Search

When do electoral incentives encourage candidates to target immigrants with discriminatory rhetoric? I address this question through a novel dataset of refugee-related tweets by elites in Lebanon, the country hosting the most Syrian refugees per capita globally. I find that Lebanon's 2018 election, the first under a new set of electoral rules, precipitated an increase in anti-migrant tweets. However, the electoral campaign did not affect candidates' rhetoric uniformly, but rather fueled xenophobic discourses specifically among Christian candidates, whose voter base is particularly hostile towards refugees, and especially among Christians facing the fiercest electoral competition. This paper makes three contributions: theoretically, it elucidates the consequences of partisan competition for xenophobia; conceptually, it relaxes an assumption common in the ethnic institutions literature that ethnic composition is fixed over time; and empirically, it demonstrates how social media data can be harnessed for expanding a nascent literature on migration politics in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plurality vote (first-past-the-post) is one of the most restrictive electoral systems used for parliamentary elections. Empirically, its deterring effect on small political parties has been widely studied at the national level, while theoretical arguments highlight its strategic effect at the district level. This paper argues that the strategic effect, reducing the votes expressed for minor parties in plurality vote systems, is uneven across districts. The strongest strategic effect is expected in very competitive constituencies, where the two strongest candidates are in close competition with each other. The paper estimates the effect empirically, based on electoral results for minor political parties from six parliamentary democracies using the plurality vote. The methodology proposed in this paper allows me to separate sociological or geographical factors from strategic factors affecting party support. Results show that due to the strategic effect, minor parties lose some 15% of their votes in very competitive districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, African courts have played an important role in the conduct of free and fair elections. In Kenya, the Supreme Court nullified the presidential election of the incumbent. These rulings challenge the conventional wisdom that courts in hybrid regimes always support power holders despite blatant evidence of electoral fraud. Furthermore, these sparks of judicial resistance deserve our scholarly attention as they have the power to start the democratization process or limit further autocratization. Hence, this paper seeks to understand the conditions under which courts are able to resist incumbents' pressure to legitimize electoral malpractice and side with the opposition. I argue that institutional reforms incentivize courts to resist the incumbent's pressure and to rule in favor of the opposition during electoral disputes under two conditions. First, institutional reforms must reinforce de jure independence by enacting effective legal and constitutional mechanisms that prevent the executive branch from undermining the separation of power. Second, institutional reforms must mobilize judicial support networks by granting them the tools to engage in strategic and repeated litigation. I test this novel theory by leveraging original qualitative and quantitative data from Kenya. Using process tracing, I show how the 2010 constitution created an environment where the courts had no other choice than to annul the election of the incumbent – President Kenyatta – in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Last Digit test is a notable method to detect election fraud. It is based on an assumption that a manipulator replaces the vote counts of an election result sheet with man-made numbers, but will fail to make the numbers look random. Allegations of election fraud are based on this mechanism, but the strategic behaviour of humans when manipulating election results could make it difficult to detect fraudulent activities. This paper is the first to use a laboratory experiment to evaluate the ability of the Last Digit test to detect human manipulation of election results. Only a small share of participants' manipulations are detected by the Last Digit test. The small sensitivity is due to the strategic behaviour of participants. Participants in the experiment manipulate as few polling stations as necessary to reach their manipulation aim, manipulate leading digits when the requested intensity of fraud is extremely high, and use alternative strategies that are difficult to detect using the test. The analysis of the experiment further shows that only if participants alter a substantial share of last digits in the experiment the test indicates fraudulent activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to reconcile insights from winner–loser gap research with mainstream understanding of election legitimacy. The paper acknowledges that winning and losing elections creates differential incentives for citizens to remain supportive of their political system, but it argues that losers nevertheless have enough reasons to remain supportive in absolute terms. Drawing on democratic theory, the paper develops a rationale for why citizens are willing to accept electoral defeat voluntarily, and suggest a new way to conceptualize citizen reactions to election outcomes. It presents findings from a sample of election studies in established democracies to show that winners typically become more supportive whereas losers at minimum retain their level of support from before the election. It concludes that elections, when reasonably well executed, as they most often are in established democracies, build system support rather than undermine it. