List PR Systems Research Articles

Personalization at different levels: Intra-party competition and preference voting in local elections

Personalization refers to a shift over time in attention and/or power from collective actors to individuals. I focus on personalization in voting behavior, measured by the use of preference voting in flexible list-PR systems. I will argue that in a multi-level context this kind of personalization can take place at different policy levels, which could influence each other. In local elections, voters can be attracted by the mayor and/or other local figureheads, but also by the national party leader and/or national politicians figuring on the local list. Therefore, scholars should not only focus on the number and importance of people to which personalization applies (‘person level’ of personalization), but also on how processes at one policy level impact on other policy levels (‘territorial level’ of personalization). By combining literature on intra-party competition and personalization on the one hand, and on electoral patterns in multi-level states on the other, I engage in a conceptual discussion about the nature of personalization. I add empirical evidence to this conceptual discussion by analyzing preference voting patterns in local elections in Flanders (Belgium). As such, we gain more insights in the remarkable decline of preference voting that took place there.

Explaining candidate turnover. Evidence from a comparative analysis in 10 European established democracies with a list-PR system

AbstractThis article investigates determinants of candidate turnover in 10 European established democracies with list-PR electoral systems. We identify party and election variables that affect the supply and demand of new candidates on the parties’ lists. In addition, we apply a weighted candidate turnover measure to investigate the dynamic of renewal on high-ranked list positions. We built an original dataset that contains 3344 electoral lists of represented political parties. Hypotheses are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of political party list renewal rates. At the party level, leadership change and larger party size in terms of members are found to coincide with higher general turnover. At the system level, general turnover is higher in elections with closed lists and high electoral volatility. At higher positions on the list, candidate turnover appears not to be affected by the party- and system-level variables identified in the broader literature.

Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring

Tunisia’s political system suffers from recurrent problems with governability and proportionality. A volatile party landscape, frequent cabinet reshuffles, and political gridlocks repeatedly jeopardized stability and democratic progress since the Arab Spring. Major and minor electoral reforms were undertaken in 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2022, but they were unable to diffuse either of these issues. This analysis is therefore driven by two central questions: How have Tunisia’s electoral laws changed since the Arab Spring? And why have these reforms failed to improve both governability and proportionality? It will be argued that because Tunisia’s party landscape is fractured and volatile only on the secularist side of the spectrum, coalitions with and against Ennahda are costly to all parties involved, worsening the overall quality of political representation. By analyzing the trajectory of major and minor electoral reforms longitudinally, this paper finds that Tunisia’s electoral reforms incrementally restricted the electoral system by limiting parties’ and candidates’ capacity to compete in elections. Through modifying legislation on campaign finance and subsidies, gender parity, and candidacy requirements, and finally abolishing Tunisia’s closed list PR-system in 2022, reforms benefit established older parties and wealthier candidates while fortifying the electoral system against newer and less wealthy contenders. Tunisia’s electoral reforms are inadequate in addressing governability and proportionality because restricting electoral competition alone cannot improve the quality of representation through political parties.

"스칸디나비아 정당명부식 비례대표제와 정당공천: 덴마크와 스웨덴 사례 "

이 글은 스칸디나비아 국가들 가운데 높은 의회 민주성을 유지하고 있는 덴마크와 스웨덴의 선거제도와 정당공천방식의 제도적 특징에 대해 살펴보고 비례대표제 개혁과 정당공천에 대한 기존 연구 가설의 유효성을 검토한다. 덴마크와 스웨덴은 준개방형 정당명부식 비례대표제를 실시하며 정당들의 후보자 공천방식에서 정당자율적, 분권적, 제한적 포괄성이 나타난다. 덴마크와 스웨덴 주요 정당들의 공천 과정에서 나타난 특징은 정당의 전통적 핵심지지 집단의 영향력 약화, 평당원 중심 혹은 단계적 공천 과정, 선거구 조직 중심의 명부 작성 등이다. 한국의 선거제도 개혁은 연동형 비례대표 도입을 중심으로 논의되어 왔으며 정당민주주의 제고를 위해 비례대표 후보 공천 방식에 대한 민주적 재검토 필요성이 제기되어왔다. 하지만 정당명부식 비례대표제로 개혁방향을 재설정할 때 정당 공천에는 공천방식 이외에도 정당명부제적 특징과 당 지도부의 선거 전략적 고려가 영향을 미친다. 따라서 공천과정 혹은 절차적 민주성에만 초점을 맞출 경우, 공천결과에 개입하는 다른 요인을 간과할 수 있다. 정당명부식 비례대표제 하에서 정당공천에 영향을 미치는 요인으로 명부 작성 방식, 정당 규모 및 당내 비공식적 협의구조, 정당정치문화 등이 고려될 필요가 있다. 한국에서 선거제도 개혁과 정당 공천 방식에 대한 제고를 통해 의회 민주성 향상의 효과를 거두기 위해서는 주요 정당들의 상호합의에 기초한 민주적 정당정치문화가 수반되어야 할 것이다.

