Electoral system innovation: A comparison of the lower saxony electoral laws of 1946 and 1977, their origins and effects

This study is concerned with two electoral laws introduced in Lower Saxony for local government elections: the first post-war law (1946) introduced by the British occupation authorities, and the most recent (1977) law, the product of the CDU-FDP coalition in Lower Saxony, used for the 1981 local government elections. The background to each of these laws is presented, with emphasis on their political context and the goals sought by the authorities of the time. The article then examines the actual effects of each law, and explores some of the unintentional effects that emerged. The conclusion sets the problem of electoral-system innovation in the wider context of the relationship between electoral change and political behaviour.     

The electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment: Blame avoidance or credit claiming in the era of permanent austerity?

This article challenges the dominant assumptions in the literature that cutting social policy incurs voter wrath and that political parties can efficiently internalise electoral fallout with blame avoidance strategies. Drawing on the diverse literature on the role of partisanship in the period of permanent austerity, several partisan hypotheses on the relationship between social policy change and electoral outcomes are posited. The results indicate that religious and liberal parties gain votes, and thereby are able to ‘claim credit’, for retrenching social policy. None of the other coefficients for the effect of social policy cuts reach significance, raising the question of whether parties excel at blame avoidance or the public fails to place blame in the first place.     

Proportional representation and attitudes about politics: results from New Zealand

PR systems often are credited with producing more equitable outcomes between political parties and encouraging wider social group representation than majoritarian systems. Theory suggests that this should instill greater trust, efficacy, and faith in the political system. We assume that citizens disadvantaged by majoritarian rules (political minorities) will have a relatively greater shift toward positive attitudes about democracy following a transition from a majoritarian system to proportional representation. We employ panel data from the 1993–1996 New Zealand Election Study (NZES) to test hypotheses about the effects of electoral system change on attitudes about governmental responsiveness, trust in government, and political efficacy. We find that there is a general shift in mass opinion toward more positive attitudes on some measures of efficacy and responsiveness. Political minorities display a greater shift toward feelings of efficacy than other voters.     

The Politics of Postcapitalism: Labour and our Digital Futures

This article introduces the special issue on the politics of postcapitalism. Considering the theoretical foundations, empirical perspectives and political ramifications of claims made about a coming ‘post-work’ or ‘postcapitalist’ society, it maps existing debates through a discussion of two key recent texts, Paul Mason’s Clear Bright Future and Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism. It first surveys how the relationship between labour market trends, technological change and wider political-economic shifts is articulated in the postcapitalist literature. It then explores how concepts from Marx are deployed to depict social relations as a constraint on technological development and its utopian potentialities, leading to political demands for new class actors and electoral blocs centring on the new forms of economic and political activity associated with digital networks. It also considers the role of the state and how this theoretical and political approach envisions historical change, situating utopian visions of an incipient postcapitalist alternative to capitalism within the contemporary political context of authoritarian populism and challenges to liberal democracy. Finally, it explores the continuing relevance of humanism as a critical counterpoint to the social and philosophical agenda of present day ‘posthumanism’. It concludes that, in unfavourable political conditions, it would be strategically unwise to stake too much on an over-optimistic approach to the unfolding future. This outlook, it is suggested, carries considerable risks and consequences for a contemporary left in search of a viable electoral coalition and route back to power.     

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.     

Agency Problems, the 17th Amendment, and Representation in the Senate

A prominent change in American electoral institutions occurred when the 17th Amendment to the Constitution established direct election of U.S. Senators as of 1914. How did this change the political agency relationship between the mass electorate and U.S. Senators? We develop theoretical expectations about the representational effects of direct election by a relatively inexpert mass electorate and indirect election by a relatively expert political intermediary, based on principal‐agent theory. The chief predictions are that the representative will be more responsive to the mass electorate under direct election, but will also have more discretion to pursue his or her own ends. We use the 17th Amendment as a quasi‐experiment to test the predictions of the theory. Statistical models show strong support for both predictions. Moreover, the 17th Amendment is not associated with similar changes in the U.S. House of Representatives—as expected, since the amendment did not change House electoral institutions.     

