Comparing Strategic Voting Under FPTP and PR

JON FRAENKEL At first sight, the Pacific Islands seem like a graveyard for institutional determinist theories regarding the impact of electoral systems on party polarisation. Maurice Duverger’s well-known ‘sociological law’ was that first-past-the-post electoral rules tend to deliver two-party systems. Proportional representation (PR) systems were more loosely associated with multi-party settings.2 Yet in the Pacific, first-past-the-post using countries, such as the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea (1975-2002), have developed multipleparty systems. The PR using territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Vanuatu have, at times, veered towards a two-camp polarisation around the issue of independence. Some firstpast-the-post-using democracies, such as Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia, have not witnessed the emergence of any party-based system at all. Neighbouring Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu have similar styles of loose and fluctuating parliamentary alliances but no election-oriented political parties, despite the first using a two round electoral system, the second a unique simultaneously tallied preferential voting system, and the third a block voting system in two-member constituencies. Electoral laws would appear to exert negligible sway over Pacific party systems. On closer examination, Duverger’s theory does shed some light on the direction of electoral incentives in some of the Pacific countries, once hedged with the necessary qualifications and confined to appropriate settings. Negative cases, where electoral laws do not bring about the anticipated party structures are not confined to Oceania. India and Canada, for example, have numerous political parties, but use first-past-thepost electoral systems. Guyana uses a list PR system but has a two-party centred system, as did Austria during 1945-1990. Much of the literature has consequently been aimed at heavily revising Duverger’s theories about the impact of electoral laws on party systems, either by emphasising that the critical association is in fact between district magnitude and the number of parties or by specifying the role of intervening variables, such as ethnic heterogeneity or the number of competing ‘issue dimensions’ to the political process.3 It is in situations where a single salient political cleavage (such as Labour/Conservative, or Catholic/Protestant) dominates the political order that distinct electoral laws may work in different directions, encouraging or limiting multi-partyism. In Fiji and New Caledonia, those varying electoral pressures on party systems exerted considerable influence over the success or failure of compacts aimed at mitigating ethnic conflict. In most South Pacific nations, the decolonisation issue did not prove an enduring The contribution of AusAID to this series is acknowledged with appreciation. Discussion Paper 2005/8 State, Society and Governance in Melanesia THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

The article considers the specifics of conducting election campaigns in majority, mixed and proportional electoral systems. It is substantiated that the type of electoral system determines the nature of the election campaign and allows to determine the main types of electoral technologies used to win. Concepts such as "electoral system", "majority electoral system", "proportional electoral system", "mixed electoral system", "political brand", "party brand" have been studied. The focus is on the fact that the notion of elections is not limited to the act of voting, it is a much broader notion that takes place within an election campaign, the nature of which is determined by the type of electoral system already exercised. It is focused on the fact that in the majority electoral system it is important to focus on building a brand of politics, and in the proportional electoral system – the brand of the party. It is determined that all election campaigns, depending on the type of electoral system, were radically different from all previous election campaigns conducted in Ukraine: new channels of communication, new election technologies and means of manipulation. However, despite the availability of media technology, politicians continue to use outdated manipulative technologies. It is substantiated that the pro-government political force chooses one or another type of electoral system, given the possibility of obtaining the largest number of votes. Electoral technologies such as "administrative resource", "double" and "election grids" have been studied. It is shown that the process of virtualization has formed not only new forms of organization of public communication and analytics in politics, but also led to a radical change in the organization and conduct of elections. It is shown that there are universal electoral technologies that are used in any electoral system. It is concluded that media technologies are becoming more important today during election campaigns.

