Party Mobilization and Electoral Systems

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.

Political effects of low turnout in national and European elections

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.

The two most recent elections to the European Parliament offer an interesting opportunity to evaluate the extent to which parties in Great Britain can, and do utilise the regional list system to promote a balance between male and female representatives. A clear distinction exists between equality in the form of candidate numbers and equality in the form of elected representatives, and as such, consideration is given to the gender balance of party lists within each region. Whilst incumbency considerations may impact upon candidate selection and ordering in established parties, it is not necessarily the case that ‘newer’ parties offer the best opportunities for women candidates, as the UK Independence Party clearly demonstrates.

Policies as diverse as tariffs, exchange rates, and unemployment insurance vary across democratic countries. In an attempt to explain this cross-national variation, scholars have turned to the institutions that govern countries’ elections. The institutions that regulate elections, also known as an electoral system, vary significantly across democracies. Can these varied electoral institutions explain the diversity of policies observed? This question remains unanswered. Despite a growing body of research, little consensus exists as to precisely how electoral institutions affect policy. Why is it so difficult to untangle the effects of electoral institutions on economic policy? One reason for the confusion may be the imprecise manner in which electoral institutions are often measured. Better measures of electoral systems may improve our understanding of their policy effects. Improved theories that clarify the causal mechanism(s) linking electoral systems to policy outcomes will also help to clarify the relationship between electoral systems and policies. To better understand the policy effects of electoral institutions, both theoretical and empirical work must take seriously contextual factors, such as geography, which likely mediate the effects of electoral institutions. Finally, different types of empirical evidence are needed to shed new light on the policy effects of electoral institutions. It is difficult to identify the effects of electoral systems in cross-national studies because of the many other factors that vary across countries. Examining within-country variations, such as changes in district magnitude, may provide useful new insights regarding the effects of electoral institutions on policy.

The structural logic approach put forth in this book predicts the most likely policy outcomes on the basis of the government type, party strength, and district magnitude. This chapter applies the logic to explain why Japan's social protection system began to change fundamentally in the post-1996 period. At first sight, there appears to be little difference between the pre-1996 and the post-1996 periods: the government type remained the same – that is, coalition governments. This apparent continuity, however, masked a tidal shift in Japanese politics that occurred after the electoral and legislative rules were changed in the latter half of the 1990s. In October 1996 the Lower House adopted a SMD-dominant mixed electoral system, requiring the typical Lower House politician to compete for a single seat in her district. This chapter covers the period from the 1996 Lower House elections through to 2006.

This article empirically revisits and tests the effect of individual distance from parties on the EU integration dimension and on the left–right dimension for vote choice in both national and European elections. This analysis is based on the unique European Election Study (EES) 2014 survey panel data from seven EU countries. Our findings show that in most countries the effect of individual distance on the EU integration dimension is positive and significant for both European and national elections. Yet the effect of this dimension is not uniform across all seven countries, revealing two scenarios: one in which it is only relevant for Eurosceptic voters and the other in which it is significant for voters of most parties in the system. The first is mainly related to the presence of a ‘hard’ Eurosceptic party in the party supply, but the second, which indicates a more advanced level of Europeanisation of party systems, is not explained by most current theoretical and empirical contributions. We conclude by proposing two additional explanations for this latter scenario in which the EU integration dimension is present for most voters in both type of elections, including those voting for the main parties. Our findings and further discussion have implications for the understanding of the Europeanisation of national politics and its relationship with vote choice.

ABSTRACTThis article explores how replacement rules for midterm vacancies affect legislative turnover in the context of majoritarian and proportional electoral systems. The differing electoral rules and replacement procedures for the two chambers of the Australian parliament over more than a century permit an analysis of the complex interplay between institutional rules, party strategy, and patterns of representation between 1901 and 2013. Since 1901, the Australian House of Representatives has been committed to single member electoral systems and by-elections for filling midterm vacancies, but major changes to both the electoral system and midterm replacement rules for the Australian Senate have played a critical role in enhancing party control of Senate careers.

The paper investigates women's representation in the European Parliament delegations of the new member states by bringing together three distinct strands of scholarship: the second-order elections model, feminist theories of candidate recruitment and the literature on party positions on European integration. It tests three hypotheses explaining women's selection as candidates in European elections: the impact of electoral systems; the impact of political parties’ left–right placement and the impact of party positions on European integration. The key finding is that gendered patterns of candidate recruitment in the new member states are best explained as a function of political parties’ positions on European integration, with electoral systems and left–right placement having only a limited impact on the selection of women candidates.

Show Your Flag or Be Everyone's Friend?: The Effects of District Magnitude on Vote-Securing Strategies

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

Unpacking second-order elections theory: The effects of ideological extremity on voting in European elections

This paper investigates how electoral laws affect the position-taking incentives of parties and candidates. It seeks to extend the finding presented in the classical median voter theorem to a wide class of electoral systems-or to show the limits of such extension. The factors examined are the district magnitude, the electoral formula, the number of votes each voter is allowed to cast, whether voters can cumulate their votes, and whether voters can partially abstain. I suggest a crude division of electoral systems into those producing predominantly centripetal incentives and those producing predominantly centrifugal incentives. Among the factors found to produce centripetal incentives, at least in noncumulative systems, are the following: increases in the number of votes per voter; outlawry of partial abstention; and decreases in the district magnitude. In systems allowing the cumulation of votes, matters are a bit different.