggests that electoral incentives alone are not enough to modify significantly the behavior of MPs experiencing the institutional change and that selection effects should be taken more into account when considering the impact of electoral systems. By differentiating two mechanisms through which electoral rules influence legislators' behavior, this finding contributes new knowledge to the ongoing debate about the consequences of electoral institutions and reforms.

Impact of electoral systems and rules on political representation in Albania: shortcomings, changes and fight against their violations

The purpose of the article is to deal with the influence of electoral systems and rules on the strategies of political parties, on increasing voter confidence and on creating a sustainable electoral framework. Through research into the history of elections in Albania, especially in recent years, the article points out that electoral systems and rules have had and have a significant impact on political representation, the behavior of the electorate, the representation of minorities, regional and local representation, accountability, coalition building and public perception. For a democratic and standard development of elections in Albania, it is important to ensure that any reform matches the specific context and needs of the country. A well-defined, accessible and transparent legal framework can help improve the electoral process and minimize delays or confusion. Security and reliability in the electoral process is essential. The flaws and shortcomings that are noticed will be reduced and minimized by tightening the laws that protect the electoral process, accompanied by punitive measures to combat any violation of the electoral rules. This war is one of the current affairs that always accompanies the arena of politics in our country. Encouraging observation and transparency would be the most important and decisive step that would motivate people to go willingly to vote and be aware that their vote would be valid and transparent. In recent years, Albania has undergone electoral reforms to address some of the challenges related to the election system and has made improvements.

ON THE DISCUSSION ABOUT THE EFFECT OF ELECTORAL SYSTEM ON PARTY SYSTEM AND ITS PERFORMANCE REGARDING THE GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

The paper aims to examine theoretical grounds of political institutions, particularly electoral institutions and its impact on political party system. Moreover, paper explores behavior of electoral system in certain governing systems. To accomplish that purpose following problems were set and methodology applied: discourse analysis and comparative method are utilized through scrutiny of Linz’s, Lipset’s and Horowitz’s approaches regarding governance system, as well as Colomerian and electoral system-party system models. For all institutional models advantages and perils are discussed: from government formation flexibility, regime volatility to party system discipline and electoral system features. Consequently, electoral system and its impact on party system are explored in detail. Two general concepts are outlined: mechanistic and psychological voting, as main factors, which affect party system. Apart from that impact of electoral system on party system and regime change in paper is described trough the party system stability concept: party volatility and party replacement. The paper suggests that certain set of political institutions are relevant for certain aims and that sustainability of that institutions is reliant on path dependency.

Impact of electoral systems on gender representation in legislative bodies: the example of Ukraine

Impact of electoral systems on gender representation in legislative bodies: the example of Ukraine

Socioeconomic Development and Party System Fragmentation Cross‐Nationally

The literature examining the number of parties cross‐nationally has focused extensively on the impact of electoral systems; the study of social cleavages is, by comparison, less well developed. While a sizeable body of research has examined the effects of ethnic and other measures of diversity, other cleavages have received less attention. This article focuses on the impact of socioeconomic development—reflecting class and urban‐rural cleavages—on party system fragmentation. Examining a large cross‐national dataset, the analysis shows that, in line with the expectations of social cleavage theory and independently of other social cleavage variables, socioeconomic development is associated with higher levels of party system fragmentation.

Partie polityczne i systemy wyborcze

The essay deals with the topic of the relationship between parties and electoral systems. The author chooses to follow a historical perspective, leaving out both the influence of parties on electoral systems and the impact of electoral systems on the role and the organization of political parties. In the first part, the essay focuses on the transformation of the electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies from a proportional system to a majority system, untill the current “Italicum” system, remitted to the Constitutional Court for a legitimacy judgement. The second part deals with the characteristics of the new electoral system and with the (also paradoxal) effects that it could produce on the Italian political system. In the conclusions, the author mentions the law proposal concerning the discipline of political parties which is structured considering that the traditional model of party's organization is progressively disappearing.

Un po' di political economy dei processi di ristrutturazione del governo locale in alcuni paesi Europei: Francia, Spagna e Danimarca a confronto

The paper offers a review of the recent processes of structural reform of subnational government in France, Spain and Denmark. Shrinking the number of levels of government and of the number of units at each level was the main aim of those processes. The paper analyzes motivation and results, focusing on political and institutional constraints with a special emphasis on the impact of electoral systems. Spain and France show similarities with Italy concerning the structure of decentralized government and ambitions of reform. Denmark represents a very interesting case combining a pure proportional system of representation with a corporatist decision-making process. This combination requires a global and negotiated approach to intergovernmental reform, also. France and Spain seem to have operated within a shorter time frame that privileges immediate results. Contrary to Denmark established layers of government in both France and Spain, such as the municipalities and the provinces, seem to have been almost immune to reform.

