Majoritarian Electoral Systems Research Articles

Analysis of electoral systems used in the election of deputies of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan

The article is devoted to the analysis of electoral systems during the election of deputies to the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Based on the study of the laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan, many normative legal acts regulating the election procedure in Kazakhstan, the author conducted a study of the evolution of electoral legislation. The Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan of August 30, 1995, and the constitutional law of the Republic of Kazakhstan on elections have undergone significant changes, which are associated with the process of democratization of the political system and the gradual transition from the majoritarian electoral system to a proportional system of elections of deputies of the Mazhilis of Parliament. In the article, the author, relying on the study of monographic literature, the experience of foreign countries, conducts a study of the features of the proportional electoral system. The author reveals the differences between open and closed types of a proportional system, which depends on the methods of forming party lists, as well as the possibilities of voting by voters considering different forms of party lists. In the article, the author gives his vision of improving electoral systems during the election of deputies to the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Electoral system, corporate political donation, and carbon emission intensity: Cross‐country evidence

AbstractWe examine the association between a country's electoral system and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of firms and explore whether this association is influenced by corporate political donation. The study draws on the neo‐pluralist theory of power in society to examine how possible corporate influence in the electoral systems relates to corporate environmental performance. Using a cross‐country panel dataset, we find that companies operating in countries using majoritarian electoral systems (MAJ), where corporations have a relatively low influence on election outcomes, are associated with lower GHG emission intensity than those in proportional electoral systems, after controlling for macro‐economic factors and variations in firm characteristics. Further, our findings show that corporate political donation positively moderates the association between MAJ and GHG emission intensity. Our results suggest that corporations are likely to utilise political donations as a component of business strategy to ease the regulatory actions of the state on companies. The results are robust to alternative variable measurements and tests of sensitivity.

Stock markets in turmoil: political institutions and the impact of elections

AbstractThis paper explores how elections impact stock markets across diverse political institutions. I argue that electoral and party systems impact the fragmentation, credibility, and predictability of electoral information, influencing levels of uncertainty resolved by elections and leading to distinct stock market reactions. First, elections in majoritarian electoral systems produce larger cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) than elections in proportional representation systems. Second, the weaker institutionalized a party systems is, the larger are the CARs around elections. Third, these two institutional variables interact. Elections in majoritarian (proportional representation) systems with weak (strong) party system institutionalizations will have particularly large (small) CARs. I formally derive these propositions, conduct event studies of the impact of 87 elections on SMs in 21 countries from 1999 to 2016, and analyze four case studies.

Socialist Threat? Radical Party Entry, Electoral Alliances, and the Introduction of Proportional Representation

A substantial body of research shows that the entry of socialist parties to the electoral arena is linked to major political and economic reforms at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, how socialist parties have affected electoral competition and coordination has never been investigated in detail. Drawing on the debate of the adoption of proportional representation, I employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the casual effect of socialist entry to the electoral arena on the formation of electoral alliances and the support of established parties. To do so, I use newly collected data for Imperial Germany 1890–1912. I show that established parties facing strong socialist competitors received more endorsement by other non-socialist parties and, as a result, a higher voter share. The findings suggest that established parties were able to mitigate coordination problems within the institutional setting of majoritarian electoral systems.

Mitigating the Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: Key Trends and Drivers of Redistribution

The growing inequality of market income has attracted considerable attention; less so the redistribution of income. This article analyses key trends and drivers of income redistribution in the EU and the world. It shows that in the EU increasing redistribution has largely stabilised the dispersion of disposable income since the late 1990s. Only some advanced countries with a dominant free market ideology have recorded an increasing inequality of disposable income alongside a growing inequality of market outcomes. The evidence from panel data shows that the degree of redistribution increases with per capita income and with the share of low-tech, low-income sectors in manufacturing as well as, in line with the median voter model, when more than half of the voters earn less than the average income in countries with a majoritarian electoral system. More redistribution is associated with lower budgetary surpluses or higher deficits.

