Single-member Districts Research Articles

Nation or District? Evaluating the Territorial Scope of Bills through Experimental Designs

This paper studies the territorial scope of the bills presented by members of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber of the Argentine National Congress) during Juan Domingo Perón's first two terms in office (1946–1955). Its main objective is to observe the effect that modifying the electoral system (switching from incomplete party ballots in multimember districts to relative majorities in single-member districts) had on that scope. Experimental techniques (an interrupted time-series and a within-subjects design) are used to analyze a novel database including every bill presented in the Chamber of Deputies during the period in question. Contrary to theoretical expectations, an increase is observed in the share of bills with a territorial scope that goes beyond deputies’ districts – especially for those presented by legislators from the opposition and from larger provinces. In addition, by separately analyzing the effect on the ruling party and the opposition, the paper uncovers a plausible explanation for previous nonconclusive findings.

Malapportionment and democracy: A curvilinear relationship

This article examines electoral malapportionment by illuminating the relationship between malapportionment level and democracy. Although a seminal study rejects this relationship, we argue that a logical and empirically significant relationship exists, which is curvilinear and is based on a framework focusing on incumbent politicians' incentives and the constraints they face regarding malapportionment. Malapportionment is lowest in established democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes with an overwhelmingly strong incumbent; it is relatively high in new democracies and authoritarian regimes with robust opposition forces. The seminal study's null finding is due to the mismatch between theoretical mechanisms and choice of democracy indices. Employing an original cross-national dataset, we conduct regression analyses; the results support our claims. Furthermore, on controlling the degree of democracy, the single-member district system's effects become insignificant. Australia, Belarus, the Gambia, Japan, Malaysia, Tunisia, and the United States illustrate the political logic underlying curvilinear relations at democracy's various levels.

Making votes count in parliament or government?

ABSTRACTSeveral scholars have sought to elucidate voting strategies in proportional representation (PR) systems. The argument is that the existence of coalition governments forces voters to consider potential alliances and to vote in order to maximize their chances of influencing the outcome. In this paper, we argue that this vision is incomplete as PR, just as single-member district plurality, also creates incentives for voters to desert parties that have little chances of obtaining a seat in their district. We validate this theoretical claim using two different surveys conducted during the 2014 Belgian federal and regional elections. Our results show that both government and district viability have a substantial and distinct effect on vote choice.

Recreating the House: The 1842 Apportionment Act and the Whig Party’s Reconstruction of Representation

This article analyzes early debates over the size of the United States House of Representatives and the requirement to elect representatives using single-member districts. It focuses on early theories of representation during the 1790s and later developments during debates over the 1842 Apportionment Act, when Congress, for the first time, reduced the size of the House and required single-member districts. It was in the course of the 1842 debates that the Whig Party legitimized these electoral changes by articulating a theory of representation that synthesized the Federalists’ and the Anti-Federalists’ theories. The Whigs argued that the reduced House size provided for a more efficient deliberative body, and the single-member district requirement provided for better constituent representation, particularly given the development of political parties. This historical analysis enhances our understanding of representation by addressing how the Whigs legitimized electoral change, aiming to balance legislative ...

Gerrymandering and Malapportionment, Romanian Style: The 2008 Electoral System

Varieties of gerrymandering and malapportionment can appear not only in electoral systems where all legislative seats are allocated to plurality winners in single-member districts but also in proportional Single-Member District (SMD)–based electoral systems and in settings where multi-partisan committees draw the district boundaries. This article investigates such a case, in which the main parliamentary parties collaborated in order to minimize the uncertainty regarding intra-party allocation of seats. The 2008 electoral reform in Romania created such opportunities, and both the SMD maps and the electoral results at the parliamentary election held in the same year indicate that the parties collaborated to design a number of safe seats for each of them. We draw on a novel data set that measures the degree to which the newly created SMDs reflect natural or artificial strongholds of concentrated partisan support in otherwise unfavorable political territories, and also assess the malapportionment of these districts. All three types of mechanisms were frequently used, and our logistic regression analyses indicate that nomination from the “right” type of SMD was the main factor deciding which of each party’s candidates got elected. The statistical analyses are complemented by a qualitative investigation of the political composition and design of 9 SMDs.

