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.     

Changing Patterns of Party Competition in Austria: From Multipolar to Bipolar System

The Austrian party system has entered a new phase since the controversial ÖVP-FPÖ coalition came into office in February 2000. The party system literature offers two contradicting expectations about party system mechanics in multi-party systems without relevant extremist parties: competition structured by party alliances and strictly competitive relations between government and opposition parties (as suggested by <citeref rid="b30">Sartori 1976</citeref>) versus competition structured by individual parties and some mix of competition and co-operation and perhaps even power-sharing in extra-governmental arenas between government and opposition parties (as suggested by <citeref rid="b3">Dahl 1966</citeref>). Our empirical analysis of party system competitiveness in the electoral, parliamentary and other arenas (in particular, the corporatist arena) between 2000 and 2003 shows that the relations between the government and opposition parties were strictly competitive (i.e. of a zero-sum character) in the electoral arena. Likewise, there was no trading between government and opposition in the parliamentary arena. Finally, the government substantially increased its impact on the official sites (i.e. arenas controlled by the government) and used fire and hire methods more than any of its predecessors to build up its positions in public sector institutions. The opposition parties, in turn, perceived the government parties as a bloc and were united in their goal of undermining the government parties' majority. Yet, while relations between the government and opposition parties remained highly competitive throughout the entire period, relations between the parties on each side of the government-opposition divide became more fluid, partly for tactical considerations and partly for reasons of genuine preferences. In sum, the post-2000 Austrian party system is a weak version of a two-bloc system.     

Government Formation in the Nordic Countries: The Electoral Connection

Government formation is guided by several principles, such as majority, plurality and electoral principles. According to the electoral principle, parties that increase their share of seats in the elections should form the government, parties that lose seats joining the opposition. We analyse the fulfilment of this principle in the five Nordic countries. In Denmark, Finland and Iceland the majority of governments contained parties that both won and lost in elections, whereas in Sweden nearly half of the governments included only parties that lost seats. Only in Iceland and Denmark does election success translate to an increased probability of a government place in an increasing way. In Norway and particularly in Sweden big losers have better chances of being in government than big winners. Party system attributes are not related to the fulfilment of the electoral principle. To shift our analysis to individual parties, prime ministers come more likely from parties that are big winners. Winning does not explain the probability of becoming a coalition partner. If a party wants to be in government it is more important to avoid losing seats than to be an actual winner. Coalition partners are more likely to be mid–sized parties, a finding probably explained by the desire of the formateur party to maximise its policy influence in the government.     

Elections and Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes

When do elections in authoritarian regimes lead to democracy? Building from the distinction between competitive and hegemonic authoritarian regimes, I argue that presence of relatively weaker incumbents renders competitive authoritarian elections more prone to democratization, but only when domestic and international actors choose to actively pressure the regime. The effects of two forms of pressure—opposition electoral coalitions and international conditionality—are theorized. Propositions are tested using a comprehensive dataset of elections in authoritarian regimes from 1990 to 2007. Results support two core claims: that the effect of electoral pressure is conditional on the type of authoritarianism and that this greater vulnerability to pressure is the reason why competitive authoritarian elections are more likely to lead to democracy. In contrast, several alternative explanations—that differences across regime type are explained by alternation in power, better electoral conduct, or ongoing processes of liberalization—are not supported by the evidence.     

Resource disparity and multi-level elections in competitive authoritarian regimes: Regression discontinuity evidence from Hong Kong

Much research has been done to study how competitive elections affect autocracies and their opposition. Electoral institutions, however, may have different social and political effects. In this paper, I examine the effect of an understudied electoral institution: lower-level elections. I argue that elections at grassroots levels tend to favor the ruling party by allowing it to more fully utilize its resource advantage to buy political support, which would in turn undermine the opposition's ability to develop a local support network that is important to its struggle for democratization as well as for elected offices. Evaluating the effect of lower-level elections is empirically challenging because the effect is likely to be confounded with voter preference. I tackle this identification problem by taking advantage of a quasi-experiment afforded by the electoral formula of Hong Kong, which allows me to use a regression discontinuity design to test my causal argument. I find strong statistical evidence supporting my argument; the ruling elite's aggressive expansion in the District Councils, the lowest elected tier, aims to drive out the opposition elites, who, by occupying a District Council seat, are able to increase their vote share of that constituency by 4–5 percentage points in a subsequent legislative election.     