The role of political parties in the election of deputies Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan

The article is devoted to the participation of political parties in the elections of deputies of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, including deputies of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The role of political parties as an institution of representative democracy, which is expressed in the representation of the opinion of the people in the legislative branch of power, is substantiated. In the process of research, the laws were studied: the constitutional law of the Republic of Kazakhstan «On Elections in the Republic of Kazakhstan», the laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan «On Political Parties». The analysis of the activities of political parties of the Republic of Kazakhstan and foreign countries through an in-depth study of laws and practice. A study of the practice of legal regulation and the participation of political parties in legislative elections in foreign countries shows the limited approaches used in Kazakhstani legislation to create favorable conditions for the establishment of a multi-party system, to involve the widest sections of the population in political activity and to participate in the elections of deputies of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Features of the proportional electoral system of the system that are used in the election of deputies of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan were identified. The article shows the processes of a gradual transition from a majoritarian electoral system to a proportional system, which allowed political parties in Kazakhstan and a number of foreign countries to actively participate in the process of election of deputies. When writing the article, the authors used general methods of scientific knowledge: synthesis and analysis, induction, deduction, modeling, which made it possible to comprehensively consider the studied constitutional and legal phenomena. The methods of comparative legal, systemic, logical and statistical were also applied.

Electoral Systems and Policy Congruence

Many studies examined the state of citizen-elite congruence at the party system, legislative and government stages of representation. Few scholars examined, however, whether citizen preferences are adequately represented in enacted policies. The article addresses this gap in the literature and examines the role of electoral systems in fostering citizens-policy congruence. Building on studies of government congruence and responsiveness, we expect levels of policy congruence to be greater under majoritarian electoral systems than under proportional representation electoral systems and as the number of parties in government decreases. In order to test these expectations, we make use of data from the International Social Survey Programme and examine the proportions of respondents whose preferences are congruent with government levels of spending in eight major policy domains. Overall, the results do not support our expectations and indicate that levels of policy congruence are similar across electoral systems and government types. In line with recent works on electoral systems and representation, our findings support the claim that majoritarian and proportional representation electoral systems both have mechanisms which allow governments to represent their citizens similarly.

Gender Differences in Political Media Coverage: A Meta-Analysis

AbstractDo the media cover men and women politicians and candidates differently? This article performs a systematic analysis of 90 studies covering over 25,000 politicians in over 750,000 media stories, and presents the accumulated knowledge in a comprehensive theoretical framework. The paper shows that there is a gender bias in the amount of coverage of politicians in proportional electoral systems, where women politicians lag behind men in media attention, but that, surprisingly, this gender bias is absent in majoritarian electoral systems. In addition, we systematically review gender differences in the content of media reports on political candidates, such as differences in attention to private life and family, viability and horse-race coverage, issue coverage, and gender stereotypes. Overall, women politicians receive more attention to their appearance and personal life, more negative viability coverage, and, to some extent, stereotypical issue and trait coverage. We conclude by pointing out promising avenues for future research.

Legal aspects of formation and development of electoral systems in Ukraine

Introduction. The history of the Ukrainian Parliament functioning counts many electoral systems. The constant change of one kind or another was supposed to eliminate the shortcomings that were revealed during the preparation and carrying out the last elections. For a long time elections were holding under a mixed electoral system, but the combination of proportional and majoritarian components in it did not allow to provide the real expression of the citizens’ will and the effective parliament functioning. Therefore the legislator has been tasked with introducing a more optimal voting model. The result in this area was the adoption the Electoral Code of Ukraine in 2019. The purpose of the paper is to identify the main disadvantages of a mixed electoral system. to carry out the comparative analysis of the activity of deputies, which elected by different components of the mixed electoral system, to investigate the key points of the Electoral Code of Ukraine that will form the basis of legal regulation of the preparation and holding the elections to the Ukrainian Parliament and to compare them with the previous electoral system features. Results. Despite the combination of proportional and majoritarian electoral systems, theirinherent negative features remained relevant. We are talking about the lack of opportunity to select specific candidates from the electoral lists of parties, whose votes were not supported by another candidate in the single-member district etc. At the same time there was a pronounced preference for the proportional system over the majority one, because thanks to the popularity of the political party candidates could obtain a mandate without “special” effort. It is determined, that the points of the new Electoral Code of Ukraine provide the introduction of a new electoral system that will allow citizens to independently determine the priority of a candidate on the list during the distribution of mandates. At the same time the analysis of the Electoral Code shows that in some cases it will still be possible to keep "closed" lists. Conclusion. The Electoral Code of Ukraine, approved by the People's Deputies, is another testimony to the prudence of their political will and readiness to take into account the demands of society. During the analysis of the codified act it was found out that it will promote the political will of the citizens in the elections and ensure the efficiency of the deputies themselves.

