The long and the short of it: Electoral institutions and the dynamics of party system size, 1950–2005

While institutional theories of party system size are usually examined cross‐nationally, there is ample reason to expect that changes in electoral institutions will affect party system size within countries as well. Although some of this effect may occur immediately, most of the effects are likely to be realised over time and across subsequent elections. A series of error‐correction models examine the short‐ and long‐term effects of changes in electoral institutions on party system size. The results indicate that changes in electoral institutions do produce the expected effects on party system size, and that these effects occur mostly over the long term.     

The Development of Stable Party Support: Electoral Dynamics in Post-Communist Europe

What conditions help stable patterns of party support to emerge? Using pooled time‐series cross‐section data on election results from 15 East European democracies, the empirical analysis finds that (1) right after a regime change electoral volatility increases while the trend is reversed after democracy has endured for about a decade; (2) ethnic cleavages have no effect on stability while social cleavages affect electoral stability only during economic downturns; (3) both institutions and economic performance influence the stability of party support; however, the effect of the latter diminishes over time when democracies mature.     

The Crisis of German Social Democracy Revisited

This article analyses the dramatic electoral decline of German social democracy since 2003. It argues that the SPD's decision, under the leadership of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, to engage in welfare state retrenchment and labour market deregulation during the ‘Hartz reforms’ (2003–05) demoralised the SPD electorate. The SPD subsequently lost half of its former electoral coalition, namely blue‐collar voters and socially disadvantaged groups, while efforts to gain access to centrist and middle‐class voters have failed to produce any compensating gains. While the SPD's decline from a large to a mid‐sized party is part of a larger transformation of the German party system, no political recovery is possible for social democracy without a fundamental change of strategy, namely efforts to regain former voters by offering credible social welfare and redistributive policies. The SPD will not be able to delegate such policies in a ‘convoy model’ to other parties, such as the Left Party; nor will a modest ‘correction’ of the earlier course, such as has been attempted since 2009 under the leadership of current party chairman Sigmar Gabriel, be sufficient to recover lost electoral ground.     

Electoral Reform and Party System Change: An Analysis of Nordic Elections with Two Different Electoral Systems

Electoral system reforms are frequently discussed in various parts of the world, although major electoral system changes have been quite rare in established democracies. This article aims at predicting how the party systems in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden would change if elections were conducted under a plurality system or a mixed‐member majoritarian system. To this end, results of the last parliamentary elections are recalculated. The analyses show that the Nordic party systems would be subjected to drastic change. In Denmark, plurality elections would create a two‐party system; in Finland, Norway and Sweden, one party would be much larger than the others. Keskusta and Arbeiderpartiet would be superior to the other parties in Finland and Norway, respectively, whereas Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet would almost take complete control over the Swedish legislature. In practice, smaller parties would have to team up with larger ideologically similar parties. Under a mixed electoral system, several small and medium‐sized parties would survive, but in most countries, the main competition would take place between two basic political alternatives. Smaller parties are well‐advised to go against electoral system reforms that involve single‐member districts.     

Parties under stress: Realignment and dealignment in advanced industrial societies

The findings of a forthcoming study of electoral change in advanced industrial democracies are reviewed. These findings point to broad‐based processes of change that can be organised around two models ‐a social cleavage model of realignment and a functional model of dealignment. Both types of change are at work in most party systems. Surprisingly, their impact on future party system change is likely to be more reinforcing than contradictory in altering the context of party competition and moving parties further away from the responsible party model.     

Apartisans and the changing German electorate

The concept of party identification is central to our understanding of electoral behavior. This paper builds upon the functional logic of party identification and asks what occurs when more Germans manage the complexities of politics without needing to rely on habitual party cues—what we label as Apartisans. We track the distribution of party mobilization and cognitive mobilization within the German electorate from 1976 until 2009. Then, we demonstrate the importance of these mobilization patterns by documenting strong differences in electoral commitment, the content of political thinking, and electoral change. The results suggest a secular transformation in the characteristics of the public has led to a more differentiated and dealigned German electorate.     

Income inequality,electoral systems and party polarisation

This study analyses why income inequality and party polarisation proceed together in some countries but not in others. By focusing on the relationship between income inequality, the permissiveness of electoral systems and party polarisation, the study offers a theoretical explanation for how the combination of income inequality and permissive electoral systems generates higher party polarisation. After analysing a cross‐national dataset of party polarisation, income inequality and electoral institutions covering 24 advanced democracies between 1960 and 2011, it is found that a simple correlation between income inequality and party polarisation is not strong. However, the empirical results indicate that greater income inequality under permissive electoral systems contributes to growing party polarisation, which suggests that parties only have diverging ideological platforms due to greater income inequality when electoral systems encourage their moves towards the extreme; parties do not diverge when electoral systems discourage their moves towards the extreme.     

