On Parties’ Terms: Gender Quota Politics in South Korea’s Mixed Electoral System

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-131
Author(s):  
Erik Mobrand
Keyword(s):  
Electoral System ◽  
Mixed Electoral System ◽  
Gender Quota

Quotas and qualifications: the impact of gender quota laws on the qualifications of legislators in the Italian parliament

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Catalano Weeks ◽  
Lisa Baldez
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Government Experience ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Mixed Electoral System ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Impact

This article addresses concerns that candidates nominated because of gender quota laws will be less qualified for office. While questions of candidate quality have long been relevant to legislative behavior, quota laws requiring a certain percentage of candidates for national office to be women have generated renewed interest. Gender quotas are often perceived to reduce the scope of political competition. By putting gender identity center stage, they preclude the possibility that elections will be based on ‘ideas’ or ‘merit’ alone. Other electoral rules that restrict candidate selection, such as the centralization of candidate selection common in closed list PR systems, have been found to reduce the quality of candidates. Rules that open selection, such as primaries, result in higher quality candidates. We exploit the institutional design of Italy’s mixed electoral system in 1994, where quotas were applied only to the PR portion of the list, to compare the qualifications of men, women, and ‘quota women’. We estimate regressions on several measures of deputies’ qualifications for office and performance in office. We find that unlike other rules limiting candidate selection, quotas are not associated with lower quality on most measures of qualifications. In fact, quota women have more local government experience than other legislators and lower rates of absenteeism than their male counterparts. Contrary to critics, quota laws may have apositiveimpact on legislator quality. Once the quota law was rescinded, quota women were less likely to be re-elected than non-quota women or men, which suggests that discrimination – not qualification – limits women’s status as candidates.

The Never-ending Story of Law and Electoral System in Lesotho

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoolo Nyane
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Mixed Electoral System ◽  
2012 Election

While electoral discontent has been the enduring feature of constitutional democracy in Lesotho since independence, disagreement over electoral system is a fairly recent phenomenon. When the country attained independence in 1966 from Britain, electoral system was not necessarily one of the topical issues of pre-independence constitutional negotiations. The major issues were the powers of the monarch, the office of prime minister, the command of the army and many more.  It was taken for granted that the country would use the British-based plurality electoral system.  This is the system which the country used until early 2000s when the electoral laws were reformed to anchor a new mixed electoral system.  When the new electoral laws were ultimately passed in 2001, the country transitioned from a plurality electoral system to a two-ballot mixed member proportional system. By this time, electoral system had acquired prominence in politico-legal discourse in Lesotho.  In the run-up to 2007 elections, bigger political parties orchestrated the manipulation of electoral laws which culminated in clearly distorted electoral outcomes. The manipulations motivated further reforms in the run-up to 2012 election which resulted in the single-ballot mixed member proportional system. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate how electoral laws have anchored electoral system reforms throughout the various historical epochs in Lesotho since independence. The paper contends that while the country has been courageous, unlike most of its peers, to introduce far-reaching electoral system changes, the reform of electoral laws has not been so helpful in attaining the higher objectives of political inclusivity, constitutionalism and stability in Lesotho.

Does candidate nomination in districts increase party votes of small parties? Evidence from the 2016 Taiwan legislative elections

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-473
Author(s):  
Ching-Hsing Wang ◽  
Dennis Lu-Chung Weng ◽  
Vincent Wei-Cheng Wang
Keyword(s):  
Spillover Effect ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Contamination Effect ◽  
Positive Spillover ◽  
Strategic Entry ◽  
Mixed Electoral System ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
Legislative Election

AbstractThis study addresses why small parties nominate candidates to run in the district elections and how nomination of district candidates could influence small parties’ share of party votes in Taiwan. Previous studies on party's strategic entry in the mixed electoral system demonstrate the existence of ‘contamination effect’ in various Western democracies. While ‘contamination effect’ suggests that party would gain more proportional representation (PR) seats by increasing its number of candidate nomination in the single-member-district (SMD) races, we contend that small parties should also take the strength of nominated candidates into consideration. Nominating strong candidates in SMD competitions could generate positive ‘spillover effect’ to party's PR tier. By focusing on the 2016 Taiwan legislative election, our findings suggest that first, small parties need to fulfill the institutional requirements in order to qualify for running in the party-list election; second, the ‘contamination effect’ exists in Taiwan, but it is conditional; and finally, candidates’ strength creates positive ‘spillover effect’ on party's proportional seats.

De kracht van de definitie : een vergelijking van quotawetten in Argentinië, België en Frankrijk

Res Publica ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-100
Author(s):  
Petra Meier
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Sex Ratios ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
Gender Balance ◽  
System A ◽  
Input Side ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
French Gender

Gender quota do not always go hand in hand with a considerable rise in the number of women elected. Although the number of fe/male representatives elected depends on several factors, we argue that the stipulations of gender quota acts influence to a large extent their impact on the sex ratios in politics. This is not so much due to the share of fe/male candidates parties have to present than to the extent to which a gender quota act anticipates the particularities of the electoral system. A comparative analysis of three prominent cases, the Argentinean, Belgian and French gender quota acts, shows that the more a gender quota rule targets at the specificities of the electoral system in order to promote a gender balance in political representation, the more this rule 'guarantees' a result, even though gender quota acts concern but the input side of the electoral process.

