Single-member Districts Research Articles

Incumbent and Challenger Campaign Spending Effects in Proportional Electoral Systems

Positive effects of campaign spending on electoral outcomes have been found in several comparative, multiparty contexts, but very few of these systems use proportional representation. The few studies examining spending effects in multiparty elections have found that incumbent spending is no less effective than challenger spending, contrary to the vast bulk of empirical literature drawn from single-member district contexts. This study reexamines incumbent—challenger differences in spending effects under the single transferable vote. Examining the Irish general elections of 2002, the authors find a positive and statistically significant relationship between spending and votes. Candidates that spend more win more votes, and outspending one’s rivals means winning more of the vote share. Spending more also directly increases a candidate’s chance of winning a seat. Finally, incumbent spending is considerably less effective than spending by challengers from other parties but no less effective than spending by challengers from a candidate’s own party.

Electoral Incentives and Budgetary Spending: Rethinking the Role of Political Institutions

This paper reconciles the long-standing debate on electorally motivated government spending by embedding politicians’ electoral incentives in political institutions. Using budgetary spending data from 21 OECD countries from 1973 to 2000, this paper shows that electoral budgetary cycles take the form of higher district-specific spending under single-member district systems and higher social welfare spending under proportional representation systems. This study also shows that budgetary cycles are constrained by multiple veto players. The results remain robust even after taking into account the effect of exchange rate regimes and the possibility of strategically timed elections.

Limited Choices: Russian Opposition Parties and the 2007 Duma Election

The December 2007 Russian Duma election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party (YeR) won in an overwhelming fashion, did not use the same electoral rules that had structured parlimentary elections from 1993 until 2003.1 Before 2005, when the change was implemented, the 450-member Duma was selected through a combined electoral system in which half the seats were filled via a party list and half were drawn from single-member districts (SMDs) in Russia's eighty-nine regions. This system produced party ballots with frequently fluctuating numbers of parties, and SMD ballots with large numbers of independents. In an effort to expedite the party consolidation process, the 2005 law abolished SMD seats and extended the party lists to encompass all 450 seats. In addition, the vote threshold required for representation was increased from 5 percent to 7 percent.one of the highest thresholds in the world (rivaled by the 7 percent required for the Polish Sejm and exceeded by the 10 percent required for the Turkish Grand National Assembly). To ensure the maintenance of partyness, the law also stipulated that parliament members could not change their party affiliation after getting elected and that the candidates themselves must undergo a two-stage evaluation process by the Central Election Commission. Finally, the law prohibited the formation of party blocs, requiring each party to possess official registration, dovetailing with the 2001 law, On Political Parties, that raised the number of members and regional branches required for registration.2 All of these changes obviously pose a strategic problem for Russia's political parties: they must learn to adapt to the new rules to remain relevant as representational organizations. Most of all, the new electoral formula was a challenge to the opposition parties that saw their support decline in the 2003 Duma election.namely, the democratic parties Yabloko and Union of Rightist Forces (SPS), and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).3 In this article, I explore how these parties have responded to the electoral changes and what factors have influenced these strategies. The first part of this article examines Yabloko and the SPS, both of which failed to individually pass the 5 percent threshold in the 2003 election and were unable to combine into a single party for the 2007 election as a means of overcoming the daunting 7 percent threshold. I also look into the decline of the KPRF, which suffered a major reversal of support in the 2003 election that continued into the 2007 election. Finally, because the setbacks for these parties have not occurred in a vacuum, the last part of this article deals with the nature of the system itself and how it has limited opposition parties' choices. This includes a discussion of the hegemonic influence of the Putin regime (and, by extension, YeR), its use of administrative resource, and the role of client parties (the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia [LDPR] and Just Russia) in shaping party system outcomes. Even in the absence of the opposition parties' strategic failures (of which there are many), the election rules militate against opposition party success.Theoretical BackgroundBefore moving on to the main discussion of the opposition parties and their electoral challenges, it would be prudent to first outline some basic theoretical considerations of Russian party system analysis. Much of the existing literature on party systems explicitly deals with Western Europe and North America, and adapting the models used therein to the Russian context is fraught with certain difficulties, such as the nature of the post-Communist transition itself and the resultant conflict between representation and effectiveness in the party system. As Jack Bielasiak notes, the immediate aftermath of the 1991 fall of Communism was an explosion in the number of parties designed as vehicles for representation that moved into the newly opened political space. …

