An Opposing View of Scotland's Ballot Paper Problem: Arbuthnott and the Government had the Right Idea

The May 2007 Scottish Parliament election used a different ballot format from the one used in the previous elections, one that combined the regional and constituency votes onto one ballot paper (two separate papers were used before). Because there were many more invalid votes in 2007, the problem was blamed on the two‐vote ballot paper, which was recommended by the Arbuthnott Commission to prevent misunderstandings about what the two votes were for. Other places that use the mixed‐member proportional (MMP) electoral system tend to use a two‐vote ballot paper, with Germany and New Zealand seeing low levels of invalid votes. While the decision to revert to two separate papers in future Scottish Parliament elections might reduce the number of invalid votes, the price could be more confusion about the proportional nature of the electoral system unless public education improves significantly.     

Constituency campaigning in parliamentary systems with preferential voting: Is there a paradox?

This paper sets out to show whether constituency campaign effects exist, particularly in the context of a preferential electoral system such as Australia's. Data from the 1993 Australian Election Study suggest that, despite the best efforts of the candidates, local campaigning has a very limited impact on the vote. The paper considers a range of possible explanations for this limited impact: displacement, MPs' perceptions of their role, sources of campaign information, the importance of party labels in Australia, party discipline. It concludes with an explanation for the apparent paradox of why candidates bother campaigning when it does not make a difference to their vote.     

Comparisons among electoral systems: Distinguishing between localism and candidate-centered politics

Carey and Shugart (1995) offer a four component composite index of “incentives to cultivate a personal vote.” We argue that this index, while tapping important aspects of electoral system choice, is best regarded as encompassing two distinct dimensions: degree of party-centeredness of the electoral system, on the one hand, and incentives for “parochial” behavior on the part of legislators, on the other. Also, while we have no problem with the three indicators used by Carey and Shugart to measure party-centeredness; to measure parochial incentives we prefer to use a new measure, E (Grofman, 1999a) of the size of a legislator's electoral constituency, rather than using district magnitude, m, as a proxy for a the size of a legislator's geographic constituency, as Carey and Shugart do. In the conclusion to the paper we argue that the degree of similarity between any two electoral systems will depend upon the research question at issue, and that the expected degree of proportionality of election results is only one of the many political consequences of electoral laws to which we ought to be paying attention.     

The right to vote and nomadic voter enrolment

What model of voter enrolment is appropriate for states with nomadic minority populations? The present paper examines this question with reference to an equality-based, moral right to vote and considers four models that track some of the different institutional strategies that have been developed by states with transient populations. The paper shows that the right to vote is compatible neither with a model that makes permanent residence in a constituency an absolute condition for voter enrolment and so excludes nomads from the electoral process, nor with a model that enables nomadic voter enrolment but restricts the number of nomads that can enrol in a single constituency. But the right is, subject to certain caveats, consistent with a model that enables nomads to enrol in a constituency of their choice and, as well, with a model that enables nomads to enrol and vote in a distinct, non-territorial constituency.     

The importance of personal vote intentions for the responsiveness of legislators: A field experiment

Individual legislators can be important agents of political representation. However, this is contingent upon their responsiveness to constituency requests. To study this topic, an increasing number of studies use field experiments in which the researcher sends a standardized email to legislators on behalf of a constituent. In this paper, we report the results of an original field experiment of this genre with the members of the German Bundestag. Supplementing previous research, we explore whether constituency requests in which voters mention a personal vote intention (rather than a partisan vote intention) increase legislators’ responsiveness, and how this treatment relates to electoral system's incentives. We find that legislators treated with a personal vote intention were more likely to respond (67 per cent) and respond faster than those treated with a partisan vote intention (59 per cent). However, we also show that the treatment effect is moderated by electoral system incentives: it is larger for nominally-elected legislators than for those elected via a party list. Our results suggest that electoral system's incentives matter for legislators’ responsiveness only when constituents explicitly signals an intention to cast a personal vote.     

Electoral Institutions and Distributive Policies in Parliamentary Systems: An Application to State Aid Measures in EU Countries

Electoral institutions should systematically affect the propensity of a country to rely and spend on distributive measures. Supporting evidence is however still rare because of the difficulty in finding comparable cross-national data, the employment of dummy variables to account for the electoral systems, and the failure to recognise the interacting effects of different electoral rules on policy outcomes. Employing national data on state aid expenditure and a number of measures across European Union countries, the article provides evidence that legislators elected in higher magnitude districts spend less. More interestingly, it shows the interlocking policy effects of electoral institutions. Where high district magnitude is combined with ballot control, party-based voting and pooling, these rules conjunctly dampen politicians’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote and lead to lower spending on, and use of, distributive measures. Where high district magnitude is not combined with these rules, results are inconclusive. With one exception though, if leaders do not have control over the ballot rank, higher magnitude increases reliance on distributive measures. Results are robust to several alternative political-economy explanations of fiscal policy outcomes.     

