Suffrage Extensions and Voting Patterns in Latin America: Is Mobilization a Source of Decay?

This article examines whether changes in electoral participation contributed to electoral volatility in Latin America between 1945 and 2000. As a result of literacy voting requirements and authoritarian interludes that disenfranchised large portions of the population, new voters in Latin America probably had different political interests from the previous electorate and were not socialized to electoral politics. The article considers the hypothesis that the inclusion of new voters with different interests produces an immediate, short‐term change in aggregate voting patterns, and a lack of socialization of new voters generates lingering instability in electoral behavior. Accounting for confounding factors, the analysis of legislative elections in 12 countries indicates that the expansion of the electorate temporarily disrupted voting patterns in Latin America but did not lead to long‐run party system decay.     

So Close But So Far: Voting Propensity and Party Choice for Left‐Wing Parties

While the bulk of the literature focuses on the vote for parties from different blocs, the purpose of our article is to study the vote for two parties that are ideologically very close to each other: The Social Democrats and the Greens in Switzerland. To that end, we develop a two‐step model, where voters first make a selection of parties that are acceptable to them and then make their electoral choice out of this set of acceptable alternatives. We use voting propensities as a measure of the first, consideration step and we show that they strongly depend on the distance between voters and parties on the Left–Right scale. With regard to the second, choice stage of the electoral process we hypothesize about the factors that may account for the varying ability of the two parties to convert potential voters into real voters. Our empirical tests provide encouraging support for our hypotheses regarding the impact of socio‐demographic variables and issue voting. Strategic considerations, by contrast, do not seem to matter.     

Is Consensual Politicizing Being Punished in Switzerland?

Over the last decade, Switzerland has been characterized by both a radicalization of its political system and the relative success of the SP and SVP parties, which tend to adopt a strategy of permanent campaigning. Because of this, it is often argued that politicians are held accountable for their behaviour and that their electoral successes depend on their voting behaviour in parliament. We thus explore whether the voting behaviour of representatives, or citizens' evaluations of parties' ideological positions had an impact on their electoral success in the 1995, 1999, and 2003 national elections. More precisely, we assess how far the proximity and directional models explain the electoral success of incumbents and parties using roll call data for the National Council as well as the Selects surveys at the individual level. The results at both levels suggest that voters' choice is largely consistent with what is predicted by the spatial models of electoral behaviour. Swiss voters form their party preference on both proximity and direction, which supports a mixed model of electoral behaviour.     

Leader Effects and Voting for the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

Charismatic leaders are often assumed to drive the electoral success of populist radical right parties. Yet, little attention is given to how voter evaluations of leaders influence individual voting behavior. To our knowledge, no systematic and comparative tests of this empirical question exist. In this paper, we test to what extent voters’ support for populist radical right parties is fueled by leaders' appreciation. In order to examine leader effects on the populist radical right vote, we rely on an original dataset pooling 29 National Election Studies from ten established West European parliamentary democracies (1985‐2018). Our analysis finds that: (1) voters’ evaluation of party leaders is significantly associated with voting for populist radical right parties; (2) leader evaluations are more important than left‐right self‐placement when it comes to voting for the populist radical right, and (3) leader effects are more important for populist radical right voters than for other voters.     

Multi-level voting and party competition in vertically simultaneous elections: the case of Ukraine

Vertically simultaneous elections to state-wide and regional legislatures provide us with a naturally occurring experiment in which to examine regionalism and multi-level voting. We examine the 2006 vertically and horizontally simultaneous state-wide and regional elections in Ukraine to determine how the internal dynamics of regionalism within a state account for the dissimilarity of voting behavior across electoral levels. Drawing on the party competition literature, we demonstrate that variations in both supply (parties) and demand (voters) produce considerable dissimilarity between regional and state results, with lower levels of consolidation and greater fractionalization at the regional level. We show that political cleavages operate differently across levels, that regional distinctiveness rather than regional authority better predicts first order-ness in regional elections, and that voters display varying tolerance for polarization at the regional and state level.     

Strategic Overshooting in National Council Elections

The Swiss party system has become strongly polarized over the last decade, following the rise of the Swiss People's Party and the electoral losses of center parties. This article suggests that these developments are, at least in part, a consequence of strategic behaviour among voters. As the government policy is the result of institutionalized multiparty bargaining, voters have incentives to compensate for this watering‐down by supporting parties whose positions are more extreme than their own. This article empirically tests extent and conditions of compensatory voting in the 2007 National Council Elections using Selects survey data. Our results suggest that compensatory voting generally outweighs voting based on ideological proximity and increases with rising district magnitude.     

Electoral Accountability in the Midst of Criminal Violence: Evidence from Mexico

Rising levels of crime and insecurity affect the quality of life. A fundamental question for the prospects of democracy is whether voters, in hopes of reaching better solutions to conditions of prevailing insecurity, can hold their elected officials accountable for such situations. This article argues that electoral accountability amid criminal violence requires voters to be able to assign responsibility for crime, and that partisan alignment across levels of government facilitates this task. Recent Mexican elections are examined to test this argument. Relying on both aggregate electoral data and individual survey evidence, this study shows that voters hold politicians accountable for crime in the narrow circumstances of organized crime–related violence and political alignment. This evidence not only provides additional caveats to issue voting models, but also opens new avenues of research on electoral accountability.     