Dynamic effects of electoral laws

A change in electoral laws is expected to substantially alter political outcomes as voters and elites adjust their behavior to new rules. However, testing the causal implications of this theory using electoral reforms has been difficult because election results before a reform are not the appropriate counterfactual for election results after a reform. This article leverages electoral reform in New Zealand and Norway and the synthetic control method to approximate the appropriate counterfactuals: election results in the period after reform, had the reform not occurred. In both the countries, I find evidence that electoral reform had a short-term effect on the size of the electoral party system, but no evidence of a lasting effect on the electoral party system.     

The dimensions of Fianna fail rule in Ireland

Politics in the Irish Republic derives its special party orientation from a bitterly‐contested civil war waged relatively early in the nation‐state's history. In Ireland, as in America, the loser in the civil war has turned out to be the most successful political party. Fianna Fail is a national coalition of regions, interests, and classes which has rarely been out of power thanks to the professionalism of its electoral machine and its understanding of the importance of localism in Irish politics. Until recently, Irish political expectations were relatively low. Today, in the wake of major cultural and economic change, nascent class conflict may challenge the conservative status quo.     

Personal vote‐seeking in flexible list systems: How electoral incentives shape Belgian MPs' bill initiation behaviour

It is well known that different types of electoral systems create different incentives to cultivate a personal vote and that there may be variation in intra‐party competition within an electoral system. This article demonstrates that flexible list systems – where voters can choose to cast a vote for the list as ordered by the party or express preference votes for candidates – create another type of variation in personal vote‐seeking incentives within the system. This variation arises because the flexibility of party‐in‐a‐district lists results from voters' actual inclination to use preference votes and the formal weight of preference votes in changing the original list order. Hypotheses are tested which are linked to this logic for the case of Belgium, where party‐in‐a‐district constituencies vary in their use of preference votes and the electoral reform of 2001 adds interesting institutional variation in the formal impact of preference votes on intra‐party seat allocation. Since formal rules grant Belgian MPs considerable leeway in terms of bill initiation, personal vote‐seeking strategies are inferred by examining the use of legislative activity as signalling tool in the period between 1999 and 2007. The results establish that personal vote‐seeking incentives vary with the extent to which voters use preference votes and that this variable interacts with the weight of preference votes as defined by institutional rules. In addition, the article confirms the effect of intra‐party competition on personal vote‐seeking incentives and illustrates that such incentives can underlie the initiation of private members bills in a European parliamentary system.     

When Is a Gerrymander Not a Gerrymander: Who Benefits and Who Loses from the Changed Rules for Defining Parliamentary Constituencies?

Members of the British Labour party have, not for the first time, criticised the Boundary Commissions’ proposals for new constituency boundaries as gerrymandering. This represents a misuse of the term: the Commissions have produced recommended constituencies in the context of new rules for such redistributions that give precedence to equality of electorates across all seats and the boundaries of those constituencies have been defined without any reference to the likely electoral consequences. The Conservatives, who were responsible for the change in the rules to emphasise electoral equality, wanted to remove a decades‐long Labour advantage in the translation of votes into seats because of variations in constituency size, and the Commissions’ implementation of those rules has achieved that. A Labour advantage has been removed but not replaced by a Conservative advantage: in terms of electoral equality between the two, the playing field has been levelled. Labour's claim to have been disadvantaged by decisions on the electoral register is also examined; the disadvantage is probably only small.     

Party Elites' Perceptions of Voters and Public Opinion

Given the vast amounts of research on party competition, party strategy, political communication and electoral campaigning, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the study of national party elites' perceptions of voters and public opinion. This article argues that the mindset of leading party officials, and more specifically their perceptions of voter and public opinion rationality, driving forces and knowledge, is a much‐neglected explanation for why parties adopt the electoral strategies they do. Analysed here are unique internal party documents from two Swedish parties during the period 1964 to 1991: the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. A simple analytic framework is proposed for the study of party elite perceptions of voters and public opinion. In contrast to the overwhelmingly pessimistic view of voter rationality that still prevails in contemporary research, the findings presented in this article suggest that national party elites in general have had a surprisingly positive view of voters and, in particular, public opinion. Perceptions of voters and public opinion were largely unaffected by the parties' electoral fortunes, and did not become gloomier over time.     