Understanding the Impact of Electoral Systems on Women's Representation

The study of electoral systems is a key area of research within political science. In part, the attention paid to electoral systems reflects their importance to democratic political systems. Electoral systems define “what constitutes” a vote, establish “a rule for how votes are totaled,” and create a mechanism for “translating vote share into seat allocations” for representative institutions (Bawn 1993, 966). These roles mean that electoral systems impact not only how interests are represented, but also how accountability is structured.

Electoral Systems and Opinion Representation

Electoral systems are critical to the political representation of public opinion. Most existing work has examined the differences between proportional and majoritarian systems. The debate has centered on whether proportional representation produces greater ideological congruence between the positions of the government and the public. The focus has been on the immediate aftermath of elections, however—the existing literature on electoral systems has largely ignored the fact that representation occurs (or not) in the years between elections as well. Here, we argue for a shift in focus to the impact of electoral systems on representation throughout the electoral cycle, that is, during the tenure of governments. This shift, capturing the period during governments actually govern, leads to quite different expectations.

Social democratic parties and antitrust policy: evidence from Western Europe (2002–13)

This paper investigates the position of social democratic parties (SDPs) towards antitrust (competition) policy. Given their traditional state-interventionist attitude and their ties with organized labour, SDPs have long been considered as not supportive of antitrust policy. However, antitrust policy’s goal of granting consumers lower prices is beneficial to salary earners. Hence, it is not surprising that SDPs’ support for antitrust policy varies considerably. To account for such variation, this paper hypothesizes that SDPs’ support for antitrust policy depends on: (a) the influence of trade unions; (b) the electoral system; and (c) the degree of coordination of the economy. Analysing in depth 16 party manifestos of West European SDPs from 2002 to 2013, we check the plausibility of our hypotheses with seven paired comparisons. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that the influence of trade unions affects SDPs’ support for antitrust policy, while the impact of electoral system and economic coordination appears less evident.

Understanding the Impact of Electoral Systems on Women's Representation

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

The Overstated Merits of Proportional Representation: The Republic of Macedonia as a Natural Experiment for Assessing the Impact of Electoral Systems on Descriptive Representation

For the comparative study of the effects of electoral systems on the descriptive representation of ethnic minorities in parliament, Macedonia is a highly interesting case because the country had several elections under majoritarian as well as under proportional systems. Whereas most observers claim that ethnic Albanians have benefitted from the introduction of proportional representation, the article argues that the merits of PR have been overstated. First, scholars have often only reported members of political parties but not independent candidates in parliament. Second, when comparing the share of seats before and after the introduction of PR, the growing share of the Albanians in the population is usually ignored.

How do Voters' Strategic Behaviors Mediate the Impact of Electoral Systems on the Effective Number of Electoral Parties? An Experimental Study

This article presents the results of an experiment that looks at the relationship between electoral systems, strategic voting and the effective number of electoral parties. The study is based on experiments conducted with groups of 21 participants. The experiments consisted of a series of elections involving four parties. Two main treatments were applied. First, four different voter distributions were created. Second, there were two kinds of electoral systems under which the subjects voted. The analysis indicates that voters do not coordinate on the same parties under different electoral rules. Importantly, we find that the classic type of strategic voting identified by Duverger (1954) is reinforced by a different type of strategic voting identified by Cox (1997), namely “strategic amplifying voting”. The results show that classic strategic voting reduces the effective number of electoral parties while strategic amplifying voting increases the latter. Overall, we show that voters' strategic behaviors mediate the impact of the electoral system on the effective number of electoral parties.

Sistemi elettorali e comportamento di voto: una comparazione fra Germania e Nuova Zelanda

The article analyses the impact of mixed-member proportional electoral systems (MMP) on the party systems and electoral behaviors in Germany and New Zealand. The MMP grants proportional representation while reducing party fragmentation. The latter effect is stronger in Germany than in New Zealand, due to a difference in the electoral thresholds. Mixed member systems that allow citizens to cast two ballots for two different competitive arenas are much interesting for analyzing the impact of electoral systems on electoral behaviors. A voter can choose to split her vote, thus supporting a party in the multimember constituency and the candidate of another party in the single-mandate constituency. MMP is not theoretically supposed to strongly favor such choice. Yet, in the two countries many citizens split their votes; thus, in single-mandate constituencies votes typically concentrate on fewer candidates than in the proportional arena. This seems to be particularly the case in New Zealand. Voters act strategically while splitting their vote. There are evidences that this can be due both to a seat maximizing and to a localistic logic. Evidences are stronger for the latter.

