Majoritarian Research Articles

Why do majoritarian systems benefit the right? Income groups and vote choice across different electoral systems – ERRATUM

Why do majoritarian systems benefit the right? Income groups and vote choice across different electoral systems – ERRATUM

Ideological self-selection in online news exposure: Evidence from Europe and the US.

Today's high-choice digital media environments allow citizens to completely refrain from online news exposure and, if they do use news, to select sources that align with their ideological preferences. Yet due to measurement problems and cross-country differences, recent research has been inconclusive regarding the prevalence of ideological self-selection into like-minded online news. We introduce a multi-method design combining the web-browsing histories and survey responses of more than 7000 participants from six major democracies with supervised text classification to separate political from nonpolitical news exposure. We find that political online news exposure is both substantially less prevalent and subject to stronger ideological self-selection than nonpolitical online news exposure, especially in the United States. By highlighting the peculiar role of political news content, the results improve the understanding of online news exposure and the role of digital media in democracy.

Introducing the Democratic Electoral Systems data, 1919-1945

This data note introduces an update to the widely-used Democratic Electoral Systems (DES) data that encompasses the period from 1919 to 1945. The data include 243 legislative lower house and presidential elections in 34 interwar democracies. Information on these elections falls into four categories: first and foremost, DES contains variables that capture the institutional rules that define how elections are organized. Second, the data captures the consequences of electoral rules in the form of summary statistics of electoral outcomes. Third, we include democracy classifications for four major democracy datasets so that users can choose their preferred democracy definition when working with the data. Finally, the DES dataset contains multiple identification variables that allow linking the DES data to a wide variety of other datasets. This update to the DES data is fully compatible with prior releases for the post-war period 1–3 .

Popular Understandings and the Limits of Popular Democracy

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on how more democratic processes and more democratic participation are not in themselves good measures for a successful democratic order. Rather, whether more democratic participation is good depends on the type of knowledge the people actually bring to the political order. Increases in democratic participation are, thus, a misleading measure of democratic success. The crucial point is what sort of knowledge the people bring to democratic discourse. Furthermore, political and civic institutions play a key role in fostering and shaping public understandings. Here, I suggest that American institutions, while designed to help educate popular understandings by requiring the building of complex democratic majorities, have in many instances enabled the worst aspects of popular government, often empowering minority rule, rather than refining popular sentiment. Thus, American political institutions could engage in constitutional reform to recapture the balance between popular understandings and the constitutional institutions that help articulate, educate, and refine those understandings.

Crises and energy markets reforms

The spikes in energy prices observed following recent major global shocks—e.g., COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine war —as well as issues related to the diffusion of renewable energy power generation, have reopened the debate about the design of electricity markets and the role of the “state” vs. “market” in the electricity markets governance. In this article, we contribute to this debate by looking at the effect of economic crises on energy markets regulation. We find that, historically, economic crises have been associated with a persistent tightening in energy markets regulation (i.e., more restrictions to competition), with the effect being larger during periods of high economic and policy uncertainty and when governments were politically strong—that is, characterized by a larger majority, in majoritarian systems, and at the beginning of their mandate.

Паттерны трансформации партийных систем стран ЕС: направление перемен и причины различий

The article presents an original classification of patterns of transformation of party systems in EU countries under the influence of the institutionalization of a new post-industrial cleavage. Drawing on theories of cleavage and spatial competition and using party positioning databases, electoral indices and statistics, the author attempts to identify the main trajectories of the transformation of the European party systems between 1990 and 2023 and identify factors that explain the differences between them. The study identified five patterns associated with the effects of two key parameters. The first one is the structural specificity of the conditions of party competition in post-communist and other EU countries, associated with the difference between the old structured and new volatile party systems. The second parameter is the type of a country’s party-political system in accordance with Arend Lijphart’s classification — either majoritarian-polarized or coalition-consensus. While under majoritarian system the institutionalization of a new cleavage often gave rise to a radical breakdown of the old configuration of parties with the emergence of powerful populist forces, under consensus system — a smooth increase in fragmentation with the outflow of votes in favor of various new parties and the complication of the process of forming coalitions. For a number of countries other factors, such as the level of socio-economic development, ethnocentricity of politics, the type of electoral system and the stability of the welfare state appeared relatively important. In contrast, hypotheses about the significance of the initial configuration of party systems, the timing of formation of new parties and the geographical proximity of countries were not confirmed.