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract A vast literature shows that voting for the winning party in elections boosts satisfaction with democracy. But in many list PR systems, voters do not only vote for a party, they can also vote for candidates within parties. Yet, we know very little about how such votes affect voters' satisfaction with democracy. In this paper, we analyse pre- and post-election panel survey data from Belgium, in which we asked respondents to report their vote choice for parties and for candidates. The main finding is that casting a preference vote for a winning candidate makes little difference, as party-list voters are those with the largest increase in satisfaction with democracy. Such a finding is very important as reforms that increase voters' opportunities to vote for candidates within list have multiplied recently, and many of these reforms have been justified as being in line with voters' demand for more candidate-centred electoral systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to provide the definitional and empirical background to the Liberal Democracy Series I Index of democracy that is available in Bollen (1998) but whose rationale has not been published. More specifically, the paper (1) gives a definition of liberal democracy that has guided the formation of this index, (2) describes measures that correspond to this definition, (3) provides a measurement model that links the indicators of democracy to the latent variables that represent the concept, (4) explains the construction of the Liberal Democracy Series I Index, and (5) compares the Series I democracy measure to two other widely used democracy measures in a latent curve model. The Liberal Democracy Series I Index provides a simple unweighted measure of liberal democracy that minimizes the bias in expert ratings, is highly reliable and highly correlated with the latent liberal democracy variable. The evidenced reviewed here suggests that its measurement properties are superior to the Polity and Vanhanen democracy indices with the exception that it is available for a more limited period of years than these latter two. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Does government formation affect satisfaction with democracy? Research so far has focused on how winning or losing elections affects satisfaction with democracy, yet, in many coalition systems, who wins and who loses is not determined directly by the elections, but by the coalition formation process. Until now, the effect of government formation on satisfaction with democracy has not been examined. In this paper, we examine this using a quasi-experimental matching design examining eleven elections. We find some evidence that the formation of the coalition slightly but significantly lowers the satisfaction with democracy among those who supported a party that was removed from the governing coalition. This suggests that in coalition systems, looking at electoral winners and losers may be insufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among stable democracies, Uruguay is one of the most prodigious users of direct democratic devices at the national level. If we analyze the relationship between the share of “yes” votes received by any popular initiative and the share of votes received by politicians who politically supported it, we observe a strikingly high positive correlation of 0.9. Explaining this correlation is the central objective of this paper. Three alternative hypotheses are plausible: First, such a correlation could be a spurious association due to aggregation bias. Second, PI results could be reflections of economic conditions. Third, Uruguayans are extremely consistent in following their political parties'' advice. This paper finds that when Uruguayans go to the polls to vote on a popular initiative, their vote choice is primarily the result of their party loyalty, rather than their reaction to economic conditions. In testing my hypotheses I rely on the following statistical methods: King''s “Ecological Inference,” multivariate regression, and path analysis. The data come from seven popular initiatives in Uruguay since 1985 (133 observations). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There is a lively debate whether to consider vote decisions based on leader evaluations a threat to democracy, as this has long been assumed to constitute irrational decision-making behavior. Empirical evidence indicating that leader effects are not necessarily expressions of irrationality has recently mounted up, though skepticism towards leader effects remains resilient especially when considering voters being influenced through media coverage of party leaders. This paper studies some of the core assumptions of the ‘irrationality of leader effects’ thesis, by testing the conditionality of mediated leader effects based upon four voter characteristics: education, political interest, ideological distance to the leader's party and political cynicism. Two datasets are combined: a manual content analysis of leadership images in television coverage and a five-wave panel-dataset in the four months preceding the 2012 Parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. The results are mixed: one the one hand, being influenced by leadership images through the media is not a shortcut for voters who are incapable of understanding politics, while ideological considerations and other political attitudes are not completely excluded from the decision-making process, but, on the other hand, mediated leader effects are found to be strongest for voters who care least about politics. Thus, the empirical evidence can be brought to bear on both sides of the discussion, and, hence, does not conclusively settle the issue how mediated leader effects must be considered in relation to the irrationality of the vote decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature on the consequences of decentralization has demonstrated a positive effect on voter participation in subnational elections. However, does this positive effect also extend to national level elections? This paper evaluates the consequences of decentralization-level political participation. Our approach innovates by disaggregating decentralization to uncover the specific dimensions that matter for voting participation. We argue that self-rule (or the authority that subnational units exercise in their own territory) is closely associated with vertical accountability and positively affects voting participation. Moreover, we find that political dimensions of self-rule matter more than fiscal dimensions. Shared-rule (or the authority that subnational units exercise in the country as a whole) has no significant effect on participation since it is more closely related to horizontal accountability. We test our theory in 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries using a hierarchical model with 2010 data at the national and individual-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As multiparty elections have become a global norm, scholars and policy experts regard public trust in elections as vital for regime legitimacy. However, very few cross-national studies have examined the consequences of electoral manipulation, including the manipulation of election administration and the media, on citizens' trust in elections. