Ethnicity and electoral fraud in Britain

Several reports have highlighted that, within Britain, allegations of electoral fraud tend to be more common in areas with large Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. However, the extent of this association has not yet been quantified. Using data at the local authority level, this paper shows that percentage Pakistani and Bangladeshi (logged) is a robust predictor of two measures of electoral fraud allegations: one based on designations by the Electoral Commission, and one based on police enquiries. Indeed, the association persists after controlling for other minority shares, demographic characteristics, socio-economic deprivation, and anti-immigration attitudes. I interpret this finding with reference to the growing literature on consanguinity (cousin marriage) and corruption. Rates of cousin marriage tend to be high in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which may have fostered norms of nepotism and in-group favoritism that persist over time. To bolster my interpretation, I use individual level survey data to show that, within Europe, migrants from countries with high rates of cousin marriage are more likely to say that family should be one's main priority in life, and are less likely to say it is wrong for a public official to request a bribe.     

Changes in the menu of manipulation: Electoral fraud,ballot stuffing,and voter pressure in the 2011 Russian election

Vote-buying and voter intimidation are costly, complicated, and risky ways to manage elections. Why, then, do hybrid regimes utilize such tactics rather than ballot stuffing or election falsification? Such methods to mobilize voters require the construction of patronage networks that can be used to mobilize or demobilize clients beyond the election, and to display the incumbent's organizational strength. These networks are most valuable in places where opposition groups are active; consequently direct voter pressure should be more common in competitive areas. This paper uses data from Russia's 83 regions during the 2011 election to compare patterns of extra-legal mobilization with patterns of ballot stuffing and falsification. I conclude that local political competitiveness structures the mix of electoral manipulation tactics employed.     

Manipulating electoral laws in Singapore

The literature on electoral authoritarianism has drawn attention to the use of democratic electoral institutions for undemocratic gains. This paper adds to this body of work by showing how a sophisticated hegemonic party in Singapore manipulated its majoritarian electoral system to “manufacture” its legislative supermajority. By measuring the psychological and mechanical effects of the altered electoral system in Singapore, it shows how changes in the rules of the game boosted the incumbent's legislative dominance despite its declining vote shares in the late 1980s. It also offers new evidence to show how electoral manipulation create an uneven playing field with institutional constraints that penalize smaller parties and benefit the ruling, larger party.     

Partisan self-interest and electoral reform: The new Italian electoral law of 2005

In December 2005, Italy's mixed-member electoral system was replaced with a system of bonus-adjusted proportional representation. The reform conformed with rational-choice models in that it was imposed by the ruling coalition, which sought to bolster its own power interests. But the case illustrates the impossibility of reducing such power-based motivation to a single goal, such as seat maximization. Power is shaped by many factors, and electoral systems influence many of these. This article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the various power-oriented considerations that may operate in electoral reform. It then analyses the role these played in Italy. It argues, in particular, for the need to take account of coalition dynamics when studying such processes.     

Public support for electoral reform: The role of electoral system experience

What affects public support for electoral reform? How does experience with different electoral systems affect people's willingness to support electoral reform? Given the salience of changes to election rules even when they are passed via the legislature and the increasing use of referenda as alternative mechanisms for change, these questions are critical to understanding when electoral reform will occur. I argue that experience (specifically, with an electoral system similar to that under consideration) affects public opinion by reducing uncertainty about the likely effects of reform and thus affects support for reform (although the direction of the effect depends on partisan bias). Moreover, I argue that experience is most important in the absence of strong party cues. I leverage subnational electoral system variation in the United Kingdom and find that experience does affect support for reform — negative experiences decrease support for reform. The results have implications for the possibility of electoral reform in the UK and beyond.     

Competing loyalties in electoral reform: An analysis of the U.S. electoral college

A central tenet in the electoral systems subfield is that parties, when in power and motivated by partisan interest, seek desired outcomes via the strategic adoption of electoral rules. Such a focus, however, omits a key point: electoral rules also distribute power among geographic units. If, within a party, the partisan and geographic interests of some members conflict, then the canonical relationship between partisanship and rule choice may be conditional. The U.S. electoral college provides an opportunity to test for such intra-party variation, because it advantages some states over others and thus makes salient geographic allegiances. Using an original dataset on one reform proposal—the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC)—I find evidence of competing loyalties. Although NPVIC advances furthest when Democrats control state lawmaking, a state's status as a swing—but not as an overrepresented—state weakens the relationship to the point where even Democrats are unlikely to aid NPVIC.     

