Political parties, electoral systems and democracy: A cross-national analysis

Abstract.  The number of political parties and the type of electoral system may impact the level of democratic functioning within a government. Models are used to explore whether the number of political parties increases a country's democracy score on the POLITY IV measure of democracy, and whether countries with proportional representation electoral systems have higher democracy scores than those without. Multiple regression analysis reveals that countries with proportional electoral systems have higher democracy scores. Countries involved in the Third Wave of democracy may find the choice of an electoral system among the most important issues in structuring a democratic government.     

Democratic 'Misfit'? Conceptions of Civil Society Participation in France and the European Union

The European Union's attempts to improve its democratic character increasingly often lead to debates about how to include civil society organizations in its decision-making processes. However, this interpretation of participatory democracy seems at odds with democratic traditions in a number of member states. Among those, France is said to be at the diametrically opposite end of the EU democratization debate spectrum. French democratic thought is based on government through electoral representation. The aim of this article is to analyze both theoretically and empirically the discourse and participatory processes in both the EU and France. While normative approaches to democratic patterns in the EU and French political debate show important differences, empirical evidence suggests that the misfit between the European and French conception of democracy is less developed than one might believe.     

Elections and Representation in Local Government: A Victorian Case Study

This article examines the application of different views of representation in the electoral systems at local government level: interest, corporate and mirror representation. The electoral framework underpins the process of representation, influencing both who are eligible to become voters and how their votes are collected and counted. The paper examines the interrelationship between representation and the electoral framework in local government in Victoria. We use a historical analysis, and identify a long period of interest representation; a short, relatively recent period of corporate representation; and an attempt to introduce some elements of mirror representation. We conclude by arguing that local electoral reform needs to take into account the multiple meanings of representation.     

Giving Coalitions a Good Name

Opponents of electoral reform believe that proportional representation (PR) will mean the end of stable and responsible government in Britain. Coalitions between political parties (the likely result of PR) are portrayed as essentially alien to our political culture, leading to unstable government and an abandonment of political principles by deals in 'smoke-filled rooms'. This article challenges such perceptions. The example of hung local government provides powerful support to those who argue electoral reform need not be a recipe for sordid and unstable government.     

Inequalities in Non-institutionalised Forms of Political Participation: A Multi-level Analysis of 25 countries

Various studies suggest that while institutionalised and electoral forms of political participation are in decline in Western societies, non-institutionalised forms of participation (like demonstrating, political consumerism or signing petitions) are on the rise. However, this expansion of the political action repertoire of citizens also entails the question of equal participation opportunities. It can be argued that contemporary ideals of democratic participation assume an equal representation of citizens' interests. In this article we analyse the equality of participation patterns using comparative data from the 2004 ISSP survey. Our results suggest that non-institutionalised forms of participation increase patterns of inequality due to education but strongly reduce or even reverse gender and age inequalities. As such, both institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms of participation have specific (dis)advantages from the perspective of preserving equal access to democratic decision-making procedures.     

A multilevel puzzle: Migrants’ voting rights in national and local elections

How does international migration impact the composition of the demos? Constitutional doctrines and democratic theories suggest contrasting responses: an insular one excludes both non‐citizen immigrants and citizen‐emigrants; a deterritorialised one includes all citizens wherever they reside; a postnational one includes all residents and only these. This article argues that none of these predicted responses represents the dominant pattern of democratic adaptation, which is instead a level‐specific expansion of the national franchise to include non‐resident citizens and of the local franchise to include non‐citizen residents. This is demonstrated by analysing an original dataset on voting rights in 31 European and 22 American countries, and outlining a level‐sensitive normative theory of citizenship that provides support for this pattern as well as a critical benchmark for current franchise policies. The findings can be summarised in two inductive generalisations: (1) Voting rights today no longer depend on residence at the national level and on citizenship of the respective state at the local level; (2) Voting rights do, however, generally depend on citizenship of the respective state at the national level and on residence at the local level. In the article, these are called the patterns of franchise ‘expansion’ and ‘containment’. The former supports the idea of widespread level‐specific expansion of the franchise and refutes the insular view of the demos. The latter signals corresponding level‐specific restrictions, which defeats over‐generalised versions of deterritorialised or postnational conceptions of the demos. In order to test how robust this finding is, cases are analysed where the dominant patterns of expansion have been resisted and where unexpected expansion has occurred. With regard to the former, the article identifies constitutional and political obstacles to voting rights expansion in particular countries. With regard to the latter, the article shows that even where national voting rights have been extended to non‐citizen residents, containment remains strong through indirect links to citizenship.     

Concurrent Elections and Voter Turnout: The Effect of the De-linking of State Elections on Electoral Participation in India's Parliamentary Polls, 1971–2004

This article examines the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971. According to conventional wisdom in the comparative literature on electoral turnout, separate elections to multiple levels and/or branches of government should depress turnout relative to co-temporal polls, ceteris paribus . The evidence from Indian elections provides strong confirmation for this hypothesis. This suggests that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.     

