Type Of Electoral System Research Articles

The Vicious Circle that is Mauritian Politics: The Legacy of Mauritius’s Electoral Boundaries

In the lead up to independence in Mauritius two commissions were appointed by the British colonial authorities to determine the type of electoral system that would be used. The choices were between proportional representation (PR) and plurality voting, and larger versus smaller constituencies. PR was rejected as it was feared it would harden communal divisions and smaller constituencies were chosen to ensure adequate representation of the society’s different ethnic groups. A review of the 11 general elections that have taken place between 1967 and 2014 shows that plurality voting and smaller constituencies have had the very same effect that was imputed to PR. With the exception of the 1982 general election, government has always been formed by a Hindu-dominated political party and voting seems to be conducted primarily along ethnic lines. The paper argues that this level of predictability in voting patterns is due to the legacy of how Mauritius’s electoral boundaries were delimited and suggests change will only come once they are reformed.

La evaluación de escalas de conocimiento político entre países: evidencia de América Latina

An informed public is viewed as essential for democratic representation. Exist- ing work suggests individual-level characteristics such as education affect political information. But contextual factors such as level of democracy and type of electoral system may also impede or facilitate the acquisition of knowledge. However, survey questions often vary across countries, making it difficult to identify the role of con- textual factors. Using the AmericasBarometer surveys from Latin America and the Caribbean, this paper compares alternative scaling methods and demonstrates that the conclusions about knowledge cross-nationally depend on the measure used. The analyses compare a raw additive scale, a standardized additive scale, factor scores, item response scores with anchoring, and item response scores with bridging. The conventional additive scale suggests that very little predicts variation in knowledge across countries, while the alternatives show that factors such democracy, telecom- munications, ethnolinguistic diversity, and electoral system have substantial effects on knowledge.

Quotas, the Electoral System Type and the Election of Young Women

AbstractThis article focuses on a specific group of legislators facing large hurdles during recruitment processes, namely young women. Building on the institutional literature, we hypothesize that gender quota regulations, youth quotas, and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems should particularly benefit young women. Our quantitative study, capturing one hundred elections conducted between 2012 and 2017, finds partial support for our expectations. For the three hypotheses, we find that legislative quotas and voluntary party quotas for both youths and gender do not significantly increase the share of young women. In contrast, PR electoral systems render the electoral arena less discriminatory toward younger women.

Resultan Sistem Pemilu dan Sistem Pemerintahan terhadap Pelaksanaan Demokrasi di Indonesia

Problems related to the resultant electoral system and the government system are the focus of the discussion in this study. Types of electoral systems, as well as types of governmental systems are discussed to be able to be a study of the use of electoral systems and government systems. The purpose of discussing this problem is to analyze the electoral system and the government system that are compatible with the implementation of democracy in Indonesia. This research is discussed through normative analysis, and through qualitative methods. The results of the qualitative normative analysis can be seen as follows: First, the results of the analysis show that there is a resultant between the electoral system towards the implementation of democracy in Indonesia as seen from the theory of the people's unity and the representative system. The consultant becomes strong if the general election system used is a purely open proportional electoral system, namely the voter as the supreme sovereignty constitution, can know with certainty who the candidate is and will help determine who is the people's representative. Second, there is a result between the government system and the implementation of democracy, the theory of popular sovereignty and the system of representation. Parliamentary and presidential government systems have their own weak points and strengths. However, the presidential system applied in democratic countries in Indonesia is better, because it tends to be more stable in its accountability. Placing the highest sovereignty as the only party that accepts the responsibility of those who have been elected to the executive and parliamentary institutions. The concept developed is a system of political representation, not as a system of partisan representation .
 
 Keywords: Resultan, District System, Proporsional System, Presidensiil, Parlementary

ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EU MEMBER STATES: AN EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

The electoral system plays a significant role in various areas of the functioning of the states. Alongside this, there are areas, which can't be affected by the change in the electoral system or of the electoral system type. However, in Bulgaria, there is a debate on the introduction of the majority/plurality electoral system and one of the arguments is related to the possible overall positive effect on the functioning of the country. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to identify if the electoral system is relevant for the development of the EU member states. The object of the study is the countries, members of the European Union, studied in 2018. Focus of the research is their electoral system and their development, measured on a number of indicators. For the purposes of the analysis statistical methods (frequencies and cross tables) and comparative approach are used. The results show that the type of electoral system is not relevant for the development of EU member states, measured on the selected indicators.