One of the limits of previous studies using respondents’ self‐placements and subjective party placements to examine levels of citizen‐government congruence is that they were limited to the post‐1995 period. This article extends the number of elections where it is possible to examine levels of citizen‐government ideological congruence with a survey‐based approach. In particular, a unique dataset has been collected that combines data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and several national election studies. The results confirm recent studies that show that levels of citizen‐government ideological congruence are similar under majoritarian and proportional representation (PR) systems. Such studies, however, did not provide evidence that congruence is maintained over the course of a government's mandate. This article introduces, therefore, two measures of citizen‐government congruence that address this issue and that may revive the debate about which electoral systems strengthen the citizen‐government connection: citizen‐government congruence at the end of government mandates and change in congruence between elections. The results indicate that governments stay closer to the median citizens between elections under PR systems than under majoritarian systems. It is found, however, that this decrease in congruence in majoritarian systems is not detrimental to the point of observing smaller levels of congruence at the end of government mandates under majoritarian systems than under PR systems.

ABSTRACTScholars argue that members of parliament (MPs) in first-past-the-post (FPTP) systems have stronger incentives to cater to their electoral district than those in proportional representation (PR) types. Yet, few studies have explored whether MPs in PR systems or MPs from small parties engage local issues in general. I build new theory and explore its support through a case study that compares Green party behaviour in an FPTP system (the UK) to a PR system (New Zealand). Results show that MPs focus on local issues in both systems, but the distribution of attention varies in ways consistent with differing electoral incentives.

Japan's new electoral system may or may not be good for Japanese democracy, but it is almost ideally designed for the study of strategic voting. No other existing electoral system provides political scientists with data on such neatly separated but simultaneous single-member districts (SMD) and proportional representation (PR) votes. Using candidate-level aggregate data, I find strong evidence for strategic voting: Candidates with a good chance of winning receive more SMD than PR votes, and those with little chance of winning receive more PR votes. Strategic voting explains not only the basic pattern but also several exceptions to the rule. In addition, I find that a realistic but relatively inaccurate ex ante prediction of a candidate's probability of victory produces a superior explanatory model than does a perfect ex post prediction calculated from the final electoral results. These results support the hypothesis that voters base their strategic voting calculations on simple cues available to them before the election.

A normatively desirable feature of representative government is for the diversity of ideological choices on offer in the party system to reflect the diversity of policy views in the electorate. Building on the work of Ezrow, and relying on Eurobarometer data which suggest that the degree of public opinion diversity is stable over time, the authors analyse how voting systems mediate the diversity of views in parliament, a variable they label party system dispersion. The paper's central question is: to what extent does party system dispersion remain stable over time? Presented are theoretical arguments that party system dispersion will be more stable in countries that feature single‐member district (SMD) voting systems than in proportional representation (PR) systems. Using cross‐national data on 25 countries over 363 elections, the authors present results that support this hypothesis: they find that proportional representation systems are characterised by fluidity in party system dispersion, whereas party system dispersion in SMD countries remains stable from election to election. The implications of the findings are surprising – to the extent that party platforms reflect the diversity of public opinion within an electoral system, the results suggest that SMD systems do a better job at reflecting the diversity of public opinion viewpoints than do PR systems.

