Politics Of Electoral Reform Research Articles

Trade and the Politics of Electoral Reform

Trade and the Politics of Electoral Reform

The Politics of Electoral Reform in Ukraine

ABSTRACT Since independence, Ukraine has had three major electoral reforms, moving from a majoritarian system to a mixed system (1997), to proportional representation (2004), and back to a mixed system (2011). Two additional reform attempts (1993 and 2001) resulted in minor changes to the electoral law. What explains the timing and direction of electoral reforms in Ukraine? Extant research fails to provide satisfactory answers. I argue that the shifting expectations of electoral change by the key actors explain the observed outcomes. Negative expectations led to adoption or preservation of permissive electoral systems, while positive expectations resulted in adoption or preservation of restrictive systems. Within-case analysis of five episodes of electoral reform supports this argument.

Temptation of the “Powerful”: The politics of electoral reform in Central Europe in post-transitional period

Abstract The paper explores and analyses processes of electoral reforms in selected Central European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia) in post-transitional period. The qualitative analysis focuses “only” on the enacted changes in electoral systems and its purpose is not to evaluate the impact and political consequences of individual changes but rather to concentrate, through a theoretically-informed detailed contextual analysis, on the electoral reform process itself. It is therefore concerned with contextual factors affecting, underlying, initiating and/or controlling these changes. The paper identifies political elites as the main actors of electoral reform processes in selected countries, and it tries to explain both motivations of political elites for changing status quo electoral systems and other circumstances of electoral reform processes in Central Europe as well. The analysis also suggests that processes of electoral reform in post-transitional period in Central Europe are characterized by a tendency to less proportional electoral system designs, with the only exception of the Slovak electoral reform of 1999 (due to specific political constellation), while it did not discover any clear tendency regarding personalization of electoral systems.

Women's Citizenship and the First World War: general remarks and a case study of women's enfranchisement in Austria and Germany

Historians' views about the impact of World War I on women's citizenship have diverged. Some scholars have emphasized that the war changed cultural understandings of suffrage due to women's patriotism and dedication to the war effort. Others have underlined that the politics of electoral reform determined whether or not women attained voting rights. Based on the cases of Austria and Germany where women were enfranchised in the context of revolutionary unrest triggered by the war, this article argues that the political process was in fact crucial. However, the claim of women's suffrage during the war is to be contextualized within a general understanding of republican citizenship and the concept of the ‘citizen soldier’. This discourse was essential to keeping the issue alive during the war. Nonetheless, further studies are still required to assess the war's impact on women and citizenship in the subjective sense of participation.

ANGER AND CONSTRAINT? NEW ZEALAND'S ELECTORAL POLITICS 1992 TO 2014

New Zealand's electoral referendum in 1993—at which New Zealand abandoned first-past-the-post in favour of mixed member proportional representation—has been described as ‘an electoral earthquake’ after ‘generations of dormancy’ [Norris, P. 1995. Introduction: the politics of electoral reform. International Political Science Review 16 (1): 3–8, p. 4]. Alan Renwick [2010. The Politics of Electoral Reform: Changing the Rules of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] has argued that the referendum is an example of electoral reform by elite–mass interaction, which is very rare in Western democratic nations. New Zealand is, therefore, a valuable case for analysis of electoral reform. Even more exceptional by international standards was the follow-up referendum New Zealand held in 2011/2012 on the electoral system. This article brings analysis of New Zealand's electoral politics up-to-date to include these recent events; it specifically asks whether Renwick's theory of elite–mass interaction also explains the outcomes of New Zealand's electoral politics in 2011/2012. It reveals that the 2011 referendum does not fit easily with the stages in Renwick's model (and New Zealand's previous experience) because the 2011 referendum was manufactured by government elites, not demanded by the New Zealand public. But the principle underpinning Renwick's model—that mass discontent with the general state of politics acts as a legitimacy constraints on elites—still has important analytical value in explaining the New Zealand case; unlike in 1992/1993, in 2011/2012 the New Zealand government was able to ignore the (complacent) public's electoral system preferences without fear of being punished at the polls.

