Electoral Systems and Policy Outcomes

\n As regras eleitorais podem afetar o nível de proteção comercial em países democráticos? Estudos recentes indicam que, no que diz respeito ao protecionismo comercial, as instituições eleitorais importam. No entanto, diante de uma análise mais detalhada da literatura, é possível perceber que não há uma teoria prevalecente e que os resultados apresentados são ainda contraditórios. Nesta tese, objetiva-se resolver esse problema teórico e empírico que envolve representação política e protecionismo comercial testando pressupostos da literatura e apresentando explicações alternativas. A primeira parte do estudo aborda problema específico que, indiretamente, serviu de incentivo para a segunda etapa. A questão que se busca responder pode ser resumida na seguinte indagação: o tamanho do distrito eleitoral é um bom preditor para as preferências em matéria de política comercial do legislador? A pergunta trata, diretamente, da Constituency Size Assumption, um pressuposto que é amplamente aceito pela literatura de Economia Política Internacional (EPI). De acordo com essa abordagem, quanto maior o distrito, maior a probabilidade de o legislador se mostrar favorável ao livre-comércio, uma vez que ele estaria insulado em relação a grupos de interesses. Em distritos menores, no entanto, legisladores poderiam ser tornar, mais facilmente, reféns de interesses particularistas, fato que resultaria em posições protecionistas. Nesta parte, foi proposto o estudo dos casos brasileiros e chileno, levando em consideração as votações nominais de deputados e senadores. Corroborando os achados da literatura, também não foram encontradas evidências para validar a teoria diante da análise de votos nominais entre os anos de 1995 e 2010, para o Brasil, e entre 1996 e 2006, para o Chile. Na segunda parte, apresenta-se o modelo Stigler-Peltzman (S-P) de regulação, tal qual formalizado por Chang et al. em Electoral Systems and the Balance of Consumer-Producer Power, como uma possível solução para se entender a relação entre os incentivos gerados pelos sistemas eleitorais e os níveis de proteção comercial em democracias. Após adaptar o modelo para a área de política comercial, este foi testado empiricamente em 37 democracias entre os anos de 1995 e 2008, quando se estimou o efeito do nível de responsividade dos sistemas eleitorais - desproporcionalidade eleitoral - sobre o nível de proteção tarifária. Os achados indicam que quanto maior a taxa de proporcionalidade entre cadeiras e votos obtidos gerada pelos sistemas eleitorais, maior o nível de proteção que os governantes eleitos irão oferecer aos grupos de interesses, especialmente em democracias não-presidencialistas.\n

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.

The relationship between electoral systems and corruption in a large sample of contemporary democratic nations is analysed in this article. Whereas previous studies have shown that closed-list proportional representation is associated with greater (perceived) corruption than open-list PR, it is demonstrated here that this relationship fails to hold once district magnitude is considered. The theory underlying this study draws on work on ‘the personal vote’ that suggests that the incentives to amass resources – and perhaps even to do so illegally – increase with district magnitude in open-list settings but decrease in closed-list contexts. Extending this insight, it is shown that political corruption gets more (less) severe as district magnitude increases under open-list PR (closed-list PR) systems. In addition, once district magnitude exceeds a certain threshold – the estimates here are that this is as low as fifteen – corruption is greater under open lists than closed lists. Only at small district magnitudes (below fifteen) is closed-list PR associated with more corruption, as conventionally held. These results hold for alternative measures of corruption, for different sets of countries analysed, for different measures of district magnitude and regardless of whether the political system is presidential or parliamentary, and of the number of parties.Using an objective measure of corruption in public works contracting, corroborating evidence is also presented from Italian electoral districts. In Italy's open-list environment in the period prior to 1994, larger districts were more susceptible to corruption than smaller ones.

Institutions and Market Reform in Emerging Economies: A Rent Seeking Perspective

he Fijian General Election of 2018 was a significant one- it was only the second election held under a new electoral system and legal framework. In a divided society like Fiji where a high degree of mistrust and lack of confidence in electoral arrangements and institutions exist driven in part by a lack of knowledge and misinformation, it was critical for independent actors like civil society organisations that work across ethnic, religious, political and ideological divides to provide balanced analyses and commentary on different elements of the elections, including the contentious aspects. As an implementing partner in the International IDEA led “Upholding Citizens’ Constitutional Rights for Democratic Consolidation in Fiji (C3 project), Dialogue Fiji published a series of articles on different elements of the 2018 elections. The Fiji C3 project had a key objective to increase citizens’ and voters’ knowledge of their constitutional rights relating to elections, including increasing their knowledge and understanding of various aspects of elections. This book contains a collection of articles that provide insights on a number of key elements of the 2018 General Elections and provides recommendations for strengthening laws and processes, and improving electoral outcomes and legitimacy in Fiji.

This article evaluates structural, institutional, and actor-centered explanations of the collapse of the Peruvian party system around 1990 and its surprising partial recovery in 2001. It begins by describing the changes in the dependent variable, the emergence, collapse, and partial resurrection of the 1980s Peruvian party system. The next section examines the argument that the large size and rapid growth of the informal sector undermined the party system and led to its collapse. The author shows that the evidence does not support this argument. The article then examines changes in the electoral system. The author demonstrates that, contrary to theoretical expectations, the changes in the electoral system do not correlate with the observed changes in the party system. The final section shows that performance failure by political elites, including corruption in government, was more important than social cleavages or electoral institutions in the collapse and partial recovery of the party system.