The Legislative Logic of Electoral Reform in Ukraine

Since the end of Communist rule, Ukraine has undertaken three major electoral reforms, moving from a single-member district majoritarian system, to a mixed-member system, to a closed-list proportional representation system, and back to the mixed-member system. Some argue that political parties are primarily motivated by the desire to maximise seats or improve their ability to impact on policy. I argue that existing theories of electoral reform often assume that parties are unitary actors during electoral reform. My analysis of electoral reform in Ukraine clearly demonstrates significant intra-party dissonance on electoral system preferences. This result questions the usefulness of the party unity assumption.

Electoral Incentives and the Costs of Indiscipline in the Ukrainian Rada

Does indiscipline hurt the electoral prospects of legislators? Using electoral and roll-call data from the Ukrainian Rada between 1994 to 2014, I test whether shirking affects the likelihood of Rada deputies running as partisan candidates and winning seats in the next election. I argue that the costs of indiscipline vary by electoral systems. I analyze the impact of ill-discipline on the electoral prospects of both single-member district (SMD) and proportional-representation (PR) deputies. The analysis shows that indiscipline has little cost for SMD deputies and modest costs for PR deputies.

How Competitive Should a Fair Single Member Districting Plan Be?

Abstract Partisan unfairness is easily detected when the statewide vote is equally divided between two parties. But when the vote is not evenly divided, even the determination of which party is disfavored becomes controversial. This article examines the ideal fair outcome in a two party single member district system when the statewide vote is not equally divided. It is shown that equal voter empowerment, implied by readings of the First Amendment (Shapiro v. McManus and Whitford v. Nichol), requires that the fraction of seats be proportional to the fraction of the statewide vote. However, strict proportionality conflicts with the single member district system, so alternative approaches are explored. Generalized party inefficiency and voter effectiveness are defined and shown to encompass many possibilities for an ideal fair seats-votes function. The best choice is fundamentally determined by the degree of geographical heterogeneity of voters of like mind. Based upon historical election results, it appears...

Democratic Institutions and Subjective Well-Being

We examine how differences in how democracy is institutionalized affect life satisfaction across nations. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous, systematic study of this subject. Using data for 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1981 to 2008, we find robust evidence that citizens report living more satisfying lives in countries with a parliamentary (rather than presidential) executive, a proportional representation electoral system (as opposed to single member districts), and a unitary (rather than federal) governmental structure. Moreover, the findings suggest that the real-world consequences for these types of democratic institutions for human well-being are substantial, rivaling or exceeding other common predictors. We conclude with a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of the results.

Third-Party Strategy under Plurality Rule: The British Liberal Democrats and the New Zealand Social Credit Party

This article examines the strategic options facing small centrist third parties in two-party parliamentary systems operating under the single-member district plurality electoral system. It uses a spatial model to show that centrist third parties are better off targeting the ‘safe’ districts of a major party rather than marginal districts. Furthermore, it is optimal to target one party’s districts, not both, to benefit from tactical and protest voting. This article also questions the implicit conclusion of the median-legislator theorem that pivotality-seeking is the best strategy for a third party, at least under the single-member district plurality system, because that would usurp voters’ ability to select the executive directly, a key feature of two-partism. Finally, this article shows that third parties can damage themselves if they ‘flip’ their strategies from opposing particular major parties to supporting them. Evidence is provided for the British Liberal Democrats and New Zealand’s historic Social Credit Party.

The Effects of District Magnitude on Voting Behavior

Is there more sincere voting in multi-member districts than in single-member districts? Existing research on this question is inconclusive, at least in part because it is difficult with observational data to isolate the effect of district magnitude on voting behavior independently from voters’ preferences or the number of parties. Hence, we investigate this issue in a laboratory experiment, where we vary district magnitude while keeping the distribution of voters’ preferences and the number of parties constant. We find that voting for the preferred party (sincere voting) increases with district magnitude. This is consistent with existing findings from observational data. We also discover a surprising result: a high incidence of “frontrunner” voting, which cannot be easily explained by existing research.