The Politics of Electoral Reform in the UK

The Politics of Electoral Reform in the UK

Defining democracy: electoral reform and the struggle for power in New York City

Introduction: The Perils and Promise of Democratic Reform 1. The Politics of Electoral Reform in New York City History 2. Restructuring Urban Democracy Amid the Great Depression 3. Proportional Representation and the Practice of Democracy in New York City 4. Under the Cloak of Patriotism: Specters of Totalitarianism in City Politics 5. A Red (in the) City Hall 6. The Democratic-Republican Alliance and the Repeal of Proportional Representation Epilogue: Repeal's Aftermath Notes Bibliography Index

Rational, reverential or experimental? The politics of electoral reform in Oceania

Oceania, with the exception of New Zealand, has received little comparative attention in studies of electoral reform. This article uses evidence from Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Nauru, as well as New Zealand and Australia, in order to: understand the process of electoral reform at national and regional levels; examine variation in the process and consider whether theories of electoral reform from elsewhere apply to Oceania. It finds that electoral reform is a highly complex process that is influenced by the self-interest of parties, democratic values and diffusion.除了新西兰，不大有人从比较选举改革的角度关注大洋洲。本文使用斐济、汤加、巴布亚新几内亚、瑙鲁以及新西兰和澳大利亚的资料，目的是在国家和地区的层面上理解选举改革的过程；探讨过程中的变异，并思考其他地方的选举改革理论是否适用于大洋洲。

Alan Renwick, The politics of electoral reform: Changing the rules of democracy, reviewed by Aaron Martin

Alan Renwick, The politics of electoral reform: Changing the rules of democracy, reviewed by Aaron Martin

Editorial: The Politics of Electoral Reform in Nigeria, 2007-2011

Editorial: The Politics of Electoral Reform in Nigeria, 2007-2011

The Politics of Electoral Reform: Changing the Rules of Democracy. By Alan Renwick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 328p. $95.00 cloth, $43.00 paper.

The Politics of Electoral Reform: Changing the Rules of Democracy. By Alan Renwick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 328p. $95.00 cloth, $43.00 paper.

Elections and Democracy: To Cheat or to Change?

The Forensics of Election Fraud: Russia and Ukraine. By Mikhail Myagkov, Peter C. Ordeshook, Dimitri Shakin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 289 pp., $30.99 paperback (IBSN-13: 978-0-521-74836-0). The Politics of Electoral Reform: Changing the Rules of Democracy. By Alan Renwick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 312 pp., $90.00 hardcover (IBSN-13: 978-0-521-76530-05). Cambridge University Press has released two monographs recently that deal with the complex relationship of elections and democracy. Though substantively distinct, these books both address a core concern regarding the ways political actors attempt to influence electoral outcomes and the consequences of such attempts for democracy. For Myagkov, Ordeshook, and Shakin, the question is: how can we detect election fraud where we suspect it has occurred? Renwick's questions center on the dynamics of electoral system reform. Both works bring an arguably under-utilized methodological approach to bear on their questions, and both provide empirical analysis of a small number of cases. As indicated by the title, The Forensics of Election Fraud , Myagkov et al. investigate election fraud in Russia and Ukraine, while Renwick's The Politics of Electoral Reform traces the process of electoral system reform in France, Japan, Italy, and New Zealand. Myagkov et al. attribute their motivation for Forensics to the work of one Dr. Alexander Sobyanin, a scholar committed to exposing electoral fraud in Russia. In many ways, the book maintains this tight focus throughout, though one can certainly imagine theoretical extensions and methodological applications. The authors’ fraud detection efforts focus very specifically on those illegal activities that directly distort election results: ballot box stuffing and the deliberate manipulation of vote counts. They introduce three forensic indicators of election fraud, based on the logic of what fraud-free elections should look like, in terms of turnout, candidate vote shares, and the relationship between the two. Deviations from any of these three expectations might indicate fraud. First, they argue that as turnout increases so should the votes for each candidate, at a rate proportional to their support in the electorate. Second, they argue that turnout should be normally distributed across districts, with small proportions of high and low turnout districts …

The Expenses Scandal and the Politics of Electoral Reform

The scandal over MPs' expenses that erupted in 2009 was followed by a surge in discussion of electoral reform. A range of reforms to Westminster's existing electoral system are now high on the political agenda. This article examines the extent and the nature of the scandal's impact on the electoral reform debate and draws out comparative implications for the sorts of conditions that can force politicians to accept electoral reforms that they do not want. It finds that the expenses scandal significantly changed debate about some electoral reform topics, but not about others. It proposes three factors likely to increase the impact of scandal in sparking reform: that the scandal is seen as harming ordinary people in their daily lives; that reforms can readily be understood as likely to mitigate the sources of scandal; and that those reforms do not seriously harm politicians' own perceived interests.