Drawing Electoral Districts to Promote Minority Representation

ABSTRACT The conventional wisdom that List PR is the best electoral system for ensuring the inclusion of racial, ethnic or other minorities in parliament is not necessarily true if the minority group has not established its own political party. An electoral system that includes single-member or small multimember districts offers the same avenues for minority representation under this condition as a List PR system, but presents an additional possibility as well: electoral districts can be configured specifically to promote or guarantee the election of minority representatives. This descriptive comparative study provides a conceptual framework for organising the approaches districted systems have adopted and discusses the implications of these approaches for the inclusion of minorities in parliament and the accountability of these representatives to the minority community they are intended to represent. While restricting the candidates who can compete in a district to minority candidates guarantees descriptive representation, restricting the voters, either by drawing districts so that minorities make up a majority of the voters or through communal voter lists that permit only members of the minority group to vote for the district representative, may be better for enhancing substantive representation.

The effect of candidate electoral experience on ballot placement in list proportional representation systems

This article investigates how candidate experience in previous elections, measured by the number of prior candidacies, affects ballot placement in list PR systems. The central argument is that selectorates find experienced candidates attractive because of proven loyalty and higher voter recognition. Moreover, prior candidacies strengthen candidates’ familiarity with intra-party selection processes. Returning candidates, however, also risk becoming victims of a seniority trap: after not succeeding to access realistic positions after a number of elections, additional candidacies become harmful as selectorates lose interest. Using data on 18,393 candidacies by 9,905 candidates of parties in Flanders (Belgium) (1987–2019), a set of logit and Cox models test the hypothesised curvilinear effect of prior candidacies on access to realistic positions. Both approaches lead to similar outcomes, confirming that experience positively affects ballot placement but with decreasing marginal utility. These findings have important implications for career strategies and contribute to knowledge on nomination processes and candidate turnover.

Centralized or decentralized personalization? Measuring intra-party competition in open and flexible list PR systems

This article offers a comparative analysis of electoral intra-party competition in four countries – Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland and Luxembourg – based on an original data set of 79,621 candidates and 3150 party lists covering the last quarter century (1994–2017). We use two measures to describe the nature of intra-party competition over time, across countries and across party lists: a Gini coefficient and a measure of the effective number of candidates. First, in terms of change over time (personalization) – contra the presidentialization thesis – there is no concentration of intra-party competition around a few leaders over time. Second, in terms of the dynamics of concentration of votes (personalized politics), the results suggest a move beyond the clear-cut divide found in the literature between centralized and decentralized forms of personalized politics. Instead, personalized politics is best described by the concept of ‘elitization’, meaning the concentration of most votes on a medium-sized group of candidates (5–10 per lists). Finally, three sets of factors condition intra-party electoral competition: the electoral rules organizing preference votes, the level of elections (European, national and regional) and the presence on the party lists of incumbent politicians (party leaders, ministers and parliamentarians).

Does high on the ballot means highly competent? Explaining the ballot position effect in list-PR systems

Previous research provides solid evidence for the existence of a ballot position effect. The cognitive mechanisms behind this effect are, however, undertheorized and understudied. We develop and test here ‘voter perception effects’ as a possible explanation. Following this reasoning, the list position in a list-PR system functions as a heuristic cue for the competence of candidates: candidates selected for a high list position are perceived as more competent by voters, even when controlling for other candidate characteristics. Our results, based on an experimental design, show that head of lists are indeed perceived as more competent than middle of list candidates. This is related to both advantages for the first position and to disadvantages related to a middle of list position.

Voting and satisfaction with democracy in flexible-list PR

A vast literature shows that voting for the winning party in elections boosts satisfaction with democracy. But in many list PR systems, voters do not only vote for a party, they can also vote for candidates within parties. Yet, we know very little about how such votes affect voters' satisfaction with democracy. In this paper, we analyse pre- and post-election panel survey data from Belgium, in which we asked respondents to report their vote choice for parties and for candidates. The main finding is that casting a preference vote for a winning candidate makes little difference, as party-list voters are those with the largest increase in satisfaction with democracy. Such a finding is very important as reforms that increase voters' opportunities to vote for candidates within list have multiplied recently, and many of these reforms have been justified as being in line with voters’ demand for more candidate-centred electoral systems.