Mandates, Parties and Dissent

Russia's mixed electoral system offers an excellent opportunity to study the effects of electoral rules on party discipline in legislative voting. Under the rules in force from the 1993 to 2003 elections, one half of the Russian Duma's members were elected on party lists, while the remaining half were elected by plurality vote in single-member districts (SMDs). The existing literature has found inconclusive evidence for the direction and magnitude of the effect of such mandate-type differences on the level of party discipline in floor voting. Using a comprehensive database of electronically recorded votes in the Duma in the period between 1994 and 2003 and a panel data structure, we examine the influence of this hybrid system on factional voting cohesion for votes on budget bills. The panel structure permits a more sensitive and rigorous research design than has been employed in previous research. We find modest evidence that SMD representatives defect from the faction position on budget bills more often than proportional representation representatives, even taking into account such intervening factors as party faction, ideology, committee membership and the evolution of the post-communist political system.

Electoral Systems and Real Prices: Panel Evidence for the OECD Countries, 1970–2000

In a recent article, Rogowski and Kayser introduced a claim to the political economy literature that majoritarian electoral systems: (a) systematically privilege consumers relative to producers and, consequently, (b) reduce real prices. The authors, modifying an established model of regulation, showed that, within a competitive political system, politicians favour those who provide only votes (consumers) over those who provide both money and votes (producers). When producers provide only money, the intuition becomes apparent even without a model: politicians respond more to voters under (majoritarian) systems in which a small change in vote share can produce a large change in seat share. Cross-sectional evidence for the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in 1990 was strongly supportive, suggesting that real prices were, all else equal, about 10 per cent lower in the averageOECDcountry with single-member district (SMD) electoral systems than in those that used some form of proportional representation (PR).As with all new empirical claims, healthy scepticism is warranted. Indeed, recent research in related areas has to be contrasted with – but it has not contradicted – these price results, associating proportional electoral arrangements with more positive social welfare outcomes including (a) less income inequality, (b) higher public spending, or, in combination with central banking institutions, (c) greater price stability. We acknowledge the possible incongruity of these results with those of Rogowski and Kayser; after all, verification of the price effects would suggest a more complicated relationship between electoral institutions and social welfare than is indicated in the extant literature.

Ideological extremism and electoral design. Multimember versus single member districts

Relying on a formal theoretical model, Gary Cox demonstrates that single member districts induce candidates toward policy positions at their constituency median while multimember districts encourage dispersion. We test this theoretical implication in the context of the Arizona state legislature, in which each legislative district chooses one senator and two representatives in single member and multimember contests respectively. To do so, we generate W-NOMINATE estimates of scores based on roll-call data from the Arizona state legislature that are comparable across chambers (Senate and House). Our results are substantially less supportive of the formal theory than are those of prior studies.

An axiomatic theory of political representation

We discuss the theory of gerrymandering-proof voting rules. Our approach is axiomatic. We show that, for votes over a binary set of alternatives, any rule that is unanimous, anonymous, and gerrymandering-proof must decide a social outcome as a function of the proportions of agents voting for each alternative, and must either be independent of this proportion, or be in one-to-one correspondence with the proportions. In an extended model in which the outcome of a vote at the district level can be a composition of a governing body (with two possible parties), we discuss the quasi-proportional rules (characterized by unanimity, anonymity, gerrymandering-proofness, strict monotonicity, and continuity). We show that we can always (pointwise) approximate a single-member district quota rule with a quasi-proportional rule. We also discuss a more general environment, where there may be more than two parties.

Don’t let the lawyers do the math: Some problems of legislative districting in the UK and the USA

A fair allocation of electoral districts would give each citizen as near as possible an equal share of power, as measured by standard power indices which operationalize ‘power’ as ‘pivotality’. The practical difficulties of implementing this principle are discussed, with reference to the UK and the USA. The history of attempts to achieve equal districts in each country is reviewed. It is shown that equal-population (or equal electorate) districts are a necessary condition for each citizen to have an identical power index, but not a sufficient one; and that it is impossible to achieve descriptive representation (where each gender, ethnic group, and/or political party is represented in the legislature in the same proportion as in the population) while retaining single-member districts. Some open issues in the mathematics of redistricting are listed.