Democracy Beyond Secrecy: Assessing the Promises and Pitfalls of Collective Voting

This paper assesses collective voting as a specific mode of democratic decision‐making and compares it to secret voting. Under collective voting, voters gather in one place and decide by the show of hands. We theorise two potential advantages and two disadvantages of collective voting so defined. We then draw on original survey data from one of the largest polities practising collective voting, the citizen assembly of the Swiss canton of Glarus. We find that both the promises and pitfalls of non‐secret voting are exaggerated. Non‐secret voting’s suspected pitfalls – social pressure and abstention – do not generally materialise in our sample, although for women they do appear to be relevant to some extent. However, the promises of collective voting – enabling cue‐taking and discursive bridging and bonding – are equally realised to a limited extent only.     

Mixed electoral systems in Britain and the Jenkins Commission on electoral reform

Mixed electoral systems seek to combine elements from different voting methods so as to maximise the numbers of individually accountable constituency MPs, while achieving more proportional outcomes in terms of parties' representation. This paper looks in detail at two kinds of mixed systems: variants of the Additional Member System; and AV Plus (or SV Plus). We examine how they would have operated in British conditions during the 1990s—how ballot papers would be structured, how voters respond to them and what electoral outcomes would have resulted. Both approaches offer good prospects for achieving a consensus amongst electoral reformers on an alternative to first-past-the-post elections. We also show how the Jenkins Commission's proposals can be located within the broader development of 'British AMS' by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. In addition, we quantify the main impacts of the policy choices which the Commission made in designing the proposed system to be submitted to a referendum. The British case will be a key one for the wider debate in political science about the endogenisation of voting system changes within party systems.     

Keeping Up with the Souzas: Social Influence and Electoral Change in a Weak Party System,Brazil 2002–2006

Despite weak partisanship and considerable political change in the wake of the 2002 election, three‐quarters of Brazilian voters supported a presidential candidate in 2006 from the same party they had backed in 2002. This article assesses the factors causing both electoral stability and electoral change with a transition model, a model testing whether the effects of respondents' evaluative criteria depend on their initial vote choices. Social context—personal discussion networks, neighborhood influences, and the interactions of social networks and municipal context—is the major force promoting stability and change, while the impact of partisanship is limited to a small share of voters.     

Crown and Cortes in Castile, 1590–1665

Summary

Preparations for the Estates General of 1789 constituted one of the last acts of the anclen régime in France. The accompanying elections have received relatively little attention, yet they bequeathed much more to the electoral practices and political mentalités of the Revolution than most historians have realised. Though separate orders were preserved at the final meeting of the Estates General, with disastrous consequences for the monarchy, custom was breached by the uniform fashion and broad franchise with which deputies were elected. When the National Assembly was created the orders were dissolved, but much of this semi‐traditional electoral system survived. Assemblies of voters, an indirect, two‐tier process of election and exhaustive balloting were all retained from the past. A pronounced aversion to declared candidatures and electoral canvassing remained equally entrenched. Moreover, radicals drew upon the old‐régime heritage, rather than upon Rousseau, in their use of mandates, oral voting and the pursuit of unanimity at the polls. The revolutionary experiment with elections ultimately faltered in face of apathy and cynicism among voters. This article concludes by suggesting how the electoral legacy of the anden regime inhibited the emergence of a ‘modern political culture’, which is currently hailed as the major achievement of the French Revolution.     

Invalid Voting in German Constituencies

This article studies invalid voting, which has received very little attention so far, given the broad interest and substantial relevance of voting behaviour research. Existing evidence is mostly limited to rather specific and hardly representative countries. Yet, the extent of invalid ballots is not negligible. Despite undemanding electoral rules, more invalid votes are cast in German general elections than votes for niche parties. Against this backdrop, the article describes prevalence of invalid voting in the mixed electoral system of Germany and tests explanations of its variation between constituencies. Analysing data from the most recent Bundestag Election, results give clear support to politico-institutional explanations: voters are more willing to waste their vote if second-order elections are held concurrently. Specifically under the plurality rule, more (first) votes are wasted if there are large shares for parties without direct candidates and many competing candidates.     

Individual and Contextual Determinants of Electoral Participation

Individual‐level explanations of electoral participation typically argue that non‐voting is determined by a combination of facilitative and motivational factors. We advance the argument that, beyond individual characteristics, there are pivotal contextual features which enable or impede individual action through specific incentive structures. Thus, contextual factors influence the individual propensity to vote or to abstain. For the first time the data of Selects 2003 allows for the testing of contextual effects, at least on the cantonal level. Several multilevel analyses show that high party competition, compulsory voting, and strong Catholicism foster individual participation. The findings clearly indicate that an individual's propensity to vote is influenced by personal characteristics as well as by cantonal attributes.     

