Nowhere to Run,Nowhere to Hide? The 2010 General Election and the Defence of First‐past‐the‐post

The 2010 general election threw traditional arguments about electoral reform into chaos: defenders of the status quo suddenly found themselves defending outcomes the existing system is supposed to prevent, while advocates of reform were obliged to praise outcomes arising from current arrangements. This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of first‐past‐the‐post in the light of the 2010 result and asserts that—contrary to many claims—FPTP remains a defensible electoral system. In doing so, the article highlights the peculiar political circumstances attending the last general election, while reminding readers that other recent UK elections, conducted under other electoral systems, have not been free of serious anomalies.     

MP behavior in mixed-member electoral systems

Previous research has argued that representatives in mixed-member electoral systems adjust their behavior to the mode of their election, the so-called mandate divide. MPs elected in single-member districts focus on their district, whereas those elected through closed party lists focus on their party. Yet this ignores that candidates in mixed-member systems can run in a district and on their party's list concurrently. This paper presents a model of how the prospects of re-election in the district and through the party list affect the relationship between voters, candidates, and parties. It is shown that the dual candidacy option results in candidates focusing on their party in most instances. The model is applied to a novel data set on the allocation of federal road construction projects in Germany.     

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.     

Male MPs,electoral vulnerability and the substantive representation of women's interests

What are the political conditions affecting male MPs’ willingness to represent women's interests in parliament? This paper explores the role of electoral vulnerability in this regard and analyzes whether male MPs’ re-election prospects affect their likelihood of paying attention to women's concerns. Theoretically, we expect that male MPs are not blamed if they do not represent women's interests but can gain additional credit for doing so. Thus, male MPs should be more likely to speak on behalf of women if their electoral vulnerability is high and if they need to win additional votes to be re-elected. Empirically, the paper analyzes the representation of women's issues in the British House of Commons, by using Early Day Motions tabled preceding the General Elections in 2001, 2005, 2010 and 2015. The results show that male MPs are more likely to represent women's interests when their re-election is at risk.     

How Unusual is the United Kingdom Coalition (and What are the Chances of It Happening Again)?

This article draws upon insights from theoretical and empirical studies of coalition behaviour in multiparty politics to examine the formation of the United Kingdom coalition following the general election of 6 May 2010. It argues that the formation of the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition is not unusual in historical terms or in the context of contemporary European politics; and that although it is a break from the more recent pattern of postwar British politics it nevertheless does conform to expectations in the light of the coalition literature. The article also provides a comparative analysis of the impact of Britain's ‘First‐Past‐The‐Post’ (FPTP) electoral system on party competition and an examination of the performance of the Alternative Vote (AV) system and argues that if the United Kingdom retains FPTP then a return to single‐party government in 2015 is highly likely; and it is not inevitable that the introduction of AV would significantly advantage the Liberal Democrats.     

The international diffusion of electoral systems: The spread of mechanisms tempering proportional representation across Europe

There is an assumption in much of the electoral engineering literature that domestic episodes of electoral system choice occur in a vacuum, isolated from international influences. Yet this assumption remains largely untested, despite the comparative focus of much of that literature. This article focuses on part of this gap by considering two electoral mechanisms that seek to limit party system fragmentation under proportional representation – low district magnitudes and high electoral thresholds – and shows that the mechanisms have spread across many European countries during the post‐1945 period. Analyses reveal that national legislators are more likely to adopt one of these electoral mechanisms when a large number of peer countries have made similar choices within the last two or three years. This effect is robust to various model specifications and to the inclusion of multiple controls. The article also offers some qualitative evidence from case studies and parliamentary debates.     