Debate—Proportional RepresentationPR and Democratic Statecraft Quentin L. Quade (bio) In "Constitutional Choices for New Democracies," Arend Lijphart sets out to describe and evaluate some of the primary institutional alternatives available to new democracies. Lijphart knows that the choice of electoral system is especially important, since it will likely determine whether many or few parties will compete, and whether coalition or single-party governments will result. He also knows that once chosen, the electoral system will be hard to change. Lijphart favors proportional representation (PR), welcomes proliferated parties, and esteems coalitions. I have publicly defended the opposite view. I urge plurality voting in single-member districts, hope and expect that this will encourage a two-party system, and applaud the single-party government that would result.1 How is it that two democrats with similar starting points like Lijphart and myself could come up with such starkly contrasting practical advice for newly emerging democracies? As in real estate, the key is to inspect the premises. Even a brief and selective inspection, as this one must be, will show why our recommendations differ so sharply, and why I think Lijphart's position rests on questionable, even utopian, foundations. Advocates of proportional representation typically describe it as more "fair" and more "just." Lijphart's article says PR produces "consensus" politics, promotes "conciliation and compromise," and is more "representative" than plurality voting. In fact, each of these good words applied to PR begs a question and calls for a rarely given philosophical argument to establish a meaning for "fair," "just," "representative," and so on. No such arguments are presented or even summarized by Lijphart. The only thing certain about PR is that it will tend to re-create society's [End Page 36] divisions and locate them in the legislature. That is its purpose, logic, and result.2 Whether a system that encourages party proliferation is any of the good things its proponents call it—fairer, more just, more representative—depends on a theory of statecraft and democratic form. What is the purpose of the state? Does the adoption of democracy eliminate or even lessen the traditional requirements of state action? In particular, does democratic statecraft have a diminished responsibility to synthesize society's parts, unify and defend its people, or identify and pursue the common good—meaning those values that no particular part of society will ever seek as its own but on which all particular parts depend? Or does democratic politics exist to do all the things states exist for, but to do them in a new way, a responsible and accountable way? If it does, then the first test of fairness, justice, and representation that democratic politics must pass will be the test of excellence in state action. The second and no less important test will be that of accountability. But for Lijphart and his fellow PR advocates, the first question appears to be: how well are society's natural divisions recreated and relocated in the legislature? Where he equates the number of women in legislatures with representation of women's interests, for example, Lijphart uses the term "representation" as identical to recreation. In his uncritical implicit reliance on the "picture theory" of legislative representation, Lijphart writes as if Edmund Burke had never lived. To prove that PR's tendency to re-create divisions and proliferate parties is indeed a good thing, an extended argument is required. It must explain how a political system will be "fair" if it succumbs to the centrifugal pull of interests, how it can advance the general welfare if it "represents" only minute and particular aspects of society, and how a government cobbled together out of postelection splinters by a secretive process of interparty bartering can be considered responsible and accountable. Only by doing this can PR advocates escape the charge of question-begging. Easy Cases and Unfounded Speculations I have suggested that PR advocates generally, and Lijphart in particular, tend to make their work easy by eliding from PR's tendency to re-create societal divisions to an unexamined designation of such recreation as good. Another labor-saving approach, greatly evident in Lijphart's article, is to build the argument for PR on...

Patrick Dunleavy examines the proportional (PR) electoral system now used for smaller UK elections: the Northern Ireland Assembly, and Scottish and Northern Irish local councils. How has STV fared in converting votes into seats and fostering political legitimacy, under UK political conditions? An Annex also discusses the list PR system used to elect European Parliament MEPs from 1999 to 2014, but now discontinued as a result of Brexit.

The political history of Italy and Japan during the post-war period is strongly ­associated with two dominant parties: the Italian Christian Democrats (DC) and the Japanese Liberal Democrat Party (LDP). Notwithstanding this similarity, the electoral and party systems of the two countries differed. Italy had a fragmented and polarized multiparty system under proportional representation (PR), while Japan was known for the dominance of a single ruling party under the unusual single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system. However, in the 1990s, both countries experienced electoral system changes through the adoption of mixed electoral systems. Electoral reform was enacted first in Italy in 1993 and in the following year in Japan. Later in 2005, Italy switched from a mixed majoritarian electoral system (MMES) to a further “hybridized” electoral system, which gives a seat bonus to the party or coalition winning a plurality of votes, but in which seat allocation to coalition partners follows a proportional rule. In Japan, the MMES adopted in 1994 was changed as well, although in minor ways. For example, in the 1996 elections, the mixed system elected 300 MPs from single member districts (SMDs) and 200 from 11 PR districts; in the 2000 elections, the number of PR seats decreased from 200 to 180.KeywordsElectoral SystemParty SystemProportional RepresentationLiberal Democrat PartyCoalition GovernmentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Electoral Strategies in Mixed Systems of Representation

