scholarly journals Electoral systems and income inequality: a tale of political equality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Izaskun Zuazu
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mixed Systems

AbstractThe link between democracy and within-country income inequality remains an unresolved quest in the literature of political economy. To look into this debate, I propose exploring the implications of electoral systems, rather than political regimes, on income inequality. I surmise that proportional representation systems should be associated with lower income inequality than majoritarian or mixed systems. Further, I conjecture that the relationship between electoral systems and income inequality hinges on the de facto distribution of real political power, namely political equality. I use data on 85 countries covering the period 1960–2016 and specify models able to capture the persistence and mean reversion of income inequality. The estimates fail to significantly associate democracy with income inequality, and find other political institutions to significantly shape income inequality. The paper finds a robust association between more proportional systems and lower income inequality. However, this association depends on political equality. Changes towards proportional representation systems seem to lower income inequality at low and medium levels of political equality. Strikingly, instrumental variable estimates show that changes in electoral systems in political equal societies increases income inequality.

Electoral Systems and the Substantive Representation of Marginalized Groups: Evidence from Women’s Issue Bills in South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110282
Author(s):  
Yesola Kweon ◽  
Josh M. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Substantive Representation ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
The Relationship

How do electoral rules shape the substantive representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? Using an original dataset of introduced and passed bills in the Korean National Assembly, which has both single-member districts and proportional representation, we examine the extent to which institutions condition the relationship between lawmaker gender and the substantive representation of women. While women lawmakers engage in higher levels of substantive representation of women, proportional representation allows both women and men to introduce more women’s issue bills than their counterparts elected through single-member districts. Furthermore, legislators elected through proportional representation are more effective at achieving passage of women’s issue legislation when compared with those elected in single-member districts, and this effect is especially pronounced for men. Our findings show that electoral systems matter for the representation of marginalized groups and that proportional representation systems allow both female and male politicians to increase their substantive representation of women.

Party nomination strategies in flexible-list systems

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 589-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey André ◽  
Sam Depauw ◽  
Matthew S Shugart ◽  
Roman Chytilek
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Representation Systems

A paradox in the comparative literature on electoral systems is that one of the most common systems in Europe – flexible-list proportional representation systems – may be the least understood. Any study of flexible-list systems must start by acknowledging a puzzle: why candidates spend time and effort striving to win preference votes when typically these votes make no difference between election and defeat. Offering the first comprehensive multi-country test of this key puzzle, we provide evidence from Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia that parties will promote to better list ranks in the next election those candidates who are successful at winning preference votes, thereby improving their prospects of election in the longer term and incentivizing them to cultivate personal reputations. Our findings have important implications for party scholars and practitioners when designing, or reforming, political institutions.

Presidentialism and the Effect of Electoral Law in Postcommunist Systems

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry D. Clark ◽  
Jill N. Wittrock
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Majority Control ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
Electoral Law ◽  
Mixed Systems

Efforts to test Duverger’s law in the new democracies of postcommunist Europe have had mixed results. Research argues that mixed systems have an effect on the number of effective parties that is distinct from that of single-mandate district and proportional representation systems. Less attention has been given to the effect of other institutions on the party system, particularly strong presidents. Analyzing election results in postcommunist Europe, the authors find support for Duverger’s law after controlling for the strength of the executive. They argue that strong presidents substantially reduce the incentive for parties to seize control of the legislative agenda. Hence, the restraint that electoral systems exercise on the proliferation of parties and independent candidates is weakened. The authors find that a further consequence of strong presidents is that the incentive for majority control of committees and the legislative agenda is weakened.

Wahlsystemreform in Deutschland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy Matauschek
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Parallel Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Suitable Alternative ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
District Magnitude ◽  
Alternative Vote

Is plurality or majority electoral reform a sensible option in Germany’s muddled electoral system debate? Yes, it is. Since Germany’s mixed-member proportional system fails to concentrate the party system in a sufficient way, Peggy Matauschek searches for a suitable alternative to the principle of proportional representation. She discusses the following options according to their contextual conditions: single-member plurality and majority electoral systems—like the alternative vote system—, parallel systems, proportional representation systems with a low district magnitude and majority bonus systems. In light of its balanced performance, the study advocates the introduction of a system with a majority bonus for a coalition.

Strategic Voting Versus Sincere Voting

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Bol ◽  
Tom Verthé
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Electoral Outcome ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
The Government ◽  
Sincere Voting

People do not always vote for the party that they like the most. Sometimes, they choose to vote for another one because they want to maximize their influence on the outcome of the election. This behavior driven by strategic considerations is often labeled as “strategic voting.” It is opposed to “sincere voting,” which refers to the act of voting for one’s favorite party. Strategic voting can take different forms. It can consist in deserting a small party for a bigger one that has more chances of forming the government, or to the contrary, deserting a big party for a smaller one in order to send a signal to the political class. More importantly the strategies employed by voters differ across electoral systems. The presence of frequent government coalitions in proportional representation systems gives different opportunities, or ways, for people to influence the electoral outcome with their vote. In total, the literature identifies four main forms of strategic voting. Some of them are specific to some electoral systems; others apply to all.

scholarly journals ‘Don’t play if you can’t win’: does economic inequality undermine political equality?

