Explaining the effective number of parties: Beyond the standard model

This study casts new light on the conditions determining the effective number of parties in elections. The state-of-the-art mostly considers the interaction between the permissiveness of the electoral system and social heterogeneity, labelled the standard model. This study argues that we should move beyond the standard model and also consider voters’ short term ideological preferences as well as the diversity of issues on the party system agenda. Moreover, the effects of these variables are expected to be conditioned by electoral system permissiveness. The hypotheses are examined on the basis of a longitudinal dataset containing information on 696 elections that took place in 79 countries between 1945 and 2011. Importantly, the hypotheses could only be confirmed on institutionalized party systems.     

The impact of motivational and contextual factors on turnout in first- and second-order elections

Based on voter survey from European election study 2009, we examine the impact of one individual-level motivational factor, i.e. interest in politics, and its interactions with institutional and contextual factors such as compulsory voting, electoral competition and the number of parties on participation in 2009 EP elections and previous national elections. The results show that political interest is more closely connected to turnout in second-order elections which are usually considered less salient. Correspondingly, also the contingent effect of compulsory voting and competition is more evident in EP elections. While compulsory voting substantially decreases the turnout gap between the most and least politically attentive voters in both types of elections, the moderating effect of competitiveness is found only in EP elections.     

Turnout in Germany in the course of time: Life cycle and cohort effects on electoral turnout from 1953 to 2049

The steadily rising share of older voters could lead to them gaining an ever increasing level of political representation compared to younger voters not only because of the imbalance of numbers between the young and the old, but also because turnout rates among the old have always been above-average. The latter argument only applies if the so-called life cycle effect is assumed to be dominant. However, diverse socialisation backgrounds, captured by the cohort effect, also have to be taken into account. It is also unclear what the interplay of these two effects of time implies for future aggregate turnout. Focusing on the German case, we base our analyses on the Repräsentative Wahlstatistik (Representative Electoral Statistic, RES) and population forecasts to estimate consequences of the demographic shifts for all federal elections from 1953 until today, as well as for future elections. First, we calculate life cycle, cohort and period effects on turnout for previous elections by using cohort analysis; second, we apply these net effects to the future age distribution under certain assumptions concerning life cycle and cohort effects. Our results show that the recent decline in turnout is in particular due to negative period effects and (in West Germany) to a minor extent also due to consequences of cohort replacement, whereas changes in the age structure have had a positive effect on turnout since 1990 in both parts of Germany. Additionally, our forecasts suggest that turnout rates will decline and that the over-representation of the old will continue until around 2030 and diminish afterwards in a 'greying' population.     

The Seat Product Model of the effective number of parties: A case for applied political science

This paper extends Taagepera's (2007) Seat Product Model and shows that the effective number of seat-wining parties and vote winning parties can both be predicted with institutional variables alone, namely district magnitude, assembly size, and upper-tier seat share. The expected coefficients are remarkably stable across different samples. Including the further information of ethnic diversity in the models hardly improves the estimate of the effective number of parties, and thus the institutions-only models are preferable on the grounds of parsimony and the applicability to electoral-system design or “engineering”.     

Compulsory voting,turnout, and support for left-wing parties: The case of Australia

Does compulsory voting and the higher voter turnout that it produces increase support for left-wing parties? An influential and highly cited study provides strong evidence for such an effect in Australia. However, several quasi-experimental studies find little support for it in Europe. Given these conflicting findings, this study reanalyzes the crucial Australian case. It uses a unique, more fine-grained district-level dataset (N=4,219) and difference-in-differences designs to more directly test the assumed causal mechanism between compulsory voting and left-wing party support. Overall, it finds little evidence for the commonly assumed positive direct effect of turnout on Labor’s vote share. Further analyses identify an indirect effect of turnout – Labor’s decision to run candidates in more districts under compulsory voting – as an alternative mechanism and electoral system change and the Great Depression as potential confounding factors. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the political consequences of compulsory voting.     

A note on electoral competition and turnout in run-off electoral systems: Taking into account both endogeneity and attenuation bias

In this short note, I propose an identification strategy to estimate the causal effect of expected electoral competition on voter turnout in run-off systems taking into account both endogeneity and attenuation bias. I find that electoral competition significantly raises turnout. Not addressing attenuation bias yields estimates that are biased by up to 50%.     

The legacy of lethargy: How elections to the European Parliament depress turnout

Why has turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections remained so low, despite attempts to expand the Parliament’s powers? One possible answer is that because little is at stake in these second-order elections only those with an established habit of voting, acquired in previous national elections, can be counted on to vote. Others argue that low turnout is an indication of apathy or even scepticism towards Europe. This article conducts a critical test of the “little at stake” hypothesis by focusing on a testable implication: that turnout at these elections will be particularly low on the part of voters not yet socialized into habitual voting. This proposition is examined using both time-series cross-section analyses and a regression discontinuity design. Our findings show that EP elections depress turnout as they inculcate habits of non-voting, with long-term implications for political participation in EU member states.     