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how autonomy of election management bodies (EMBs) and media freedom individually and conjointly shape citizens’ trust in elections. Citizens are more likely to express confidence in elections when EMBs display de-facto autonomy, and less likely to do so when mass media disseminate information independent of government control. Additionally, we suggest that EMB autonomy may not have a positive effect on public trust in elections if media freedom is low. Empirical findings based on recent survey data on public trust in 47 elections and expert data on de-facto EMB autonomy and media freedom support our hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party system nationalization is often viewed as critical to national unity, the production of public goods, and may have implications for democratic success. This paper assesses the impact of ethnic diversity and electoral rules in 74 economically developing democracies. Contrary to past studies, majoritarian electoral systems heighten the tendency of ethnic diversity to reduce nationalization while proportional representation greatly reduces its impact. Presidential systems produce higher levels of nationalization than parliamentary systems but the effect reverses as the number of presidential candidates increases. Though ethnic party bans may increase nationalization, ballot access requirements, the level of freedom, and relative prosperity have no effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conditions under which voters in emerging democracies support non-viable candidates. We argue that cognitive biases and the geographic clustering of minor-party supporters in ethno-political enclaves lead to misperceptions about the electoral prospects of minor-party candidates, weakening strategic defections both among co-ethnic and non-co-ethnic supporters. We explore these arguments using original survey data from Kenya's 2007 presidential election, a contest that featured a minor-party candidate, Kalonzo Musyoka, who stood little chance of electoral victory. Despite this, results show that most of his supporters chose to vote for the candidate, failing to perceive that he was not a viable contender. The findings suggest that theories of political behavior in multi-ethnic settings can be enriched by drawing upon insights from the political psychology literature on belief formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In all democracies, anticipating the final results of a national election the same day the voters go to the polling stations is a matter of interest, for television stations and some civil rights organizations, for example. The most reliable option is a quick count, a statistical procedure that consists in selecting a random sample of polling stations and analysing their final counts to forecast the election results. In Mexico, a particularly important quick count is organized by the electoral authority. The importance of its results requires this exercise to be designed and executed with specially high standards far beyond those used in commercial studies of this type. In this paper, the model and the Bayesian analysis of the quick counts conducted by the Mexican authority, during the presidential elections in 2006 and 2012, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections are celebrated in democracies as well as in non-democracies. Studies on the factors explaining turnout normally focus, however, only on democracies. Are turnout patterns different in non-democracies? If so, how different are those? In this paper I address this issue with a unique dataset covering 1251 elections -678 democratic (in 107 countries) and 250 nondemocratic elections (in 81 countries) for the lower house and 209 democratic (in 57 countries) and 114 nondemocratic (in 60 countries)- for the period 1961-2008. I find that the turnout determinants are contingent upon the regimes and that the most important differences lay in the institutional and in the political factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the important role of election management in new democracies, this paper explores citizens' opinions of Mexico's key electoral institutions – the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TRIFE) – within the context of the 2006 and 2012 Mexican general elections. Using data from the Mexico 2006 Panel Study and the Mexico 2012 Panel Study, we find that key predictors of public opinion of Mexico's key electoral institutions include support for specific presidential candidates and partisan identification, but also perceptions of electoral integrity, the urban–rural divide, and other socio-demographic variables. In particular, this study finds strong support of a “winner's effect” in the context of the 2006 and 2012 Mexican elections. These findings raise important questions regarding citizens' opinions of Mexico's key electoral institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics in regions or countries with a salient ethno-regionalist cleavage take on a unique dynamic. In addition to ideological positioning on economic and social stances, centre-periphery issues add a third ideological dimension that needs to be acknowledged. Yet, electoral research