Why do majoritarian systems benefit the right? Income groups and vote choice across different electoral systems

Abstract This research note investigates how the voting behavior of middle-income citizens explains why right-wing parties tend to govern under majoritarian electoral rule. The growing literature that investigates the ideological effects of electoral systems has mostly focused on institutional explanations. However, whether the electoral rules overrepresent parties with some specific ideologies is also a matter of behavior. Building on Iversen and Soskice (2006), we test two arguments. First, middle-income groups are more likely to vote for the right under majoritarian rules because they fear the redistributive consequences of a victory of the left in these contexts. Second, middle-income earners particularly concerned with tax rates are particularly prone to vote differently across electoral systems. Combining survey evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the New Zealand Election Study, we show that the voting behavior of middle-income citizens is indeed responsible for the predominance of the right under majoritarian systems.

Democracy as Secular Theodicy

Scholars across political philosophy, theology, economics, sociology, sociobiology, and history presently acknowledge that theistic and secular religions are similar in form and function. This essay goes further by establishing that all religions are congruent and otherwise complementary rather than being merely similar. All religions, regardless of their basis, are institutionalized behavioral responses to the “evil” represented by the scarcity of economic resources. All religions serve to unify populations for defense, cooperation, and production and proffer apologias for evil’s persistence in the presence of presumptively omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent sovereigns (gods, kings, elected officials, etc.). All religions comprise a mix of metaphysical constructs and all religious “truths” are pragmatic in the sense of reflecting “what works,” to what end it works, and for whom it works. Leibnizian theodicy, an aspect of theology and precursor of radical utilitarianism and welfare economics, argues that creating “the best of all possible worlds” entails divine trade-offs that purportedly minimize evil. Today’s political economics and philosophy similarly entail faith-based approaches to creating “the greatest good for the greatest number,” often implying the backing of divine wisdom. The upshot is the panoply of man-made evils, often intentional, that are characteristic of illiberal democratic majorities and theocratic states.

2024 Indonesian Presidential Election: How Prabowo Won

In 2024, major democracies, including India, the United States, and Indonesia, held national elections. Indonesia was first to hold its presidential election on February 14, 2024, where approximately 205 million voters participated. This election is significant for several reasons: its implications for other large democracies, its potential impact on the regional order in Southeast Asia amidst US-China tensions, and its effect on Indonesia’s democracy. Three candidates contested the election: Anies Baswedan, former Governor of Jakarta; Ganjar Pranowo, former Governor of Central Java; and Prabowo Subianto, the Minister of Defense. Although Ganjar led the polls until April 2023, Prabowo’s support surged after November 2023, leading to a close race. Contrary to expectations of a runoff, Prabowo won decisively, with 58% of the vote share in the first round. This article explores why Prabowo’s third presidential bid was successful and examines the election’s impact on Indonesian democracy.

Podemos, Sumar and the return of Eurocommunism: the real, the radical and the populist left

Is it possible to create a majoritarian left without lapsing into reformism? Given that Eurocommunism was marked by serious limitations in the past, why is it still relevant to think about it? This article argues that Eurocommunism represented an attempt to create and own the necessary political space to advance socialism in liberal democracies, and to search for ways of building a counterhegemonic project within civil society (which would imply cross-class alliances and a subject of change larger than the working class). The approach adopted by the Spanish left in a number of specific moments in its past reflects the difficulties of a project to shape a political space to the left of social democrac y in modern liberal democracies. This is why Eurocommunism continually resurfaces in contemporary left debate and serially reproduces confrontational positions between reformists and ‘real’ leftists or revolutionaries. What began as a preliminary attempt to re-assess the positions of the left during the transition to liberal democracy returned to debate after 2010, at a time when several fractions and political leaderships were competing to define the way to develop left politics. First the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), and then Izquierda Unida (United Left, IU), Podemos and Sumar have been drawn into debates on how to construct a counter-hegemonic project or build a democratic majority; positions on these questions have been a way of defining their parties, an d the basis for splits inside them This article discusses the PCE, IU, Podemos, Unidas Podemos and Sumar in the light of these recurring themes. Eurocommunism typically figures in these battles as a stand-in for reformism. The problem, however, is not these disagreements per se, but an apparent inability to find a way to widen the space of the left to accommodate pluralism. It is difficult to imagine how positions can be consolidated given the perpetual conflicts in the left bl oc. Regardless of whether the goal is democratic socialism, and the subject the people as a whole or the workers, attempts to expand the political space of the left, in a representative and participatory sense, will not be achieved through narrowing the internal space of organisation and debate. The left is more likely to be able to shape its narrative for thinking about the past and dealing with the future by learning from past successes and mistakes. Eurocommunism functions as a reminder of the challenges of forging a left project aiming to govern and become hegemonic. Reproducing the logics that create enemies within the left has not been an efficient strategy for expanding the political space.

