Don't air your dirty laundry: Party leadership contests and parliamentary election outcomes

Staging an open contest is a democratic method to choose a party leader, though its electoral consequences remain unclear. I argue that leadership contests are electorally detrimental to governing parties. Competitive contests signal intraparty policy and/or personality conflict to voters, which damages governing parties’ perceived unity as well as competence in the policy-making process. Thus, leadership contests undermine governing parties’ performances in parliamentary elections. Moreover, since voters evaluate governing parties’ record in office more than their rhetoric, unlike opposition parties, they cannot repair the image of incompetence/disunity by reshaping their rhetoric and/or policy direction. This implies that leadership contests damage governing parties’ electoral prospects more than they do to opposition parties’ electoral performances. Results from statistical testing with original data from 14 countries support my argument. In addition, these results are not endogenous to the contests’ timing; degree of competitiveness; leadership selection rules; whether or not the incumbent retains office; norms of contests; or how predecessors left office. These findings underscore the need to investigate the relationship between intraparty dynamics and election outcomes.     

Do opportunistic snap elections affect political trust? Evidence from a natural experiment

Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)-invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust-inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent-triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust-inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May-led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left-wing or non-Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.     

A voter-centric explanation of the success of ideological candidates for the U.S. house

In recent years, ideological candidates for the U.S. House have become increasingly successful, to the point where their chances of being elected are indistinguishable from moderates. However, scholars have still not uncovered exactly why this is happening. Using survey data from the American National Election Studies, I find that voter-centric explanations of vote choice – a voter's partisanship, ideology, and presidential approval rating – have increasingly predicted their vote choice in U.S. House elections from 1980 to 2016. Using data on candidate ideology, I find that candidate ideology is an increasingly poor predictor of individual vote choice over time. Original experimental data supports these claims, finding only a small electoral advantage for moderates, compared to ideologues of their own party, and evidence suggesting that, at least among Democrats, ideological candidates are rated more favorably than moderates. Taken together, these results suggest that the increased electoral success of ideological candidates can be attributed to changes in voters' decision calculus, rather than structural or candidate-centric explanations.     

The 2011 general and presidential elections in Singapore

For the first time in Singapore's history, two elections were held in a year. In 2011, Singaporeans voted in a general election on 7 May and in another competitive presidential election on 27 August. Faced with a stronger opposition force and an emboldened electorate, the ruling People's Action Party won the elections but achieved the worst results since the country's independence.     

A ‘whole system’ approach to the choice of electoral rules in democratizing countries:: Senegal in comparative perspective

Authoritarian incumbents in democratizing countries choose electoral rules to retain power while accommodating opposition demands for increased participation and representation. We clarify the political logic of this institutional choice and its consequences in Senegal by employing a ‘whole system’ approach that emphasizes the intricate but often hidden relationships between elections and the rules governing them at multiple levels — presidential, legislative and local. Success at one level depends on performance at all levels. In the short run, multiple-level electoral reforms preserve the ruling party in power while expanding opportunities for, but also fragmenting, the opposition. In the long run, they encourage splits within the ruling party and help the opposition develop increased ability to coalesce around a single opposition candidate, resulting in the defeat of the authoritarian incumbent and a democratic transfer of power through competitive elections.     

You just made it: Individual incumbency advantage under Proportional Representation

Using close election outcomes, we identify a personal effect of incumbency on the probability of seeking election, and seeking and winning office in subsequent elections for elected officials in an Open List Proportional System. In many cases Danish local elections creates an as-if random distribution of candidates that are elected or not, which is an ideal setting for a Regression Discontinuity design. The incumbency advantage has been studied to a great extent, though primarily in pluralistic electoral systems, while more recent studies have extended the scope to Proportional Representation systems. This study adds to this budding literature by showing an advantage in a new context and focusing on candidate level electoral returns under conditions where candidates are arguably least likely to benefit from incumbency.     

Female representation and electoral clientelism: New insights from South African municipal electionss

Do citizens experience less electoral clientelism in polities with more elected female representatives? The current literature is remarkably silent on the role of gender and female political representation for electoral clientelism. Due to gender differences in issue priorities, targeted constituent groups, networks and resources, we argue that voters experience less clientelism in municipalities with a higher proportion of female politicians because either female politicians are likely to engage less in clientelism or women are less likely to be viable candidates in more clientelist settings. Through either mechanism, we expect all voters – and female voters in particular – to experience less exposure to clientelism in municipalities with higher female representation. We examine this idea using survey data from the 2016 municipal elections in South Africa – a country with high levels of female representation in politics but increasing problems of corruption and patronage in the political system. Our findings are consistent with the argument that municipalities with more elected female councilors have considerably lower rates of electoral clientelism and that this mostly affects whether female voters are targeted by clientelist distribution. These findings shed new light on how women's representation in elected political office shapes the incidence and use of clientelist distribution during elections.     

