An integrated perspective on the three potential sources of partisan bias: Malapportionment, turnout differences, and the geographic distribution of party vote shares

Partisan bias refers to an asymmetry in the way party vote share is translated into seats, i.e., a situation where some parties are able to win a given share of seats with a lesser (share of the) vote than is true for other parties. Any districted system is potentially subject to partisan biases. We show that there are three potential sources of partisan bias: (1) differences in the nature of the vote shares of the winning candidates of different parties that give rise to differences in the proportion of each party's votes that come to be ‘wasted’—differences which arise because of the nature of the geographic distribution of partisan support; (2) turnout rate differences across districts that are linked to the partisan vote shares in those districts, such that certain parties are more likely to have ‘cheap seats’ vis-à-vis turnout; and (3) malapportionment. In the context of two-party competition over single-member districts we provide a simple formulation to calculate the independent effect of each of these three factors. We illustrate our analysis with a calculation of the magnitude and direction of effects of the three determinants of partisan bias in elections to the US House and the US Senate in 1984, 1986 and 1988; then we consider how to extend the approach to a system with a mix of single- and multi-member districts or to a weighted voting system such as the US electoral college. We then apply the method to calculate the nature and sources of partisan bias in the 1984 and 1988 US presidential elections.     

Women's Substantive Representation: Defending Feminist Interests or Women's Electoral Preferences?

To what extent does the inclusion of marginalised groups in policymaking institutions influence policy outcomes? This article examines whether and under which conditions female legislators are more likely to represent women's interests compared with male legislators. Building on the literature on women's substantive representation, it is argued that the advocacy of women's interests by female representatives depends on a number of factors, namely party affiliation, contact with women's organisations, electoral district, and seniority. This argument is evaluated using vote-level fixed-effect models based on a unique data set from a direct democratic context that combines representatives' voting behaviour, women's voting preferences, and recommendations from feminist groups. The findings show that female legislators defend feminist interests more than their male colleagues but that they only marginally respond to women's electoral preferences. Moreover, gender has its most visible effect within the populist party.     

Office effects and campaign spending in a semi-open list PR system: The Belgian/Flemish federal and regional elections 1999–2010

In majoritarian systems, campaign spending is generally found to be more effective for challengers than for incumbents. This article seeks to understand how the personal campaign spending of a candidate impacts preference votes in a semi-open List PR system. We analyse the effect of office in general, postulating that the size of the effect varies with the prominence of the office. On the basis of the pooled data on six different elections in the Flemish region of Belgium, we show that personal spending has an effect on the number and the relative share of preference votes, except for ministers and (to a lesser extent) mayors of local communalities. Irrespective of the office, personal spending has no effect on the odds of actually obtaining a seat.     

Behavioral consequences of mixed electoral systems: Deviating voting behavior of district and list MPs in the German Bundestag

Electoral rules should affect parliamentary behavior. In particular, deputies elected from single-member districts should be more likely to deviate from the party line than deputies elected under proportional representation. This paper suggests a framework for conceptualizing and modeling the effect of the type of mandate on deputies’ propensity to cast deviating votes in mixed electoral systems. The proposed modeling strategy uses disaggregated voting data and integrates dependencies among observations in a multi-level design. Empirically, the paper analyses voting behavior in the 16th German Bundestag (2005–2009) and shows that the odds of district MPs to deviate are significantly higher despite frequent claims that the two types of MPs behave alike. However, the behavioral differences cannot be attributed to attempts by district MPs to follow their local constituents as competing principals.     

Compensating the Losers: An Examination of Congressional Votes on Trade Adjustment Assistance

Globalization intensifies political conflict between citizens whose circumstances improve from foreign trade and those whose lives deteriorate as a result of trade. To pacify these rival interests, governments may assist citizens who become unemployed due to trade. When and under what conditions will legislators fund such assistance programs? The current study addresses this question by examining Congressional roll call votes in the United States during a period of rapid economic integration (1980–2004). The analysis reveals that protrade legislators who represent relatively more exporters are more likely to vote for increased spending on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs. Exporters and their elected representatives arguably support such expenditures to broaden the protrade coalition.     