Distinguishing territorial structure from electoral adventurism: The distinct sources of static and dynamic nationalization

Estimates of static nationalization do not always reflect stark qualitative differences between parties. We use a research design oriented around a comparison of sharply different parties—the unstable Democratic Left in Ecuador and the stable Broad Front in Uruguay—to develop the distinctiveness of static and dynamic nationalization. Snapshot measures that only consider a single election suggest that both parties are poorly statically nationalized; but we show that the former case is highly statically nationalized, and that the observed territorial differences arise because it is poorly dynamically nationalized. We adopt the linear mixed modeling approach to reduce the bias in extant estimators. The approach is also informative about the sources of variance in a party's territorial support: relatively stable district attributes account for static nationalization, while features unique to the electoral cycle account for dynamic nationalization. Substantively, our study alters conclusions about parties operating in highly unstable electoral contexts.     

The classification of electoral systems: Bringing legislators back in

It is widely assumed that electoral institutions shape politicians' incentive for personal vote-seeking, with important behavioral and policy consequences. Yet, there is a surprising lack of consensus on how to compare real-world electoral institutions. Using new data this paper examines how legislators' own perception of their electoral incentives in fifteen democracies correspond to some of the most seminal classification schemes in political science. Our survey of 2326 legislators – the empirically broadest study of personal vote orientation so far conducted – demonstrates that legislators do not always understand electoral incentives in the same way scholarly rankings do, highlighting the need for scholars of political institutions to justify their choice of classification scheme. If not, an entire body of literature may be misguided.     

Protesting with the ballot: Diffusion of methods of electoral protest in Spain

This paper shows the pattern of diffusion of a tool of protest – blank and null voting (BNV)– in the context of Spanish national elections. It shows how the 2004 protest mobilization by Batasuna (a Basque nationalist party) predicts null voting by identifying the relationship of this form of protest with both the level of grievance of the population and the political resources of the mobilizers. The paper then demonstrates that this large and visible use of a protest tactic is followed by a heterogeneous diffusion process after the main mobilized protest event and beyond the supporters of the original mobilizer. In the 2008 national election, across Spain, citizens with grievances toward the political system and, most importantly, with political affinity with the initiators were the ones to update their individual protest repertoire with this electoral protest tool.     

The hierarchies of age-period-cohort research: Political context and the development of generational turnout patterns

Voters that come of age at roughly the same time share common influences because of the specific political context during their formative years. We can therefore assume the errors in a model explaining their political behavior to be dependent. Recent advances in social statistical analysis of age-period-cohort (APC) effects propose the use of hierarchical modeling in combination with repeated cross-sectional survey design to solve this problem. We apply these random-intercept models to assess the impact of the political context on the development of generational turnout patterns, assuming that cohorts that grew up in a highly-politicized context have a higher propensity to turnout to vote despite of any age or period effects.     

Competing loyalties in electoral reform: An analysis of the U.S. electoral college

A central tenet in the electoral systems subfield is that parties, when in power and motivated by partisan interest, seek desired outcomes via the strategic adoption of electoral rules. Such a focus, however, omits a key point: electoral rules also distribute power among geographic units. If, within a party, the partisan and geographic interests of some members conflict, then the canonical relationship between partisanship and rule choice may be conditional. The U.S. electoral college provides an opportunity to test for such intra-party variation, because it advantages some states over others and thus makes salient geographic allegiances. Using an original dataset on one reform proposal—the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC)—I find evidence of competing loyalties. Although NPVIC advances furthest when Democrats control state lawmaking, a state's status as a swing—but not as an overrepresented—state weakens the relationship to the point where even Democrats are unlikely to aid NPVIC.     

From voter ID to party ID: How political parties affect perceptions of election fraud in the U.S.

This paper uses a survey experiment to assess what individuals understand about election fraud and under what circumstances they see it as a problem. I argue that political parties are central to answering both these questions. Results from the 2011 CCES survey suggest respondents are able to differentiate between the relative incentives of Democrats and Republicans where fraud tactics are concerned, but whether voters see these tactics as problematic is heavily influenced by partisan bias. The results show little support for the notion that partisan ideology drives fraud assessments, and suggest support for the idea that individual concerns for fraud are shaped a desire for their preferred candidate to win. These results offer insights that might be applied more broadly to questions of perceptions of electoral integrity and procedural fairness in democracies.     