Electoral Systems and the Representation of Ethnic Minorities: Evidence from Russia

Scholars have long noted that states with significant ethnic cleavages face difficult obsta cles to maintenance of democracy and that these problems are most severe in new democracies.1 As a result, scholars have looked primarily to institutions as a means to help ethnically divided states overcome these obstacles and successfully implant democ racy in face of deep ethnic cleavages.2 Achieving broad representation of different ethnic groups has important implications for stability and quality of democracy, particularly in polities just emerging out of long peri ods of authoritarian rule.3 Legislative representation carries powerful symbolic power for ethnic minorities and often becomes an end in itself even when minorities have little or no chance of participating in governing coalition.4 It is often taken as a matter of faith that proportional representation (PR) increases minority representation while electoral systems with single member districts (SMD) exclude minorities from legislative representation. Lijphart argues that proportional rep resentation, for example, is not only better than single member districts but is superior to all other electoral institutions (for example, alternative vote, reserved seats for minor ity groups, and mixed electoral systems) in promoting minority representation.5 While advocates of proportional representation acknowledge possibility that minorities can gain representation under certain conditions in other electoral systems, it is still viewed as providing crucial advantages. As Lijphart explains, the beauty of PR is that in addi tion to producing proportionality and minority representation, it treats all groups-eth nic, racial, religious, or even noncommunal groups-in a completely equal and evenhanded fashion. Why deviate from full PR at all?6 Despite scholarly consensus in favor of proportional representation, there is sur prisingly little empirical evidence that PR systems provide better representation of ethnic minorities than SMD systems.7 This article offers a model of electoral system effects on minority representation and a set of hypotheses concerning how PR and SMD electoral rules will affect different categories of ethnic minorities under certain conditions. Patterns of minority representation under PR and SMD electoral arrangements are then

The Importance of Being First

Twenty years ago, Wilma Rule (1987) published one of the first pieces that tested statistically a series of variables that might explain women's representation in national legislatures. Since its publication, Electoral Systems, Contextual Factors and Women's Opportunity for Election to Parliament in Twenty-Three Democracies has been widely cited, extensively built upon, and at times criticized. Despite the criticism, the core ideas of Rule's piece have stood up quite well and have been consistently confirmed by a wide range of authors using a wide range of techniques. While her 1987 piece is her most widely cited work, it is only one of a corpus of literature dealing with representation and electoral systems. These were issues that interested Rule throughout her career and to which she made several contributions. The question that animated Rule's interest in this particular case was what explains variations in women's representation in legislative bodies. Her 1987 article looking at women's representation in twenty-three democracies was a follow-up and an extension of her earlier Western Political Quarterly article (Rule 1981) looking at women's representation across U.S. state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, and nineteen countries. In her 1981 piece, using data from 1972, she had confirmed Duverger's (1955) assertion that women were advantaged by proportional representation electoral systems. In the 1987 piece, using data from a decade later, Rule was interested in retesting her previous findings, considering more extensively the role electoral systems play, and identifying countries that were likely to lead in increasing women's representation. In retesting her findings, Rule found significant effects for electoral systems, women's labor force participation, percentage women college graduates, percentage unemployed, percentage right-wing Members of Parliament (MPs), and percentage Catholic. In further analysis, she factor analyzed her independent variables and identified three separate factors: a political-system component, a socioeconomic component, and an educational component. All had significant effects on representation across countries. In addition to testing for the effects of these variables, Rule took a particular interest in electoral systems. This interest had a twofold source. First was a belief that electoral systems were an important factor in determining the likelihood that women get elected. second, as a political institution established in drawing up the rules of the political game, it was possible to engage in social engineering and design institutions so that women's representation might increase. She followed up the statistically significant results of her regressions by showing that for four different democracies where both single-member district and some type of proportional representation were used, women were better represented in all cases under the proportional representation conditions. In further analysis, Rule identified clusters of nations in terms of the likelihood that women would have significant political opportunities for improved representation. She argued for an interaction between the political-systems component and the socioeconomic component, both being important to women's political opportunities but with the political factor having primacy. Using her categorization of political opportunity, we can compare her predictions of twenty years ago with present-day levels of representation. When we do, we see a strong degree of predictive power, the predictions from 1987 largely hold today. Rule identified a political-opportunity cluster consisting of four Nordic countries where conditions were optimal for significant women's representation; looking at those countries today, they all have representation levels above 35% and are among the top ten countries in the world in terms of women's representation.1 On the other end, Rule identified a limited political-opportunity cluster consisting of five countries with single-member-district electoral systems (Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom, and United States). …