The classification of electoral systems: Bringing legislators back in

It is widely assumed that electoral institutions shape politicians' incentive for personal vote-seeking, with important behavioral and policy consequences. Yet, there is a surprising lack of consensus on how to compare real-world electoral institutions. Using new data this paper examines how legislators' own perception of their electoral incentives in fifteen democracies correspond to some of the most seminal classification schemes in political science. Our survey of 2326 legislators – the empirically broadest study of personal vote orientation so far conducted – demonstrates that legislators do not always understand electoral incentives in the same way scholarly rankings do, highlighting the need for scholars of political institutions to justify their choice of classification scheme. If not, an entire body of literature may be misguided.     

Fixing failures of U.K. electoral management

Concerns about electoral malpractice have been raised in many democracies in recent years because of errors made in the administration of elections by local election officials (LEOs). This article argues that adopting appropriate policy instruments to manage LEOs is an under-explored method for improving election administration and reducing electoral malpractice. The article provides a case study of the use of performance benchmarking schemes in the UK 2008–2010. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 74 LEOs from 41 organisations subject to newly devised performance indicators. The research demonstrates that performance benchmarking can encourage learning amongst local electoral officials and strengthen central control over them.     

A systematic approach to study electoral fraud

Integrity of elections relies on fair procedures at different stages of the election process, and fraud can occur in many instances and different forms. This paper provides a general approach for the detection of fraud. While most existing contributions focus on a single instance and form of fraud, we propose a more encompassing approach, testing for several empirical implications of different possible forms of fraud. To illustrate this approach we rely on a case of electoral irregularities in one of the oldest democracies: In a Swiss referendum in 2011, one in twelve municipalities irregularly destroyed the ballots, rendering a recount impossible. We do not know whether this happened due to sloppiness, or to cover possible fraudulent actions. However, one of our statistical tests leads to results, which point to irregularities in some of the municipalities, which lost their ballots: they reported significantly fewer empty ballots than the other municipalities. Relying on several tests leads to the well known multiple comparisons problem. We show two strategies and illustrate strengths and weaknesses of each potential way to deal with multiple tests.     

Attitudes to voting rules and electoral system preferences: Evidence from the 1999 and 2003 Scottish Parliament elections

Researchers have paid little attention to the way citizens evaluate different electoral systems. This reflects the limited knowledge citizens are presumed to have about alternative electoral arrangements. However, the establishment of a legislature under new electoral rules creates conditions in which citizens can make more informed judgements. Such a situation occurred with the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, elected under the Additional Member system. Using data collected in 1999 and 2003, we consider Scottish voters’ reactions to the new electoral rules. We examine how voters evaluated various features and outcomes of the rules, the structure of voters’ attitudes, and which features and outcomes of the rules were decisive in shaping overall support for plurality and proportional voting systems.     

Neighborhood heterogeneity and electoral turnout

We perform an empirical analysis to investigate how neighborhood heterogeneity affects electoral turnout. To this end, we rely on a unique dataset on local elections in an Italian municipality, which merges information on socio-economic characteristics of about 370.000 individuals with turnout data for 434 electoral precincts in 2004 and 2009. Exploiting both across and within precincts variation, we are able to disentangle the contextual effects on precinct-level electoral turnout of two different dimensions of neighborhood heterogeneity: income inequality and ethnic composition. Our results support the idea that contextual heterogeneity negatively affects political participation.     

How electoral systems affect MPs’ positions

The question how different electoral systems affect the representation of voters in parliaments has been a thorny issue for a considerable time. While some research suggests that first-past-the-posts systems should lead to a closer correspondence between the preferences of the electoral district’s median voter and of its representative, other work concludes that in proportional representation (PR) systems, especially with open lists, candidates have an incentive to cultivate a strong personal vote.     

The range and limitation of sub-national regime variations under electoral authoritarianism: The case of Russia

ABSTRACT

As has been demonstrated by scholars, different levels of a polity may encompass different political regimes. In this study we examine variations in regional political regimes which have developed under Russia's system of electoral authoritarianism. Comparing the results of two cycles of regional assembly elections (2008–12 and 2013–17) we analyse and compare elections results and levels of electoral contestation in both the party list (PL) and single member district (SMD) contests. This allows us to identify the range of sub-national regime variations: ‘hegemonic authoritarian’, ‘inter-elite bargain authoritarian’, ‘clearly-competitive authoritarian’, and ‘moderately-competitive authoritarian’ regions. Approximately half of the regions demonstrate stable electoral patterns across both cycles. At the same time, none of the regions go beyond the authoritarian limitations imposed by the Russian regime. The variation is explained by a combination of structural and agency factors with a prevalence of the latter.     

