Increasing irrationality? The equilibrium relationship between electoral and legislative party system size, 1950–2005

Institutional theories of party system size tell us that voters and parties should anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral systems and adjust their behaviour accordingly. If these expectations hold true, then the size of the party system at the electoral and legislative levels should maintain a long-run equilibrium relationship, as the number of parties receiving votes is adjusted in response to the number of parties in the legislature. I estimate a series of error-correction models to examine this expectation in 16 Western democracies from 1950 to 2005. Party system size at the electoral level does exhibit a general, equilibrium relationship with party system size in the legislature. However, this relationship has recently disappeared in single-member-district systems. This growing disparity between party system size at the electoral and legislative levels signals important changes in the nature of electoral representation.     

Ideological congruence between party rhetoric and policy-making

Scholars, citizens and journalists alike question whether political parties keep their electoral promises. A growing body of literature provides empirical evidence that parties do indeed keep their electoral pledges. Yet little is known about the congruence between party rhetoric between elections and the policies delivered by them. Given the increasing influence of party rhetoric in the media with respect to voting decisions, it is highly relevant to understand if parties ‘walk like they talk’. The article suggests that due to electoral reasons parties face strong incentives to deliver policy outputs which are congruent to their daily rhetoric. Analysing data on 54 policy outputs on nuclear energy, drafted by 24 parties after the Fukushima accident, the analysis finds overwhelming evidence that parties deliver ideologically congruent policy outputs to their rhetoric (incongruent only in 7.89%). These findings have important implications for our understanding of the linkage between party communication and the masses in modern media democracies.     

Election type and the logic of pre-election violence: Evidence from Zimbabwe

Election violence is often conceptualized as a form of coercive campaigning, but the literature has not fully explored how electoral institutions shape incentives for competition and violence. We argue that the logic of subnational electoral competition – and with it incentives for violence – differs in presidential and legislative elections. In presidential elections, national-level considerations dominate incentives for violence. Presidential elections are usually decided by winning a majority of votes in a single, national district, incentivizing parties to demobilize voters with violence in strongholds. In contrast, election violence is subject to district-level incentives in legislative elections. District-level incentives imply that parties focus on winning the majority of districts, and therefore center violent campaigning on the most competitive districts. We test our argument with georeferenced, constituency-level data from Zimbabwe, a case that fits our scope conditions of holding competitive elections, violence by the incumbent, and majoritarian electoral rule. We find that most violence takes place in strongholds in presidential elections, especially in opposition strongholds. In contrast, competitive constituencies are targeted in legislative contests.     

Proffering Pork: How Party Leaders Build Party Reputations in Brazil

Despite its highly candidate-centered electoral law, recent studies have shown that Brazilian party leaders are more powerful, and Brazilian parties are more unified, than alleged by long-dominant scholarship. Examining post-War and contemporary democracy in Brazil, governed by the same federal legislative electoral law, this article provides a controlled test of the role of leadership and electoral law in driving party unity. The combination of leadership intervention to enforce unity, increased unity, and partisan tides in contemporary Brazil, in contrast to an absence of leadership intervention, lower unity, and no partisan tides in the post-War, provides strong support for the role of the leadership in generating unity, as emphasized in the collective action theory of party organization. The findings also suggest that a general theory of variation in party unity requires examining factors that lead to variation in party leaders' incentives to enforce unity, in addition to the current emphasis on backbenchers' incentives to defy the leadership.     

Strategic Party Government: Party Influence in Congress, 1789–2000

Why does the influence of Congressional parties fluctuate over time? Building on prevailing answers, we develop a model, Strategic Party Government, which highlights the electoral motives of legislative parties and the strategic interaction between parties. We test this theory using the entire range of House and Senate party behavior from 1789 to 2000 and find that the strategic behavior of parties complements members' preferences as an explanation for variation in party influence. Specifically, the strongest predictors of one party's voting unity are the unity of the opposing party and the difference between the parties in the preceding year. Moreover, we find strong links between party behavior in Congress and electoral outcomes: an increase in partisan influence on legislative voting has adverse electoral costs, while winning contested votes has electoral benefits.     