Mechanisms of Political Responsiveness: The Information Sources Shaping Elected Representatives' Policy Actions

This study examines the micro-level foundations of how policy responsiveness may come about. Our study builds on the assumption that elected officials' information source use shapes their policy actions. We analyze the variation in information sources elected officials rely on for agenda-setting and policy formulation, distinguishing between public opinion sources, advocacy sources, and expert sources. Additionally, we examine how elected officials' public opinion sources vary across individuals, parties, and political systems. Based on a 2015 survey with 345 Members of Parliament in Belgium and Canada, the results indicate that the actions of elected representatives are more affected by public opinion sources like citizens and the mass media when they initially prioritize issues for policy action, while interest groups are prominent in both stages, and parties and expert sources are more used in the policy formulation phase. Furthermore, politicians in majoritarian systems, those belonging to the opposition and members of populist parties, tend to rely more on public opinion sources than their peers in proportional systems, those in the majority and non-populist parties.

Introducing the Democratic Electoral Systems data, 1919-1945.

This data note introduces an update to the widely-used Democratic Electoral Systems (DES) data that encompasses the period from 1919 to 1945. The data include 243 legislative lower house and presidential elections in 34 interwar democracies. Information on these elections falls into four categories: first and foremost, DES contains variables that capture the institutional rules that define how elections are organized. Second, the data captures the consequences of electoral rules in the form of summary statistics of electoral outcomes. Third, we include democracy classifications for four major democracy datasets so that users can choose their preferred democracy definition when working with the data. Finally, the DES dataset contains multiple identification variables that allow linking the DES data to a wide variety of other datasets. This update to the DES data is fully compatible with prior releases for the post-war period 1- 3.

Recovering the Democratic Value of Public Discourse

The decline of democracy in the US entails the surge of authoritarianism, ascendency of demagoguery, dispersal of the democratic majority, and weakening of public reason. Dissent, envisioned as a rhetorical practice of democratic deliberation, resists authoritarianism by advancing democratic values. Accordingly, this paper examines democracy as a minority voice, explores the deliberative capacity of dissent, and identifies the rhetorical properties of deliberation. The paper argues that dissent, in its fugitive aspect, is dispersed across an array of modest sites, guided by a deliberative ideal partially realised, and framed by democratic values. Dissent functions in this capacity as an itinerant, recurring source of democratic renewal on occasions of political crisis. It is an adaptation to structural constraints that provides a nurturing aspiration to prompt political agency, establish realistic expectations, and sustain vigilance. While the immediacy of the authoritarian threat and corresponding questions about the role of democratic communication are addressed in terms of the 2024 general election in the US, the democratic challenge in the US is indicative of the abiding immediacy of the authoritarian threat to other democracies and suggestive of deliberative adaptations for restoring the vitality of democratic communication and culture. Complacency in democratic theory and practice is counter-indicated.

Conditional Effects of the Spotlight: Electoral Institutions and the Enforcement of Global Corporate Norms

Abstract Under what conditions do governments discipline powerful multinational companies for breaching global corporate norms? Existing international relations theories have shown that peer monitoring and transnational advocacy are crucial strategies that shine a spotlight on norm violations. Despite the importance of those strategies, governments in the Global North have not consistently condemned their home-grown multinational companies for breaking norms related to climate or human rights in the Global South. This paper argues that the effect of such spotlighting is crucially moderated by electoral institutions, and legislators in proportional representation systems are more likely than those in majoritarian systems to push multinational companies to comply with global norms when such issues are in the spotlight. I find supporting evidence from the OECD Guidelines’ Specific Instance process and case studies. This article shows that traditional strategies to promote norm compliance, such as transnational advocacy and peer pressure, work differently in different countries, and electoral systems in the Global North can have unintended distributional consequences for norm beneficiaries.

Search and seizure of electronic devices in India: time for a change?

In the past two decades, there has been an exponential rise in the use of technology for commission of crimes. In certain scenarios, investigation of such crimes call for inspections of an accused's personal electronic devices. In India, there is no law regulating the field of search and seizure of electronic devices in a criminal investigation. Only recently, Virendra Khanna v State of Karnataka laid down certain guidelines in this regard. Furthermore, on multiple occasions, the Indian Courts have relied on the US jurisprudence on the matter. Due to a well-developed jurisprudence in the USA on this subject, the authors have chosen to do a comparative study between the two countries. This paper seeks to examine how these two major democracies balance the right to privacy against the need to unearth information for better investigation. While analysing the lack of a well-rounded law on the matter, this paper also analyses the provisions in the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Bill 2023 and highlights the missed opportunities to frame guidelines on the issue of search and seizure of electronic device. Section II of the paper introduces the readers to the law on electronic search and seizure in the USA. Section III examines the Indian position. It discusses the law as it was pre- Virendra Khanna, then goes into the law laid down by the Karnataka High Court in Virendra Khanna and critically analyses the same. It also looks at the progress made in the field through other legislation. Section IV deals with a comparative analysis of the USA and Indian law on the subject and section V provides mechanisms and ways in which the current law can be modified to deal with some of the inadequacies of the matter.