The 2013 South Tyrolean Election: The End of SVP Hegemony

The results of the 2013 South Tyrolean elections, held on 27 October, caused major changes in the political system of the autonomy. For the first time since the Second World War the South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP) lost its absolute majority. While the German secessionist parties increased their electoral support, the Italian parties suffered heavy electoral losses, thus leading to an under-representation of Italian speakers in the political institutions. The election report shows how the electoral results affect the South Tyrolean system of ethnic proportional representation, which is characterized by an increasing asymmetry.     

Incumbents' Interests and Gender Quotas

The introduction of mandatory gender quotas in party lists is a reform that many countries have recently adopted or have been considering. The electoral system affects the incumbents' incentives to make such reforms, their details, and their effectiveness. We show that male incumbents can actually expect an increased incumbency advantage when gender quotas are introduced, if they are elected through single‐member district majority rule. On the other hand, no expectation of male advantage can reduce the incumbents' fear of being replaced if they are elected through closed‐list proportional representation. As France has both electoral systems, we validate the above argument using a formal model of constitutional design as well as an empirical analysis of the legislative elections in France, displaying the existence of male bias in the last three elections. We also show that parity may have Assembly composition effects and policy effects that vary with the electoral system.     

Does multiple office-holding generate an electoral bonus? Evidence from Belgian national and local elections

Traditionally, scholars have assumed that multiple office-holding (i.e. the combination of a local and national directly elected political mandate) leads to an enhanced electoral performance. Although the prospect of electoral benefits for such a mandate combination seems plausible, it remains unclear whether accumulating a national and local mandate does indeed provide an additional boost compared to holding either one prior to the election. Previous studies have only offered limited support for this assumption. For instance, they have focused exclusively on French national elections. This article, however, scrutinises whether dual mandate-holding pays off individually, for the candidate, as well as collectively, for the list as a whole in both Belgian national and local elections. The results here strongly suggest that cumul des mandats does not yield an additional electoral reward compared to single office-holders, contradicting both theoretical presumptions and normative beliefs.     

Coattails and spillover-effects: Quasi-experimental evidence from concurrent executive and legislative elections

Concurrent elections are widely used to increase turnout. We theorize and show empirically how concurrency affects electoral outcomes. First, concurrency increases turnout and thereby the participation of peripheral voters. Second, in combined elections, one electoral arena affects the other. In our case of majoritarian executive elections concurrent to proportional representation (PR) legislative elections, the centripetal tendency of majoritarian elections colors off to the concurrent PR race. Third, concurrency also entails spillovers of the incumbency advantage of executive officeholders to the concurrent legislative race. Drawing on quasi-random variation in local election timing in Germany, we show that concurrency increases turnout as well as council votes for the incumbent mayor's party and centrist parties more generally, with slightly more pronounced gains for the political left. As a consequence, concurrent elections consolidate party systems and political power by leading to less fragmented municipal councils and more unified local governments.     

The autocratic mandate: elections,legitimacy and regime stability in Singapore

This paper explains how authoritarian regimes employ flawed elections to obtain both short-term legitimacy and long-term stability. In conjunction with the use of co-optation and repression, it argues that ruling parties hold de jure competitive elections to claim what is termed autonomous legitimation. This denotes the feigning of conformity to the established rules of the constitution and the shared beliefs of citizens. Regardless of overall turnout and support, ruling parties exploit the normative and symbolic value of elections in order to establish moral grounds for compliance within a dominant-subordinate relationship. In support of this argument, the case of Singapore's People's Action Party (PAP) is analysed in historical and contemporary terms. Since 1959, the PAP has used precisely timed elections to extract one or more mandate types from citizens and, by extension, claim legitimacy. In particular, it has sort a mandate based on its response to an event, execution of a policy and/or collection of a reward. In the long run, autocratic stability has been achieved through a process of reciprocal reinforcement, which has combined autonomous legitimation with targeted co-optation and low intensity coercion. The paper concludes by addressing the generalisability of this finding for other authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia.     

Malaysia's March 2008 general election: understanding the new media factor

Abstract

The Malaysian general elections held on 8 March 2008 proved to be a historic event. For the first time, the political opposition managed to deny the incumbent National Front coalition a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Attempts to explain the opposition coalition's 2008 success have identified new media as a critical factor that turned the tide in the opposition's favour. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the new media factor at the 2008 elections and its immediate aftermath by analysing its role, advantages proffered, and limitations in terms of advancing democratization and greater political openness in Malaysia.     

Madeira Regional Elections 2015: A Polity Tyrannized by Majorities or the End of an Era?

The 2015 Madeira regional elections, held on 29 March, saw the re-election of the Social Democratic Party (PSD/M), for the twelfth regional government. This was despite the incumbent party's vote share falling to 44.36%. For almost 40 years of regional elections in Madeira, the PSD/M has won consecutive absolute majorities without once losing power. The result of the 2015 election reinforced the tendency over the last 40 years of politics in Madeira: the emergence of a viable electoral challenger to the ruling party continues to be unlikely and the incumbent continues to mobilize the regional electorate and win the electoral contest.     