Budget Deficits and Coalition Governments

This paper shows that compromise between different ideologicalmotivations within multiparty governments may result in a biastoward running budget deficits even if all parties in thecoalition prefer balanced budgets. The deficit bias increases withthe degree of ``polarization'' of the ideological motivations andgenerally decreases with the degree of concentration of powerwithin the government. Although the analysis is conducted assuminga proportional representation electoral system, the results willalso apply to majoritarian systems if the winning party comprisesideologically different constituencies. The relationship betweenbudget deficits and multiparty governments is investigated usingdata from a sample of eight European Union countries for the period1971–1990. Analysis on pooled data is partly in line with the theory.Time series within country analysis is less favorable: we findclear support to the theory only in the case of Italy.     

Party factions and coalition government: portfolio allocation in Italian Christian Democracy

In this paper I elaborate a recently advanced argument about government formation, and assess it by studying the factions of the Italian Christian Democratic Party (DC). I contend that the costs of making and breaking coalitions depend on political institutions and on the configuration of actors in policy space. Comparisons across parties in Italy and other countries support this argument. So also do comparisons across party factions. The Christian Democratic factions that incurred the lowest office costs to build coalitions were those at or near the left–right median in Italy's core party. When electoral rules were rewritten in the DC, internal party competition over portfolio allocation changed as well. The paper's conclusion outlines how the argument would guide further research on party factions.     

Walking the line: Electoral cycles and the shift in legislative priorities among German parliamentarians

This article sheds light on how MPs' priorities change in the course of legislative terms. We purport that members of parliament (MPs) balance a variety of incentives over the electoral cycle. While they emphasize issues that relate to the policy-making agenda of their party right after an election, competition with other parties increasingly gains influence over legislators’ priorities as the next election day approaches. We show supportive evidence for these patterns based on a unique longitudinal dataset combining information on sponsorship of legislative proposals, public opinion, party manifestos, and committee chair positions in Germany between 1990 and 2013. By bringing variation within the electoral cycle to our attention, the results enhance our understanding of the factors that set the incentive structure for MPs and the relationship between party competition and legislative behavior.     

Endogenous ballot structures: The selection of open and closed lists in Colombia’s legislative elections

What are the incentives for parties to personalize electoral competition? This paper proposes that both open and closed lists give congruity, rather than tension, to the interests of party leaders and candidates. However, the efficacy of each list type depends on the electoral returns expected from promoting the partisan and personal vote. To test this argument, we analyze the choices of parties over the ballot structure by leveraging an unusual institutional feature of the Colombian legislative elections, wherein parties are allowed to present either an open or a closed list, varying their choices across electoral districts and contests. Our empirical analysis shows that parties are more likely to open their lists in high-magnitude districts and wherever they have a strong, local electoral organization. We also find a positive relationship between the selection of closed lists among personalist parties, providing evidence to previous arguments proposing a closed list as a tool to concentrate campaign efforts behind a particular candidate.     

Is the party system affected by booms and busts? Not very much

The literature on party system fragmentation emphasizes how political institutions and social cleavages shape the long-term development of the party system, but short-term swings in economic performance could change the level of electoral fragmentation by affecting the concentration of the vote in the executive. Time series data from presidential elections in 59 countries and from district-level legislative election contests in 22 countries show that a growing economy is negatively associated with the effective number of parties winning votes: a strong economy leads to a slight reduction in fragmentation as the ruling party consolidates its rule while a weak economy tends to disperse votes among alternatives to it. But the effect of economic performance relative to political institutions and the incumbency advantage is at the margins. The modest size of this effect should remind scholars of the limits of the economy as an overall driver of voter choice. Keywords: Economic Voting, Party System Fragmentation, Duverger’s Hypothesis.     