has rarely given appropriate attention to these three ideological dimensions independently. This paper takes up this challenge by presenting a three-dimensional ideological model of vote choice. The three dimensions are each theoretically portrayed as having a determining and independent influence on voting. Using survey data from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project, we explore determinants of vote choice in recent sub-national elections in Catalonia and Quebec. The results show that all three ideological dimensions are significant determinants of vote choice in both regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging consensus that niche parties are fundamentally different from mainstream parties because niche parties do not moderate their policy positions strategically. However, there is theoretical reason to believe that niche parties have an electoral incentive to shift their policy positions in the same direction as parties that are proximate to them in their most salient policy space. This paper examines whether niche parties respond to such electoral incentives, using data on government coalitions from the Parliament and Government Composition Database, and party behavior from the Comparative Manifesto Project in 17 Western style democracies. The results suggest that niche parties tend to respond strategically to the perceived behavior of proximate parties, especially on their most salient policy dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1970s onwards, a wide range of forecasting techniques have been developed in the literature on electoral forecasting. However, these models have primarily been applied in two-party, presidential democracies, with the US being by far the most popular country to investigate. The question thus arises whether the same techniques that have proved successful in this context can also be applied to the more complex, multiparty democracies in northern Europe. This paper seeks to answer this question and in the process makes two main contributions. Firstly, the popular dynamic linear model (Jackman, 2005) is tried and tested in Germany and Sweden where it is shown that reasonable forecasts can be made despite the complexity of the systems and the emergence of new parties. A novelty is then introduced when cyclical changes in party support are modelled through a seasonal component . This extension of the dynamic linear model helps to significantly lower the error in early forecasts and is thus something that could be useful in future applications of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making cross-groups comparisons by using survey instruments has raised substantial scholarly concerns due to the potential risk of incomparability resulting from differential item functioning (DIF). However, not every survey item necessarily suffers from DIF. In this paper, we argue that, unlike many other survey items (e.g., political efficacy), the usual question used to measure political interest is likely to be largely immune to DIF. Our theoretical argument centers on the relative specificity of the item and a corresponding cultural homogeneity (at least in advanced democracies) in what it means to be politically interested or not. Utilizing the anchoring vignettes technique (King et al., 2004; King and Wand, 2007) in our original surveys in the UK, France, and the Netherlands, we demonstrate the size of DIF is small for the standard political interest question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political socialization literature attributes the formation of public political attitudes in mature democracies to varying mixtures of life-cycle processes, generational experiences and period effects. In the absence of long-term, individual-level panel data, delineating these effects has been a longstanding problem. Building on path-breaking work by Yang and Land, recent research has utilized multi-level analyses of repeated cross-sectional survey data sets to estimate life-cycle, generational and period effects in several Western countries. Employing data from national election surveys conducted over the past decade by the TEDS project, this paper uses the Yang–Land methodology to conduct illustrative analyses of age cohort and period effects on political attitudes and behavior in a new Asian democracy, Taiwan. Analyses of KMT partisanship show a significant generational component, and analyses of political efficacy, political interest and electoral turnout suggest that inferences about age cohort and period effects can depend on how individual-level age effects are specified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, election administration has become a subject of intensified debates, raising questions of how to organize elections to ensure electoral integrity. One question concerns who should serve as members of polling station boards, administer election day proceedings, and participate in the vote count. Different models co-exist in modern democracies, with some countries – among them Austria – actively involving the political parties in the election administration. Against this background, this paper examines perceptions of electoral integrity among Austrian poll workers and citizens using data from an original survey of poll workers and survey data of the voting population. The results show that poll workers have greater confidence in the election administration than regular voters but are equally or more skeptical regarding other aspects of electoral integrity. Also, their partisan background shapes perceptions of electoral integrity. To conclude, we discuss the benefits and limitations of the 'party model' for poll worker recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is still not well understood how the media affect anti-immigrant party voting. In this paper, we argue and demonstrate empirically that mere exposure to immigration- and crime-related news is positively related to the likelihood that a voter casts a vote for an anti-immigrant party. On the basis of a media content analysis ( N = 20,084 news items) in combination with a voter panel survey ( N = 17,014 