An electoral calculus? Dual incentives and committee assignment in the UK’s mixed-member legislatures

Although mixed-member electoral systems offer an apparent opportunity to observe how different rules shape politicians’ behaviour, ‘contamination’ between the SMD and PR-list tiers has frequently confounded academic work. Investigating Scotland and Wales’ mixed-member legislatures by exploiting their different chamber sizes and an unusual dual candidacy prohibition in Wales, modelling of committee assignments uncovers a split finding. Controlling for membership of the lead governing party, list members have a higher committee workload than their constituency colleagues, and members with previous employment experience in justice and health are more likely to be assigned to the corresponding subject committee once elected. Elsewhere, expectations that members might seek assignments that best suit theorized re-election interests are not found. The hypothesized influence of electoral rules is strongly conditioned by the small size of the legislature in Wales.     

It's Only Made Things Worse: A Critique of Electoral Reform in Britain

Since it came to power, New Labour has introduced a range of new electoral system into the British political system, implicitly accepting the argument that Britain's traditional electoral system - first-past-the-post (FPTP) - has been a cause of voter disenchantment with Britain's representative democracy. In this article, it is asserted that Labour's reforms have merely compounded this problem, while demonstrating that all electoral systems have significant flaws. Indeed, it is argued that the flaws of the new systems are more serious than those of FPTP and threaten an even greater disconnection between UK politicians and the people they represent."     

Catalysts and barriers: Explaining electoral reform in Western Europe

Most accounts of electoral system change tend to consider it as being driven by purely partisan interests. Political parties are expected to change the electoral rules as a way to maximise gains or minimise losses. However, little work has been done on the question of why electoral reforms are so scarce in spite of these potential benefits. In this study, a wide range of both factors that may foster (‘catalysts’) and ones that may hinder (‘barriers’) the change of electoral institutions are investigated. A statistical analysis is performed of 16 West European countries from 1975 to 2005, covering 23 reforms of the proportionality of their electoral systems. It is found that procedural barriers are more effective for explaining the likelihood of electoral reforms than (most of) the catalysts. Additionally, there are indications that courts may play a more active role in triggering reform than previously thought.     

The impact of candidate selection rules and electoral vulnerability on legislative behaviour in comparative perspective

Legislators are political actors whose main goal is to get re-elected. They use their legislative repertoire to help them cater to the interests of their principals. It is argued in this article that we need to move beyond treating electoral systems as monolithic entities, as if all legislators operating under the same set of macro-rules shared the same set of incentives. Rather, we need to account for within-system variation – namely, candidate selection rules and individual electoral vulnerability. Using a most different systems design, Germany, Ireland and Portugal are leveraged with both cross-system and within-system variation. An original dataset of 345,000 parliamentary questions is used. Findings show that candidate selection rules blur canonical electoral system boundaries. Electoral vulnerability has a similar effect in closed-list and mixed systems, but not in preferential voting settings.     

The legislative consequences of Mexico’s mixed-member electoral system, 2000–2009

The emergence of mixed-member electoral systems across the globe has been an attempt to balance local representation through single-member districts (SMD) with programmatic representation through proportional representation lists (PR). However, there are several competing theoretical interpretations for the consequences of mixed systems on legislative bodies. Through a study of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, I test several empirical implications of these competing theories by examining the impact of the electoral system on party discipline, participation, and legislative organization. I find little convincing evidence of differences between legislators elected through PR and those elected through SMD in their levels of party discipline, but I do find that PR legislators participate in a manner theoretically consistent with their mode of election. I also find that PR legislators have disproportionate control over key leadership positions. I suggest the primary reasons for these findings is due to differing methods of candidate selection and restricted use of dual candidacy.     

The British general election of 2010 under different voting rules

The 2010 British election resulted in what the British refer to as a “hung Parliament” for the first time in over a generation. This result further heightened the debate over the fairness and utility of the nation’s centuries-old first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. Survey data are used to simulate the election outcome under four different electoral systems beyond FPTP: round-robin pair-wise comparisons, the Borda count, the alternative vote, and Coombs' method. Results suggest that in 2010, the Liberal-Democrats were Condorcet preferred to all other parties and would have won a national election under every tested method except the alternative vote, the method supported by the Liberal-Democrats during the referendum in May 2011 and, of course, FPTP as actually used.     