Democratic Performance of Parties and Legitimacy in Europe

This article analyses the development of legitimacy across 20 European democracies (1990–2010). The claim is that the democratic performance of parties affects levels of legitimacy. A conceptual and empirical discussion is presented to establish this relationship. Democratic performance is characterised by trusting parties to be responsive to the electorate and responsible in government. Legitimacy is defined as a composite measure representing satisfaction with parties, compliance with the rule of law as well as voter turnout and willingness to protest. The responsiveness of parties appears less representative on public concerns and governmental responsibility appears closer to party interests than to the general interest. Hence, a ‘democratic deficit’ seems to have emerged across Europe, manifested by more electoral volatility, new parties and alternation in government and lower survival rates of governments. This negatively affects trust in parties, parliament and government efficacy. Hence, party behaviour has not strongly contributed to political legitimacy since the 1990s.     

Mapping established democracies: Integrated data on parties,elections and cabinets

Work on democratic delegation needs coherent and integrated recording of parties, elections and cabinets to study aspects of democratic representation such as electoral dynamics, cabinet formation and policy making. In this article, we present the methodological design of the ParlGov database and demonstrate how its operationalization of parties, election results and cabinets adds to a better understanding of political representation. The most recent version of the database includes 1177 parties, 735 elections (580 national, 155 European Parliament) and 1067 cabinets for democratic elections in 37 established democracies from 1945 to 2015. With this information we provide a definition of relevant political parties, a systematic recording of electoral results including electoral alliances and an adjustment to the definition of cabinets to account for potentially short lived cabinets. A replication of a prominent study by Hix and Marsh (2007) on second-order elections to the European Parliament (EP) demonstrates the added value of an integrated data source for a better understanding of electoral dynamics.     

Electoral incentives and distributive politics in young democracies: Evidence from Chile

How do electoral incentives and institutional constraints vary as democracies consolidate? Are incumbents more inclined to behave opportunistically during transitions, or when the rules of the game are well established? Using Chile as a case study and exploiting panel data on public works investment at the municipal level, the article examines if the strategies to obtain electoral rewards have changed over time. From the first democratic elections and until the constitutional reforms of 2005, those municipalities where the coalition government won in national and local elections were systematically privileged before municipal polls. After the reforms, we find no sign of partisan preference but investment kept on rising during ballot years, indicative of the persistence of political budget cycles. Indeed, we identify stronger cycles as democracy was consolidated. The article concludes discussing the role played by institutional constraints and incentives shaping distributive politics.     

Political Mobilisation,Political Participation and the Power of the Vote

This article proposes a framework to recast our thinking about political participation. The approach adopted insists on the role of collective actors and their agents – the political elites – in the democratic process and, by implication, in determining the amount and forms of individual political participation. The proposed framework builds on a simple model of representative government and introduces some major changes in the political context which have become ever more conspicuous in the course of the last 30 years, and which are substantially modifying the conditions for conventional (electoral) and unconventional political participation. Prominent among these changes are the increasing role of the media in politics, and the decline of party control over the voters. These changes tend to enhance both electoral and non-electoral forms of participation. Another set of contemporary institutional changes reduces the electoral accountability of political decision-makers, with expected consequences that are more ambiguous for both electoral and non-electoral participation.     

Assessing the Composition and Diversity of the Australian Interest Group System

Any democratic society requires mechanisms for citizens to have effective political voice. Clearly, political parties provide a key channel for expressing views and preferences. However, organised interests provide another important mechanism for such representation. A crucial question in this regard is whether the interest group system is capable of ensuring the representation of a variety of public and private interests. Resolving these debates requires data that map the terrain and also are attentive to organisational diversity. This article takes up this challenge through exploring the composition and diversity of the Australian system of organised interests, using a new data set based on the Directory of Australian Associations. This system‐level approach delivers important insights into the nature of the Australian interest group system, as well as provides a framework for subsequent work interpreting and contextualising advocacy activities of particular groups, or lobbying dynamics in specific policy domains.     

Mobile Capital, Democratic Institutions, and the Public Economy in Advanced Industrial Societies

This article addresses the following questions. Is international capital mobility systematically related to reductions in the size of the public economy, as globalization theory suggests? Alternatively, do democratic institutions and processes shape the ways in which internationalization affects national policies? Specifically, I argue that the effects of capital mobility on the scope of the public economy should be conditioned by the institutional forms of societal interest representation and the formal organization of decision-making authority within the polity. Utilizing econometric analysis of 1964–1993 data from 16 nations, I find that international capital mobility has few direct effects on the scope of the public economy. However, configurations of democratic institutions fundamentally shape the domestic policy impacts of capital mobility. Where social corporatism and inclusive electoral institutions are strong and where decision-making authority within the polity is concentrated, international capital mobility is either unrelated to the scope of the public economy or positively associated with total public spending, social transfers, and public consumption. In institutional contexts of pluralist interest and exclusive electoral representation, and in polities where decision-making is dispersed, rises in capital mobility are systematically associated with rollbacks of the public sector.     

