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.     

Partisan dealignment and committee power in five Westminster parliaments

What explains the power of parliamentary committees? A large literature on the United States Congress sees strong legislative committees as a consequence of legislators’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote. These incentives are typically understood to be determined by formal electoral rules. How legislatures are elected thus shapes how they are organised. This article argues that explanations of legislative organisation should also consider a non-institutional source of personal vote-seeking incentives: voters’ partisanship. Where partisan dealignment is more extensive, legislators have stronger incentives to develop a personal vote. Where committee systems are more powerful, legislators have better opportunities to do so. Partisan dealignment should thus lead to stronger committee systems. This argument is supported by analysis of original data on the postwar evolution of committee systems in five ‘Westminster’ parliaments. Partisan dealignment is associated with larger committee systems, and with larger expansions of committee systems.     

Making wasted votes count: Turnout,transfers, and preferential voting in practice

Proponents of electoral reform champion the single transferable vote (STV) or aligned forms of preferential voting (AV, IRV, RCV) as a method to improve participation among and representation of the general public. Voters provide an ordinal ranking among alternatives on the ballot, and ballots not used to elect a candidate are transferred to another favored alternative. Preferential voting is intended to encourage both citizen participation in an election and sincere voting. Yet the empirical evidence about the effects of preferential voting in the scholarly literature is scant. Elections of members to the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of national parliament in Ireland, provide a wealth of data on preferential voting. Data from four recent Irish elections (1997, 2002, 2007, and 2011) are analyzed to assess the effectiveness of STV on reducing wasted votes. The number of nontransferable ballots, votes not used for any candidate, is large and increases as the need for lower level preferences (that is, later counts or rounds) grows. Voter turnout does not correspond to preferential voting in predictable ways; turnout declines as the number of candidates elected increases. Although preferential voting systems have much to offer, their effects need to be evaluated.     

The religious and spiritual underpinnings of party choice in christian Europe

Many studies have shown that individual religiosity is related to a Christian Democratic vote. Recently, studies from sociology of religion have reported the rise of holistic spirituality. This paper is the first to examine the effects of holistic spirituality on party choice. In addition, it critically assesses the assertion that conventional religiosity prevents individuals from affiliating with Green parties.Our results show that spirituality is related to a higher probability of choosing Green parties. Moreover, conventional religiosity increases the probability that moderate left voters will prefer a Green party to a Social Democratic party. This result shows that there is common ground between the electorates of Green and Christian Democratic parties, thus creating possibilities for new political coalitions.     

That’s Why the Lady Lost to the Trump: Demographics and the 2016 Presidential Election

I examine the relationship between demographics and vote choice using pre-election tracking polls, exit polls, and data on the American states. A number of important findings emerge: (1) there was a fair amount of preference stability in 2016; (2) Clinton underperformed Obama in 83% of demographic groups examined; (3) at the state level, the percent of whites with low levels of education and the size of the rural population had important effects on vote choice, and both of those variables were more strongly correlated with Democratic vote share in 2016 than in 2012; and (4) while state turnout rates were moderately correlated with Clinton’s vote share, changes in state turnout rates from 2012 to 2016 did not have a substantial impact on Clinton’s performance.     

关于检察长列席审判委员会制度的思考

检察长列席审判委员会制度作为中国特色社会主义司法制度的重要组成部分,是实现审判监督方式多元化的一个重要途径,它对于加强审判监督、增强检法交流、提高办案质量与办案效率等具有重要意义和作用。文章从检察长列席审判委员会制度的运行现状入手,对其合理性进行了深入论证,并对其制度构建进行了有益探讨。     

Voting for government coalitions in Ireland under single transferable vote

This paper addresses the issue of whether voters indicate a preference for a government rather than, or in addition to a preference for a party, when they cast a ballot under the system of the single transferable vote (STV). It thus contributes to the existing literature on strategic coalition voting by examining whether coalition preferences matter where electors are given the option to rank the parties in order of preference. The question then becomes: does this ranking reflect or signal a coalition preference? Using survey data from two Irish elections, this paper finds that whereas first preferences are closely aligned with coalition choices, Irish voters do not systematically use second preferences to express a view on their preferred coalition formation.     

中西方选举传统的分歧、冲突与融合

对古代中国而言，“选举”指的是以皇帝名义进行的某种选贤任能的人事制度；对古代西方而言，“选举”指的则是以不同阶级制度为基础的代表制度，其目的在于分享特定事务的决定权。在西学东渐的背景下，近现代中国的选举，在与以往的察举、科举制度存在根本性差异的同时，并没有完全脱离察举、科举制度的基本价值取向，反而在相当程度上受到这些传统的影响，并产生了中国近代选举中的民智、政纲和异见问题。     

论公民选举权与被选举权的平等保护——以2010年选举法修改为视角

2010年修改后的《选举法》确立了＂城乡按相同人口比例选举人大代表＂的原则,这是对我国选举制度的重要发展。但是由于户籍制度的制约以及相关配套制度的滞后和缺位,在实践中城乡人大代表同比例选举这一目标的实现仍存在障碍。针对实践中存在的相关问题,在下次修改《选举法》时,可以考虑以居住地为划分选区的唯一标准,同时可以采取＂异地选举＂的方式,将上亿流动人口纳入选举制度中来。     

The Effect of Information Signals on Strategic Voting in Mock Mayoral Elections

While theoretical work on strategic voting emphasizes the importance of elite messages in persuading minor party supporters to abandon their first preference, few empirical studies have examined this relationship. I argue that while poll results certainly increase the likelihood of changing one’s vote, explicit information signals can increase this probability even more. Furthermore, these effects will be moderated by the presence of a counter message and the sponsor of the explicit information signal. These hypotheses are tested with data generated from two experiments. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.