The Impact of Taiwan’s 2008 Elections on Cross-Strait Relations: A Game-Theoretical Analysis

As an index case of Third-Wave democracies facing existential threat, Taiwan's elections entail important implications for study in comparative politics and international relations. In 2008, three important elections help define the course of Taiwan's democratic development and its relationship with China: the January legislative election, the March presidential election, and a controversial referendum on Taiwan's United Nations entry. This article employs theory to analyze the impact of Taiwan's 2008 elections on cross-strait relations. It develops an game by examining each principal player's preferences regarding each election. It analyzes Beijing's possible reaction to the potential outcomes, and then examines the actual election outcomes against the model and offers observations on the prospect of cross-strait relations. Overall, the model predicts that cross-strait relations after the 2008 elections will present a historic opportunity, which can be seized or squandered, depending on political leadership. Key words: China-Taiwan relations, Democracy - East Asia, East Asian politics Introduction: The Internal-External Nexus The year 2008 marks a turning point in Taiwan's democratic political development and cross-strait relations. A key reason for this prospect is the momentous elections that took place in this year. On January 12, a parliamentary election was conducted under a new, mixed electoral system that selected candidates from single-member districts (SMDs) through the firstpast- the-post (FPTP) method and from lists nominated by political parties. Taking the so-called Duverger's Law (i.e., that a correlation exists between the plurality method and a two-party system) 1 at its face value and hoping to emulate other states that have adopted a mixed electoral system (e.g., Japan),2 many analysts hoped this new electoral system would contribute to a more healthy electoral competition between the two centrist parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). They also hoped this new system would reduce the influence of fringe candidates and money politics that became somewhat common under the old system of single non-transferable vote (SNTV) in multi-member districts (MMDs). On March 22, 2008, the presidential election, featuring the KMT's and the DPP's former chairmen, decided whether Taiwan's voters wanted a leader who will solidify the Taiwan or one who promises to improve the economy and ease crossstrait relations. That the identity issue became a key issue in these elections,3 as it had been in recent years, was an important reason why Taiwan's elections entail implications for its external relations, particularly vis-a-vis China and the United States, and for regional stability.4 The electoral link between Taiwan's domestic politics and its external relations was further accentuated by the two referenda regarding the issue of Taiwan's entry into the United Nations that were conducted on the same day as the presidential election. The DPP-sponsored referendum called for the country's entry into the UN under the name Taiwan. Not to be outdone by the DPP, the KMT sponsored a referendum calling for the country's return to the UN under flexible means. Various powers opposed the DPP's UN referendum, most significantly the United States, Taiwan's chief security backer.5 Chinese officials expressed their concerns that crossstrait relations during the lead-up to the March 2008 presidential elections might enter a high danger period. Passage of DPP's UN referendum would constitute a step toward a declaration of de jure independence of Taiwan.6 For China, such a declaration would be considered a major incident as defined in its Anti- Secession Law (ASL), and would call for a response using non- peaceful means.7 The United States, while stating that it did not oppose Taiwan's holding referenda, tried hard but to no avail to dissuade the DPP government from conducting the most controversial UN referendum, and, failing that, to appeal directly to voters. …

Fluid Party Systems, Electoral Rules and Accountability of Legislators in Emerging Democracies

Does the system of repeated parliamentary elections function as a mechanism of political control in new democracies with fluid party systems? Moreover, does electoral format affect the degree to which voters are able to hold legislators accountable for their performance in office? In addressing these questions, we use a new database on all legislative incumbents and all parliamentary elections that have taken place in Ukraine since 1994. Our findings indicate that, even in a flawed `electoralist' democracy such as Ukraine, repeated parliamentary elections do serve as a mechanism of accountability with respect to economic performance. Disregarding electoral format, political control tends to work through political parties/partisan blocs. Only in the case of single-member district elections, however, is there a statistically significant relationship between economic performance and chances of winning, i.e. when economic performance is poor, voters punish legislators from a pro-presidential group and reward legislators from the opposition.