respondents) conducted in 11 European countries we find for several anti-immigrant parties that – ceteris paribus – exposure to news about immigration or crime increases voters' probabilities to vote for these parties. We discuss our findings in light of prior research on issue ownership, and their implications for the role of the mass media in established democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting advice applications (VAAs) are interactive online tools designed to assist voters by improving the basis on which they decide how to vote. Current VAAs typically aim to do so by matching users' policy-preferences with the positions of parties or candidates. But this ‘matching model’ depends crucially on implicit, contestable presuppositions about the proper functioning of the electoral process and about the forms of competence required for good citizenship—presuppositions associated with the social choice conception of democracy. This paper aims to make those presuppositions explicit and to contrast them with two possible alternative perspectives on VAAs, associated with deliberative and agonistic conceptions of democracy and citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on existing studies linking formal electoral institutions to democracy. It reveals that there is an interactive effect between the electoral formula and the levels of ethnic polarization that systematically influences the quality of elections and the probability of government turnover. Proportional representation is associated with better elections and more frequent government turnover than single-member district majority formulas in ethnically polarized countries. However, the opposite is true when ethno-cultural groups are not numerous or polarized. This study contributes to the existing literature on formal political institutions by presenting evidence that the electoral formula's impact on governance is contingent on the context in which such institutions operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many theories of democracy point out that voters make their choices based on two goals: the retrospective assessment of incumbents and the prospective choice between incumbents and challengers. Do voters react to malfeasance on the part of their elected representatives? If they abandon corrupt incumbents, are they able to select more virtuous replacements? In this paper, we assess the effects of corruption on voter loyalty and, conversely, of voter defection on subsequent malfeasance. We examine these relationships with data drawn from 169 elections across 72 countries. Our results show that malfeasance does indeed provoke voter defection, but that electoral volatility is not followed by lower levels of perceived corruption. We conclude by discussing the appropriate interpretation of our results, the future research they suggest, and their meaning for related, emerging literatures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Despite the important consequences of citizens' election quality perceptions on political behavior and political attitudes, very little is known about how citizens formulate their perceptions of election quality. In this paper, I assess the correlates of citizens' perceptions of election quality. I suggest that the performance of election-related institutions is an important correlate of citizens' election quality perceptions. However, citizens' experience with electoral irregularities, and partisan affiliation also matter. I test these hypotheses in the context of the 2007 Nigerian general elections using survey data from Afrobarometer and International Foundation for Electoral Systems. The findings provide robust support for the hypotheses. Most importantly, the results indicate that the performance of electoral management bodies is associated with citizens' assessment of election quality in Africa and that citizens demand electoral management bodies with impartiality and professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: After two peaceful alternations of political power in a single decade, Taiwan is a democratic success story, demonstrating levels of party competition, turnout rates and patterns of civic engagement similar to those in mature Western democracies. What factors drive electoral choice in Taiwan's new democracy? This paper addresses this question by testing rival models of voting behavior using the Taiwan Elections and Democratization Study (TEDS) 2008 presidential election survey data and the 2010 mayoral election survey data. Analyses show that, similar to their counterparts in mature democracies, Taiwanese voters place more emphasis on the performance of political parties and their leaders in delivering policies designed to address valence issues concerning broadly shared policy goals than on position issues or more general ideological stances that divide the electorate. Findings demonstrating the strength of the valence politics model of electoral choice in Taiwan closely resemble the results of analyses of competing models of voting behavior in Western countries such as Great Britain and the United States. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper argues that wasted votes in founding elections decrease when countries have a previous democratic experience before the current democratic period. This historical-institutionalist argument is tested with national election results in 22 founding elections in third-wave European, Asian, Latin American and African democracies. The results demonstrate that having a democratic past clearly increases coordination and then reduces the percentage of wasted votes in the founding election, controlling for the electoral system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the way three types of factors influence eastern and western German voters in order to assess the similarities and differences in electoral behavior across the former East-West divide. First, to what extend does the performance of parties and the regime influence party support in the East and the West? Second, how do candidate perceptions affect party support? Third, to what degree do ideological values influence vote