Political Gender Stereotypes in a List-PR System with a High Share of Women MPs: Competent Men versus Leftist Women?

On the basis of a candidate’s sex, voters ascribe particular personality traits, capacities, and opinions to candidates (often to the detriment of women), which are referred to as political gender stereotypes. The prevalence of political gender stereotypes has almost exclusively been investigated in the United States. As the presence of these stereotypes is highly dependent on contextual factors, we switch the context and investigate whether they are also present in a List-Proportional Representation (PR) system with a high share of women in parliament spread over different parties. The results of our experimental study, conducted in Flanders (Belgium), provide evidence for the existence of stereotypical patterns. The differences in perceived issue competence are, however, rather small and not always unequivocal, but larger differences were found in terms of ideological position. This leads us to conclude that misperceptions about women’s ideological orientation might be persistent and difficult to overcome. Moreover, our results demonstrate that the argument that female politicians are perceived as more leftist because they disproportionately belong to leftist parties does not hold, as female politicians are rather equally spread over the different parties in Belgium.

Electoral regime and trade policy

We study how trade protection varies with the electoral rules for legislative representation. In particular, we investigate different hypotheses about why trade policy differs between countries with legislatures elected by a plurality election rule in single member constituencies and legislatures elected by a proportional, or party-list, rule. Our results, which are in line with the existing literature, show that countries with list-PR systems tend to have lower trade barriers than countries with majoritarian systems. We expand on this literature by looking at the mechanisms through which this correlation can be explained. Our findings indicate that, contrary to existing theory, neither constituency size nor party strength are important when explaining this correlation. Country size does matter, but does not explain the whole of the correlation.

Quotas and qualifications: the impact of gender quota laws on the qualifications of legislators in the Italian parliament

This article addresses concerns that candidates nominated because of gender quota laws will be less qualified for office. While questions of candidate quality have long been relevant to legislative behavior, quota laws requiring a certain percentage of candidates for national office to be women have generated renewed interest. Gender quotas are often perceived to reduce the scope of political competition. By putting gender identity center stage, they preclude the possibility that elections will be based on ‘ideas’ or ‘merit’ alone. Other electoral rules that restrict candidate selection, such as the centralization of candidate selection common in closed list PR systems, have been found to reduce the quality of candidates. Rules that open selection, such as primaries, result in higher quality candidates. We exploit the institutional design of Italy’s mixed electoral system in 1994, where quotas were applied only to the PR portion of the list, to compare the qualifications of men, women, and ‘quota women’. We estimate regressions on several measures of deputies’ qualifications for office and performance in office. We find that unlike other rules limiting candidate selection, quotas are not associated with lower quality on most measures of qualifications. In fact, quota women have more local government experience than other legislators and lower rates of absenteeism than their male counterparts. Contrary to critics, quota laws may have apositiveimpact on legislator quality. Once the quota law was rescinded, quota women were less likely to be re-elected than non-quota women or men, which suggests that discrimination – not qualification – limits women’s status as candidates.

Electoral contexts that assist voter coordination: Ballot position effects in Poland

Hypothetically, in the open list PR system, all contestants, independently of their ballot position, have the same chance of winning a mandate. In practice, candidates placed at the top of the ballot enjoy a large surplus of votes. Their success can be explained by the primacy effect, in which the first ballot position acts as a focal point. The analysis of 6187 candidates running for the Polish Sejm in 2007 finds not only significant gains for top candidates, but that proximity to the upper end of the ballot likewise matters. It correspondingly discovers a weak benefit for candidates placed last on the list. Other sources of candidate advantage such as incumbency, capital city effect, age and gender are also investigated.

Office effects and campaign spending in a semi-open list PR system: The Belgian/Flemish federal and regional elections 1999–2010

In majoritarian systems, campaign spending is generally found to be more effective for challengers than for incumbents. This article seeks to understand how the personal campaign spending of a candidate impacts preference votes in a semi-open List PR system. We analyse the effect of office in general, postulating that the size of the effect varies with the prominence of the office. On the basis of the pooled data on six different elections in the Flemish region of Belgium, we show that personal spending has an effect on the number and the relative share of preference votes, except for ministers and (to a lesser extent) mayors of local communalities. Irrespective of the office, personal spending has no effect on the odds of actually obtaining a seat.