Ideological Diversity, Intelligibility and Electoral Design: A Deliberative Perspective

ABSTRACT The article explores some trade-offs between two democratic goods: intelligibility and ideological diversity that different types of electoral systems – proportional representation and single member plurality – often involve through the way in which they affect the number of significant political parties in a polity. The article reviews practices that can alleviate those trade-offs and provides a sketch of what we can and should want to achieve within the limits of each system from the normative vantage point of deliberative democratic theory.

Consociational Democracy and Political Engineering in Postwar Kosovo

This article examines the consociational democracy installed in Kosovo after the war. Starting from the premise that the electoral system is considered one of the key instruments for the engineering of post-conflict societies with deep ethnic divisions, the article analyzes the preferences of local and international actors for the type of electoral system. In particular, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission’s reluctance to organize elections without a prior creation of an institutional base, as well as grand governing coalitions. The mechanisms of consociational democracy aim at addressing elite cooperation between different ethnic communities for building peace and stability in post-conflict societies. But focusing on the intra- and inter-community dynamics of cooperation and confrontation between elites, I conclude that the main obstacle to building a democratic multi-ethnic society in Kosovo and implementing the power-sharing arrangements was the uncertainty over the status of Kosovo.

MAJORITY/PLURALITY SYSTEMS: THE CHOICE OF LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES?

The electoral system of a country is related to the political, economic and social areas of life. Their functioning directly or indirectly depends on it and the different types and subtypes of electoral systems produce different effects. The purpose of the current study is to identify if there is a relation between the statute of the least developed countries and their electoral system. The object of the study are countries, defined as least developed in 2018 by the United Nations. The focus is the type of electoral system for the legislative body (or its lower chamber in case of bicameralism) of these countries, their regime type, overall score and the score for electoral process and pluralism according to EIU Democracy Index 2018. For the purposes of the analysis statistical methods (frequencies, hypothesis test and chi-square test) and comparative approach are used. The results show that there is statistically significant relationship between the statute of least developed countries and their electoral system on one hand and their regime type on other. There is also a statistically significant difference in the scores of least developed countries compared to all others regarding the evaluation of democracy and the electoral process and pluralism.

Trends in the development of Russian legislation regulating the mechanism of political parties' participation in elections

This article analyses the aspects of the development of Russian legislation regulating the mechanism of parties 'participation in elections, the procedure for the creation of political parties, changes in the legal status of an electoral association, the prospects for the use of majority and proportional electoral systems, as well as the system of guarantees established following the results of parties' participation in elections. The author substantiates the idea that the improvement of the electoral legislation of the Russian Federation is to find the optimal type of electoral system, which provides an effective mechanism for the implementation of the people's representation at the federal, regional and municipal levels. The authors conclude that the development of new provisions in the field of electoral law on the assessment of the powers of political parties as the main collective participants in the electoral process, the definition of the scope and content of the rights of electoral associations to participate in specific actions and procedures will contribute to further democratisation and improvement of the electoral process.

Democracy, electoral systems and emissions: explaining when and why democratization promotes mitigation

ABSTRACTDoes democratization help countries mitigate climate change? On the one hand, by increasing the value placed on quality of life, creating more opportunity for environmental actors to influence policymaking and holding elected politicians accountable, an increase in democratic institution and process should promote emissions reduction. On the other hand, the desire to safeguard individual freedom presumably brings with it an aversion to intervene in lifestyle and market decisions, thereby raising the risk of climate inaction. This outcome is further encouraged by the political need to balance (conflicting) environmental and energy interests.This article evaluates the thesis that democratization promotes mitigation in light of national emissions levels from 1990 to 2012. Using data from the Freedom House, Polity IV and V-Dem indices, World Bank World Development Indicators and the World Resources Institute Climate Data Explorer it conducts a large-N investigation of the emissions levels of 147 countries. Although several quantitative studies have found that domestic political regimes affect emissions levels, this article goes beyond existing research by building a more sophisticated – multilevel- research design to determine whether democracy: (a) continues to be an important driver of emissions when country-level clustering is accounted for and (b) has uniform effects across countries. The results indicate that, even after controlling for country-level clustering and holding constant the other confounding factors, democracy is indeed a significant driver. More strikingly, they reveal that while democracies tend to have lower emissions than non-democracies, democratization spells within the same country do not have the same kind of inhibitory effects as they do between countries. This article also finds tentative evidence that the type of electoral system plays a critical role in shaping the effect of democratization on individual countries.Key policy insightsDemocracies tend to perform better in terms of emission levels than non-democracies.Democratization has non-uniform effects across different countries, with the type of electoral system playing a key role in determining the effect that democratization has on national emissions.Further research is needed to develop our understanding of how the political context influences emissions, especially with regard to the influence of pro and anti-decarbonisation actors.

