Legislative Party Turnover and Electoral Volatility: What Explains the Difference?

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 806-828
Author(s):  
Grigorii V. Golosov

Abstract This article explores the structural determinants of aggregate change in the party composition of legislative assemblies, i.e. legislative party turnover. To a large extent a product of electoral volatility, it has its own causal dynamics due to the differentiated impact exerted by electoral rules, party system properties, and institutional design upon the two phenomena. The empirical test on elections held in 111 electoral democracies of the world (1992-2014) demonstrates that the impact of institutional factors (including electoral rules, federalism, and presidentialism) and party system nationalization upon legislative party turnover tends to be mitigated in comparison with their effects upon electoral volatility, even though the direction of the impact is almost invariably the same.

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-326
Author(s):  
Christopher D Raymond

Cross-national models of party system fragmentation hold that social diversity and district magnitude interact: higher levels of district magnitude allow for greater expression of social diversity that leads to higher levels of party system fragmentation. Most models, however, ignore differences between majoritarian and proportional electoral rules, which may significantly alter the impact of district magnitude, as well as the way in which district magnitude impacts the translation of social cleavages into party system fragmentation. Examining the case of Singapore suggests majoritarian multimember districts limit party system fragmentation, particularly by reducing the degree to which ethnic and religious diversity are translated into political parties. Applying these insights to a standard cross-national model of party system fragmentation, the results suggest that majoritarian multimember districts produce lower levels of party system fragmentation than proportional multimember districts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Kuenzi ◽  
John P Tuman ◽  
Moritz P Rissmann ◽  
Gina MS Lambright

Democratic performance and party system institutionalization (PSI) are thought to be integrally linked. Electoral volatility is an important dimension of PSI and has thus been the focus of many studies. Despite the attention given to electoral volatility, its determinants remain elusive. We examine the determinants of electoral volatility in 35 African countries from 1972 to 2010. This study extends the prior literature by analyzing the effects of two previously unexamined variables, foreign aid and structural adjustment, on electoral volatility. Our results indicate that electoral volatility is lower when foreign aid is high, while structural adjustment programs are associated with increased volatility. Our findings contribute to the research on the political economy of aid, illustrating the impact of these economic practices on election outcomes. Political institutions and social demography also appear to affect volatility. Based on our analysis, the party systems of Africa generally do not appear to be institutionalizing.


Author(s):  
Nathan Allen

This chapter examines the evolution of the Indonesian electoral system and its effects on political outcomes. Although Indonesia has repeatedly chosen to conduct elections using proportional representation, electoral rules have changed considerably over time. The chapter traces two trajectories of reform in the post-Suharto era: one restricting opportunities for small parties and the other restricting the power of party leadership. Efforts to shape party system outcomes using electoral rules have succeeded in some areas, particularly in preventing the formation of regional partisan cleavages. Yet the proliferation of political parties in the face of reforms meant to consolidate the party system underline the limits of institutional design.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grigorii V. Golosov

This study uses empirical evidence from a nearly comprehensive set of electoral democracies that use single-member plurality systems or mixed electoral systems with single-member plurality components in order to establish empirically the impact of territorial patterns of electoral support upon vote-to-seat conversion. The analysis, employing individual parties as units of analysis and multiple linear regression with cluster-robust standard errors as its main methodological tool, confirms the hypothesis that single-member plurality rules give a representational bonus to parties with low levels of nationalization. This effect is contingent upon absolute and relative party size, so that very large parties, and particularly frontrunners in party competition, receive an advantage irrespective of their nationalization. Mixed electoral rules further facilitate their advantage, while the gains of very small parties tend to be enhanced by large assembly size. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of party system development under Duvergerian conditions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grigorii V Golosov ◽  
Kirill Kalinin

Using data from a nearly comprehensive set of the world’s electoral democracies, 1992–2014, this article empirically evaluates the impact of presidentialism upon legislative fragmentation. The analysis demonstrates that the impact is strong, consistent across a wide variety of political contexts, and conditioned by the type of presidential regime, the scope of presidential powers, electoral system effects, and essential party system properties. While much of the reasoning regarding the interplay between presidentialism and legislative fragmentation has been traditionally focused on short-term coattail effects of presidential elections, this study shows that these effects are real, but they are insufficient to make a significant impact upon the parameter of crucial importance for the functioning of presidential regimes: the number of parties in the legislature. The main impact of presidentialism is systemic, stemming from its tendency to restrict the number of parties to a limited set of viable competitors for the presidential prize.


