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While political accountability requires that voters can form an accurate picture of government performance, public evaluations of government performance in established democracies are often distorted by partisan considerations. We test whether the same factors bias evaluations of government performance in a new democracy where partisanship is less stable and defined. This analysis estimates individual-level models of retrospective national economic evaluations in South Korea's 2017 presidential election. South Korea has unstable party politics, low levels of party institutionalization, and high levels of public distrust in political parties. Yet even in this context we find that voters' economic evaluations are significantly affected by political loyalties such as party identification. This endogeneity is sufficiently large that it results in aggregate consumer evaluations of the economy that systematically vary across regions depending upon the relationship of the president to that region. The findings confirm that party identification shapes citizen opinions even in a context where its effect would likely be weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of democratic legitimacy argue that people who believe the government is well managed and represents their interests are likely to defend the democratic status quo. Principal-agent theory predicts, however, that these same groups are also more likely to support executive actions that threaten vertical or horizontal accountability. Citizens who feel represented by an ideologically sympathetic and competent executive may be willing to delegate the president additional authority to enact their agenda, even at the expense of democratic principles. Survey data from Latin America are largely consistent with the principal-agent hypothesis; those who voted for the ruling party in the previous election or who perceive that the economy is strong say they not only like democracy and oppose coups but also support limits on critical actors and opposition parties and are willing to let the president bypass the legislature and court. Thus to understand the breakdown of democracy, we must not only examine the conditions that leave the losers of political and economic processes satisfied with the process that culminated in their defeat but also identify conditions when winners tolerate electoral and institutional challenges and are willing to protect space for public criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political polarization may lead to gridlock and other negative policy outcomes, representation is likely to be enhanced when parties differentiate themselves from each other and make it easier for voters to see the connection between their personal ideologies and the electoral offerings. These differences between parties may be especially important in developing democracies, where voters are still learning parties' priorities and where parties do not always emphasize issues when campaigning. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of elite polarization in Latin America since the early 1990s based on legislative surveys. Individual-level voting patterns from mass survey data confirm that the connection between voters' self-placement on the left-right scale and their electoral choice is stronger in polarized party systems, even when controlling for other party system factors like the age of the party system or electoral fragmentation. This effect on voting behavior is not immediate, however, as voters take time to recognize the new cues being provided by the changing party system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In districts where only one seat is contested, the electoral formula (plurality or majority) should be a major determinant of the number of parties that receive votes. Specifically, plurality rule should generate two-party competition while other institutional arrangements should generate electoral fragmentation. Yet tests of these propositions using district-level data have focused on a limited number of cases; they rarely contrast different electoral systems and have reached mixed conclusions. This study analyses district-level data from 6,745 single-member district election contests from 53 democratic countries to test the evidence for Duverger's Law and Hypothesis. Double-ballot majoritarian systems have large numbers of candidates, as predicted, but while the average outcome under plurality rule is generally consistent with two-party competition, it is not perfectly so. The two largest parties typically dominate the districts (generally receiving more than 90 per cent of the vote), and there is very little support for parties finishing fourth or worse. Yet third-place parties do not completely disappear, and ethnic divisions shape party fragmentation levels, even under plurality rule. Finally, institutional rules that generate multiparty systems elsewhere in the country increase electoral fragmentation in single-member plurality districts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: A central tenet of electoral systems'' research is that more parties should get votes in districts with large magnitudes than in districts with smaller magnitudes. This proposition is largely untested at the district level, even though that is the level at which relevant pressures are expected to work. At the aggregate level, research has found that there are systematic deviations from Duverger''s law related to incentives from ethnolinguistic fragmentation, institutions, and strategic voting. This analysis confirms that many of these results hold at the district level, which is the most appropriate level for testing Duverger''s law. District level party-system fragmentation patterns in 44 countries support Duverger''s basic hypotheses. The effect of electoral institutions is contingent, however, upon the presence of social cleavages that generate pressures for additional parties, the establishment of patterns of party-system competition that help voters evaluate contenders'' viability, and the absence of competing incentives generated by districts of varying magnitudes. These effects are robust to different specifications of social heterogeneity. However, we find no evidence that institutional features like federalism or presidentialism reduce the strategic effects of district level factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]