ELECTORAL SYSTEM IS one of main democratic institutions. Like other fields of law, it is a very dynamic phenomenon that depends on constantly changing social and political circumstances. Of course, it has to be updated quite recently. On the other hand, one shall take into account, that such factors as instability, variety and incompatibility of some electoral provisions may cause delegitimization of the political system in general. Electoral systems may be then modified, but each reform shall be first thought over and the changes cannot be implemented too frequently. In the article, the author suggests that such reforms shall be categorized into four kinds of change: (1) system reforms – aimed at comprehensive standardization and unification of electoral law; (2) basic standardization changes – that occur as amending former regulations due to discrepancies between regulations and existence of some dysfunctional anachronisms; (3) simplifications of voting – these reforms should encourage people who do not vote to change their habits; (4) rationalizing reforms – aimed at verification of authentic functionality of certain electoral institutions and mechanisms. It seems that an electoral code has the best potential to follow these aims. It would fulfill most of requirements concerning reforms of the electoral law, which are being proposed by theoreticians and practitioners of electoral regulations since such a long time.

Evidence from Argentina shows that women entering male-dominated legislatures face structural barriers and have limited ability to exert influence on the policy-making process. As a result, women have strong incentives to collaborate in order to overcome such barriers, exert influence in the chamber, and gain a voice in the policy-making process. Despite the many benefits of collaboration, its prevalence varies between legislative contexts because not all women have the same opportunities to collaborate. In Argentina, women facing weak party constraints are more likely to collaborate than their male colleagues, and their propensity to do so increases as women's numeric representation increases. By contrast, women facing strong party constraints have limited opportunities to collaborate with other women. Instead, these women behave more like their male colleagues and collaborate less frequently. The effects of strong party constraints are mitigated by other factors; notably affiliation with the executive's party, seniority, and women's issues legislation motivate collaboration among women. In this chapter, I draw on a series of case studies from across the world in order to expand my analysis and to demonstrate the generalizability of my theory beyond Argentina. I evaluate data from four national parliaments: the Rwandan Chamber of Deputies, the U.S. Senate, the Uruguayan Congress, and the South African Parliament. In doing so, I examine countries that have different legislative contexts than the ones found in Argentina, thus providing broader tests of how other legislative contexts constrain or facilitate women's collaboration. I present this set of case studies to facilitate the exploration of how institutional arrangements structure women's collaboration outside of the Argentine provinces. As I explain in Chapter 2, electoral institutions that concentrate power in the hands of party leaders and foster strong party loyalty constrain women's collaboration. By contrast, electoral institutions that allow legislators to act independently of political parties impose fewer constraints on women's collaboration. Whereas the Argentine provinces enabled me to test these expectations for both women facing strong party constraints and women facing comparably weaker party constraints (i.e., closed-list PR systems with large district magnitudes and closed-list PR systems with small district magnitudes), these four additional cases allow me to examine collaboration in legislatures across the full range of party constraints.

How party strategies vary by electoral system remains largely unexplored in election studies. Using qualitative and quantitative data from Spanish national and European elections, we test how party strategies diverge between districted electoral systems and systems using a single national district. We use the number of visits to districts by the party leaders to determine if targeted party strategies are driven by district magnitude, the share of the population entitled to vote in every district, the number of districts or the strength of parties’ local organizations. Our results show that only the frequency of visits to districts by large parties are clearly affected by electoral systems and, more specifically, by the number of districts and district population.

This chapter focuses on electoral systems and institutional design in new democracies. It first compares Maurice Duverger’s electoral laws with those of Giovanni Sartori before discussing the main insights from the literature on electoral systems in established democracies as well as evidence from new democracies. It then considers the impact of the electoral law on the type of party system and its role as intermediary between society and government in plural societies. It also examines the party system as independent variable, along with dependent variables such as the number of political parties, social cleavages and presidentialism. Finally, it discusses consociational democracy and how electoral system design can be used in managing ethnic conflicts.

How Electoral Institutions Change the Influence of World Trade Integration on Trade Policies

Comparisons among electoral systems: Distinguishing between localism and candidate-centered politics

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

Standard political economy models of redistribution, notably that of Meltzer and Richard (1981), fail to account for the remarkable variance in government redistribution across democracies. We develop a general model of redistribution that explains why some democratic governments are more prone to redistribute than others. We show that the electoral system plays a key role because it shapes the nature of political parties and the composition of governing coalitions, hence redistribution. Our argument implies (1) that center-left governments dominate under PR systems, whereas center-right governments dominate under majoritarian systems; and (2) that PR systems redistribute more than majoritarian systems. We test our argument on panel data for redistribution, government partisanship, and electoral system in advanced democracies.

The issue of unequal electoral turnout poses serious concerns for both the overall health of democratic politics, and the extent to which certain groups exert an unequal influence on the political process. This article explores the relationship between electoral rules such as: compulsory voting, electoral system proportionality, and voter registration with voter inequality in terms of age, income and education. This is examined using cross-national survey data and cross-level interactions between electoral institutions and socio-demographic variables. The final dataset is based on waves 2–4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, and contains information on 133,000 individuals, within 45 countries, between 2001 and 2016. The results indicate that compulsory voting is associated with a significant reduction in turnout inequalities, while the effects of proportionality and voter registration are somewhat more mixed.