Party Linkage, Public Justification and Mixed Electoral Systems

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172097833
Author(s):  
Matteo Bonotti
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Mixed Electoral Systems ◽  
Democratic Life ◽  
Mixed Electoral System

In recent years, a number of political theorists have aimed to restore the central role of parties in democratic life. These theorists have especially highlighted two key normative functions of parties: linkage and public justification. In this article, I argue that these two functions are often in tension. First, I illustrate how this tension manifests itself in liberal democracies. Second, I explain that parties’ ability to fulfil each of the two functions is strongly affected by the electoral system under which they operate: while first-past-the-post encourages party linkage but hinders public justification, the opposite is true of proportional representation. Third, I argue that a mixed electoral system can best guarantee the balance between parties’ linkage and justificatory functions. Fourth, I suggest a number of proposals for party reforms that could help mixed electoral systems to balance party linkage and public justification while preventing the re-emergence of the tension between them within parties.

Quotas, the Electoral System Type and the Election of Young Women

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stockemer ◽  
Aksel Sundström
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Partial Support ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Younger Women ◽  
System Type ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Quota

Abstract This article focuses on a specific group of legislators facing large hurdles during recruitment processes, namely young women. Building on the institutional literature, we hypothesize that gender quota regulations, youth quotas, and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems should particularly benefit young women. Our quantitative study, capturing one hundred elections conducted between 2012 and 2017, finds partial support for our expectations. For the three hypotheses, we find that legislative quotas and voluntary party quotas for both youths and gender do not significantly increase the share of young women. In contrast, PR electoral systems render the electoral arena less discriminatory toward younger women.

scholarly journals Electoral incentives, policy compromise, and coalition durability: Japan's LDP–Komeito Government in a mixed electoral system

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam P. Liff ◽  
Ko Maeda
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Coalition Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Mixed Electoral System

AbstractPolitical parties’ behavior in coalition formation is commonly explained by their policy-, vote-, and office-seeking incentives. From these perspectives, the 20-year partnership of Japan's ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its pacifistic Komeito junior coalition partner is an anomalous case. The longevity, closeness, and nature of their unlikely partnership challenges core assumptions in existing theories of coalition politics. LDP–Komeito cooperation has sustained for two decades despite vastly different support bases and ideological differences on fundamental policy issues. LDP leaders also show no signs of abandoning the much smaller Komeito despite enjoying a single-party majority. We argue that the remarkable durability of this puzzling partnership results primarily from the two parties’ electoral incentives and what has effectively become codependence under Japan's mixed electoral system. Our analysis also demonstrates that being in a coalition can induce significant policy compromises, even from a much larger senior partner. Beyond theoretical implications, these phenomena yield important real-world consequences for Japanese politics: especially, a far less dominant LDP than the party's Diet seat total suggests, and Komeito's remarkable ability to punch significantly above its weight and constrain its far larger senior partner, even on the latter's major national security policy priorities.

scholarly journals PRIMARIES AS A NEW COMMUNICATION FORMAT FOR INTERACTION BETWEEN THE RUSSIAN VOTER AND THE PARTY CANDIDATE

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-207
Author(s):  
Iana I Rep’eva
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
Active Testing ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Mixed Electoral System ◽  
The Given ◽  
First Time ◽  
Expert Surveys

The transformation of electoral processes, as well as the introduction of new elements, as a rule, are due to the dynamic development and at the same time the increasing complexity of social relations. One of such manifestations is the active testing party of the mechanism of preliminary intraparty voting to determine the most effective candidates by the United Russia and their subsequent nomination to elected authorities of power. The use of a truly innovative candidate selection mechanism for the Russian Federation, for the first time in which all citizens with active electoral rights could join, was a demonstration of the party’s preparation for participation in the competition for single-mandate constituencies within the framework of the newly returned mixed electoral system in the elections of deputies of the State Duma. In the given conditions, the party declared its readiness to induce its regional organizations to reorient - the main political resource for it should be voter support. The key indirect effect of the use of this tool for the Russian voter was manifested in the expansion of the traditional boundaries of the application of active suffrage. Taking into consideration attention to the emerging practice of both its supporters and critics, as well as attempts to institutionalize, the author analyzed the background of the issue and formulated the advantages and threats brought by the primaries into the Russian electoral process. The basis of the study for the formulation of the problem and the formulation of possible arguments in favor of this procedure were the data of sociological and expert surveys, as well as the existing scientific works of authors who are few in this area of work.

scholarly journals Technologies of Manipulation During the Presidential Elections of 1999 in Ukraine

2021 ◽  
pp. 170-185
Author(s):  
Andrii Konet
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Mixed Electoral System ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Favorable Conditions ◽  
Collective Goals

The article examines the election campaigns of the late twentieth century. in Ukraine and proved, that they operated manipulation technologies. The state was democratizing the political system, adoption of new election legislation, transition to a mixed electoral system; political pluralism was formed, the number of parties has increased significantly, the struggle for power intensified. With each subsequent election campaign (presidential, parliamentary), the political struggle intensified, and voter engagement technologies have become more vulnerable. The author proves, that the ways and purposes of application of technologies depend on motivations of subjects of the power, as: obtaining, exercising and retaining power; the desire to achieve political and social results, most profitable for pragmatic actors, although this may run counter to collective goals. In Ukraine, democratic processes are not yet complete, traditions of democracy and stable political institutions are absent. Instead, manipulation technologies, electoral engineering, which are aimed at limiting the actions of competitors and creating favorable conditions for their own victory. This prevents the formation of certain restraints, barriers to manipulation technologies, familiar to many civilized democracies.

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