A turning point in Argentine politics: demands for change and territorial cleavages in the 2015 presidential election

The 2015 national, subnational, executive and legislative elections marked a turning point for Argentina's democratic history. For the first time, a non-Peronist centre-right coalition won the presidency. These elections also inaugurated the first non-Peronist governor of the Province of Buenos Aires in almost 30 years. This article tries to make sense of these elections, which represent a significant shift in the country's political direction. We argue that the incumbent left-party (Peronist Frente para la Victoria) faced a combination of electoral fatigue and mounting economic challenges. Sluggish economic growth and unabated inflation created an anti-incumbent demand for change, alienated the middle class and deepened territorial cleavages between the agricultural central region and the peripheral provinces. Against this backdrop, the combination of a unified opposition and a fragmented Peronism led to Mauricio Macri's victory. We also explore the challenges that the newly elected president faces, including minority in Congress and among governors.     

Don't Vote for Them: The Effects of the Spanish Indignant Movement on Attitudes about Voting

This article investigates the recent so-called Spanish Revolution of 2011 with a view to understanding what it reveals about the current relationship between protest and electoral modes of participation. Theories of “disaffeccted radicalism” that grew up following the 1960s period of civil unrest strongly advocated the view that protest activity boosted electoral abstention. More recent work on protest, however, has pointed to its “normalization” and linkage to more conventional modes of participation. The Spanish case of 15M constitutes a useful new test of the two theories given that it mixed an explicit rejection of the choices voters faced with a criticism of political apathy. I examine the validity of each argument using a four-wave online panel survey and fixed-effects model to unravel how engagement in the 15M protest activity affected Spaniards' attitudes towards voting. The results provide fresh support for the normalization argument about a convergence of electoral and non-electoral types of activity. What is more, protest here seems to have a socialization effect that leads people to look at elections in a more positive manner.     

Departmental elections and the changing landscape of French politics

The departmental elections of March 2015 redrew the French political landscape, setting the new terms of electoral competition in advance of the regional elections of December 2015 and, more critically, the presidential election of April–May 2017. These elections saw the far-right National Front (FN) come top in both rounds only to be outmanoeuvred by the mainstream parties and prevented from winning a single department. As a case study in vote–seat distortion, the elections highlighted a voting system effective in keeping the FN out of executive power but deficient in terms of democratic representation and inadequate as a response to the new tripartite realities of France's changing political landscape.     

The Worst of All Worlds? Electoral Reform and Britain's 2009 European Elections

At the 2009 European elections, Britain again elected its MEPs under the 'closed list' system of proportional representation (PR)—the third time it had done so since 1999. This article looks at claims that these elections vindicated PR by producing a 'fairer' relationship between the parties' share of votes and their share of seats, a truer reflection of diverse political allegiance in modern Britain, and (thanks to multi-member constituencies) a more efficient and sensitive system for representing voters. However, the article will also inspect the idea that the case for electoral reform was gravely weakened by the 2009 Euro elections. It will recall how PR again failed to boost turnout, again employed a method of counting that most voters did not understand, and again involved constituencies too large for meaningful representation. Furthermore, it will recall that PR allowed the election of two MEPs from the far-right British National Party. (With just 6% of votes, it is unlikely that the BNP would have secured seats under Britain's traditional electoral system.) The article will argue that, as a result, PR has had a centrifugal effect on the British party system and, potentially, a polarising effect on our political culture. Consequently, the article will assert that, owing to the success of the BNP in 2009, arguments about PR for Westminster have been 'ideologically neutralised'. The article will thus suggest that we can now take a more objective view of hung Parliaments and coalitions (the likely effects of PR at general elections), free from the assumption that they entrench centrist governments and progressive politics.     

Do Primaries Improve Electoral Performance? Clientelism and Intra‐Party Conflict in Ghana

We consider the effect of legislative primaries on the electoral performance of political parties in a new democracy. While existing literature suggests that primaries may either hurt a party by selecting extremist candidates or improve performance by selecting high valence candidates or improving a party’s image, these mechanisms may not apply where clientelism is prevalent. A theory of primaries built instead on a logic of clientelism with intra‐party conflict suggests different effects of legislative primaries for ruling and opposition parties, as well as spillover effects for presidential elections. Using matching with an original dataset on Ghana, we find evidence of a primary bonus for the opposition party and a primary penalty for the ruling party in the legislative election, while legislative primaries improve performance in the presidential election in some constituencies for both parties.     

Between ballots and bullets: elections and citizenship in and beyond the nation-state

This article approaches electoral acts and performances as central sites for the negotiation of citizenship relations. I argue that, in order to understand how these relationships are shaped, we must attend to governmental actors beyond the nation-state, from trade unions to criminal organizations. Focusing on the case of Jamaica, I show how non-state actors have come to play a central role in hybrid forms of governance, shaping citizens' allegiances to multiple, overlapping political communities. How are campaigning and voting affected by such multiple allegiances? What new understandings of citizenship can we develop if we take the role of non-state actors in the electoral process seriously? I suggest that we should study elections as a site where citizenship – understood here in its broad sense of membership of a political community – can develop both within and beyond the nation-state.