Ideology,economic interests,and congressional roll-call voting: Partisan instability and Bank of the United States legislation, 1811–1816

We introduce a wrinkle into the study of Congressional roll-call voting by focusing on a period of partisan instability in American History: the Era of Good Feelings. During deviations from normal periods of two-party rule, the dominant model of voting behavior, the ideological model, loses precision in correctly classifying individual votes. We contend that a “pooled” voting model – comprised of both ideological and economic variables – performs better than the basic ideological model during these unstable periods. When party mechanisms no longer constrain or structure actions, we believe the “electoral connection” is especially important, and, thus, economic-based constituency factors must be included in models of vote choice. To explore this belief, we focus on a particularly contentious issue – the rechartering of the Bank of the United States (BUS) – which was dealt with before and after a partisan decomposition occurred in the House. Using measures developed by Poole and Rosenthal (1985, 1997), we find that the vote on the First BUS in 1811, during a stable partisan period, is organized along ideological lines. By 1816, the two-party system collapsed, and we do not find the vote on the Second BUS to exhibit much ideological structure. Conversely, we find that our pooled model predicts the vote on the Second BUS quite well, providing a substantial improvement in fit over the basic ideological classification.     

新中国选举制度六十年发展的回顾与思考

新中国共颁布了两部选举法。其中第二部选举法经历了四次修改、一次补充。建国60年来,我国的选举制度取得了重大进展：享有选举权的主体从有限发展到普遍;选举权的平等性从着眼于实质平等逐渐向统一实质与形式平等方向发展;从记名投票发展到无记名投票;直接选举范围从基层扩大到县级,并逐步向高层迈进;从等额选举发展到差额选举。但选举制度还存在一些问题,需要进一步进行完善,以有力地促进民主政治建设。     

Proportional Representation and the Fortunes of Right-Wing Extremist Parties

This article examines the relationship between electoral systems and extremist political parties. Focusing on the West European parties of the extreme right, it first investigates the extent to which district magnitude and electoral formula - the two main dimensions of electoral systems - influence the scores of these parties. It then considers the overall impact of the disproportionality of the electoral system. The article concludes that whilst proportional electoral systems do undeniably make it easier for extremist parties to gain legislative representation, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they promote extremism. Instead, the share of the vote going to extremist parties appears unrelated to the type of electoral system employed.     

The electoral effectiveness of constituency campaigning in the 2010 British general election: The ‘triumph’ of Labour?

This article establishes a model of likely campaign effectiveness, before examining the intensity of constituency campaigning at the 2010 general election in Britain and its subsequent impact on electoral outcomes, using both aggregate and individual level data. It shows that constituency campaigning yielded benefits in varying degrees for all three main parties and that Labour’s constituency campaign efforts were effective despite the electoral context, and ultimately affected the overall outcome of the election. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the circumstances under which campaigns are likely to be more or less effective, and provide further evidence that a carefully managed campaign stands the most chance of delivering tangible electoral payoffs.     

Electoral Cycles and Turnout in Multilevel Electoral Systems

This article differentiates between three ways in which electoral cycles may impact on participation in elections. First, it identifies a simultaneity effect – turnout increases to the extent that elections are held on the same date. A second effect is voter fatigue – turnout declines when another election has just been held before. Poll voting is a third effect. It suggests that turnout increases when another election is to be held shortly after. On the basis of a novel dataset that includes 2,915 regional elections held in 317 regions and 18 countries from 1945 to 2009, evidence is found for all three effects. The results point towards a basic dilemma in multilevel electoral systems: increase turnout by holding elections on the same date but accept high vote congruence across elections or decouple election cycles, which decreases vote congruence but lowers participation rates.     

Electoral registration and the control of votes: The case of Chile

We investigate how the employment relationship may lead employers to control the voting behavior and to induce the electoral registration of their workers. Forced registration and the control of votes become feasible when voting behavior is observable, as in open ballot elections. Workers whose vote is controlled are more likely to be registered as compared to other eligible voters, increasing their impact on electoral outcomes. Increasing the secrecy of the vote (for instance with the adoption of a secret ballot) significantly reduces the control of votes. Electoral registration, however, remains biased as long as the probability of voting behavior disclosure induces less ideologically motivated voters to comply with the political preference of the employer. We provide empirical support for the predictions of the model examining the effects of the introduction of the secret ballot in Chile in 1958.     

Ballot position and election results: New evidence from a natural experiment

It is well-known that candidates listed first on the ballot paper tend to receive more votes than other candidates. However, experimental studies that confirm this truism mostly stem from first-past-the-post systems. Do we also find ballot position effects in PR systems where voters may vote for a party instead of a specific candidate? We investigate a natural experiment in Danish national elections involving more than 9,000 candidates on almost 100 different ballot papers. Our findings show that ballot positions, indeed, have a causal effect on election results in PR systems. Since Danish national elections constitute a least-likely case, our findings indicate that ballot position effects are much more empirically relevant than suggested by existing research.     