Turning your back on the EU. The role of Eurosceptic parties in the 2014 European Parliament elections

This paper analyses how disaffection with the EU influenced individuals' likelihood of turning out to vote and of casting a vote for a Eurosceptic party in the 2014 EP elections, and how these relationships were moderated by the Eurosceptic partisan supply of each country. We argue that the degree to which political parties oppose European integration, as well as the ideological leaning of Eurosceptic parties, should influence both the likelihood of disaffected citizens turning out to vote, and their likelihood of voting for a Eurosceptic party. Our empirical findings show that, in the presence of a party that is strongly opposed to European integration, disaffected citizens are more likely to turn out to vote and to vote for a Eurosceptic party provided that this party also shares their ideological leaning in the left-right dimension. These results indicate that Eurosceptic parties are important actors for the politicization of the European integration conflict and for the Europeanization of EP elections, but, at the same time, they suggest that opposition to European integration is subordinate to the traditional left-right conflict.     

Lifecycle changes and the activation of habitual voting: The case of Costa Rica

Under circumstances of substantial turnout reductions, the development of electoral habits may constitute a key factor to attenuate or even revert such tendency in the long term. Using a unique dataset I examine the extent to which age and lifecycle changes mediate the effects of prior turnout (habituation) on future electoral behavior. Three findings are highlighted. First, age and turnout_t-1 reinforce each other and boost turnout to higher rates. Second, even under favorable circumstances, residential mobility still can disrupt individuals' voting patterns, regardless of whether their behavior was already habituated. Finally, habitual voting is activated by the time individuals participate in their fourth election, and the sooner they cast their first vote.     

Electoral entry and success of ethnic minority parties in central and eastern Europe: A hierarchical selection model

The paper examines determinants of electoral entry and success of ethnic minority parties in central and eastern Europe. The application of a hierarchical selection model shows that the strategic entry of minority parties depends on their expected electoral success due both to observed and unobserved factors. Drawing on formal models of electoral entry, the electoral success of new (or niche) parties is expected to be influenced by the costs of entry (determined by electoral thresholds) and the potential for electoral support. The latter depends on the reactions of political competitors and electoral demand, measured here as the size of ethnic groups and the saliency of ethnic issues. In line with these expectations, parties only run if they can expect electoral support sufficient to pass the electoral threshold. This finding would have been overlooked by a naïve model of electoral success which does not take self-selection into account.     

Fertile soil: explaining variation in the success of Green parties

Comparative political science has largely ignored the marked cross-national variation in Green party electoral performance. This article uses a unique aggregate dataset of 347 parliamentary elections from 32 countries over the course of 45 years to test competing theories about the causes of Green party success. The findings show that voter demand, institutions and mainstream party strategy all affect the Green vote. Green parties do well in societies with post-materialist conflicts caused by high levels of wealth or the presence of a tangible environmental dispute. The article also shows that regional decentralisation helps Green parties, but electoral systems have little effect on their vote share. Most importantly, it demonstrates that the impact of mainstream party strategy on Green electoral strength is dependent on the age of the Green party. While mainstream parties can undermine young Green parties by adopting the environmental issue, this effect is reversed once the Greens have survived a number of elections. Thus ‘accommodative’ mainstream party strategies eventually boost the Green vote by increasing the salience of the key Green issue.     

The downstream consequences of long waits: How lines at the precinct depress future turnout

Researchers have increasingly paid attention to the impact that the administrative component of elections has on voter behavior. Existing research has focused almost exclusively on the effect that legal changes--such as voter identification laws--have on turnout. This paper extends our understanding of the electoral process by exploring how one aspect of the precinct experience--standing in line to vote--can shape the turnout behavior of voters in subsequent elections. I demonstrate that for every additional hour a voter waits in line to vote, their probability of voting in the subsequent election drops by 1 percentage point. To arrive at these estimates, I analyze vote history files using a combination of exact matching and placebo tests to test the identification assumptions. I then leverage an unusual institutional arrangement in the City of Boston and longitudinal data from Florida to show that the result also holds at the precinct level. The findings in this paper have important policy implications for administrative changes that may impact line length, such as voter identification requirements and precinct consolidation. They also suggest that racial asymmetries in precinct wait times contribute to the gap in turnout rates between white and non-white voters.     

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.     

Bargaining in legislatures,portfolio allocation,and the electoral costs of governing

What motivates political parties in the legislative arena? Existing legislative bargaining models stress parties’ office and policy motivations. A particularly important question concerns how parties in coalition government agree the distribution of cabinet seats. This article adds to the portfolio allocation literature by suggesting that future electoral considerations affect bargaining over the allocation of cabinet seats in multi-party cabinets. Some parties are penalised by voters for participating in government, increasing the attractiveness of staying in opposition. This ‘cost of governing’ shifts their seat reservation price – the minimum cabinet seats demanded in return for joining the coalition. Results of a randomised survey experiment of Irish legislators support our expectation, demonstrating that political elites are sensitive to future electoral losses when contemplating the distribution of cabinet seats. This research advances our understanding of how parties’ behaviour between elections is influenced by anticipation of voters’ reactions.