A welfare simulation of mixed-member electoral systems

This paper considers welfare properties of mixed-member electoral systems. In a mixed system, voters may elect high-quality district representatives without excessive campaign fundraising. Simulation results reveal that the optimally mixed electoral system can be welfare-enhancing, but a poorly targeted electoral reform can do worse than a PR system or plurality rule.     

The Cube Rule in a Mixed Electoral System: Disproportionality in German Bundestag Elections

In the German mixed electoral system the PR tier is generally perceived as fully compensating for any disproportionality in the vote–seat translation generated by the plurality tier. However, as this article shows, the PR tier can itself increase disproportionality. In a mixed electoral system, small parties enter (hopeless) district races with the hope of boosting their PR vote share. But with a high number of district parties, parties may win districts at levels way below the usual 50 per cent vote share threshold. Looking at all 16 Bundestag elections from 1953 to 2009, the article identifies the effective number of district parties as a very strong predictor for the disproportional translation of votes into seats in the plurality tier of Germany's mixed electoral system. The article points to consequences for the internal composition of parliamentary parties, for parties' nomination strategies and for the occurrence of so-called overhang mandates.     

Dimensionen der Disproportionalität – Erststimmen und Direktmandate in den Bundestagswahlen von 1953 bis 2009

This article looks at how candidate votes have been translated into district mandates in the plurality tier of Germany’s mixed electoral system in all Bundestags-elections since 1953. Two questions in particular are addressed: How has disproportionality changed over time? And: What are the main determinants of disproportionality? To answer these two questions the article employs a modified version of the cube rule that accounts for the fact that the number of district parties in a mixed electoral system is higher than in a pure majoritarian system. The article identifies the effective number of district parties as the most important determinant of the disproportional translation of candidate votes into district mandates, i. e., the higher the number of district parties, the less proportional the translation.     

District magnitude,electoral formula,and the number of parties

Abstract. Duverger's propositions concerning the psychological and mechanical consequences of electoral rules have previously been examined mainly through the lens of district magnitude, comparing the properties of single–member district plurality elections with those of multimember proportional representation elections. The empirical consequences of multimember plurality (MMP) rules, on the other hand, have received scant attention. Theory suggests that the effect of district magnitude on the number and concentration of parties will differ with regard to whether the allocation rules are plurality–based or proportional. I test this theory by drawing on a uniquely large–sample dataset where district magnitude and electoral formula vary but the basic universe of political parties is held constant, applying regression analysis to data from several thousand Hungarian local bodies elected in 1994 consisting of municipal councils, county councils, and mayors. The results indicate that omitting the variable of electoral formula has the potential to cause significant bias in estimates of Duvergerian consequences of district magnitude. In addition, the analysis of multi–member plurality elections from the local election dataset reveals counter–intuitively that candidate and party entry may increase with district magnitude under MMP, suggesting important directions for future investigation of MMP rules.     

Making votes count in parliament or government?

Several 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.     

Going It Alone? Strategic Entry under Mixed Electoral Rules

Recent studies on strategic voting and entry in elections that combine plurality or majority and proportional representation (PR) have found candidate placement in single-member district (SMD) races to improve a party's PR performance. The primary implication of the existence of "contamination effects" is that parties have an incentive to nominate candidates in as many single-member districts as possible. Pre-electoral coordination in the majoritarian component of mixed electoral systems, however, is far from uncommon. In this article, we identify a number of institutional incentives that induce political parties to form pre-electoral alliances in spite of contamination effects. By identifying institutions that favor and hamper coordination, we seek to advance the understanding of PR-SMD interactions and to assess their implications for the design, classification, and empirical analysis of mixed electoral rules. Our statistical tests evaluate strategic entry in a diverse sample of countries.     

A dynamic Duverger’s law

Electoral systems promote strategic voting and affect party systems. Duverger (Les partis politiques, 1951) proposed that plurality rule leads to bi-partyism and proportional representation leads to multi-partyism. We show that in a dynamic setting, these static effects also lead to a higher option value for existing minor parties under plurality rule, so their incentive to exit the party system is mitigated by their future benefits from continued participation. The predictions of our model are consistent with multiple cross-sectional predictions on the comparative number of parties under plurality rule and proportional representation. In particular, there could be more parties under plurality rule than under proportional representation at any point in time. However, our model makes a unique time-series prediction: the number of parties under plurality rule should be less variable than under proportional representation. We provide extensive empirical evidence in support of these results.     