POLITICIANS AND ELECTORAL LAWS: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF PARTY COMPETITION IN IRELAND

Abstract At one level this paper constitutes an electoral anthropology of party competition in Ireland. Focusing on one constituency, over three decades, the analysis reveals the complex and intertwined patterns of inter-party and intra-party competition that characterize Irish electoral politics and which, now institutionalized, contribute to the conservative cast of the country's politics. At a second level the argument points to the importance of the electoral system (here Proportional Representation by the single transferable vote) in structuring the behaviors of politicians who must work within it. In this regard an electoral system affects both the quality and quantity of competition, the character of party organization, and the capacity of a political system to recruit talent.     

Does electoral competition affect politicians’ trade policy preferences? Evidence from Japan

This study examines the effect of electoral competition on politicians’ trade policy preferences using candidate observations from the House of Representatives in Japan’s 2012 general election. The study clarifies the effects of constituency size and the electoral strength of constituencies on candidates’ political stances. The empirical results provide evidence that politicians’ preferences for trade policy are sensitive to electoral pressure, but their reactions differ depending on the characteristics of each constituency. The results reveal that for a broad constituency with a large concentration of agricultural workers, election candidates are more likely to support protectionism than their counterparts running in a narrow constituency. For city district election candidates, electoral strength measured by the vote margin significantly affects their trade policy preferences. Candidates in close elections are more likely to be protectionist than candidates elected by a substantial majority, suggesting that electoral pressures deter politicians from supporting trade liberalization.     

No (Parliamentary) Gender Gap Please, We're British

Although the number of women MPs has increased in recent years, there continues to be a pronounced gender gap in the British House of Commons. Most attempts to close this gap have involved political parties selecting candidates on the basis of some form of electoral gender quota, but quotas are problematic, and more radical steps need to be taken if we are serious about women being equally represented in the Mother of Parliaments. This article proposes a possible solution that accords as far as possible with Britain's governing and representative traditions: the modification of current electoral arrangements so that voters in each constituency vote for and are represented by both a male and a female MP.     

Voter turnout and district-level competitiveness in mixed-member electoral systems

It has been suggested that one of the reasons why majoritarian electoral systems are associated with lower voter turnout in comparison to proportional electoral systems is that citizens in uncompetitive districts (“safe seats”) are not motivated to vote. This study brings this thesis into a new context and tests it with unique data. Mixed-member electoral systems have both majoritarian and proportional components. The relative importance of these components differs between mixed-member proportional (MMP) and mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) systems. I argue that, due to this difference, the impact of district-level competitiveness on turnout is stronger in MMM than in MMP. An analysis of district-level electoral data from four countries confirms this hypothesis. Findings from this study advance our theoretical understanding of voter participation and also of the functioning of mixed-member electoral systems.     

Party knowledge and candidate knowledge: constituency campaigning and voting and the 1997 British General Election

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the electoral impact of constituency campaigns in British General Elections. Much is now known about the electoral consequences of local campaigns on parties’ constituency vote shares. Yet more remains to be discovered about the impacts of these local campaigns on voters’ knowledge of parties and candidates. Analysis of data from the 1997 British General Election demonstrates that the local campaign is associated with improved voter knowledge of who is standing for each party in a constituency, which is, in its turn, associated with an increased chance of voting for the party in the election, other things being equal. Campaign efforts at different scales, from the national to the local, have different impacts on voters’ knowledge.     

The Geographical Challenge: How Winning Elections Has Become Much More Difficult for Labour

Labour won fewer seats in 2015 than in 2010, even though its share of the vote increased. The decline in representation was occasioned by three features of the electoral geography of the 2015 contest—a collapse in Labour support in Scotland, a particularly strong Conservative advance in marginal seats and the fact that in England and Wales Labour's vote rose most strongly in seats that the party already held. As a result, Labour's vote became markedly less efficiently distributed than that of the Conservatives—a development that could make it very difficult for the party to win an overall majority at the next election. Meanwhile, the redrawing of constituency boundaries that is currently in train will make winning a majority even more difficult. However, the next election could well produce a hung parliament, and the party should be prepared for that eventuality.     

Who would vote NOTA? Explaining a ‘none of the above’ choice in eight countries

In this study, we investigate who would vote ‘none of the above’ (NOTA) if this were available on the ballot paper using original data from eight European countries. In particular, we examine whether NOTA would be used by abstainers and voters to protest within the electoral process. We also test whether socioeconomic factors and specific and diffuse support for democracy and its institutions correlate with a NOTA vote. We find that having NOTA on the ballot would reduce invalid balloting more than abstention and much more than protest party voting. Our results also suggest that NOTA is related to socioeconomic status, political interest, political knowledge and distrust in political institutions and authorities, but not to broadly undemocratic attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the increasingly large amounts of abstention and invalid voting, as well as the growing distrust of political institutions, in democratic countries. They also hold lessons for electoral reformers.