Manufactured Responsiveness: The Impact of State Electoral Laws on Unified Party Control of the Presidency and House of Representatives, 1840–1940

The modern history of divided government in America suggests that the framers succeeded in creating a government unresponsive to popular passions. Yet in the nineteenth century the party winning the presidency almost always captured control of the House of Representatives. Why and how could nineteenth century national elections be so responsive that they resemble parliamentary outcomes? We identify electoral institutions present in the states that directly linked congressional elections to presidential coattails. Specifically, we estimate the impact of state ballot laws and the strategic design of congressional districts on presidential coattail voting from 1840 to 1940. We find that presidential elections, as mediated by state electoral laws, strongly account for unified party control of the House and the presidency throughout the nineteenth century.     

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.     

Republicans in the South

This article explains the failure of the Republican party to reproduce their dominance of the South in presidential elections at lower electoral levels. First, the foreign policy and social issues that have benefitted Republican presidential candidates have lower salience in state and congressional elections. Second, sustained Republican control of the White House has exposed the party to recurrent mid-term setbacks at lower electoral levels. Third, deficiencies of local party organization and a paucity of identifiers deprives the Republicans of candidates in sufficient quantity and quality to be competitive with Democrats.     

The Political Consequences of External Economic Shocks: Evidence from Poland

How do external economic shocks influence domestic politics? We argue that those materially exposed to the shock will display systematic differences in policy preferences and voting behavior compared to the unexposed, and political parties can exploit these circumstances. Empirically, we take advantage of the 2015 surprise revaluation of the Swiss franc to identify the Polish citizens with direct economic exposure to this exogenous event. Using an original survey fielded prior to the 2015 elections and an embedded survey experiment, we show that exposed individuals were more likely to demand government support and more likely to desert the government and vote for the largest opposition party, which was able to use the shock to expand its electoral coalition without alienating its core voters. Our article clarifies the connection between international shocks, voters’ policy preferences, partisan policy responses, and, ultimately, voting decisions.     

Ideological proximity and voter turnout in multi-level systems: evidence from Spain

ABSTRACT

Does ideological proximity between the individual and political parties determine electoral participation in regional elections, as much as in national elections? Does the degree of self-rule of a region affect the interplay between ideological distance and turnout? This article addresses these questions and provides empirical evidence drawing upon individual-level and regional-level data from 53 regional elections and 4 national elections in Spain. Results indicate that citizens are more likely to vote when they perceive there is at least one congruent policy option among the party supply, and this happens at both regional and national levels. However, whether the closest party is in national government or whether it is a regionalist organization has a dissimilar impact on turnout in different tiers. This relationship between the type of party which is most ideologically proximate and electoral participation is partially affected by the degree of regional autonomy of the territory.     

Doomed to Defeat? Electoral Support and the Conservative Party

This article recaps the main trends in public opinion and electoral support for the Conservative party since the last general election in June 2001 by examining the overall polling data relating to party popularity. The article also considers by-elections, local elections and leadership change, as well as the most recent elections in 2004. The various challenges the party faces as it attempts to position itself as a credible alternative government to the Labour party under Tony Blair are considered.
Given the clear biases of the electoral system used for the House of Commons, which are certain to benefit Labour substantially even if the Conservatives get close to them in terms of overall vote share, or indeed even overtake them, it still seems unlikely that such success will be sufficient to achieve much more than to reduce Tony Blair's House of Commons majority in 2005.     

Winning & losing in coalition systems. A quasi-experimental study of the effect of coalition formation on satisfaction with democracy

Does government formation affect satisfaction with democracy? Research so far has focused on how winning or losing elections affects satisfaction with democracy, yet, in many coalition systems, who wins and who loses is not determined directly by the elections, but by the coalition formation process. Until now, the effect of government formation on satisfaction with democracy has not been examined. In this paper, we examine this using a quasi-experimental matching design examining eleven elections. We find some evidence that the formation of the coalition slightly but significantly lowers the satisfaction with democracy among those who supported a party that was removed from the governing coalition. This suggests that in coalition systems, looking at electoral winners and losers may be insufficient.     

Committed or Conditional Democrats? Opposition Dynamics in Electoral Autocracies

In electoral autocracies, opposition coalition formation offers the best hope of getting to democracy. Yet forming electoral coalitions also entails convincing opposition voters to ignore compromises and engage in the cross‐party voting necessary for opposition victory. To what extent are voters committed to defeating the autocratic incumbent even if it would result in dislikable outcomes? A survey experiment in Malaysia finds that opposition voters overwhelmingly express pretreatment support for the opposition coalition. But when exposed to a treatment vignette about which member party might lead the next government, many voters retract their support. Specifically, voters’ support for the coalition declines when their least preferred member is expected to control the government and when they can vote for a closer ideological alternative outside of the coalition. Although voters are committed to opposition unity and democratic transition, that commitment is sensitive to the anticipated consequences of an opposition victory.     