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armin Schäfer ◽  
Hanna Schwander
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Local Data ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate whether income inequality negatively affects voter turnout. Despite some progress, the answer to this question is still debated due to methodological disagreements and differences in the selection of countries and time periods. We contribute to this debate by triangulating data and methods. More specifically, we use three kinds of data to resolve the question: first, we use cross-sectional aggregate data of 21 OECD countries in the time period from 1980 to 2014 to study the relationship between inequality and electoral participation. Second, we zoom in on the German case and examine local data from 402 administrative districts between 1998 and 2017. Focusing on within-country variation eliminates differences that are linked to features of the political system. Finally, we combine survey data with macro-data to investigate the impact of inequality on individual voting. This final step also allows us to test whether the effect of income inequality on voter turnout differs across income groups. Taken together, we offer the most comprehensive analysis of the impact of social inequality on political inequality to date. We corroborate accounts that argue that economic inequality exacerbates participatory inequality.

scholarly journals Measuring the Competitiveness of Elections

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary W. Cox ◽  
Jon H. Fiva ◽  
Daniel M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
District Level ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
Runoff Elections ◽  
Electoral Competitiveness

The concept of electoral competition plays a central role in many subfields of political science, but no consensus exists on how to measure it. One key challenge is how to conceptualize and measure electoral competitiveness at the district level across alternative electoral systems. Recent efforts to meet this challenge have introduced general measures of competitiveness which rest on explicit calculations about how votes translate into seats, but also implicit assumptions about how effort maps into votes (and how costly effort is). We investigate how assumptions about the effort-to-votes mapping affect the units in which competitiveness is best measured, arguing in favor of vote-share-denominated measures and against vote-share-per-seat measures. Whether elections under multimember proportional representation systems are judged more or less competitive than single-member plurality or runoff elections depends directly on the units in which competitiveness is assessed (and hence on assumptions about how effort maps into votes).

scholarly journals Strategic Split-Ticket Voting in Mixed Electoral Systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
Peter Bence Stumpf
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Individual Candidate ◽  
Mixed Electoral Systems ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mixed Systems

This article aims to examine strategic split-voting in mixed systems by analyzing the results of elections in three countries using mixed electoral systems—Germany, Hungary, and Lithuania—to further improve researchers' understanding of the relationship between strategic voting and ticket splitting. This is achieved by exploring new quantitative measures. The three selected countries do not use identical electoral systems, but their common characteristic is that they provide an opportunity for voters to split their ballot between an individual candidate running in a single-member constituency and a party list. This makes it possible to compare the two different types of votes and to search for patterns indicating strategic behavior. In this article, the authors introduce two analytic tools: one for determining the approximate quantity of split ballots and another for measuring strategic voting patterns based on the concentration of split tickets.

scholarly journals The Conditional Relationship between Inequality and Development

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (04) ◽  
pp. 645-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carles Boix
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Persistent Inequality ◽  
Do So

In recent years political scientists and economists have spent considerable efforts investigating the impact of income inequality both on political institutions and social conflict (Boix 2003, 2008; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Geddes 2007) and on growth and development (Atkinson and Bourguignon 2000). In this article I focus on the latter question: I discuss the extent to which (that is, the conditions under which) inequality may hinder economic growth. I do so by moving away from the current literature, which models the relationship between development and inequality in a linear fashion—with the latter unconditionally distorting (or boosting) the incentives to invest and therefore reducing (or increasing) the rate of growth. Instead, I claim that the potential correlation between inequality and development will be always conditional on the (mostly political and institutional) causes that generate the existing income distribution to start with. Hence it is not surprising to find instances in which growth and (mostly temporary) inequality come hand in hand as well as other periods and countries where there is both high and persistent inequality jointly with economic stagnation.

Electoral Systems and the Number of Parties in Postcommunist States

1999 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Moser
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Standard Pattern ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
Party Institutionalization ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Over Time

Scholars studying electoral systems have consistently found that single-member plurality elections tend to constrain the number of parties operating in a polity to a much greater extent than multimember proportional representation systems. This article tests this hypothesis in the post-communist context by examining the effects of proportional representation and single-member district elections on the number of parties in five postcommunist states. It is shown that some postcommunist states, most notably Poland and Hungary, have followed the standard pattern of party consolidation over time in reaction to incentives of electoral systems, while others, most notably Russia and Ukraine, have not. The author argues that the different effects of electoral systems can be attributed to different levels of party institutionalization found in postcommunist states.These findings have policy implications. Under conditions of extreme party underdevelopment, the electoral system that promotes the use of party labels—proportional representation—may be more effective than the plurality system in constraining the number of parties, provided a legal threshold is used. This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that plurality elections offer the greatest constraint on the number of parties.

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