Age representation in parliaments: Can institutions pave the way for the young?

Middle-aged to senior men of the ethnic majority and higher income groups are generally overrepresented in parliaments. While research on group representation has examined issues of gender, economic standing, and, more recently, ethnicity, few studies examine age groups. We argue that the design of political institutions influences the share of young adults in parliaments across nations and hypothesize that the electoral system type, age candidacy requirements, and quotas influence the share of younger deputies in national parliaments. Analyzing an original data set with a global cross-national sample, we find that proportional representation and giving candidates the right to stand in elections as early as possible (i.e. at the age of 18) matter. In contrast, quota provisions for youths are currently too selectively applied to increase the percentage of young deputies in parliament.

Proportional Representation, Large District Magnitude and Closed Lists

AbstractChoosing the type of electoral system in new democracies has become a contested issue for social scientists as well as for political actors. Contrary to the state of the public debate on the issue, the article advances the position from a multidisciplinary standpoint (political science, historical sociology, economics) that proportional representation with large districts and closed lists performs better on a variety of key indicators. We review recent literature on the performance of electoral systems especially in post-communist and Latin American democracies. The article identifies the centripetal theory of democracy as a normative basis for our institutional prescriptions and discusses how distinct types of political representation relate to the debate on electoral systems. We focus especially on four main concerns commonly associated with proportional representation (the rise of “extremist” parties, government instability, party system deconsolidation, and corruption and clientelism). Contrary to much of the public debate on electoral systems, we conclude that further steps towards personalization (by opening lists or reducing district magnitude) are not advisable.

Physical attractiveness, voter heuristics and electoral systems: The role of candidate attractiveness under different institutional designs

While existing studies have shown that more attractive candidates running for office have an electoral advantage, very little has been written on how this advantage relates to different institutions. We theorise that formal institutions mediate the positive effect from which attractive candidates benefit. More in detail, we focus on the type of electoral system, hypothesising that physical attractiveness plays a more important role in majoritarian, first-past-the-post systems than in list proportional systems. We test this stipulation using the German federal elections’ two-tier electoral system, together with data collected in Australia on the physical attractiveness of German federal election candidates in 2013. A series of bivariate and multivariate statistics show that physical attractiveness is a significant factor explaining a candidate’s likelihood to win in the FPTP tier, but not in the list proportional representation (PR) tier.

The Problems of the Electoral Law of Russia

The article contains an analysis of some problems of the electoral law of the Russian Federation, undertaken on the basis of scientific works of N.A. Mikhaleva. There is a conclusion about the necessity of including in the text of the Constitution of the Russian Federation of separate chapter regulating the Organization and conduct of the elections in Russia. The author considers it appropriate at the constitutional level to consolidate the principles of suffrage for all levels of elections (voluntariness, freedom of citizen participation at elections, their frequency and alternativeness, etc.); outline the types of electoral systems used in all elections, securing, for example, that the legislative (representative) organs of State power and bodies of local self-government shall be carried out using a mixed electoral system (majority-proportional); listed in the Constitution of the Russian Federation all those elections, which were conducted at the Federal and regional levels; fasten the exhaustive list of restrictions associated with the realization of the electoral rights of citizens. The article concludes that there is a need for further improvements to the legislation on political parties as one of the most important subjects of the electoral process.