Sustainable local democracy

To identify what is needed to sustain local democracy we need a model of democratic government and an idea of the kind of social and economic context that is supportive of democracy. Local democracy requires a combination of a liberal democratic model of local government and the prerequisites of democratic stability: economic development, equality, political culture and the development of civil society. However, a number of factors, non-local as well as local, may undermine local government and local democracy, especially centralization, economic decisions, external conflicts, dependency on civil servants, the dilution of elected representation, formalistic participation, skewed representation, class conflict and official attitudes. However, democratic local government can contribute to economic development, the reduction of inequality, a democratic political culture and the development of civil society, thereby strengthening local democracy.     

Lords Reform: Some Inconvenient Truths

The failure of the Coalition government's attempt to reform the House of Lords has by no means taken further reform off the political agenda. The commitment to installing an elected upper chamber is still widely shared across the political spectrum, on the basis of perceptions that the House of Lords lacks democratic legitimacy. Against this view, this article considers recent literature upon non‐electoral representation, deliberative democracy and bicameralism, which together highlight the possibility of an unelected second chamber playing a legitimate role within a wider (democratic) system of government. The article then considers the House of Lords from this perspective, reflecting on changes in the upper chamber since the 1999 reforms and evaluating its role within the wider political system. The paper concludes by suggesting that political debate should focus upon small‐scale reforms to ensure that the Lords becomes more effective, representative and legitimate, within the constraints of its present role.     

Introduction: Issue Congruence and Political Responsiveness

It has long been realised that democratic governance requires a two-way flow of influence. Governments must be able to respond to what people want and people must be able to react to what governments do. These preconditions for democratic governance have been central to two research traditions on political representation. One of these, the responsible party approach, views policy change as a consequence of ‘electoral turnover’, while the other, the dynamic representation approach, focuses on policy change that occurs in ‘rational anticipation’ of electoral repercussions. The aim of this volume is to evaluate the state of political representation in contemporary Europe and to advance our understanding of the topic by presenting fresh insights both on the extent to which there exists issue congruence between voters and parties and the degree to which there is dynamic representation in the policy responses of representatives. This introduction describes in some detail the nature of the two approaches and then briefly summarises the contributions made in the remainder of the volume.     

Electoral Backlash against Climate Policy: A Natural Experiment on Retrospective Voting and Local Resistance to Public Policy

Retrospective voting studies typically examine policies where the public has common interests. By contrast, climate policy has broad public support but concentrated opposition in communities where costs are imposed. This spatial distribution of weak supporters and strong local opponents mirrors opposition to other policies with diffuse public benefits and concentrated local costs. I use a natural experiment to investigate whether citizens living in proximity to wind energy projects retrospectively punished an incumbent government because of its climate policy. Using both fixed effects and instrumental variable estimators, I identify electoral losses for the incumbent party ranging from 4 to 10%, with the effect persisting 3 km from wind turbines. There is also evidence that voters are informed, only punishing the government responsible for the policy. I conclude that the spatial distribution of citizens' policy preferences can affect democratic accountability through ‘spatially distorted signalling’, which can exacerbate political barriers to addressing climate change.     

Reform or Resistance? Local Government Responses to State-Mandated Ethics Reform in Kentucky

Although several studies have examined state and federal regulationof political corruption andethics reform, few studies have extendedtheir focus to local governments. In this study, we examinethe local government response to stale-mandated ethics reformin Kentucky during the 1990s. Based on a quantitative analysisof local government ethics codes in 288 cities, we concludethat local compliance with state-mandated ethics reform hasbeen largely driven by local political factors. Cities withrelatively developed democratic institutions, characterizedby high levels of electoral competition and a strong media presence,were significantly more likely to construct strict ethics ordinances,as were cities reflecting moralistic political cultural values.     

How do voters perceive ideological congruence? The effects of winning and losing under different electoral rules

The degree of ideological congruence between citizens and their elected representatives is an important feature of democratic systems of government. A long tradition of literature has examined the ideological linkages between citizens and governments, often drawing attention to the differences (or lack thereof) in congruence across different types of electoral systems. Previous research has largely relied on aggregate-level measures of ideological congruence, such as the ideological distance between the position of the median voter and the government. We turn our attention here to how congruence relationships are perceived by individual voters, and how the perceptions of congruence may vary across electoral system types. This individual-level measure of ideological congruence is important in that individual-level, rather than aggregate-level, congruence has been shown to influence other outcomes such as citizen satisfaction with democratic performance. We expect electoral “winners” – those who voted for a party that entered government – to perceive greater ideological congruence between themselves and the government compared to electoral “losers”. We expect this effect to be stronger in majoritarian systems where political competition takes place primarily between two parties, than in proportional systems where electoral losers are more likely to receive a proportional share of representation. We test these expectations by estimating random-effects regressions of perceived individual-level congruence using data from 54 elections held in 23 democracies included in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). The results provide consistent support for our expectations. Electoral winners in all types of electoral systems perceive greater ideological congruence between themselves and the government, and this effect is stronger in majoritarian systems.