Plus ça change: Electoral law reform and the 2008 Romanian parliamentary elections

Romania reformed the law governing its parliamentary elections between 2004 and 2008, shifting from a complex proportional representation system based on county-level party lists to a complex uninominal system in which each district for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate elects one representative. The change in law emerged after more than a year of heated political controversies, including partisan and personal animosity between President Basescu and Prime Minister Tariceanu, a failed attempt at impeachment, a deadlocked special electoral commission, a failed popular referendum, an unfavorable constitutional court ruling, and a confusing final accord brokered under deadline. Qualitative comparison of the 2004 and 2008 laws reveals that the heralded reform merely added an additional layer of calculation to the previous electoral system. Quantitative analysis using counterfactual estimation reveals that the new law had absolutely zero effect on the partisan outcome. In the conclusion, we explore the implications of these findings for Romanian politics and the politics of electoral reform more generally.

Explaining Majoritarian Modification: The Politics of Electoral Reform in the United Kingdom and British Columbia

Drawing on recent research in the United Kingdom and the Canadian province of British Columbia, this article focuses on the politics of electoral reform:the strategic maneuvering by political elites to prevent and facilitate change. Through a comparative analysis of two highly majoritarian polities in which dominant executives have, since 1997, adopted contrasting reform trajectories, the article suggests that previous analyses of this topic have underemphasized the role of political agency and ideational change. In order to demonstrate this argument, the article develops and refines a process-based approach by embedding it within a framework that recognizes the interplay between context, agency, and structure. Not only does this approach deepen our understanding of executive veto points, majoritarian modification, and aversive constitutionalism, but it also sensitizes scholars to the role and power of political cultures and dominant ideologies.

PR Man? Cameron's Conservatives and the Symbolic Politics of Electoral Reform

Even before David Cameron took the Conservative conference, the Conservative media and eventually the Conservative party by storm, there were clear indications that many high-profile Tories recognised something of the nature and the magnitude of the challenge confronting them. None more so, of course, than the eventual winner. His crushing victory may have owed something to his telegeneity, but also had a lot to do with the credibility of his commitment to 'modernisation' and 'change'.

An evolutionary theoretic approach to electoral politics

This comment adapts Darwin's theory of evolution and applies it to electoral politics. The extent of the analogy between the two is outlined. Attention is then directed to the role of the electoral system as an agent of natural selection in politics, and its impact on adaptation in political parties. Some consequences for the politics of electoral reform in the UK are identified, limitations of the theory are considered, and brief conclusions drawn.

The Politics of Electoral Reform in Hong Kong

The electoral reform of the Hong Kong Legislative Council from 1991 to 1998 was a politically controversial process. This article examines the historical evolution of the direct election, functional constituencies, Election Committee, and the electoral boundary of the LegCo. Before the handover, electoral reform in Hong Kong had already become a political tug-of-war amongst the political groups and parties in the legislature. This phenomenon could still be seen shortly after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on 1 July 1997. If electoral reform in Hong Kong has traditionally been politicised, such politicisation aimed at favouring some political parties will most likely persist in the years to come, especially in 2007, when the HKSAR will conduct a review of its political development.

Institutionalizing Democracy: Constraint and Ambition in the Politics of Electoral Reform

Why do politicians reform the institutions that keep them in power? Why do they relinquish the ability to rig elections? The nonfraudulent 1988 Chilean plebiscite triggered the collapse of General Pinochet's sixteen year dictatorship. The fairness of the 1997 legislative elections in Mexico signaled the end of the PRI's sixty year stranglehold of the state. Fair elections typically result in the end of dictatorship and often a shift in government priorities. However, it is far from clear why incumbents would consent to hold and respect the outcomes of fair elections. Why they would relinquish power is a question of central importance to politics and political science.

Introduction: The Politics of Electoral Reform

Introduction: The Politics of Electoral Reform