All in the Family: Partisan Disagreement and Electoral Mobilization in Intimate Networks—A Spillover Experiment

We advance the debate about the impact of political disagreement in social networks on electoral participation by addressing issues of causal inference common in network studies, focusing on voters' most important context of interpersonal influence: the household. We leverage a randomly assigned spillover experiment conducted in the United Kingdom, combined with a detailed database of pretreatment party preferences and public turnout records, to identify social influence within heterogeneous and homogeneous partisan households. Our results show that intrahousehold mobilization effects are larger as a result of campaign contact in heterogeneous than in homogeneous partisan households, and larger still when the partisan intensity of the message is exogenously increased, suggesting discussion rather than behavioral contagion as a mechanism. Our results qualify findings from influential observational studies and suggest that within intimate social networks, negative correlations between political heterogeneity and electoral participation are unlikely to result from political disagreement.     

Questioning generational replacement. An age,period and cohort analysis of electoral volatility in the Netherlands, 1971–2010

Political behavior has been changing all over Western Europe and electoral volatility is one of the facets of politics in which this change is apparent. Theories on stabilization of political attitudes and behavior in lifetime and the slow rate at which change in the electoral arena is found to proceed, have led to the assumption of generational replacement as the mechanism driving change. The Netherlands, however, provide a remarkably different case of this trend in electoral volatility. The country has shifted from an example of how cleavages stabilize politics to one of the most electorally volatile countries in Europe. The Dutch surge in electoral volatility thus contrasts with expectations of a slow process driven by generational replacement. Starting from this apparent contradiction between the evolution of volatility in the Netherlands and theories on generational replacement, this article investigates time effects of electoral volatility. The study is based on an age, period and cohort analysis on the repeated cross-sectional data of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies, 1971–2010. Based on characteristics of such repeated cross-sectional data, individuals are cross-classified in birth cohorts and election years respectively, which overcomes the identification problem inherent in cohort analyses. Results of a Cross-Classified Random Effects Model (CCREM) indicate that, contrary to the hypothesis of new generations causing the increase in volatility, the Dutch change can be attributed primarily to period effects. As such, the analyses indicate that a general shift in the Dutch electorate has caused the growth in volatility and that supply-side factors should probably be analyzed when trying to explain electoral volatility.     

Consensus,constraint, and political polarization in recent presidential elections

By reexamining the structure of political attitudes among Americans in the period 1956–72, using both the items and coding scheme as given inThe Changing American Voter (1976) by Nie and his associates and using only domestic attitude items, but including all available responses, we have found that the major type of change between the 1950s and the 1970s is not an increase in internal constraint (ideological thinking of any sort) but an increase in political attitude polarization. Further, this analysis indicates that when interitem associations are used to measure constraints present in the entire population, a major source of political attitude constraint is ignored—the constraints present within the social, political and demographic groupings within the society. The major types of attitude constraints in our society are likely to be external to the attitudes themselves. Understanding electoral outcomes will necessitate understanding the nature of electoral coalitions formed across social and political groupings.     

Personality and Political Discussion

Political discussion matters for a wide array of political phenomena such as attitude formation, electoral choice, other forms of participation, levels of political expertise, and tolerance. Thus far, research on the underpinnings of political discussion has focused on political, social, and contextual forces. We expand upon this existing research by examining how individual personality traits influence patterns of political discussion. Drawing on data from two surveys we investigate how personality traits influence the context in which citizens discuss politics, the nature of the relationship between individuals and their discussion partners, and the influence discussion partners have on respondents’ views. We find a number of personality effects and our results highlight the importance of accounting for individual predispositions in the study of political discussion.     