Parties for Rent? Ambition,Ideology, and Party Switching in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies

Party switching by legislators has been common in many countries, including the Philippines, Italy, Nepal, Ecuador, Russia, and Japan. While frequently dismissed as simply an indicator of a weak parties, switching provides a unique window on party systems. To the extent that we understand affiliation decisions, we gain insight on the way politicians use parties to advance their careers. In this article I offer a model of party-membership patterns, where decisions to switch party or to stay put are a function of the strategic interaction of legislators and endogenous party leaders. I test the model on the case of Brazil, where switching is common. Results suggest that Brazilian legislators use parties to maximize pork, ideological consistency, and short-term electoral success, but which of these matters most depends on constituents, i.e., legislators use parties for different purposes in different electoral environments. The approach developed here could easily be applied to study legislative behavior in other political systems.     

Coalition incentives and party bias in Chile

This article revisits the debate over Chile's binomial electoral rules and its consequences and examines how the new electoral system conceived by a democratic congress altered political competition. It utilizes a seat-vote model of multiparty competition to analyze party bias under the binomial rule. This approach differs substantively from prior studies of the Chilean case that focused primarily on the disproportionality of aggregate results. In contrast to earlier analyses, the findings reveal that the allocation of the seats under the binominal resulted in significant party bias benefiting the main parties of the right. This bias, however, was eliminated after the electoral reform. The new rule continues to provide majoritarian benefits to parties receiving larger shares of votes, but this effect is less pronounced than before. It is now easier for small parties to gain seats, which has increased party fragmentation. However, we show that coalition incentives, which were heralded as one of the main advantages of the binomial rule, are also significant under the new rule in use since 2017.     

Citizens,politicians, and party cartellization: Political representation and state failure in post-industrial democracies

Abstract. This paper critiques what can be interpreted as an application of the literature on state failure in current political economy and political science to the changing role of political parties in advanced post–industrial democracies, Katz and Mair's theory of cartel parties . It develops an alternative set of hypotheses about the dynamics of parties and party systems with the objective to clarify empirical terms according to which rival propositions can be tested. Specifically, the paper rejects three propositions in the theory of cartel parties and advances the following alternatives. First, party leaders are not divorced from their members and voting constituencies, but become ever more sensitive to their preferences. Second, inter–party cooperation generates a prisoner's dilemma in the competitive arena that ultimately prevents the emergence of cartels. Ideological convergence of rival parties has causes external to the competitive arena, not internal to it. Third, conventional parties cannot marginalize or coopt new challengers, but must adjust to their demands and electoral appeals. The age of cartel parties, if it ever existed, is not at its beginning, but its end.     

Bounded oligarchy: How and when factions constrain leaders in party position-taking

This work investigates the process of position-taking, focussing on the factional bargaining within the party. Exploiting two recently built datasets that estimated the policy positions of Italian parties and factions from 1946 to 2010, we investigate if and to what extent factions bind the party leader in choosing the platform. We find confirmation for the idea that party positions are linked to factional preferences. Overall, the party works as a ‘bounded oligarchy’. Furthermore, the electoral payoff of party unity increases the impact of factional constraints when general elections approach. In line with the cartel party theory, however, autonomous leaders who are directly elected by a wider selectorate can get rid of factional ties choosing more moderate and vote-maximizing platforms.     

Manipulating electoral laws in Singapore

The literature on electoral authoritarianism has drawn attention to the use of democratic electoral institutions for undemocratic gains. This paper adds to this body of work by showing how a sophisticated hegemonic party in Singapore manipulated its majoritarian electoral system to “manufacture” its legislative supermajority. By measuring the psychological and mechanical effects of the altered electoral system in Singapore, it shows how changes in the rules of the game boosted the incumbent's legislative dominance despite its declining vote shares in the late 1980s. It also offers new evidence to show how electoral manipulation create an uneven playing field with institutional constraints that penalize smaller parties and benefit the ruling, larger party.     