choice? The results suggest that even 20 years after unification, voters in the East and the West still follow a partially different logic. While candidate evaluations broadly influence party support similarly, negative performance assessments lead west German voters to support the opposition, whereas eastern Germans tend to either “exit” the electoral arena or support the Linke party. Moreover, ideological values have no affect on party choice in the West, whereas they strongly influence the choice of Die Linke in the East. Theoretically, the results reflect the different East-West experiences, illustrating that voters in newer democracies may base their party choice on a different rationale than voters in more mature democracies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper evaluates whether direct democracy supplements or undermines traditional representative democracy. While a first approach assumes that a culture of active direct democracy stimulates citizens’ political interest and ultimately bolsters participation in parliamentary elections, a competing hypothesis proposes a negative relationship between the frequency of ballot measures and electoral participation due to voter fatigue and decreased significance of elections. Our multilevel analysis of the 26 Swiss cantons challenges recent studies conducted for the U.S. states: In the Swiss context, where direct democracy is more important in the political process than the less salient parliamentary elections, greater use of direct democratic procedures is associated with a lower individual probability to participate in elections. Furthermore, by distinguishing between short and long-term effects of direct democracy, we show that the relationship observed is of a long-term nature and can therefore be seen as a result of adaptive learning processes rather than of instantaneous voter fatigue. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper asks whether international economic integration negatively affects electoral turnout. The theoretical model builds on the premise that economic integration constrains the ability of national governments to shape outcomes. Citizens are conscious of such constraints and take them into account when considering the costs and benefits of casting a vote in national elections. The result is a lower inclination to vote under conditions of high economic integration. Consequently, aggregate turnout is lower the more internationally integrated a national economy is. Analysis of aggregate data for parliamentary elections in 23 OECD democracies over the period 1965–2006 robustly supports this hypothesis. The empirical estimates suggest economic globalization as a central cause of the general decline in turnout within established democracies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Economic globalization is often said to promote policy convergence between political parties in government in democratic states, and thus substantially constrain voters’ choice options. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) modules one and two, this paper tests whether and how cross-national differences in exposure to the international economy may influence the voter perceptions that are needed to underpin expectations of differences between alternative governments, one of the main preconditions for the effective practice of responsible party government. It identifies two dimensions of economic globalization, trade dependence and international financial integration (IFI), and uncovers initial evidence that IFI appears to encourage pessimism about ‘making a difference’. However, this appears to be an artefact of a contingent association between powerful presidential systems and low levels of financial globalization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper we study a coordination dilemma that appears in democracies where the Upper and Lower Houses are elected simultaneously using significantly different rules. How do party systems form when some parties are only viable in some districts of one of the chambers? Are party systems independent from one another, as Duvergerian theories expect, or dependent, as the literature on the interactive features of mixed electoral systems predict? Using the case of Spain, where all the possible incentive structures for electoral coordination are present, we test both theories. Our results point out that contamination effects matter, but they are not strong enough to make Duvergerian gravity disappear. Both effects are at play in Spanish elections. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper argues that strategic voting in young democracies increases as voters become more experienced with the functioning of democracy. This proposition is tested with election results from the democracies of Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union. The amount of wasted votes decreases with time, controlling for the number of lists running, the electoral system, the legal threshold, and the amount of votes for the leading list. The study contributes to the literature on strategic voting and democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A considerable number of democratizing states have made the transition to competitive politics on the basis of single-member district electoral systems. This paper argues that such electoral systems often do not provide viable mechanisms for the consolidation of democracy. This is because the use of single-member districts works against the institutionalization of democratic politics in a newly competitive state. If the party system is geographically heterogeneous and/or poorly entrenched, a single-member law will encourage the multiplication of small, regionalized political support bases and the dominance of one large party. This aspect of electoral institutional design is therefore likely to be destabilizing, making it possible to predict that states which inherit or adopt single-member systems will either change their electoral systems or fail to democratize. This hypothesis is tested and largely confirmed on an exhaustive set of 78 cases from the ‘third wave’ of