Voting Advice Applications and electoral turnout

In the last two decades Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have become popular tools among voters, especially in several countries with a multi-party system. In this paper we test if the use of VAAs stimulates electoral participation. We use survey data from the Netherlands, where such tools are widely used. In order to overcome methodological problems of earlier studies, we use techniques that model the effect of confounding variables as a problem of selection into the treatment (VAA usage). We estimate that VAA usage accounted for about four per cent of the reported turnout in the election. The mobilising effect was largest among groups that typically vote in relatively small numbers, such as young voters and those less knowledgeable about politics.     

Electoral volatility and the dynamics of electoral reform

Recent elections in Europe have shown that a context of increasing citizen distrust towards democratic institutions may lead to very high levels of electoral volatility and to the emergence of new parties. On the other hand, institutional reforms are sometimes presented as a solution to citizens’ discontent with political institutions. Focusing on a specific type of political institution ? electoral systems ? the question addressed in this study is whether high levels of electoral volatility may trigger electoral reforms. The article investigates the conditions under which reforms affecting the electoral system’s degree of openness to new parties were enacted in 25 European countries between 1945 and 2012. The findings demonstrate that volatility due to the emergence of new parties is the most powerful explanation to account for the introduction of electoral reforms, particularly those that hinder the entry of new parties into the system.     

Uncovering the micro-foundations of turnout and electoral systems

This paper tackles the micro-foundations of voting and addresses why proportional representation systems (PR) are associated with higher turnout than majoritarian systems (SMD). I argue that individual evaluations of the differential benefit in the calculus of voting are affected by spatial party competition framed by electoral institutions. Unlike PR, SMD constrains the number of parties and creates large centripetal forces for party competition, which reduces the perceived benefits of voting. A citizen’s voting propensity is related to the distance between her preferred policy position and those of her most- and least-favored parties. I use multilevel modeling to analyze individual voting decisions structured by aggregate variables across 64 elections. The empirical findings confirm the argument and the mechanism holds both in established and non-established democracies.     

Income-based voting and polarization over redistribution under alternative electoral systems

Democracies that have proportional electoral systems spend substantively more on welfare policies than those that have majoritarian systems. Theoretical accounts of this empirical regularity are generally tested using macro-level data, leaving micro-level implications untested. In this paper, I take an alternative approach, leveraging the fact that the theories in question make predictions about the electoral coordination between parties and voters around broad-based redistribution under alternative institutional arrangements. To test the theories, I create a novel measure of income-based voting, which captures the sensitivity of vote choice to changes in income and forms the dependent variable in a second stage model. Overall, I find robust support for more proportionality leading to more income-based voting.     

Comparisons among electoral systems: Distinguishing between localism and candidate-centered politics

Carey and Shugart (1995) offer a four component composite index of “incentives to cultivate a personal vote.” We argue that this index, while tapping important aspects of electoral system choice, is best regarded as encompassing two distinct dimensions: degree of party-centeredness of the electoral system, on the one hand, and incentives for “parochial” behavior on the part of legislators, on the other. Also, while we have no problem with the three indicators used by Carey and Shugart to measure party-centeredness; to measure parochial incentives we prefer to use a new measure, E (Grofman, 1999a) of the size of a legislator's electoral constituency, rather than using district magnitude, m, as a proxy for a the size of a legislator's geographic constituency, as Carey and Shugart do. In the conclusion to the paper we argue that the degree of similarity between any two electoral systems will depend upon the research question at issue, and that the expected degree of proportionality of election results is only one of the many political consequences of electoral laws to which we ought to be paying attention.     

Not always second order: Subnational elections,national-level vote intentions,and volatility spillovers in a multi-level electoral system

The widespread second-order view on subnational elections leaves little room for the idea that subnational election campaigns matter for national-level electoral preferences. I challenge this perspective and explore the context-conditional role of subnational election campaigns for national-level vote intentions in multi-level systems. Campaigns direct citizens’ attention to the political and economic “fundamentals” that determine their electoral preferences. Subnational election campaigns and the major campaign issues receive nation-wide media coverage. This induces all citizens in a country to evaluate parties at the national level even if they themselves are not eligible to vote in the upcoming subnational election. Thereby, subnational election campaigns may lead to a reduction in the uncertainty of voters’ national-level electoral preferences throughout the country, which is reflected by a decrease in the volatility of national-level vote intentions. I explore weekly vote intention data from Germany (1992–2007) within a conditional volatility model. Subnational elections reduce uncertainty in nation-wide federal-level vote intentions for major parties. However, patterns of incumbency and coalitional shifts moderate this volatility-reducing effect.