Elections and Electoral Systems

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-219
Author(s):  
James Mitchell ◽  
Ailsa Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Incentive Structures

Research on voting and political engagement suggests that structural features of political life can affect whether and how individuals participate. This includes the administration of elections, the ease with which one can cast a ballot, the opportunities for deliberation and engagement during election campaigns as well as the ways in which votes are translated into seats. Key here are the costs for voters—costs of time often chief amongst them—of getting involved, staying informed, reaching decisions, and casting a ballot. Scots have multiple electoral worlds to navigate, each of which has the capacity to alter the incentive structures for engagement for voters. This chapter explores these variations—focusing on the diversity of electoral experience in Scotland as well as frequent, recent, changes to elections—before focusing in greater detail on electoral systems, why they have been adopted and their implications for electoral outcomes in Scotland.

Impact of Candidate Selection Systems on Election Results: Evidence from Taiwan before and after the Change in Electoral Systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 213 ◽  
pp. 152-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafydd Fell
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Extensive Coverage ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Election Results

AbstractA central challenge for scholars of party politics is to explain parties' electoral success or failure. Campaign strategies, candidate personalities, electoral systems, parties' issue emphasis and policy positions all receive extensive coverage in the literature. One variable that has been neglected is the role of nomination systems in election results. This is surprising considering how politicians often blame candidate selection failures for disappointing electoral outcomes and then reform nomination mechanisms in the hope of improving future election prospects. In this study I examine the relationship between nomination systems and electoral results in Taiwan before and after the change in electoral systems. I show that candidate selection methods have played an important role in shaping Taiwan's party system under the old and new electoral systems.

Civic Humanism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Kallendorf
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Renaissance Studies ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
The Republic

Civic humanism is one of the more interesting and important concepts in Renaissance studies, in part because of its unusually long afterlife, and in part because almost everything pertaining to it is controversial. There is general agreement that it involves a commitment to the active political life under the influence of classical models, but from that point on, scholarship divides. Are its origins in the political life of Florence at the turn of the 15th century or in the political thought of the 14th century? Does civic humanism predicate a commitment to the republic as we understand the term today, or only to active political engagement in general? When did it end: In Italy, in the 16th century? In England, in the 17th century? In the ideological debates of the American revolution? Or later? Since large blocks of postwar scholarship on the Italian Renaissance are a reaction to civic humanism, either directly or indirectly, any selection from among this much material becomes at least somewhat arbitrary, but the bibliography that follows should provide a basic orientation to the major issues involved, with an emphasis on how ideas about civic humanism have evolved rather than on restatements of earlier positions.

scholarly journals Active and passive: two ways party systems influence electoral outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-467
Author(s):  
Miroslav Nemčok
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Set Size ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Choice Set

AbstractParties can not only actively adjust the electoral rules to reach more favourable outcomes, as is most often recognized in political science, but they also passively create an environment that systematically influences electoral competition. This link is theorized and included in the wider framework capturing the mutual dependence of electoral systems and party systems. The impact of passive influence is successfully tested on one out of two factors closely related to party systems: choice set size (i.e., number of options provided to voters) and degree of ideological polarization. The research utilizes established datasets (i.e., Constituency-Level Elections Archive, Party System Polarization Index, Chapel Hill Expert Survey, and Manifesto Project Database) and via regression analysis with clustered robust standard errors concludes that the choice set size constitutes an attribute with passive influence over electoral systems. Thus, it must be reflected when outcomes of electoral systems are estimated or compared across various contexts.

scholarly journals “Battle of the Extremes”: Party Polarization in the 2010 Pennsylvanian Senatorial Election

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Emily Lieffers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Primary Election ◽  
Party Polarization ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Depth Analysis

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the senatorial election held in Pennsylvania in November of 2010. The paper outlines the state's primary election campaigns and the eventual campaign between two ideologically-opposed candidates, Sestak and Toomey. By referencing extensive primary source documents (interviews, campaign videos, and speeches), supported by scholarly secondary sources, this paper argues that Pennsylvania's senatorial election is emblematic of greater party polarization across the United States. The candidates' unwillingness to provide moderate solutions to appeal to voters in this swing state is noteworthy and is reflective of the decline of centrist politics in the country. Though narrow in scope, the argument put forth in this paper has broader implications for polarization and political engagement in contemporary American politics.

Reasoning Chains: Causal Models of Policy Reasoning in Mass Publics

1986 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Sniderman ◽  
Michael G. Hagen ◽  
Philip E. Tetlock ◽  
Henry E. Brady
Keyword(s):  
Causal Models ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Mass Publics ◽  
Basic Facts

Citizens do not choose sides on issues like busing or abortion whimsically. They have reasons for their preferences – certainly they can give reasons for them. But how is this possible? Citizens as a rule pay little attention to politics, indeed take only a modest interest in it even during election campaigns when their interest in politics is at its height. And since they pay little attention to politics, it is hardly surprising that they know little about it. Many, in fact, are quite ignorant of basic facts of political life – such as the identity of the party that controls Congress or indeed the name of the congressman who represents them. Which, of course, raises a question of some interest: how do citizens figure out what they think about political issues, given how little they commonly know about them?

Incentives in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (12) ◽  
pp. 1460-1485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian F. Crisp
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Incentive Structures

Mixed-member systems have been characterized as encouraging politicians to balance the activities that enhance their personal reputations and those of their parties. Another literature challenges that legislators from one tier are not likely to behave differently from those of the other. After summarizing this debate, data from Venezuela are used to look for evidence supporting either side in a series of behaviors that span the entire legislative process—from bill initiation to committee consideration to final vote. The author concludes that the “best of both worlds” versus “contamination” debate has led to a focus on mixed-member institutions, to the exclusion of other incentive structures confronting legislators and that we need to engage in more careful theorizing about when and where they should expect the electoral tier to have an impact on legislator behavior.

Electoral Systems and Women’s Representation

2017 ◽  
pp. 174-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Lena Krook
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Research ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Important Variable ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
Cross National

Comparative research highlights electoral systems as an important variable explaining cross-national variations in women’s political representation worldwide. This chapter summarizes key patterns in women’s representation globally. It maps existing research on gender and electoral systems, focusing on the role of electoral formulas, district and party magnitude, and ballot structure in shaping women’s opportunities to be elected. It then identifies three areas within the gender literature that have foregrounded elements of electoral systems to generate new insights into central dynamics of political life. The chapter concludes with a discussion of emerging areas of research related to gender, electoral systems, and political representation.

scholarly journals For Wales, Do Not See England? An Analysis of the 2017 General Election

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura McAllister ◽  
Roger Awan-Scully
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
General Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Regional Analyses

Abstract This article analyses the 2017 UK General Election from the perspective of the campaign and results in Wales, a nation which had the most interesting election campaign of all the different nations. The election saw a stark contrast between the way the two principal UK-wide parties fought their campaigns and how the campaign impacted on results. Drawing on data from a post-election survey conducted in June 2017, we consider factors that shape voter choice, which affected the outcome of the election in Wales. We argue that the election internalised and reflected a new pattern of party politics that is likely to stimulate differential election outcomes across the UK; this requires a different approach to understanding election campaigns, one that differentiates between the nations and how every political party operates in each territory. This will help distinguish different political and electoral fault lines, as well as constructing a more granular analysis of the campaign’s impact on electoral outcomes. We conclude first that, to better and more comprehensively explain UK-wide elections, there is a need to provide distinctive national and regional analyses, and secondly, it is mistaken to assume that the same electoral patterns will always exist in Wales as in England.

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