Perfect timing: Leveraging the timing of defection to assess the effect of electoral rules on party switching

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882199372
Author(s):  
Marius Radean
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Time Horizon ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Party Switching ◽  
Do So

When legislators switch parties between elections this may be viewed as undemocratic since, bypassing voters, they are changing the outcomes of elections. Do electoral institutions affect the likelihood of party switching? I argue that legislators are less likely to switch in candidate-centered electoral systems where, because of personal voting, parties cannot insulate defectors from voter retribution. When they switch though, legislators do so early in the term to exploit voters’ short retrospective time horizon. These expectations are tested using a quasi experimental research design that estimates the effect of the 2008 Romanian electoral reform on party switching. In 2008 Romania changed its electoral system from a closed-list PR to a candidate-centered electoral system, where all candidates compete in single-member districts. Both hypotheses are supported by empirics. This helps weed out competing explanations which now have to account for both the decrease in and the different timing of party switching.

scholarly journals Experimental Research Design in the Study of Electoral Systems

2017 ◽  
pp. 424-444
Author(s):  
Joshua A. Tucker ◽  
Dominik Duell
Keyword(s):  
Causal Inference ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
National Level ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
System P

Understanding the effects of electoral systems is of great importance to both scholars and practitioners, and experimental research can be a valuable tool in pursuit of this goal. However, scholars need to think carefully about how to utilize experimental research, especially because the variation in electoral systems in which we are most interested—at the national level—is often impossible or unethical to manipulate. To inform how experiments and related methods of causal inference are then still able to facilitate investigations into the roots and consequences of electoral systems, we situate experimental research within a broader account of research design in the study of electoral systems, summarize existing experimental work, and discuss future avenues. We call for carefully crafting experimental tests in the laboratory and for using “naturally” occurring variation in existing institutions at lower levels of the electoral system.

scholarly journals Electoral Systems, Competition, and Incentives for Corruption

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umberto Guarnier Mignozzetti
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Coordination Problems ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
The Cost

What is the effect of electoral rules on political corruption? While the influence of electoral systems on accountability and representation has been widely studied, the link between electoral systems and corruption remains sparse. This paper develops a model for the interplay between corruption and electoral rules, considering the incentives for challengers to expose the corruption undertaken by the incumbents. I identify two major components: first, rules that increase competition create incentives for freeriding, as challengers would prefer that other challengers pay the cost of exposure. Second, larger district sizes create coordination problems, as the same incumbent may be overexposed, while others were not exposed at all. These characteristics make a mix of high competitiveness and PR the worst system regarding incentives for corruption. I show that these predictions hold empirically using quasi-experimental data from Brazilian municipalities. This study has implications for the design of electoral institutions.

scholarly journals Electoral Rules and New Parties: Evidence from a Quasi‐experimental Design

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Lago
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Institutional Factor ◽  
Robust Estimate ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
The Impact

Electoral rules are a crucial institutional factor shaping the entry and success of new parties. However, testing how they affect voting behavior is problematic when using observational data in cross-national studies. As district magnitude is usually correlated with politically salient features affecting the likelihood of voting for new (and small) parties, the latent support of small parties differs across electoral systems. Using a quasi-experimental design in Spain focused on the district viability of a new party, Vox, in two elections held within 196 days, I provide a more robust estimate of the impact of electoral systems on the success of new parties. Strong evidence that the electoral system makes a difference for new parties has been identified: strategic considerations found in the districts where Vox was not successful prevented a significant number of voters from supporting the party.

Quasi‐Experimental Research Design

2021 ◽  
pp. 307-310
Author(s):  
Amanda Muse ◽  
Julie Marie Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Quasi Experimental

scholarly journals ‘STORY PYRAMID’: AN INOVATION OF ENGLISH TEACHING STRATEGY IN PROMOTING STUDENTS’ READING SKILL

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-103
Author(s):  
Eulis Rahmawati
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Research Finding ◽  
Teaching Strategy ◽  
Reading Skill ◽  
Narrative Text ◽  
English Text ◽  
Quasi Experimental

Some problems are faced by students in reading of English text. The interesting strategy is needed to teach them. Story Pyramid Strategyis one of strategies to teach reading comprehension. This strategy forces students to review and summarize the main points of a story. The research aimed at knowing the effectiveness of using story pyramid strategy in teaching  narrative text toward students’ reading comprehension was conducted in SMAN 1 Serang. The research design of this reseacrh was quasi experimental research with quantitative approach. The  research  finding  showed  that  Story Pyramid  Strategy  is  effective in  teaching  narrative  text  toward  students’ reading comprehension to Senior High School.

Swift Trust in Web Vendors

2011 ◽  
pp. 102-122
Author(s):  
Xin Li ◽  
Guang Rong ◽  
Michelle Carter ◽  
Jason Bennett Thatcher
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Effort Expectancy ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Product Search ◽  
Swift Trust ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Product Search Engines

With the growth of product search engines such as pricegrabber.com, web vendors have many more casual visitors. This research examines how web vendors may foster “swift trust” as a means to convert casual visitors to paying customers. We examine whether perceptions of website’s appearance features (normality, social presence and third-party links) and functionality features (security, privacy, effort expectancy and performance expectancy) positively relate to swift trust in a web vendor. Using a quasi-experimental research design, we empirically test the proposed relationships. Based on an analysis of 224 respondents, we found appearance and functionality features explained 61% of the variance in swift trust. The paper concludes with a discussion of findings and implications.

Internal Validity of Group Experimental Research

1983 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-83
Author(s):  
Jean R. Harber
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Internal Validity ◽  
Experimental Designs ◽  
Causal Relationships ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Research Studies

This article stresses the importance of controlling extraneous variables when studying educational problems. Various types of research studies are described. The experimental research design, which is ideally suited to detecting causal relationships if proper controls are used, and quasi-experimental procedures, which are employed when true experimental designs cannot be used, are discussed. Threats to internal validity are presented and hypothetical examples are given to illustrate these threats and the means of controlling them. The importance of utilizing control groups is illustrated.

National Electoral Thresholds and Disproportionality

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-119
Author(s):  
Tasos Kalandrakis ◽  
Miguel R. Rueda
Keyword(s):  
Expectation Maximization ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Model Fit ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Proportional Allocation ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Seat Allocation ◽  
System Configurations

We model the conditional distribution of seats given vote shares induced by national electoral systems using a stochastic threshold of representation and a disproportionality parameter that regulates allocation for parties above the threshold. We establish conditions for the parameters of this model to be identified from observed seats/votes data, and develop a Maximum a Posteriori Expectation-Maximization (MAP-EM) algorithm to estimate them. We apply the procedure to 116 electoral systems used in 417 elections to the lower house across 36 European countries since WWII. We reject a test of model fit in only 5 of those systems, while a simpler model without thresholds is rejected in favor of our estimated model in 49 electoral systems. We find that the two modal electoral system configurations involve higher thresholds with seat allocation for parties exceeding thresholds that does not statistically differ from perfectly proportional allocation (32.76% of all systems); and systems for which we cannot reject the absence of a national threshold but exhibit disproportional seat allocation for parties eligible for seats (38.79% of all systems). We also develop procedures to test for significant changes in electoral institutions and/or the distribution of seats.

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