PRODUCTIVITY MEASUREMENT AND THE PUBLIC ORGANIZATION

This article applies a broad theoretical framework identifying factors which provide an understanding of the relationship between electoral politics, organizational reform and institutional change. In focusing upon product i v i t y reforms undertaken in the 1970's and early 1980's. the authors find that political conflicts over measures of public performance may contribute to a life cycle in which organizational structures are reconstituted and subjects of regulation o r services redefined in ways that are potentially inconsistent with the demand for public accountability. The conjunction of such factors may contribute to a crisis of legitimacy resulting in the redefinition of the boundaries between public and private realms of responsibility, as expressed in the electoral process. Today liberal reformers are confronted by a dilemma of productivity and legitimacy involved in the cycle of reform and retrenchment in which the goal of public accountability is undermined by erosion of the rights of the subject. The attempt to break this bind requires, in part, an explicitness on the part of liberals about the presuppositions regarding the subject underpining the measures and strategies by which organizational reforms are undertaken.     

To Participate or Not to Participate: The Link Between Survey Participation, Electoral Participation, and Political Interest

Survey participation, electoral participation, and politicalinterest have been given wide attention in the research literature,but no one so far has combined these three variables in onemodel. Taking the social isolation-hypothesis as our startingpoint, we developed a model with one factor, social involvement,as the common factor underlying these three types of participation.We reviewed the literature and concluded that we had to includea second underlying factor: attachment to society. Using a newdata set, gathered on the occasion of the 1998 Dutch nationalelections and including validated voter turnout measures, wewere able to test the model. After making some adaptions, wefound a model with a satisfactory fit. The results show that,by including social involvement and attachment to society asmediating variables, we can reach much higher levels of explainedvariances of survey and electoral participation than we canwith traditional models. The results also add to our understandingof the relationship between survey and electoral participationand political interest.     

Farmer Representation in Australia: Avenues for Changing the Political Environment

This paper focuses on changes in the way Australian farmers have sought to influence their political environment. A taxonomy of avenues for change is constructed and used to illustrate the broad transitions in the way farmers have engaged with the formal political process. It is argued that Australian farmers have proceeded from parliamentary/electoral through militant/sectoral forms of action, and are currently pursuing sectoral action supplemented by promotional and consultative actions. Using the New South Wales Farmers' Association (NSWFA) as an example, we show how these changes in political engagement relate to a number of trends in the economic and political environment, for example economic deregulation, electoral change, administrative change, the declining economic significance of agriculture and the increasing impact of sociopolitical movements. These trends and perceived inadequate responses by sectoral interest groups and political parties have also led to rural people experimenting with alternative political avenues such as new 'populist' movements, rural summits and social movements such as Landcare and Women in Agriculture. The significance of Landcare as an avenue for renewal of rural identity and new forms of rural governance is briefly outlined.     

Black electoral power,white resistance,and legislative behavior

This paper examines the relationship between black electoral power and white legislative behavior in Mississippi. The initial theoretical foundation is provided by the work of William R. Keech. Keech's implicit model is presented and a more elaborate model which views black payoffs as a function of black electoral power and white resistance, and the political generation of white legislators is developed and tested. A typology of electoral contexts is constructed, and the impact of such contexts on the relationships between the key variables is examined. The findings suggest that the processes responsible for the curvilinear relationship between black electoral power and black payoffs are more complex than previous research has implied and that the nature of electoral contexts may have a substantial influence on these processes.     

Electoral Choice,Ideological Conflict,and Political Participation

Generations of democratic theorists argue that democratic systems should present citizens with clear and distinct electoral choices. Responsible party theorists further argued that political participation increases with greater ideological conflict between competing electoral options. Empirical evidence on this question, however, remains deeply ambiguous. This article introduces new joint estimates of citizen preferences and the campaign platforms chosen by pairs of candidates in U.S. House and Senate races. The results show that increasing levels of ideological conflict reduce voter turnout, and are robust across a wide range of empirical specifications. Furthermore, the findings provide no support for existing accounts that emphasize how ideology or partisanship explains the relationship between ideological conflict and turnout. Instead, I find that increasing levels of candidate divergence reduce turnout primarily among citizens with lower levels of political sophistication. These findings provide the strongest evidence to date for how mass political behavior is conditioned by electoral choice.     