Perceptions of policy choice in contemporary democracies

Though the concept of choice is essential to democracy, little is known about how citizens make sense of the diversity of policies offered by political elites. Research has found that institutional arrangements such as low electoral thresholds and multiple party competitors are associated with greater policy choice. Other work emphasises non‐institutional factors. No research, however, examines what the voters think. In this article these alternative explanations are assessed in terms of whether citizens believe parties to provide choice over policy. Evidence from 25 democracies reveals that electoral and party systems have no direct effect. Choice perceptions are instead affected by non‐policy factors: social heterogeneity and individual political dispositions. This result contrasts with analyses showing a strong connection between electoral rules and the diversity of messages communicated by parties during campaigns. The article also shows how choice perceptions matter for political behaviour. Overall, study findings imply that the promise of institutions for fostering representation is weaker than previously assumed.     

Third party decline in the UK: The SNP and SDP in comparative perspective

The failure of ‘third’ parties to displace their larger rivals is a consistent (although not universal) feature of competitive democracies which have simple majority electoral systems. It is argued that there are structural features intrinsic to most third parties which tend to accelerate the process of decline once it has set in. Because of their reliance on individual members, these parties put great stress on individual participation and provide the opportunities for it. As a result, they are particularly subject to the effects of internal competition which electoral decline is likely to intensify. The study tests this hypothesis by looking at two cases of third party decline, and concludes that the mass branch party format is ill‐able to cope with electoral failure.     

The short-time dynamics of issue ownership and its impact on the vote

This paper analyzes the short-term dynamics of issue ownership and its effect on electoral choice. We hypothesize that voters who change their mind with regard to the party they deem most competent to handle the top issue are more probable to change their vote choice, than those who do not change their evaluation of competence. Second, we claim that the impact of a change in perception of party issue competence increases with the electoral strength of the party benefiting from this change. The analysis is based on data from a Rolling-Cross-Section with a panel component carried out in the 2011 Swiss Election Study. The results show the expected effects of change in issue competence assessment and the conditional role of party size.     

The place of parties in contemporary democracies

The electoral system has often been considered an important determinant of the political stability that the Federal Republic of Germany has enjoyed in the half-century of its existence, so that it has been often indicated as a 'model' for electoral reforms in other democracies. The analysis of the political impact of the German electoral system after 1949 shows that such impact was different in the different phases of evolution of the party system. In the 1950s, the German party system was characterised by a higher level of fractionalisation, which the electoral system contributed progressively to reduce. That phase was followed by 30 years of concentration and defractionalisation of the vote. In the last decade, the post-reunification party system presents again higher electoral fractionalisation, which the electoral system has partially reduced in the vote-seats translation. In the current political contingency it is doubtful, however, that the electoral system by itself can contain fragmentation on a durable basis.     

The Future of Conservatism*

British Conservatism embodies certain basic, though not always compatible, tenets of belief. They have underpinned the Conservative Party, which has been the most successful political party in the history of western Europe. The party was the ‘in’ party in British politics in the 20th Century; the reasons for that success shifted in the 21st century to it principal opponent party. Attempts by Conservative leaders in the first two parliaments of opposition constituted quick‐fix and ultimately doomed approaches to restoring electoral dominance. The party under David Cameron has shifted to a long‐term, grounded approach, learning the lessons of earlier periods of opposition. Though the process remains incomplete, the Conservative Party is placed for the first time in the 21st century to return to being a party of governance.     

The Representative Roles of MPs: A Citizen Perspective

From the normative point of view, there is a general agreement that representatives should act in line with the interests of those being represented. The knowledge about citizens' preferences for representation is very limited, however. This study examines MP's representative roles from the perspective of the citizens. It utilises a task definition approach in the Finnish institutional setting, which substantially differs from the context of earlier investigations in terms of open‐list electoral systems with mandatory preferential voting. Based on the 2007 Finnish National Election Study (n = 1,422), voters' preferences concerning four different representational roles are analysed: as representatives pursuing the interests of their electoral district, party, individual voters or being independent actors. Next, voters' preferences are accounted for by the factors related to each type of representation: citizens' regional electoral context, party attachment and electoral supply, political engagement and political competence, respectively. The results show that citizens living in electoral districts located far away from the political centre or in constituencies where it is more difficult for small parties to win political representation are most prone to prefer regional representation. Similarly, voters who have closer ties with political parties prefer party‐centred representation while those who feel less politically efficient favour close ties with their MPs. Education in turn increases the support for a political representative to act independently from the electorate or the party.     

Does Partisan Self-interest Dictate Support for Election Reform? Experimental Evidence on the Willingness of Citizens to Alter the Costs of Voting for Electoral Gain

Political Behavior - Elite support for modifying electoral institutions and policies generally depends on whether a proposed change is expected to improve their party’s electoral prospects....