The Salience of Ideology: Fifteen Years of Presidential Elections in El Salvador

The victory of the FMLN in El Salvador's presidential elections of March 2009 has been considered remarkable, given the dominance of ARENA in four consecutive presidential races from 1989 to 2004. Using individual‐level data, this article examines the determinants of electoral support for both parties over the past 15 years. Several statistical models illuminate some of the factors that led to ARENA's dominance and ultimate defeat. A combination of variables associated with different theoretical models of voting helps explain the choices made by Salvadoran voters over the years. The most consistent predictors of vote have been voters' self‐reported ideology and their evaluation of the incumbent government's performance. The 2009 turnaround relates to fundamental changes in the national and international context, and also to the selection of candidates.     

Economic voting in South Korea: The 1988 assembly elections

The 1988 Assembly elections in South Korea provide an opportunity to explore whether voting based on short-term economic fluctuations was a feature of the elections. The research design regresses party votes from a large sample of the 224 electoral districts against several well-known determinants of Korean voting behavior (regionalism, urban-rural residence, and social class), as well as district unemployment rates and levels and changes in income. With traditional explanations of voting behavior held constant, income variables had no apparent influence on the vote. However, the coefficients for unemployment rates are large, statistically significant, and in a direction entirely consistent with the theory of rational economic voting. There are grounds for including short-term economic variables in future modeling of Korean electoral behavior.     

Compensatory Voting in Direct Legislation. Evidence from Switzerland

In elections, voters sometimes compensate for post‐election bargaining processes by electing parties that are more extreme than themselves. We investigate compensatory voting in direct democracy. Our goals are to develop and test a measure of compensatory voting in direct legislation and assess its extent of compensatory voting. Empirically, we draw on the case of Switzerland, a country with frequent popular votes. We operationalize compensatory voting as voting ‘yes’ on a popular initiative in spite of endorsing arguments that speak against this initiative, under the condition of being well‐informed about the initiative. Using data from post‐ballot surveys on 17'570 individuals having voted on 63 popular initiatives in the period 1993 to 2015, our analysis shows that compensatory voting has not significantly increased in Switzerland in this period.     

Electoral Redistribution in Australia: Accommodating 150 Years of Demographic Change

Electoral redistribution (redistricting) is a process that has the potential to advance the principle of “one vote, one value” in the face of dynamic human populations. Using the Australian federal electoral system as a case study, this article examines the impact of changes in the size, composition and spatial distribution of the population on electoral boundary delimitation over the past 110 years, and analyses the likely impact of future population change over the next forty years. The article concludes that the Australian electoral system has moved progressively towards greater equality of voting power encapsulated by the “one vote, one value” principle. However, the capacity to achieve even greater equality through electoral redistribution is constrained by constitutional and pragmatic considerations.     

Informal Sector Work and Evaluations of the Incumbent: The Electoral Effect of Vulnerability on Economic Voting

Economically vulnerable voters are expected to hold politicians accountable for their management of the economy because these voters are more likely to be personally affected by economic shocks and less able to cope with the resulting dislocation. Evidence from the informal sector in Argentina, where the lack of formal registration increases income volatility and denies unemployment benefits, is consistent with this hypothesis. Data from Argentina from 2005 to 2006 show that the association between evaluations of the economy and evaluations of President Néstor Kirchner was stronger among those working without formal employment guarantees. The implication is that the electoral support of Latin America's many informal workers may very well be fickle and dependent on economic performance.     

Electoral reform and the political modernization of England, 1832–1841

SUMMARY

Philip Salmon re-examines the place of the Reform Act of 1832 in English parliamentary history as a supposed turning point which averted revolution. Recent scholarship has shown that already before 1832 English radical traditions favoured popular constitutional reform over republicanism, and that changes to the electoral system were in practice not extensive after 1832. The analysis of pollbooks reveals, however, that the incidence of party-based voting was higher after the reform. The author explains how changes in the electoral laws, including those for local elections in the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, altered the nature of electioneering. The new, more bureaucratic electoral laws on voter registration and qualification, on the manner of taking the poll, and on permitted election costs, all placed a premium on party organization for both local and national elections. The legal complexities led to the formation of local party associations to tackle them, as especially the registration of party supporters as voters required constant vigilance between elections. The adversarial system of registration was a key element in the rise of party-based voting in the 1830s. Confrontational electoral practices politicized the electorate for local as well as national contests, and so contributed to the advance of more persistent party allegiances at both levels. This constitutional realignment underpinned the growth of a more modern English representative democracy.     

Welfare State Restructuring without Grand Coalitions: The Role of Informal Cooperation in Blame Avoidance

This article argues that welfare state restructuring, which is highly unpopular among voters, is politically feasible if government and opposition parties cooperate informally with one another. Contrary to what key arguments made in the literature assert, restructuring does not require the formation of a grand coalition to diffuse blame from voters. Informal cooperation between parties is a distinctive blame-avoiding strategy, which differs not only from other party-oriented strategies such as building a grand coalition, but also from voter-oriented ones, such as obfuscation and exemption. By analysing the politics of pension reform in Germany, this article shows that informal cooperation enables political parties to restructure the welfare state without running the risk of electoral failure.