A Conservative Revolution: The Electoral Response to Economic Crisis in Ireland

Abstract

The 2011 election in Ireland was one of the most dramatic elections in European post-war history in terms of net electoral volatility. In some respects the election overturned the traditional party system. Yet it was a conservative revolution, one in which the main players remained the same, and the switch in the major government party was merely one in which one centre-right party replaced another. Comparing voting behaviour over the last three elections we show that the 2011 election looks much like that of 2002 and 2007. The crisis did not result in the redefinition of the electoral landscape. While we find clear evidence of economic voting at the 2011 election, issue voting remained weak. We believe that this is due to the fact that parties have not offered clear policy alternatives to the electorate in the recent past and did not do so in 2011.     

Multidimensional incongruence and vote switching in Europe

Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice.     

The social sub-optimality of competitive elections: comment

Buchler (Public Choice 133(3-4): 439–456, 2007) models elections as methods of making social choices among different options, and argues that increased electoral competition may produce inferior outcomes. However, competitive elections also play a role in affecting the behavior of candidates, and of elected officials in office. Once this role is recognized, competitive elections must be seen as a necessary (but not sufficient) ingredient in the production of socially-optimal government.     

Ideological congruence over government mandates under majoritarian and proportional representation electoral systems

The existing literature on ideological congruence has typically looked at congruence immediately after elections when governments are formed. This article goes beyond that comparative static approach by examining changes in citizen-government ideological congruence between two fixed points in time, namely at the beginning and end of government mandates. Building on a veto player approach and dynamics of party competition under majoritarian and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems, the results indicate, first, that government positions are more stable in between elections, as the number of parties and their ideological distance increase in cabinet. Second, it appears that single-party and homogeneous coalition governments decrease ideological congruence between elections under low levels of polarisation, while they increase congruence under very high levels of polarisation. Third, it was found that governments under majoritarian systems slightly decrease congruence between elections while congruence stays stable on average under PR systems. The different levels of party system polarisation across majoritarian and PR electoral systems mostly explain this difference.     

Retrospective pledge voting: A comparative study of the electoral consequences of government parties’ pledge fulfilment

Does pledge fulfilment bear any electoral consequences for government parties? While previous research on retrospective voting has largely focused on electoral accountability with respect to the economy, the theoretical framework presented in this study links government parties’ performance to their previous electoral pledges. It is argued that government parties are more likely to be rewarded by voters when they have fulfilled more pledges during the legislative term. Good pledge performance of a party is associated with the ability to maximise policy benefits (accomplishment) and to be a responsible actor that will stick to its promises in the future as well (competence). Analysing data from 69 elections in 14 countries shows that a government party's electoral outcome is affected by its previous pledge performance. A government party that fulfils a higher share of election pledges is more likely to prevent electoral losses. This finding indicates that voters react at the polls to party pledge fulfilment, which highlights the crucial role of promissory representation in democratic regimes. Surprisingly and in contrast with economic voting, there is no evidence that retrospective pledge voting is moderated by clarity of responsibility.     

Making sense of pollsters’ errors. An analysis of the 2014 second-order European election predictions

Pollsters have been recently accused of delivering poor electoral predictions. We argue that one of the reasons for their failures lies in the difficulty of including an updated deep understanding of electoral behaviour. Even if pollsters’ predictions are not forecasts produced by models, the set of choices needed to produce their estimates is not indifferent to a theoretical comprehension of electoral dynamics. We exemplify this lack of theory by using an original dataset consisting of 1057 party*poll observations in the case of the last European election. Pollsters failed to account for what we know about second-order elections, thus overestimating government and big parties, which normally obtain poor results in European elections, and underestimating new and Eurosceptic ones, which usually perform well.     

Party performance explains disagreement between politicians and their parties

Are politicians more likely to disagree with their party after an electoral defeat or during a spell in opposition? If so, are they likely to advocate a more moderate or a more radical position than their party? In order to evaluate this, the article analyses the absolute distance between candidates for parliament and their parties on the left–right dimension. The sample used consists of 5614 politicians from 11 countries (Comparative Candidate Survey). Controlling for party system differences and individual characteristics, the results demonstrate that politicians take more moderate positions than their party after an electoral defeat. Also politicians of government parties are surprisingly more likely to disagree than politicians of opposition parties. These results overlap with predictions of party position shifts and inform the discussion on how intra-party dynamics bring about changes in party position. In addition, the article finds evidence of loss aversion, and differences in the responsiveness of elite and non-elite candidates.