democratization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The bases of electoral choice vary. Citizens differ in their ability to reason and make up their minds in different ways. Hong Kong appears to be the most likely case for the idea of cognitive mobilization, because of the the absence of socio-economic mobilization, the paucity of political mobilization, the novelty of partisanship, the high level of education, and the prosperous and easily accessible mass media. Findings on the legislative election in 1998, however, show that partisan attachment remains a powerful factor in electoral choice. Still, political information is more important as it broadens the basis of electoral choice. Specifically, the less-informed voters voted for the Democratic Party (DP) solely on the basis of partisan attachment. In comparison, the vote of the better-informed voters was broadly based, with evaluative factors overtaking partisanship in importance. This paper provides a contribution to the understanding of constrained elections in a partial democracy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The gap between electoral winners and losers in democratic satisfaction has been well documented in the literature. Scholars further argue that in consensual systems, where the institutional design involves more power sharing, the winner-loser gap is smaller than in majoritarian systems. However, how the powers of legislatures, the primary national-level agency to impose restraints on the executive, affect the winner-loser gap has not been thoroughly studied. Utilizing data of 29 countries in the world over ten years, this paper verifies that in presidential democracies, when legislatures have more oversight power, the winner-loser gap in satisfaction tends to be reduced. The relationships are particularly evident when opposition parties have distinct policy platforms, as these oppositions are better able to utilize the legislative arena to voice their positions. Furthermore, the effect of legislative strength on losers' consent is more pronounced among voters who are more interested in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research has begun to tackle the electoral consequences of affective polarization through the lens of negative partisanship. However, not equal attention has been paid to voters' polarized opinions toward political leaders and their impact on electoral behavior. This paper offers a comparative, longitudinal assessment of the relationship between negativity towards party leaders and vote choice in multi-party systems. We develop our negative personalization hypothesis and test it empirically on an original pooled dataset featuring 109 national election surveys from 14 Western European parliamentary democracies collected over the last six decades. Our findings confirm the existence of a robust relationship between negative party-leader evaluations and vote choice. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a sizable growth in the incidence of negative personalization across time, now of a magnitude that compares to that exerted by in-party-leader evaluations. This finding constitutes a central innovation adding to the personalization of politics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dozens of studies have shown that individuals who voted for the winning party in an election tend to be more satisfied with democracy than those who did not. However, a number of recent studies—many using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)—demonstrate that this relationship varies according to individual- and election-level factors. In this paper, we introduce for the first time gender as a modifier of the effect of winning on satisfaction. We advance a theoretical argument about why gender, independent of its many correlates, should shape the extent to which electoral victory induces satisfaction. Specifically, we argue that the winning effect should be smaller for women than for men because of (1) gender-based differences in political socialization and (2) gaps in the symbolic connection with candidates and parties. Given this, we also expect that the gender gap in satisfaction is moderated by women's descriptive representation. To test our expectations, we use surveys from Modules I-IV of the CSES coupled with macro-level data sources. Results indicate a robust and precisely estimated gender-based disparity in the impact of winning on satisfaction, with its magnitude being comparatively small among women. This gap is smaller where women are well represented in the legislature, though the gender of the chief executive does not play a conditioning role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between what citizens want in terms of policies and what they get from political elites is considered one of the key aspects of representative democracies. Scholars have thus investigated thoroughly the state of citizen-elite congruence in advanced democracies and whether this relationship influences citizens' democratic satisfaction. These studies do show that citizens' assessment of their political system and especially their satisfaction with democracy are importantly influenced by the quality of representation and how close they are to their preferred parties or the government position. In the paper, we build on this literature and consider whether congruence between citizen preferences and policies influences citizens' satisfaction with democracy. This last stage of representation has mostly been overlooked in past research. To address this question, we make use of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (module 4). Policy congruence is measured based on respondent answers to a series of questions with respect to their preferences on public expenditure in eight policy domains. We also compare the effect of policy congruence to other conventional measures of congruence (e.g. party and government congruence). Our results indicate that this new measure of policy congruence has substantial effect on citizens' satisfaction with democracy and more so than previous measures of ideological congruence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]