РЕАЛИЗАЦИЯ ОСНОВНЫХ ПРИНЦИПОВ ИЗБИРАТЕЛЬНОГО ПРАВА В ИЗБИРАТЕЛЬНЫХ СИСТЕМАХ

Introduction: the article analyzes the fundamental principles of electoral law and how they are implemented in various electoral systems. Purpose: to identify the objective criteria a democratic electoral system must meet. Methods: along with general scientific methods, there have been used specific scientific methods, including comparative legal and systemic ones. Results: there have been identified three principles of electoral law that can be recognized as fundamental: the principles of equal, free, and fair election. They mutually presuppose, guarantee, and supplement each other. Moreover, provisions of one principle can be corrected by provisions of the others. Thus, the principles of equal, free and fair election form an integral sustainable system whose elements are in a dialectical unity. These principles cover all the subjects of electoral law and electoral process and they must be followed at each stage of elections. Furthermore, they are complex and include provisions of a number of secondary principles (the principles of universal, equal, direct suffrage in a secret ballot, etc.). Conclusions: the above principles are implemented to the greatest extent in ranked voting. Some ranked voting systems ensure proportional representation of parties. Elections held based on such voting assure free and equal participation of both independent and party candidates. Many other majoritarian, proportional or mixed-member electoral systems do not meet the abovementioned criteria.

The measurement of electoral competition, with application to Indian states

We investigate the measurement of three distinct, but related dimensions of electoral competition in a majoritarian electoral system: contestability in the struggle for governing power; competition among candidates at the constituency level; and competition among existing parties at the level of the legislature. At each step, the analysis is made concrete by calculating our preferred indexes of these dimensions of competitiveness for 14 major Indian states from 1972 to 2009 (and from 1952 in some cases), while comparing them to others that have been widely used, though not always calculated for Indian states. We also use our preferred indexes to study the importance of the level of development for an understanding of how competition has evolved across the states. The paper concludes by posing questions about the measurement of competitiveness, in general and in the Indian case, that arise in the course of our investigation.

Strategic Entry and Strategic Voting in Majoritarian Systems

Electoral rules impact the need for and ability of voters to coordinate around a candidate or candidates. In this paper, we examine two commonly used majoritarian electoral systems—the multiple nontransferable votes (MNTV) and single-member districts decided by plurality (SMDP). We look at strategic entry by elites and strategic voting by citizens. Coordination failures at either stage could keep teams of candidates out of office who might have otherwise been chosen to govern and could prevent voters from putting in office the candidates who would best represent them. For causal identification, we leverage the design of Brazil’s senate, where both systems are alternately used. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that elites do not coordinate well under SMDP but do relatively better under MNTV while voters coordinate equally (well) across both systems.

Parties' motivations for electoral reform under the democratic transition in South Africa

At the beginning of the 90s, South Africa initiated its political transition with the transformation of the electoral system being one of the key items on the negotiation agenda. Transition in these regimes is less a struggle over the right of political actors to hold diverse political beliefs than over the extension of the franchise to previously excluded sections of the population. Following the literature on party motivations, I analyze the various motivations of the political actors engaged in the process of institutional design for electoral change. In this case study, I identify explanations based on office-seeking and policy-seeking preferences in the strategies of the political parties that participated in the negotiation of the institutional change during the democratic transition. As a result, South Africa reformed the electoral law used under the authoritarian regime and moved from a low inclusive majoritarian electoral system to a high inclusive proportional electoral system in the new democratic regime.

‘Friends and Neighbors’ Voting Under Mixed-Member Majoritarian Electoral Systems: Evidence from Lithuania

ABSTRACTThe concept of ‘friends and neighbors’ voting, in which voters are more likely to support locally-affiliated candidates, has a long tradition in the study of elections and representation. The concept was established in the study of American politics and has been tested in other political and social environments. The focus of ‘friends and neighbors’ voting has been on single and multi-seat constituency-based elections. This emphasis leaves open an important question: Does the concept carry over to party-list elections? This article takes advantage of the features of Lithuania's mixed-member electoral system to assess how ‘friends and neighbors’ voting may influence constituency and party-list races. We find that the magnitude of effect for ‘localness’ is greater when candidates dual-list in constituencies and on party lists. However, residency has a significant effect on voting outcomes even for candidates contesting only on the party list and for those in hopeless list positions, suggesting that ‘friends and neighbors’ voting may extend even to electoral systems that are not constituency-based.