The Coalition and the Politics of the English Question

For much of the 2010–15 Parliament the English Question was not a conspicuous feature of political debate in the UK. However, the issue of English votes for English laws (EvfEl) was thrust to centre stage by Prime Minister David Cameron in the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum, when he announced that fulfilment of the promise of further devolution to Scotland must be accompanied by an answer to the West Lothian Question at Westminster. This article analyses these events and explores their possible consequences. It argues that a reform of parliamentary procedures along the lines outlined in the report of the McKay Commission looks increasingly likely, but that this will not mark a resolution of the broader English Question, and the future of the Union remains in doubt.     

布雷顿森林模式的改革研究

布雷顿森林模式是一种基本投票权和加权投票权相结合的加权表决制度,它存在许多问题。解决方法有:赋予发展中国家更多的与其地位和作用一致的投票权,增加基本票在总投票权中的比重,采用集团投票制,各机构改革分开进行,并应有独立的份额分配公式,选择合理的参数和权重,改进GDP的计算方法,以上这些都要纳入法制化轨道。发展中国家对待改革要讲究策略,谨慎看待已取得的改革成果,对改革的渐进性和艰巨性要有充分认识,建立发展中国家之间的协调机制,发展本国经济,增加综合国力。     

Consensus Decisions and Similarity Measures in International Organizations

Voting behavior in international organizations, most notably in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), is often used to infer the similarity of foreign policy preferences of member states. Most of these measures ignore, however, that particular covoting patterns may appear simply by chance (Häge 2011) and that these patterns of agreement (or the absence thereof) are only observable if decisions are reached through roll-call votes. As the relative frequency of roll-call votes changes considerably over time in most international organizations, currently used similarity and affinity measures offer a misleading picture. Based on a complete data set of UNGA resolution decisions, we demonstrate how taking different forms of chance agreement and the relative prevalence of consensus decisions into account affects conclusions about the effect of the similarity of member states’ foreign policy positions on foreign aid allocation.     

Institutions and Vote Unity in Parliaments: Evidence from 33 National Chambers

The paper looks at the relationship between institutions and vote unity in national parliaments with the help of a large data set of votes from 33 national parliaments. The tests run are the first to confirm empirically the relationship between vote of confidence procedure and vote unity. The paper also provides a theoretical explanation for why the existence of the confidence procedure influences vote unity despite being used only rarely. The vote of confidence influences votes through the development of control mechanisms as well as the selection of party members who are more ideologically united. This study also challenges the view that electoral rules which make candidates individually accountable to voters necessarily lead to more vote defections. The findings suggest that higher personal accountability decreases vote unity only if party leaders do not control candidate nomination. Parties that rely on government finance for campaigns are also more united.     

Is electoral intraparty competition more intense in urban areas?

This article investigates whether intraparty competition at the election stage – measured by the distribution of preference votes over candidates running under the same party label – is more intense in urban areas. Earlier research on preferential-list PR systems shows that urban voters are less inclined to cast preference votes. Yet we do not know how these differences at the individual voter level translate to the degree of intraparty competition at the aggregate list level. We hypothesize that urban areas provide a more open electoral market and lead to lower levels of vote concentration on party lists. We leverage a novel dataset on preference voting in three Belgian elections by aggregating 461,049 preference vote scores for candidates-in-cantons to a dataset of intraparty competition scores for 3214 lists-in-cantons. The hierarchical models show that intra-party competition is impacted by the interactive effects of both the urban character of electoral competition and the presence of prominent office-holders. While rural contexts lead to greater vote concentration in presence of a larger number of office-holders, urban contexts often result in lower vote concentration. Our study provides novel insights into the contextual determinants of intraparty competition and personalization.