Decision period and Duverger's psychological effect in FPTP elections: Evidence from India

The plurality rule creates incentives that can divert the vote from the third parties. I argue that the process that converts such Duvergerian incentives into the Duvergerian outcomes has a temporal dimension: both strategic and non-strategic voters need time to form and communicate their preferences over candidates. To examine this connection, I capitalize on the institution of phased voting in India. I treat the timing of the district vote as the endpoint of the campaign period in the district and evaluate its effect on the vote for the leaders and the third parties, the third parties’ vote share, and the vote concentration. I find a positive effect of campaign period duration on the extent of the observed strategic behaviors in the district.     

Mixed-member electoral systems,best loser rules,and the descriptive representation of women

Proportional representation (PR) electoral systems are commonly considered more advantageous for the election of women compared to majoritarian electoral systems. In mixed electoral systems, female candidates are often more likely to be elected through the PR tier compared to women running in single-member district races. While most mixed systems employ a closed-list, a number of legislatures use a best loser provision whereby losing district candidates are ordered on the PR list based on their performance in single-member districts. This paper examines the extent to which best loser laws impact the election of women using candidate data from sub-national legislatures in Mexico and Germany and Japan's House of Representatives. We find the contamination of PR lists by single-member district results reduces the advantage women candidates have in the PR tier. Best loser limits the ability of political parties to use PR to represent groups underrepresented in single-member district elections.     

Plurality versus proportional representation: An analysis of Sicilian elections

The competing merits of plurality and proportional representation have intrigued political economists and political scientists for quite some time. Of primary interest is whether one or the other system is better in serving the interests of the electorate. Since theoreticians are unable to unambiguously determine the answer to this question, the issue must ultimately be decided empirically. We use data from Sicilian elections, where the system was recently altered towards the system of plurality. We are able to demonstrate that the proportional representation system engenders greater information among voters and elicits greater commitment from them than plurality. We are also able to show that in larger towns increased information causes a more dispersed vote under a proportional representation system; further, this result does not hold under plurality. This may have some implications for the size of positional rents reaped by political parties under the two electoral systems.     

The impact of electoral formulae on the creation of majority governments

This paper examines the electoral record of western democracies in terms of the incidence of one-party majority government. The record of 510 cases indicates that two features of the electoral sytem—the formula and district magnitude—contribute significantly to the creation of such governments. Regression analysis allows us to estimate precisely this impact and clearly distinguish among the political consequences of majority, plurality and PR systems.     

Electoral Reform and Party System Change: An Analysis of Nordic Elections with Two Different Electoral Systems

Electoral system reforms are frequently discussed in various parts of the world, although major electoral system changes have been quite rare in established democracies. This article aims at predicting how the party systems in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden would change if elections were conducted under a plurality system or a mixed‐member majoritarian system. To this end, results of the last parliamentary elections are recalculated. The analyses show that the Nordic party systems would be subjected to drastic change. In Denmark, plurality elections would create a two‐party system; in Finland, Norway and Sweden, one party would be much larger than the others. Keskusta and Arbeiderpartiet would be superior to the other parties in Finland and Norway, respectively, whereas Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet would almost take complete control over the Swedish legislature. In practice, smaller parties would have to team up with larger ideologically similar parties. Under a mixed electoral system, several small and medium‐sized parties would survive, but in most countries, the main competition would take place between two basic political alternatives. Smaller parties are well‐advised to go against electoral system reforms that involve single‐member districts.     

Duverger's Law in mixed legislative systems: The impact of national electoral rules on district competition

How do institutional factors shape district competition in mixed legislative systems? Preliminary evidence suggests the distinction between sub‐types of mixed systems alone poorly explains variation in district results. Consistent with the contamination thesis, this analysis suggests three additional national‐level factors at play: fused ballots, the electoral threshold for proportional representation seats, and the existence of compulsory voting laws. Regression analysis on an original dataset covering 90 mixed system elections in 23 countries (1990–2012) finds that while mixed member majoritarian systems correlate with fewer district candidates, these three often overlooked factors are also statistically significant. This analysis highlights the complexity of mixed systems and suggests why many of them diverge from Duverger's Law.     