The Career Length and Service of Female Policymakers in the US House of Representatives

Various studies have outlined the institutional (e.g. the existence of quota laws and the electoral system type of a country) and non-institutional factors (e.g. the political culture of a country) that account for variation in women’s representation, in general, and, in more detail, the low representation of women in the US Congress. However, no study has, so far, compared the Congressional career paths of men and women in order to understand whether this gender gap in representation stems from a difference in terms of the duration and importance of the careers of male and female policymakers. Using data on all US House elections between 1972 and 2012, we provide such an analysis, evaluating whether or not the political careers of women in the US House of Representatives are different from the political careers of their male counterparts. Our findings indicate that the congressional careers of men and women are alike and, if anything, women may even have a small edge over their male colleagues.

What Affects Voter Turnout? A Review Article/Meta-Analysis of Aggregate Research

For more than 40 years, studies trying to explain macro-level electoral turnout have been one of the pillars of political behavioural research. From January 2004 to December 2013 alone, more than 130 articles were published in peer-reviewed journals using turnout at the national, regional or local level as the dependent variable. This meta-analysis tries to synthesize the results of these studies. I find there is a strong consensus in the literature that turnout is higher under compulsory voting, if the election is important, and if it is held in a small country. I also find that the influence of most other predictor variables, including the type of electoral system, the number of parties, development, income inequalities and electoral closeness is inconclusive at best. These results hint at the fact that the determinants of turnout might be more complex than the current theory suggests and is rather more context dependent.

Comparative politics and quasi-rational markets

ABSTRACTThis article synthesises psychology, economics and political science theories that can explain market reaction to elections. In order to test the theories, we conduct event studies of the impact of elections on the interest rates on government bonds for 122 elections in 19 countries. The efficient market hypothesis states that rational markets immediately incorporate all information relevant to asset prices. According to psychology, human decision-making is quasi-rational. Market actors should be slow to accept evidence that conflicts with previously held opinions, leading them to under-react to new information. We show that markets under-react to elections and that under-reaction is greater in majoritarian countries because they provide more information to the market. Assuming fully rational markets underestimates the impact of elections and variations in impact across political systems. Most of the literature on market constraint assumes rational markets and may thus be underestimating the extent of market pressure in the aftermath of elections and its distribution across different types of electoral systems. Our results suggest that markets can calculate risk around elections, but are slow to do so, thereby suggesting that the role of uncertainty and the resort to heuristics is relatively minor.

Does accountability matter? How electoral systems affect conflict initiation

Recent work on conflict suggests that electoral systems impact foreign policy-making in important ways; however, the discipline has reached different conclusions regarding how different types of electoral systems affect conflict initiation. In this study we contend that legislators are more accountable individually in candidate-centred electoral systems which impacts a state’s decision to initiate interstate conflict. We test our argument using a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 54 democracies from 1975 to 2001. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that candidate-centred electoral systems result in less conflict initiation than party-centric systems due to higher levels of individual accountability for legislative members.

The Impact of Mixed-member Districts on Legislators' Behavior: The Case of Bolivia

AbstractMany studies suggest that mixed-member electoral systems produce different attitudes and behaviors among representatives. This article assesses how this type of electoral system shapes Bolivian legislators' perceptions of their roles as representatives, their district activities, and their relationships with their political parties. It examines these dimensions using elite survey data and interviews with legislators and their personal assistants. The results show that the electoral system does not produce a uniform impact. It shapes how legislators perceive their role as representatives and the nature of the relationship they build with their political parties, but it does not produce differences in the kinds of activities that both types of legislators carry out in their districts.

A Deeper Look at the Relationship between Political Knowledge and Political Participation: Evidence from Presidential and Legislative Elections in Taiwan

This study examines the effects of political knowledge on various types of political participation by focusing on five recent presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan. The empirical findings indicate that political knowledge has positive effects on some types of political participation but the effects of political knowledge on different types of political participation vary by the types of electoral systems and elections. Besides, although the interviewer's assessment of the respondent's level of information has been widely used as an effective indicator of political knowledge, this study shows that the interviewers tend to rate men and partisans as politically knowledgeable, which might lead to a biased estimate of political knowledge. Overall, this study provides insight into the relationship between political knowledge and political participation in Taiwan.