Revisiting the ideological congruence controversy

One of the limits of previous studies using respondents’ self‐placements and subjective party placements to examine levels of citizen‐government congruence is that they were limited to the post‐1995 period. This article extends the number of elections where it is possible to examine levels of citizen‐government ideological congruence with a survey‐based approach. In particular, a unique dataset has been collected that combines data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and several national election studies. The results confirm recent studies that show that levels of citizen‐government ideological congruence are similar under majoritarian and proportional representation (PR) systems. Such studies, however, did not provide evidence that congruence is maintained over the course of a government's mandate. This article introduces, therefore, two measures of citizen‐government congruence that address this issue and that may revive the debate about which electoral systems strengthen the citizen‐government connection: citizen‐government congruence at the end of government mandates and change in congruence between elections. The results indicate that governments stay closer to the median citizens between elections under PR systems than under majoritarian systems. It is found, however, that this decrease in congruence in majoritarian systems is not detrimental to the point of observing smaller levels of congruence at the end of government mandates under majoritarian systems than under PR systems.     

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.     

Proportional Representation and the Fortunes of Right-Wing Extremist Parties

This article examines the relationship between electoral systems and extremist political parties. Focusing on the West European parties of the extreme right, it first investigates the extent to which district magnitude and electoral formula - the two main dimensions of electoral systems - influence the scores of these parties. It then considers the overall impact of the disproportionality of the electoral system. The article concludes that whilst proportional electoral systems do undeniably make it easier for extremist parties to gain legislative representation, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they promote extremism. Instead, the share of the vote going to extremist parties appears unrelated to the type of electoral system employed.     

Party systems,electoral systems and constraints on corruption

This article explores the relationship between the party system, electoral formulas and corruption. Previous research has focused on the various incentives for political actors to monitor, or engage in corruption based on variations in the electoral formula. However, the electoral formula has mainly served as a proxy for the party system – whether multi-party or two-party. In this analysis, I test directly the relationship between party systems and corruption and in addition, add a degree of nuance to the established line of thinking within this literature. I argue that two-party systems in countries with predominantly single-member district (SMD) electoral formulas will demonstrate lower corruption on average than multi-party systems in SMD countries. However, I argue that this interaction effect does not play out in countries with proportional representation (PR). I test this hypothesis on 70 democratic and semi-democratic countries from 1987 to 2005 and find strong empirical support for the claim that multipartism in SMD countries is associated with higher levels of corruption, while the party system’s relationship with corruption plays no role in PR countries.     

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.     

Norwegian parliamentary elections, 1906–2013: representation and turnout across four electoral systems

Since gaining full independence in 1905, Norway has experienced more than a century of democratic elections, and has reformed its electoral system three times, most notably with the switch from a two-round runoff system to proportional representation in 1919. This research note introduces a new dataset featuring all candidates running for parliamentary (Storting) elections from 1906 to 2013, and documents the patterns over time and across electoral systems in the development of the party system; candidates’ gender, age, occupation, and geographic ties; and voter turnout. Scholars interested in using the dataset can gain access to it through the Norwegian Centre for Research Data.     

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.     

Electoral effects of candidate valence

Ideological proximity is not the sole determinant of electoral choices. Voters frequently select candidates whose policy profiles do not exhibit the closest match with their own policy preferences. Instead, non-spatial factors can govern the vote. The empirical literature has struggled to assess the effect of candidate valence on electoral outcomes due to the challenge of estimating a comprehensive indicator of candidate valence. This paper investigates the effect of non-spatial factors on candidates’ electoral results by estimating candidate valences from a vote advice application. A conservative estimate based on an analysis of the two-tiered German federal election system suggests a surplus of several percentage points for high-valence candidates over low-valence competitors – even for competitors from minor parties.