A Conditional Defense of Plurality Rule: Generalizing May's Theorem in a Restricted Informational Environment

May's theorem famously shows that, in social decisions between two options, simple majority rule uniquely satisfies four appealing conditions. Although this result is often cited in support of majority rule, it has never been extended beyond decisions based on pairwise comparisons of options. We generalize May's theorem to many-option decisions where voters each cast one vote. Surprisingly, plurality rule uniquely satisfies May's conditions. This suggests a conditional defense of plurality rule: If a society's balloting procedure collects only a single vote from each voter, then plurality rule is the uniquely compelling electoral procedure. To illustrate the conditional nature of this claim, we also identify a richer informational environment in which approval voting, not plurality rule, is supported by a May-style argument.     

Campaign civility under preferential and plurality voting

We present reasons to expect that campaigns are less negative under preferential voting. We then examine if preferential voting systems affect how people perceive the conduct of elections. This paper reports results from surveys designed to measure voters‘ perceptions of candidates’ campaigns, comparing places with plurality elections to those that used preferential voting rules. Our surveys of voters indicate that people in cities using preferential voting were significantly more satisfied with the conduct of local campaigns than people in similar cities with plurality elections. People in cities with preferential voting were also less likely to view campaigns as negative, and less likely to respond that candidates were frequently criticizing each other. Results are consistent across a series of robustness checks.     

Coordination, focal points and voting in strategic situations: a natural experiment

This paper studies coordination in a multi-stage elimination tournament with large monetary incentives and a diversified subject pool drawn from the adult British population. In the tournament, members of an ad hoc team earn money by answering general knowledge questions and then eliminate one contestant by plurality voting without prior communication. We find that in the early rounds of the tournament, contestants use a focal principle and coordinate on one of the multiple Nash equilibria in pure strategies by eliminating the weakest member of the team. However, in the later rounds, contestants switch to playing a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium.     

The impact of the electoral system on post-communist party development: The case of the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections

This paper uses a case study of the 1993 Russian parliamentary elections to explore the influence of proportional representation and plurality electoral systems on party formation in a post-communist regime. The mixed PR-plurality electoral system used by Russia in the 1993 elections is a particularly useful case for such analysis for it allows the simultaneous study of these two electoral systems under the same set of social, economic, and cultural conditions. This study found that common emphasis placed on the number of parties allowed by PR versus plurality systems is misplaced in the context of Russian politics. The vital impact of electoral systems under post-communist conditions is their permeability to independent candidates. PR systems tend to impose party labels on the electorate and elites and thus bolster the status of parties as electoral agents. Plurality systems allow independents to compete on a level playing field with partisan candidates, robbing parties of the preferential treatment they need to get established in the initial years of democratic governance.     

On Some Limitations of the Median Voting Rule

Median Voting Rule (MVR) has been proposed as a voting rule,based on the argument that MVR will be less manipulable thanBorda Rule. We find that plurality rule has only a slightlygreater probability of manipulability than MVR, and thatCopeland Rule has a smaller probability of manipulability thanMVR. In addition Borda Rule, plurality rule and Copeland Ruleall have both a greater probability of producing a decisiveresult and a greater strict Condorcet efficiency than MVR.Based on all characteristics, MVR does not seem to be viablereplacement for either plurality rule or for Copeland Rule.     

Why Is there So Little Strategic Voting in Canadian Plurality Rule Elections?

Using the 1988 Canadian Election Study I examine why there was only restricted strategic voting in single-member district plurality elections. In that election 19 percent of Canadian voters preferred the party that actually finished third in their constituency, but among these third party supporters only one in eight decided to vote strategically for one of the top two contenders. Strategic voting was relatively rare for two key reasons. First, many third party supporters had a strong preference for their party over all others and were therefore reluctant to rally to either of the top two contenders. Second, many overestimated their party's chance of winning and as a consequence did not feel that their vote would be wasted.     

Legislator Success in Committee: Gatekeeping Authority and the Loss of Majority Control

In multiparty legislatures, the largest party or coalition may fall short of controlling a majority of plenary seats. However, plurality‐led congresses generally endow the largest parties with extensive agenda‐setting prerogatives, even when plenary majorities are lacking. In this article, we present a model and compelling evidence describing changes in the strategic behavior of committee chairs when majority control is lost. Using a dataset that includes all the bills proposed to the Argentine House in the last 25 years, we estimate success in committee in majority‐ and plurality‐led congresses. We provide extensive evidence that the loss of majority control reduces the importance of the median voter of the plurality party while improving the success of the median committee voter.