Dynamic approaches to government formation and the generic instability of decisive structures in Japan

This paper relaxes the “party as unitary actor” assumption that characterises much theoretical work on party competition and government formation. It first sketches some of the theoretical implications of assuming that legislators are free to defect from parties of which they are members, and to join other parties that might be willing to accept them. This leads to a dynamic legislative party system that is quite distinct from the type of party system assumed by most models, which remains essentially static between elections. Working from “office-seeking” assumptions about the motivations of legislators that seem very plausible in the Japanese case, it shows that such a dynamic party system is likely to be unstable, since there are generic gains to be derived from the fission and fusion of parties. The paper then moves on to explore the Japanese case in these terms. The Japanese party system is self-evidently dynamic and characterised by a high degree of flux, with legislative parties regularly splitting and fusing between elections. The evidence suggests that large parties that pass a certain size threshold can be attractors in the dynamic system, both offering benefits to and receiving them from defectors from other parties. In this way, a “near-majority” party can pass the majority threshold between elections, as happened with the Japanese LDP.     

Political parties and the transnational mobilisation of the emigrant vote

The relationship between political parties and voters is usually analysed in a national framework. However, the majority of states worldwide allow their emigrant citizens to have an absentee vote. This article analyses how parties confront the challenge of mobilising voters across borders. It presents an analytical framework for comparing the scope of party transnational mobilisation strategies across different electoral systems. Drawing on a contextualised qualitative analysis, the article analyses transnational electoral mobilisation of the emigrant vote in recent elections in Spain, France, Italy and Romania. The analysis shows that a cost–benefit analysis of electoral incentives explains the scope of transnational campaign efforts of many of the political parties. Yet the article also suggests locating the analysis of party strategies in the particular context of the transnational electoral field, including the high dispersion, uncertainty and volatility of the emigrant vote and the overlap between the electoral arenas among emigrants and at home.     

From Catch-all Politics to Cartelisation: The Political Economy of the Cartel Party

Adaptations to coordination problems endogenous to political parties have established the cartel party as the emerging equilibrium type in modern Western democracies. However, these factors alone are insufficient to maintain such an equilibrium given the threat of defection. That threat is mitigated by three factors: historical changes in party form, systemic changes in the global economy and changed ideas about governments. Together, these changes produce both a cartel of parties and the cartel party organisational form, without requiring overt conspiracy. These speculations are mapped onto actual experiences of the UK, the US and Sweden. The theory of the cartel party is advanced by emphasis on the 'cost of production' of policies and the constriction of the policy-space over which parties compete. We also explain why a cartel of parties might be stable, notwithstanding the temptation to defection often attributed to cartels as multi-player prisoners' dilemmas.     

Parliamentary and presidential elections in Mongolia, 2012 and 2013

The 2012 Mongolian parliamentary election was historical as a new mixed-member majoritarian system was implemented. Compared with 2008, or even 2004, the 2012 election outcome indicates an at least tentative disruption of the bipolarisation of electoral politics in Mongolia. However, unlike in the past when the fragmentation of the party system was caused by the parties of the so-called “democratic camp”, the latest split occurred within the so-called “post-communist camp”. The presidential election took place on 26 June 2013. Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj of the Democratic Party was elected president and for the first time since the democratic transition of 1990, most executive and legislative powers shifted to the Democratic Party.     

Beyond personal vote incentives: Dividing the vote in preferential electoral systems

Comparative studies of preferential electoral systems have paid much attention to the incentives for personalized instead of party-centered campaigns, but they have largely ignored how some of these systems allow “allocation errors” and so create incentives for parties to “manage” the vote and intraparty campaigns. We discuss how the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) and single transferable vote (STV) systems create these incentives, and we illustrate the degree to which they affect actual electoral results across seven preferential electoral systems. The analysis reveals statistically significant differences in the vote inequality among incumbent cohorts (members of the same party and district), indicating the strong influence of vote division incentives over candidate-centered electoral environments. The results also have important implications for comparative research on legislative turnover and the incumbency advantage.