Legislative Equilibria and Economic Policy under Alternative Electoral Rules

This paper develops a game theoretic model in which S incumbent legislators simultaneously allocate effort between producing non-excludable public goods, targeting local goods to particular geographic constituencies, and engaging in rent-seeking. The game’s equilibria are determined by both the profile of the electorate and the electoral institution in place. Closed-List Proportional Representation (CLPR) is characterized by a fundamental collective action problem which leads to high levels of shirking among incumbent legislators. Single-Member District (SMD) systems are effective at resolving this collective action problem when voters are highly responsive to public good provision. Open-List Proportional Representation (OLPR) systems are effective at resolving this collective action problem when voters exhibit low responsiveness to public policy. Indeed, OLPR generates high levels of policy effort in electoral contexts where both CLPR and SMD systems are characterized by high rent-seeking. The model provides a wide range of implications for future empirical studies of the relationship between electoral institutions and economic policy.

Party Mobilization Gap Under the Uneven Electoral System of the Japanese Upper House

This paper demonstrates how an uneven electoral system shapes political parties’ mobilization strategies, which in turn contribute to the gap in turnout between districts, by utilizing a majoritarian electoral system with heterogeneous district magnitudes in Japan. In contrast to existing studies, this paper finds a non-monotonic relationship between district magnitude and political parties’ total mobilization efforts because the two major parties shifted their resources to single-member districts, whereas smaller parties focused on large-magnitude districts.

Components of partisan bias originating from single-member districts in multi-party systems: An application to Mexico

We extend the estimation of the components of partisan bias—i.e., undue advantage conferred to some party in the conversion of votes into legislative seats—to single-member district systems in the presence of multiple parties. Extant methods to estimate the contributions to partisan bias from malapportionment, boundary delimitations, and turnout are limited to two-party competition. In order to assess the spatial dimension of multi-party elections, we propose an empirical procedure combining three existing approaches: a separation method (Grofman et al. 1997), a multi-party estimation method (King 1990), and Monte Carlo simulations of national elections (Linzer, 2012). We apply the proposed method to the study of recent national lower chamber elections in Mexico. Analysis uncovers systematic turnout-based bias in favor of the former hegemonic ruling party that has been offset by district geography substantively helping one or both other major parties.

A Model of Split-ticket Voting with Uncertainty

This paper models an on-year election in which the presidential and legislative elections are held simultaneously. The president is elected by plurality rule and each legislator is elected in single member districts by simple plurality rule. Policy outcomes are a function of not only which party holds the presidency but which party gets the majority of seats in the legislature. Parties are uncertain about the ideal points of the voters. With this model, we show that first, there are some ticket-splitters in every equilibrium, and second, there exists an equilibrium in which moderate voters split their votes between presidential and legislative elections. In addition, when we apply the equilibrium strategy into two-period election, we find this model also explains the midterm loss phenomena.

Multiculturalism, political parties, and the conflicting pressures of ethnic minorities and far-right parties

Multiculturalism is an increasingly salient election issue. The growing size of many countries’ ethnic minority populations pushes parties to support multiculturalism, whereas the emergence of far-right parties in many countries pressures them to oppose it. This article examines parties’ positions on multiculturalism in a comparative context. It looks at 19 countries including most of Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. It argues that the influence of ethnic minorities over parties depends on electoral systems, and the strategies mainstream parties adopt in response to the far-right. The article finds that increases in ethnic minorities’ electoral strength lead parties to increase their support of multiculturalism to a greater degree in single-member district electoral systems than in proportional ones. Further, parties co-opt the anti-multicultural positions of far-right parties, and right parties do so more than left parties.

ELECTION OF DEPUTIES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF KRASNOYARSK TERRITORY – 2016: COMPARISON OF THE ELECTORAL AND PREDICTION OF ELECTION RESULTS