The space of all proportional voting systems and the most majoritarian among them

We present an alternative voting system that aims at bridging the gap between proportional representative systems and majoritarian electoral systems. The system lets people vote for multiple party-lists, but then assigns each ballot paper to a single party. This opens a whole range of possible parliaments, all proportionally representative. We show theoretically that this space is convex. Then among the possible parliaments we present an algorithm to produce the most majoritarian result. We then test the system and compare the results with a pure proportional and a majoritarian voting system showing how the results are comparable with the majoritarian system. Then we simulate the system and show how it tends to produce parties of exponentially decreasing size with always a first, major party with about half of the seats. Finally we describe how the system can be used in the context of a parliament made up of two separate houses.

Mixed-member electoral systems, best loser rules, and the descriptive representation of women

Proportional representation (PR) electoral systems are commonly considered more advantageous for the election of women compared to majoritarian electoral systems. In mixed electoral systems, female candidates are often more likely to be elected through the PR tier compared to women running in single-member district races. While most mixed systems employ a closed-list, a number of legislatures use a best loser provision whereby losing district candidates are ordered on the PR list based on their performance in single-member districts. This paper examines the extent to which best loser laws impact the election of women using candidate data from sub-national legislatures in Mexico and Germany and Japan's House of Representatives. We find the contamination of PR lists by single-member district results reduces the advantage women candidates have in the PR tier. Best loser limits the ability of political parties to use PR to represent groups underrepresented in single-member district elections.

Issue competition between Green and social democratic parties in majoritarian settings: the case of Australia

ABSTRACTThe emergence of green parties has injected new lines of competition into national party systems, with discernible issue competition effects for established, ideologically-proximate social democratic parties. Despite a burgeoning literature on green and social democratic issue competition tactics in settings where coalition government is common, we have less understanding of these same effects in settings where majority government is the norm. Using the case of the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party, we explore issue competition dynamics in a polity where the majoritarian electoral system reduces opportunities for coalition formation. We find that the absence of strong electoral imperatives for either party to enter coalitions has encouraged them to compete adjacent to one another, rather than in direct competition.

The electoral system and electoral geography -why the Rosato law appeared to be proportional while it is not

ABSTRACTThe 2018 elections confirmed the tri-polar format of the party system, with three opposing aggregations, each of which has a majority (or at least enjoys considerably more support) in a specific area of the country. The paper shows that, in a way, the highly unequal geographical distribution of the vote is revealing of the main social factors underlying the choices of voters. In another respect, it masks the potential disproportionality of the electoral system. The paper also shows that uncertainty about the possible evolution of alliances between parties, the risk that early elections could again produce a hung Parliament, and the high level of mobility of the electorate, make it probable that the electoral law will at some time in the near future, once again be subject to revisions driven by the short-term interests of the political actors involved. In this regard, the paper discusses the nature of the so called ‘Rosatellum’ as a majoritarian or proportional mixed-member electoral system. It proposes an estimate of the SMD candidates’ electoral performances and of the minimum support for the most voted coalition and the minimum level of territorial uniformity of the vote required for the Rosato law to produce a parliamentary majority. Finally, it discusses the possible adaptations of the law that could facilitate such a result.

Attract voters or appease activists? Opposition parties’ dilemma and party policy change

Why do mainstream opposition parties sometimes fail to adopt policy positions that are attractive to the wider electorate? In this paper, I construct a game-theoretic model between the party leader, the party’s MPs, and the party organization to illustrate how opposition parties’ platform adjustments depend on the party leader’s risk assessment of being deposed and MPs’ re-election incentives. The model predicts that a party leader is most likely to adhere to the activists’ position when MPs’ re-election probabilities depend greatly on activists’ campaign effort, and when MPs’ benefits of re-election are high. Platform adjustments are only possible when the reverse is true. These results have important implications on electoral competitiveness and strategies of parties in majoritarian versus proportional electoral systems. Namely, I expect that opposition parties in majoritarian systems are less able to adjust their platforms than those in proportional systems.

Electoral Systems, Regional Resentment and the Surprising Success of Anglo-American Populism

As populist movements, partly fuelled by voters in excluded regions, drive national electoral backlashes to globalisation, why have their only outright successes come in the USA and UK? Synthesising urban/regional development theory with comparative politics, this article examines a previously unconsidered contributing factor: the interaction of globalisation’s rising inter-regional disparities with majoritarian electoral systems. Majoritarianism’s distinct internal dynamics and imperfect representation mechanisms yield insufficient state responses to rising inter-regional inequality, stoking populist discontent. Global integration may thus be less stable today under majoritarian than proportional electoral rules. This has implications for urban/regional development scholarship, globalisation’s durability and electoral reform.