This paper shows how an uneven electoral system in Japan shapes political parties' mobilization strategies by utilizing a majoritarian electoral system with heterogeneous district magnitudes, which in turn contributes to the gap in turnout across districts. Scholars have long debated the relationship between electoral systems and turnout; it is known that countries with proportional representation electoral systems – those with larger district magnitude – tend to have higher turnout rates than countries with majoritarian electoral systems, especially single-member district (SMD) systems. The current discussion on turnout and district magnitude of an electoral system assumes a monotonic relationship between these factors: the larger the district magnitude of the electoral system, the more (or less) participatory the electorate, due to competitiveness and mobilization efforts by political parties and other relevant groups. In contrast, this paper shows a mixed relationship between district magnitude of the electoral system and party mobilization and subsequent turnout, investigating a majoritarian electoral system with uneven district magnitude in the Japanese Upper House. During the survey period, the party system in Japan consisted of two major parties and a few smaller parties; consequently, the two major parties focused their efforts on SMDs in order to maximize their seat share, while smaller parties focused their resource on districts electing more than two members (where they have some chance to elect their party's candidates). In combination, these party strategies have resulted in the lowest mobilization and turnout rates in districts with two members.

In some political and science circles (including Poland) there are articulated views on the crucial role of electoral systems in the process of political competition. Therefore they express the opinion about prevalence of certain electoral arrangements in terms of the implementation of certain political preferences. Often hopes for the reform of the political system are associated with the changes of the electoral systems. In the Great Britain (the United Kingdom) and other English-speaking countries citizens have formed community associations whose aim is the change from the majority to the proportional electoral system. In the effect we have more proportional election result and extension of real electoral bid to a larger number of political parties. On the other hand, in Poland, we have seen the opposite trend. Proponents of single-mandate constituencies depreciate the system of proportional representation. They express the belief in the positive effects of the majority system in the parliamentary elections. Radicals endorse the idea that only those electoral solutions are synonymous with electoral democracy and they are a way to reduce the pathologies of political life. In terms of these issues there have arisen many misconceptions and political myths. The main purpose of this article is to pay attention to trends in the areas of electoral reforms in the world. The author tries to answer the following research questions: 1) What electoral systems were popular in the world in individual periods from the 19th to the 21st centuries? 2) What tendencies appear in changes of electoral systems in the recent years? 3) What is the being of popularity phenomenon of mixed-member electoral systems? In the recent years the most popular electoral systems are: proportional representation with open lists and majority rules in single member-districts.

We provide closed-form solutions for measuring electoral closeness of candidates in proportional representation (PR) systems. In contrast to plurality systems, closeness in PR systems cannot be directly inferred from votes. Our measure captures electoral closeness for both open- and closed-list systems and for both main families of seat allocation mechanisms. This unified measure quantifies the vote surplus (shortfall) for elected (nonelected) candidates. It can serve as an assignment variable in regression discontinuity designs or as a measure of electoral competitiveness. For illustration, we estimate the incumbency advantage for the parliaments in Switzerland, Honduras, and Norway.

New Zealand’s political landscape experienced a seismic shift in 1993, when the country replaced the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system it had inherited from its British colonial past with a new Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system. The move had immediate and deep ramifications for a whole range of issues: the range of interests represented in Parliament; the way that governments are formed and function; how the country’s public sector agencies operate; the manner in which its electoral participants conduct their campaigns; and so on. Indeed, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that every area of New Zealand’s public and political life was touched in some fashion by the general ‘systems change’ produced by the country’s decision to embrace MMP.5 These changes have effected shifts in what may be termed the ‘political culture’ of New Zealand; re-alignments in the relationships between various public and political institutions and bodies; as well as alterations to the formal legal rules that govern these institutions and bodies.

The academic debate on how voters decide which candidates to support often centers on whether they prioritize their personal preferences or consider who can beat the opposing candidate. American research on voting behavior has largely focused on first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections. However, considering jurisdictions are adopting new electoral systems such as ranked-choice voting (RCV) this leads to several questions about the impact of system adoption on voter decision-making. Particularly, does the voter decision-making process differ depending on the system used? To investigate the impact of RCV on voter decision-making across electoral systems we conducted a survey experiment in a federal senate election. Our findings indicate that in comparison to FPTP elections, RCV elections may lead to decreases in both sincere and strategic voting. Instead, RCV appears to increase voter uncertainty around how to decide which candidates to support and leads to voters who appear to be neither sincere nor strategic.