The Selection of Candidates for Eligible Positions on PR Lists: The Belgian/Flemish Federal Elections 1999–2010

In list PR systems, the criteria applied in the candidate selection process can be analysed by contrasting the realistic and marginal candidates with the non-realistic candidates on the list. Realistic candidates stand a large chance, for marginal candidates this chance is more dependent on their personal result or the result of the list. This approach was applied to the Belgian Chamber elections in the period 1999–2010. A multilevel multinomial regression analysis shows that incumbents, mayors and party employees stand a significantly larger chance of being selected as a realistic or marginal candidate. No evidence was found of a specific gender bias. Once the above-mentioned variables are taken into account, previous campaign experience has a negative effect on the odds of being selected. For the marginal positions, parties particularly seek local office holders from larger municipalities.

Preferential Voting in Denmark: How, Why, and to What Effect?

The paper provides an overview of (1) the Danish system for casting a preferential – or personal – vote in a proportional list system and (2) how seats are subsequently allocated. Denmark differs from most (all?) preferential list PR systems by letting the parties themselves (actually the parties’ multi-member constituency branches) decide which one of four possible preferential list options they want to employ in an upcoming election. The two dominant options are explained in some detail, to allow a full understanding of how they function. The paper then goes on to discuss how this system can be classified if one looks at the classification schemes proposed by in previous works in this field. The way forward is to understand that 'Denmark' is not one, but at least two different – but simultaneously used – systems, which belong in different classification categories. The Danish PLPR system is then briefly compared to the Swedish and the Finnish systems before a few empirical results from Danish impact studies are presented. Finally, a model attempts to illustrate how the various explanatory factors interact to produce the parties’ votes in the Danish multi-member constituencies.

The parliamentary election in Iceland, April 2009

A vast literature shows that voting for the winning party in elections boosts satisfaction with democracy. But in many list PR systems, voters do not only vote for a party, they can also vote for candidates within parties. Yet, we know very little about how such votes affect voters' satisfaction with democracy. In this paper, we analyse pre- and post-election panel survey data from Belgium, in which we asked respondents to report their vote choice for parties and for candidates. The main finding is that casting a preference vote for a winning candidate makes little difference, as party-list voters are those with the largest increase in satisfaction with democracy. Such a finding is very important as reforms that increase voters' opportunities to vote for candidates within list have multiplied recently, and many of these reforms have been justified as being in line with voters’ demand for more candidate-centred electoral systems.

Characteristic properties of FPTP systems

In this article, we model FPTP systems as social preference rules and give two characterizations. We show that a social preference rule is an FPTP system if, and only if, it satisfies the axioms of subset consistency, district consistency, subset cancellation, and district cancellation. The second characterization consists of the axioms of subset consistency, subset anonymity, neutrality, topsonlyness, Pareto optimality, district consistency and district cancellation. The characterizations give us an opportunity to compare the characteristic properties of FPTP systems to the characteristic properties that we found for list systems of proportional representation (list PR systems) in Hout et al. (Social Choice and Welfare, 27:459–475, 2006), where we modelled those systems also as social preference rules. We find that consistency and anonymity distinguish list PR systems from FPTP systems. On the other hand, it is district cancellation that distinguishes FPTP systems from list PR systems.

The election of women in list PR systems: Testing the conventional wisdom

Certain institutional variables – closed lists, high district or party magnitudes, gender quotas, and placement mandates – are widely thought to facilitate the election of women in list PR systems, but this “conventional wisdom” has not been subject to a comprehensive, cross-national test. After reviewing the pertinent literature and highlighting potential interactions among these institutional variables, this article evaluates the election of women in virtually all democracies that rely primarily on list PR to elect the lower house or unicameral chamber of the national legislature, using an original data set and OLS regressions. The results provide strong evidence that contextual differences – rather than institutional factors – explain most of the variation. Among the institutional variables, only placement mandates clearly matter. Other institutional variables have only marginal impacts, at best, and these appear to diverge by ballot structure. The conclusion briefly addresses the practical implications of these findings.

A Critical Discussion of the Characteristic Properties of List PR and FPTP Systems

Abstract This paper discusses the characteristic properties of List PR systems and FPTP systems, as given in Hout 2005 and Hout et al. 2006. While many of the properties we consider are common to both systems, it turns out (see Hout 2005) that the British system distinguishes itself by satisfying the district cancellation property, while the Dutch system distinguishes itself by satisfying consistency and anonymity. For scoring rules, topsonlyness is equivalent to being party fragmentation-proof (see Hout 2005; Hout et al. 2006). One might present this as an argument in favour of requiring topsonlyness. However, we will also give counter-arguments against insisting upon the property of being party fragmentation-proof.