Цель статьи – выяснить, в какой мере оправдался электоральный прогноз, подготовленный за семь месяцев до выборов депутатов законодательного собрания Красноярского края (сентябрь в 2016 г.) и проанализировать основные итоги этих выборов. Актуальность темы исследования обусловлена той важной ролью, которую региональный парламент играет в жизни людей. Методы исследования – социологический опрос и анализ электоральной статистики. По результатам проведенных исследований были сделаны следующие выводы. Во-первых, электоральный прогноз подтвердился по всем основным параметрам (список партий, преодолевающих пятипроцентный избирательный барьер; развитие ситуации в одномандатных округах; возможная избирательная активность жителей края). Во-вторых, на выборах депутатов регионального парламента 2011 и 2016 гг., совмещенных с выборами депутатов Госдумы РФ, а еще ранее на федеральных выборах в 2007 г. убедительную победу одержала партия «Единая Россия». Вместе с тем, проведенный анализ показал существенное снижение числа избирателей края, поддерживающих партию «Единая Россия» (с 768,0 тыс. чел. в 2007 г. до 322,1 тыс. чел. в 2016 г.). Кроме того, в 2016 г. произошло значительное сокращение электората других парламентских партий, при фактическом игнорировании непарламентских партий. Данная негативная тенденция несет риски для партийной системы в целом. В-третьих, зафиксирована устойчивая тенденция снижения избирательной активности на выборах депутатов представительных органов власти: 59,8% (2007), 49,7% (2011) и 36,5% (2016). Это тревожная тенденция, указывающая на возможность делегитимизации этих органов власти.

How single-member districts are reinforcing local independents and strengthening mayors: on the electoral reform in Polish local government

ABSTRACTIn this article, we investigate whether the design of the electoral system used in the elections of local councils affects the position of national parties and their main competitors, local independent lists. We study the case of the electoral reform enacted recently in Poland which modified the rules of council elections by introducing the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, quite rarely used in local elections. Using empirical evidence from the municipalities where FPTP replaced the open-list proportional representation (OLPR) system, we demonstrate that the introduction of single-member districts, and majoritarian rule in council elections, increased the number of single independents, unaffiliated to any party or committee, and limited the (already poor) presence of party candidates and councillors. The reform also strengthened the position of directly elected mayors, in Poland – usually independent, by assuring many of them safe majorities in councils. We found that the share of seats for the winning mayor’s list increased by 10 pp on average after the reform.

The Contraction Effect: How Proportional Representation Affects Mobilization and Turnout

A substantial body of research examines whether increasing the proportionality of an electoral system increases turnout, mostly based on cross-national comparisons. In this study, we offer two main contributions to the previous literature. First, we show that moving from a single-member district system to proportional representation in multimember districts should, according to recent theories of elite mobilization, produce a contraction in the distribution of mobilizational effort across districts and, hence, a contraction in the distribution of turnout rates. Second, we exploit a within-country panel data set based on stable subnational geographic units before and after Norway’s historic 1919 electoral reform in order to test various implications stemming from the contraction hypothesis. We find significant support for the predictions of the elite mobilization models.

Margines zwycięstwa kandydata i mandaty zagrożone w systemie d’Hondta-Jeffersona

The inspiration for writing this article was a relatively high number of invalid ballots in Poland’s local government election in 2014. We wanted to answer the following question: what might happen to a seat won in the d'Hondt-Jefferson electoral system if the invalid ballots were originally valid. We were interested in over-voted ballots, where one choice could be originally marked by a voter and other choices added by a biased commission. Would the number of such invalid ballots be potentially high enough to change the election result, if they were assigned to other parties as valid votes? Fundamental for weighing the influence of invalid ballots on the results of a contested election is the margin of victory of the winning candidate. The margin of victory is easy to calculate for a single-member district election method but in a d’Hondt-Jefferson method, it is complex and requires simulation of the whole system, by adding additional votes to different parties. We propose a method of operating the candidate’s margin of victory as the smallest number of additional votes needed by other competing parties to take that seat. For every seat, we introduce the indicator l as the ratio of the margin of victory and the number of invalid ballots. The indicator l allows for some assessment if the seat is being threatened by invalid ballots. The higher the value of the indicator, the more vulnerable the seat is. At a value of l lower than one, the seat is safe, as invalid ballots in any configuration, may not give it to other parties. We demonstrate the calculation of the margin of victory and the indicator l on the example of Poland’s local government elections to county councils conducted in 2014, where the seats are distributed by the d'Hondt-Jefferson method. Almost 17% of the votes were invalid at that time. Since there were no statistics on over-voted ballots we have assumed all invalid ballots could be originally valid and might be cast to any party. That drove us to a conclusion that 47% of all mandates were threatened. The defined margin of victory and the indicator l may be of practical use in resolving electoral protests by the courts, as they give a glimpse of the likelihood of changing the election outcome.