Search

Voter turnout has been linked with a number of causal factors to date including economics, cultural traits, and political institutions. As far institutional explanations are concerned, voters turn out to vote at higher rates when races are competitive (measured in a variety of ways) and/or when the stakes are higher (Pacek et al. 2009). Party systems are one way scholars have gauged the competitiveness of races and researchers find that some party systems correspond with higher turnout rates than others; however, the relatively recent importance of hegemonic party systems vis-à-vis voter turnout has gone largely unnoticed. In this study, we employ an original dataset of Russia's ethnic homelands (titular regions) to better understand how hegemonic party systems influence individual voters' inclination to cast a ballot. We argue that the presence of a hegemonic party system (in this case, Edinaya Rossiya [United Russia]) depresses voter turnout due to the dominance of the party which affects the polity in numerous ways. Specifically, hegemonic party systems may scare off quality challengers, result in lower 'stakes' for an election, and distort the final electoral outcomes, which together discourages individuals from voting. Our pooled, cross-sectional analysis finds support for this argument though the republics that are not dominated by the party reveal additional interesting variations that warrant further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties are a vital component of democracy as they are designed to aggregate the interests of the populace. Yet, some party systems are more skilled at this function than others, and in democracies with stable party systems, voters can more easily trace policy decisions from parties and representatives within the government to specific policy outcomes (Mainwaring 1995). This conjecture has been tested in a variety of contexts, though virtually all of the previous work examining the implications of party system stability has focused on domestic policies. This study, however, extends this assumption to foreign policymaking or, more specifically, conflict initiation. Here, we test a model linking party system stability with the likelihood of conflict initiation in 47 democracies from 1975-2001 and find that in less stable party systems democracies are more likely to engage in interstate conflicts with other states. This finding affirms the importance of party system stability as a means of holding elected officials accountable to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties are considered indispensable institutions for consolidated democracies. In recent years, many scholars have focused on understanding the causes and effects of weak party system institutionalization. It is thought that weakly institutionalized party systems undermine citizen participation, weaken electoral accountability, and increase uncertainty for both voters and elites (Birch 2001; Mainwaring 1999; Mainwaring and Scully 1995). While there have been a significant number of studies on the effects of institutionalization, there have been few that have tested this argument in a large-N cross-national study. We do just this with a time-series cross-sectional dataset of 58 countries from 1974-2005. Using electoral volatility as a proxy for party-system institutionalization, we find that low levels of party-system institutionalization are negatively correlated with the highest level of democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have spent considerable effort trying to explain electoral volatility. Current research thus far has focused on three explanations for volatility—macroeconomic conditions, socio-political cleavages, and political institutions. All of these factors have proven to be important, but the problem of electoral volatility is still in need of further investigation, since virtually all work on this problem conflates electoral institutions with party system characteristics. Using our unique dataset of electoral volatility in 46 countries, we demonstrate that electoral institutions directly affect the “supply” of political parties (i.e., the party system) which in turn affects electoral volatility. In addition, we show that other “demand” side factors, macroeconomic conditions and political cleavages, also affect the supply of political parties and, therefore, indirectly affect electoral volatility. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]