Determinants of legislative turnover in Western Europe, 1945–2015

This article explains legislative turnover in eight West European legislatures over 152 general elections in the period 1945–2015. Turnover is measured as the rate of individual membership change in unicameral or lower chambers. It is the outcome of a legislative recruitment process with a supply and a demand side. Decisions made by contenders affect supply, while decisions made by parties and voters influence demand. Such decisions are shaped by four political and institutional factors: the institutional context of political careers, or structure of political career opportunities; political party characteristics; electoral swings; and electoral systems. Ten specific hypotheses are tested within this theoretical framework. The structure of political career opportunities is the most decisive factor explaining variability in turnover rates, followed by electoral swings and political parties. Electoral systems show less substantive effects. Electoral volatility is the predictor with the most substantive effects, followed by duration of legislative term, strength of bicameralism, regional authority, gender quotas, level of legislative income and district magnitude.     

Immigration and Electoral Change in Mainstream Political Space

Research on radical right politics shows that the immigration issue can reshape electoral alignments and patterns of political competition in favor of anti-immigrant parties. However, we know surprisingly little about the capacity of the immigration issue to generate electoral change in systems where radical parties are absent. On the basis of issue ownership theory, we show with longitudinal data that concerns over immigration strengthen the identification with the centre-right party owning the immigration issue, especially when primed by the media. Our results, obtained using the German Socioeconomic Panel and media content analysis, confirm strong priming effects among previous non-identifiers and among supporters of the issue owner, and weaker effects among former mainstream left-wing leaners. The findings suggest that the immigration issue is a relevant trigger of electoral change in mainstream political space, but is less likely to generate transfers of party loyalty. Our analyses refine the test of priming effects as a mechanism for issue ownership theory.     

More Choice,Higher Turnout? The Impact of Consideration Set Size and Homogeneity on Political Participation

Central to the emerging scholarship on how political supply influences electoral behavior is the claim that more choice leads to higher turnout. However, empirical tests of this proposition have been limited to the aggregate level. This article examines the relationship between the properties of electoral choice sets, as perceived by the voters, and electoral participation. Following recent advances in choice research, the article distinguishes between an awareness set, consisting of all choice options known to the voter, and a consideration set which includes only those alternatives that are seriously considered by the voter. We hypothesize that the cardinality, ideological homogeneity and distinctiveness of individual consideration sets are positively associated with electoral participation. The expectation is tested with individual-level data from three waves of the European Elections Study. Our results suggest that the relationship between the structure of political supply and participation is complex: while the number of choice alternatives in the consideration set is positively associated with turnout, the ideological diversity of choice options suppresses electoral participation.     

Increasing irrationality? The equilibrium relationship between electoral and legislative party system size, 1950–2005

Institutional theories of party system size tell us that voters and parties should anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral systems and adjust their behaviour accordingly. If these expectations hold true, then the size of the party system at the electoral and legislative levels should maintain a long-run equilibrium relationship, as the number of parties receiving votes is adjusted in response to the number of parties in the legislature. I estimate a series of error-correction models to examine this expectation in 16 Western democracies from 1950 to 2005. Party system size at the electoral level does exhibit a general, equilibrium relationship with party system size in the legislature. However, this relationship has recently disappeared in single-member-district systems. This growing disparity between party system size at the electoral and legislative levels signals important changes in the nature of electoral representation.     

The Electoral Relevance of Political Talk: Examining Disagreement and Expertise Effects in Social Networks on Political Participation

Although people with larger, more politicized social networks are more likely to participate in elections, we know very little about what drives this relationship. I argue that the electoral relevance of political talk depends heavily on the political expertise imbedded in discussion networks. Using data gathered during the 1996 presidential election, I demonstrate that the level of political sophistication in a person's social network exerts a positive influence on participation. Importantly, this effect is greater than the impact of political preferences in the network, the factor that is implicitly considered to be the main link between networks and involvement. This evidence makes two contributions to research on networks and participation. First, it provides support for a theoretical model that better accounts for research on the relationship between political talk, political disagreement, and involvement. Second, it changes the normative implications associated with political talk by suggesting that networks can encourage both higher levels of involvement and increased consideration of differing viewpoints.