Does context matter – The impact of electoral systems, political parties and individual characteristics on voters' perceptions of party positions

This article aims to investigate under which circumstances policy representation can exist in terms of agreement in voters' perceptions of parties' left–right positions. The focal point in the study is on how voters' perceptions are affected not only by individual characteristics but also by various contextual factors related to the political parties and the political systems. With data from the CSES on individual voters and various system characteristics from election surveys in 32 countries, this article shows that what in earlier findings have appeared as national context effects rather are party effects when being decomposed. System related variables have only a small impact on voters' perceptions while the party- followed by the individually related variables exerted the greatest impact.

Gender, European Integration and Candidate Recruitment: The European Parliament Elections in the New EU Member States

The paper investigates women's representation in the European Parliament delegations of the new member states by bringing together three distinct strands of scholarship: the second-order elections model, feminist theories of candidate recruitment and the literature on party positions on European integration. It tests three hypotheses explaining women's selection as candidates in European elections: the impact of electoral systems; the impact of political parties’ left–right placement and the impact of party positions on European integration. The key finding is that gendered patterns of candidate recruitment in the new member states are best explained as a function of political parties’ positions on European integration, with electoral systems and left–right placement having only a limited impact on the selection of women candidates.

The Impact of Electoral System on Political Party System in Thailand

기존의 태국 정당정치는 다당제에서 기인한 정치적 불안정 현상을 특징으로 했다. 그러나 1997년 신헌법에 따라 2001년 1월 치러진 하원의원 선거이후 기존 정당체제에 변화가 초래돼 다당제적 성격은 크게 약화되었으며 1당우위제가 형성됐다. 또 이런 현상은 2005년 2월 하원의원 선거 후 하나의 경향으로까지 자리 잡게 되었는데 그 중요한 원인 중 한 가지는 신헌법에서 채택된 소선거구·정당명부비례대표라는 선거제도에서 찾아 볼 수 있다. 한편 다당제의 약화와 1당우위제 형성으로 과거와 같이 취약한 연립내각 구성에서 나타난 정치 불안 현상은 급속히 줄어들긴 했지만 대신에 1당 우위 독주와 권력의 권위주의화에 대한 우려가 나타나고 있는 실정이다. 위의 내용을 중심으로 삼고 있는 이 글은 태국의 선거제도 변화와 정당체제 사이의 상관관계를 살펴보는 데 1차적인 목적을 두고 있으며 이를 위해서 다음과 같은 세 가지 점을 분석하고 있다. 첫째, 선거제도와 정당체제 사이에는 어떤 인과관계가 있는가? 둘째, 정당체제에 영향을 미치는 선거제도외적인 정치·사회적인 요인은 무엇인가? 셋째, 선거제도 변화의 결과는 태국의 정치 안정에 어떤 영향을 미쳤는가?

The Japanese House of Councillors election 1998 in comparative perspective

The Japanese House of Councillors is elected by a two-vote electoral system that is a unique combination of non-unique components. As such, it provides a useful case to examine theories about the impact of electoral systems on the number of parties that will compete nationally and within each constituency, and on the level of proportionality. The election is considered within a comparative context provided by two-vote elections in Germany, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. It emerges that the level of vote-splitting in Germany, though extensively studied, is relatively low in comparative terms. The extent and impact of malapportionment are also examined.

Electoral System Effects on Gender Representation: The Case of Mixed Systems

Electoral systems as endogenous re-distributive institutions (Tsebelis, 1990) help to define the rules of the game. In this manner they have an important impact among regional, class, ethnic, gender, and other sub-groups of the general population on the distribution and variation in outcome of who is nominated for, and elected to, national office. In particular, there is a well-established and growing literature on the impact of electoral systems and electoral system reform on the representation of women in national legislative bodies (Darcy, Welch, and Clarke 1994; Matland and Taylor 1997; Caul 1998; Rule 1987; Matland 1998). In general, these studies have concluded that more women are elected in proportional rather than in plurality or majority electoral systems. However, a major difficulty in interpreting these findings is created by the historical, cultural, economic, and institutional differences among cases chosen for comparison.