НАМ, НАМЫН СИСТЕМИЙН ТӨЛӨВШИЛД СОНГУУЛИЙН ТОГТОЛЦООНЫ ЭРХ ЗҮЙН ОРЧИН НӨЛӨӨЛӨХ НЬ

In the academic article "Influence of the legal framework of the electoral system on the formation of parties and party systems", apart from the scientific study of what the electoral system is, the legal framework of the electoral system, and how the electoral system is classified, the party is the most important part of the political system. As an important institution, it has been emphasized how it has developed and matured due to changes in the electoral system. The 8 parliamentary elections held in Mongolia in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 are characterized by the unique features of the times, economic conditions, political party and state policy decisions, and social times depending on the situation and legal changes in the electoral system, it had its own characteristics and effectiveness. Elections in Mongolia have been conducted by multi-mandate enlarged constituencies and single-mandate majoritarian system, which has created the opportunity for two political forces to hold the power in turn. The fact that the majority or two major parties alternately rule the government is related to the electoral system.

Dependent Adult Abuse Trends in Iowa, 1984 to 2023.

Little is known about trends in the incidence of dependent adult abuse (DAA). To determine the annual incidence of DAA in Iowa from 1984 to 2023. Trends in abuse rates were evaluated for their associations with calendar year, number of caseworkers and abuse laws, political party, and unemployment. Iowa Department of Health and Human Services DAA reports, investigations, and substantiations were analyzed. Report data were available for 10 years. Investigation and substantiation data were available for 40 years. Long-term trends over time were described and associations between abuse rates and number of caseworkers and abuse laws, political party, and unemployment were explored. Both investigations and substantiations increased from 50 to 182 per 100 000 adults and 17 to 38 per 100 000 adults between 1984 and 2023, respectively. Increasing calendar year and Democratic party majority in the Iowa legislature were positively and independently associated with investigated and substantiated abuse rates. An inverse correlation between the proportion of reports that were investigated and the proportion of investigations that were substantiated (Spearman's rho = -.81; P < .01) was found. During the 40-year study period, investigated and substantiated cases of DAA in Iowa have been steadily increasing.

Talking Like Opposition Parties? Electoral Proximity and Language Styles Employed by Coalition Partners in a Mixed Member Majoritarian System

Extant literature has shown that political parties that form a coalition government face one major dilemma; that is, they must govern together but fight elections separately. Thus, coalition members tend to commit to a differentiated strategy as an election approaches. However, existing research has mainly focused on empirical findings from countries with proportional representation and few measures for direct criticism from partners. In order to test the theory, this study examines parliamentary speeches from Japan's mixed member majoritarian context. It uses a supervised machine learning method for measuring confrontational attitudes toward governments irrespective of their ideologies. The results of this study show that on average, while a coalition partner may present a slightly hostile attitude toward governments in parliamentary speeches, this effect is not influenced by election proximity. This may imply that incentives for managing coalitions could differ in majoritarian‐centered electoral systems.

The Democratic Majority and the 2016 American Presidential Election: Feminist Political Behavior Across Multiple Axes of Identity

Scholarship on women voters using an intersectional lens has shown feminists and women of color within the Democratic Party to be a powerful force in electoral politics—specifically, Black and Latina women—are the most reliable voters. Combined, they represent the majority of women voters in the Democratic Party, and they have shown themselves to be a sizeable voting bloc in the last two American presidential election cycles. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES), we demonstrate important differences in support for the Democratic candidate (Hillary Clinton) between feminists and women of color—Black and Latina—underscoring the need to study gender, race, and ethnicity simultaneously (versus independently) when they are co-constitutive identity categories. By examining women and the groups the Clinton campaign appealed most to—feminists, Black, and Latina women—we add to the scholarship in political science that followed this unique election and demonstrate the importance of feminist identity for vote choice and various modes of political behavior for women voters. Knowing and understanding how women respond through affect and how this affect can result in political behaviors will help determine what it takes for future historic first candidates to emerge successful.

Citizens' policy perception, policy measures, and trust in political institutions after the first wave of COVID-19

Crises bring both human consequences and political repercussions. COVID-19, like any other crisis, strained both European governments and public support for them. During the first wave of the pandemic, political trust was correlated with public adherence to infection containment measures in the major democracies. At the end of the first wave, how did public perceptions of COVID-19 measures and of measures introduced by institutions to protect health and the economy affect the bond of political trust between the governed and the governors? Using Eurobarometer data, we estimate the effects on political trust of the public’s assessment of institutional performance, political output and policy. Applying various multilevel regression models, we show that, at the end of the first wave of the pandemic, political trust was positively affected by institutional performance and only partially affected public perceptions and the policy measures taken by governments to contain the spread of the virus.