Ballot Regulations and Multiparty Politics in the States

American politics is dominated by two major parties and has been for a century. The duopoly enjoyed by the Democrats and Republicans is largely the result of Duverger's Law: the tendency of a single-member district system to produce two-party competition (Duverger 1963). Minor parties ultimately fail in a single-member district system because (1) the winner-take-all approach does not reward candidates who finish third and (2) citizens vote strategically to avoid “wasting” their votes on hopeless candidates and spoiling the election (Cox 1997; Riker 1982). Because the U.S. two-party system is so dependent on its majoritarian electoral rules, one might suspect that other election regulations would have little effect on the number of parties. A longer version of this paper was presented at the conference, “2008 and Beyond: The Future of Election and Ethics Reform in the States,” Columbus, OH, January 16–17, 2007. I thank Richard Winger ofBallot Access Newsfor comments and information.

Electoral Systems and Electoral Misconduct

This article is a cross-national study of the impact of electoral system design on electoral misconduct. It argues that elections held in single-member districts (SMD) under plurality and majority rule are more likely to be the object of malpractice than those run under proportional representation (PR). Two reasons are advanced in support of this argument: Candidates in SMD systems have more to gain from individual efforts to manipulate elections than is the case for candidates in PR contests; and malfeasance is more efficient under SMD rules, in that the number of votes that must be altered to change the outcome is typically smaller than it is under PR. This hypothesis is tested and confirmed on a new data set of electoral manipulation in 24 postcommunist countries between 1995 and 2004. The proportion of seats elected in SMDs is found to be positively associated with levels of electoral misconduct, controlling for a variety of contextual factors.

Incumbents' Interests and Gender Quotas

The adoption of mandatory gender quotas in party lists has been a subject of discussion in many countries. Since any reform obviously requires the approval of a (sometimes qualified) majority of incumbent legislators' votes, keeping an eye on incumbents' interests and incentives in different systems seems a natural thing to do if we want to understand different prospects for reforms in different countries. Such differences in the cost-benefit analysis of incumbents may well depend on the electoral system. We argue that if male candidates have a higher probability of being elected when running against a female candidate than when running against a male of similar characteristics (male advantage), then single member district majority rule and closed list proportional representation are opposite extremes in terms of incentives for incumbents to pass parity laws. We validate the above argument using a formal model of constitutional design as well as an empirical analysis of the legislative elections in France, since France offers a natural experiment for both electoral systems. Given the male advantage, increasing the number of female new candidates made the incumbents' probability of reelection higher and thus male incumbent members of the Assembly have actually benefited from the parity law. We also show that parity may have Assembly composition effects and policy effects that vary with the electoral system.

THE STABILITY OF REPRESENTATION: A CROSS‐NATIONAL ANALYSIS OF PARTY POLICY DISPERSION

A normatively desirable feature of representative government is for the diversity of ideological choices on offer in the party system to reflect the diversity of policy views in the electorate. Building on the work of Ezrow, and relying on Eurobarometer data which suggest that the degree of public opinion diversity is stable over time, the authors analyse how voting systems mediate the diversity of views in parliament, a variable they label party system dispersion. The paper's central question is: to what extent does party system dispersion remain stable over time? Presented are theoretical arguments that party system dispersion will be more stable in countries that feature single‐member district (SMD) voting systems than in proportional representation (PR) systems. Using cross‐national data on 25 countries over 363 elections, the authors present results that support this hypothesis: they find that proportional representation systems are characterised by fluidity in party system dispersion, whereas party system dispersion in SMD countries remains stable from election to election. The implications of the findings are surprising – to the extent that party platforms reflect the diversity of public opinion within an electoral system, the results suggest that SMD systems do a better job at reflecting the diversity of public opinion viewpoints than do PR systems.