2021 ◽  
pp. 505-527
Author(s):  
Daniela Giannetti ◽  
Andrea Pedrazzani

This essay examines speechmaking activity in the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1996 to 2018. Such a period covers almost entirely the phase called the “Second Republic” following a radical change in the electoral rules and the party system that Italy experienced in the early 1990s. Our analysis of the determinants of speechmaking activity shows that the small percentage of MPs holding leading positions within and for their party in the legislative and executive arena (e.g., committee chairs, parliamentary party groups’ leaders, ministers) do speak more in parliament. Our results largely confirm the hypothesis that, in systems where party government is predominant, floor access is strictly controlled by political parties. This hypothesis receives further support from the analysis carried out in the section of this chapter examining the impact of different electoral incentives on speechmaking activity.


2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Potter ◽  
Margit Tavits

The comparative literature on party systems has convincingly demonstrated that electoral rules, social cleavages and their interaction can explain much of the cross-national variation in the size of party systems. This literature, however, has thus far ignored campaign finance laws. This article argues that various campaign finance laws exert more or less restrictive pressures on party competition. It develops a new theoretical concept, fund parity. The study demonstrates the positive relationship between fund parity and party system size and employs additional tests to supplement the regression analysis in order to account for potential endogeneity issues. The findings underscore an intuitive – but heretofore untested – relationship: increasing parity makes party competition more permissive and increases the size of the party system.


2019 ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
I. E. Limonov ◽  
M. V. Nesena

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of public investment programs on the socio-economic development of territories. As a case, the federal target programs for the development of regions and investment programs of the financial development institution — Vnesheconombank, designed to solve the problems of regional development are considered. The impact of the public interventions were evaluated by the “difference in differences” method using Bayesian modeling. The results of the evaluation suggest the positive impact of federal target programs on the total factor productivity of regions and on innovation; and that regional investment programs of Vnesheconombank are improving the export activity. All of the investments considered are likely to have contributed to the reduction of unemployment, but their implementation has been accompanied by an increase in social inequality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Farzana Sharmin Pamela Islam

As 21st century is the era of modern technologies with different aspects, it offers us to make the best use of them. After tape recorder and overhead projector (OHP), multimedia has become an important part of language classroom facilities for its unique and effective application in delivering and learning lesson. Although in many parts of Bangladesh, a South Asian developing country, where English enjoys the status of a foreign language, the use of multimedia in teaching and learning is viewed as a matter of luxury. However, nowadays the usefulness and the necessity of it are well recognized by the academics as well as the government. The study aims to focus on the difference between a traditional classroom void of multimedia and multimedia equipped classrooms at university level by explaining how multimedia support the students with enhanced opportunity to interact with diverse texts that give them more in-depth comprehension of the subject. It also focuses on audio-visual advantage of multimedia on the students’ English language learning. The study has followed a qualitative method to get an in-depth understanding of the impact of using multimedia in an English language classroom at tertiary level. For this purpose, the data have been collected from two different sources. Firstly, from students’ written response to  an open ended question as to their comparative experience of learning  lessons with and without multimedia facilities; and secondly, through  observation of English language classes at a private university of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. The discussion of the study is limited to  the use of multimedia in English language classroom using cartoons, images and music with a view to enhance students’ skills in academic writing, critical analysis of image and critical appreciation of music. For this purpose, cartoons in English language, images from Google and music from You Tube have got focused discussion in this paper.


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