Bahrain Parliamentary Election Results: 25 November and 2 December 2006

There are forty single-member districts in Bahrain. If a candidate wins a majority of the total votes cast in the district in the first round, he or she is elected. If no candidate receives a majority, the top two vote-getters compete in a runoff election one week later. Political parties are banned, but political “associations” act as parties, supporting lists of candidates, coordinating campaign activity, and publishing platforms. Districts are configured to overrepresent the Sunni minority.

Electoral Systems and Women's Representation in Australia

This article tests the hypothesis that multi-member single transferable vote systems elect more women than single-member district systems by analysing the two houses of the Australian Parliament. The data regarding the number of female members of the Australian Parliament has been collected since the first woman was elected 61 years ago. The Senate, which utilises an STV voting system, has averaged more than two and a half times the percentage of women elected than the SMD House. The data confirms that multi-member district electoral systems using STV elect more women than single-member districts.

The Statistical Properties of Competitive Districts: What the Central Limit Theorem Can Teach Us about Election Reform

Any examination of newspaper editorials and reform group positions will indicate that the most commonly perceived problem with U.S. elections at the moment is that they are rarely competitive. This absence of competition has prompted recent proposals in several states, most prominently in California and Ohio, to reform the redistricting process to increase the frequency of competitive elections. These propositions failed, but that is unlikely the end of such attempts. The reason for these proposals is obvious. Political education in the U.S. indoctrinates us at a young age to believe that competition is good. In economics, market competition provides social benefits, and, by analogy, political competition must provide similar benefits. This argument is frequently made explicitly, such as by Schumpeter (1942), and it has its roots as far back as the often-assigned Federalist Papers #10 and #51. Of course, the economic definition of competition has little to do with the political definition of a competitive election. Broadly speaking, there are two economic definitions of competition: (1) competitive behavior, which generally means innovation, and (2) competitive market structures, which means many buyers, many sellers, and perfect information. In contrast, a competitive election generally means one in which the candidates' vote shares are roughly equal, or similarly, one in which each candidate has a roughly 50% chance of winning. The only obvious relationship between these definitions is that we might equate vote shares with market shares, but the benefits of a competitive market accrue regardless of whether sellers have equal market shares—they simply must charge the same price for the same goods, as determined by the intersection of the supply and demand curves. In fact, in a competitive market, each firm should have such a small market share that no firm is a price-giver, and the idea of an election for a single-member district in which there are so many candidates that no candidate has a significant vote share seems untenable. Alternatively, we might draw an analogy between pressure on sellers to charge the same price for the same good and pressure on candidates toward policy convergence, but the idea of all candidates offering the same bundle of policies makes many people uncomfortable as well. So, the analogy between the efficiency of a competitive market and the benefits of a competitive election falls apart. Of course, Schumpeter's (1942) argument was that political leaders should compete for votes by innovating with respect to policy based on the first definition of competition, but again, that means that the economic analogy has little to say about whether elections should be uncertain and decided by narrow margins. The fact that we happen to use the same word for different circumstances does not logically allow us to say the following: because competition is good in the marketplace, close elections are good. Free market economics cannot be used to defend the drawing of competitive districts without straining the analogy beyond its limits, regardless of how intuitively appealing the analogy is.

Disclosure Rules: How Institutions Influence Campaign Finance Regulation

Political institutions influence a legislator's preferences on campaign disclosure in two ways. First, institutions determine how useful campaign donations are for running effective campaigns. When money is more useful than certain types of campaign appeals, such as emphasizing policy differences, strong political candidates, usually incumbents, have an incentive to favor weak disclosure rules. Second, institutions influence the trade-offs that electionminded politicians face when presenting themselves to their constituencies. As the durability of personal ties between politicians and their supporters increases, the cost associated with opaque campaign disclosure requirements declines. Similarly, as the vote share necessary to secure reelection declines, the cost associated with opaque campaign disclosure requirements declines. Preferences over campaign disclosure requirements in Japan were altered by the adoption of an electoral system dominated by single-member districts and more transparent campaign finance regulations. This shift increased the electoral costs associated with the earlier, more opaque campaign donation disclosure regime. The result has been an inability of incumbents to push for a return to the old regime despite favoring it.