scholarly journals The Impact of Electoral System Reform on Taiwan's Local Factions

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Göbel
Keyword(s):  
Organized Crime ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
System Reform ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Initial Test ◽  
Rural County ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Electoral Mobilization ◽  
The Impact

In 2004, the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) was abolished in Taiwan. The SNTV had long been seen as a major factor in the sustenance of county- and township-level clientelist networks (“local factions”). It was also associated with phenomena such as extremism, candidate-centred politics, vote-buying, clientelism and organized crime involvement in politics. More recent scholarship, however, has led to doubts that a single formal institution like an electoral system could have such a powerful influence on electoral mobilization. This article puts these positions to an initial test. It examines the impact of the electoral reform on the mobilization capacity of a local faction in a rural county notorious for its factionalism. By illuminating its intricate mobilization structures, it provides support for the second position: These structures are too resilient to be affected by even a radical electoral reform.

scholarly journals Electoral Reform, Regional Cleavages, and Party System Stability in Bolivia

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Centellas
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Party System ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
District Level ◽  
Research Note ◽  
System Stability ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
System Reform ◽  
Research Findings

This research note considers the effects of electoral system reform in Bolivia. In 1995, Bolivia moved from a list-proportional to a mixed-member proportional electoral system. The intervening years saw growing regional polarization of politics and a collapse of the existing party system. Using statistical analysis of disaggregated electoral data (at department, municipality, and district level), this paper tests whether electoral system reforms may have contributed to the current political crisis. Research findings show that regional cleavages existed prior to electoral system reform, but suggest that reforms aggravated their effects. Such evidence gives reason to question the recent popularity of mixed-member proportionality.

scholarly journals Malaysian Electoral System Reform and the Challenges of its Implementation After the 14th General Election

2022 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-312
Author(s):  
Mohamad Fairuz Mat Ali ◽  
Mohammad Agus Yusoff
Keyword(s):  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
General Election ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
System Reform ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Electoral Reforms

Prior to the 14th general election (GE-14), electoral practices in Malaysia have been often criticised as being obscure and biased since it was plagued with issues such as dubious voter registers and ballot paper fraud. Therefore, in its manifesto during GE-14, Pakatan Harapan (PH) promised to reform this electoral practice to make it more independent, transparent, and fair. PH then won the GE-14 on the strength of this vow, forcing it to keep its manifesto pledge. However, implementing the said promise is not easy as most of the proposals involve amendments to the Federal Constitution that require the support of at least a two-thirds majority. The fact that PH lacks such a majority has raised the issue of whether or not the objective to reform the electoral system can be materialised. Thus, this article examines the aspects of electoral reform implemented by PH during its 22 months in power and assesses the challenges faced in implementing such electoral system reform. The concept of electoral reform was used as an analytical tool in this article. This article mainly obtained its data from secondary sources including books, journals, theses, official government documents and websites, while primary data were collected from unstructured interviews with authoritative informants. Findings revealed that among the important reforms of the country's electoral system that have been accomplished by PH are improving the standard operating procedures of elections, enhancing election rules that do not require amendments, amending laws that require simple majority support in the parliament, and implementing ‘high-impact’ electoral reforms that require amendments to the Federal Constitution. Moreover, it was also discovered that the main challenge to reforming the electoral system was the constraint of electoral rule amendments that require the approval of a two-thirds majority of parliamentarians. Other obstacles included politicians' unwillingness to accept a new electoral system culture, barriers to accessing data and information owned by other agencies, discrepancies between federal and state legislation, and financial constraints on improving existing hardware and systems necessary for electoral reform success.

scholarly journals Temptation of the “Powerful”: The politics of electoral reform in Central Europe in post-transitional period

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-368
Author(s):  
Jakub Charvát
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Reform Processes ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The paper explores and analyses processes of electoral reforms in selected Central European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia) in post-transitional period. The qualitative analysis focuses “only” on the enacted changes in electoral systems and its purpose is not to evaluate the impact and political consequences of individual changes but rather to concentrate, through a theoretically-informed detailed contextual analysis, on the electoral reform process itself. It is therefore concerned with contextual factors affecting, underlying, initiating and/or controlling these changes. The paper identifies political elites as the main actors of electoral reform processes in selected countries, and it tries to explain both motivations of political elites for changing status quo electoral systems and other circumstances of electoral reform processes in Central Europe as well. The analysis also suggests that processes of electoral reform in post-transitional period in Central Europe are characterized by a tendency to less proportional electoral system designs, with the only exception of the Slovak electoral reform of 1999 (due to specific political constellation), while it did not discover any clear tendency regarding personalization of electoral systems.

Electoral System Effects on Gender Representation: The Case of Mixed Systems

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Vengroff ◽  
Lucy Creevey ◽  
Henry Krisch
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
System Reform ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
National Office ◽  
Institutional Differences ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mixed Systems ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Electoral systems as endogenous re-distributive institutions (Tsebelis, 1990) help to define the rules of the game. In this manner they have an important impact among regional, class, ethnic, gender, and other sub-groups of the general population on the distribution and variation in outcome of who is nominated for, and elected to, national office. In particular, there is a well-established and growing literature on the impact of electoral systems and electoral system reform on the representation of women in national legislative bodies (Darcy, Welch, and Clarke 1994; Matland and Taylor 1997; Caul 1998; Rule 1987; Matland 1998). In general, these studies have concluded that more women are elected in proportional rather than in plurality or majority electoral systems. However, a major difficulty in interpreting these findings is created by the historical, cultural, economic, and institutional differences among cases chosen for comparison.

Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count: Electoral System Reform in Canada and its Provinces

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 1074-1076
Author(s):  
Andrew Heard
Keyword(s):  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
System Reform ◽  
Vote Count ◽  
Concrete Action ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Academic Debate

Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count: Electoral System Reform in Canada and its Provinces, Henry Milner, ed., Peterborough: Broadview, 2004, pp. 319.After some decades of a principally academic debate in Canada, electoral reform has become a topic of current political discussion and even, in some cases, concrete action. Henry Milner's Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count is a very useful follow-up to the widely read Making Every Vote Count (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999). While the focus remains on trying to make the case that electoral reform is indeed necessary in Canada, the emphasis lies more on assessing the changes that are already under way. With five provinces directly engaged in electoral reform, this book provides a very welcome collection of essays to deepen our understanding of the subject.

The ABCs of Electoral Reform: The Impact of Reading Levels on Knowledge, Interest and Opinion

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Holly Ann Garnett ◽  
André Blais
Keyword(s):  
Electoral System ◽  
Reading Level ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Reading Levels ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Information Campaigns ◽  
The Public ◽  
Reform Proposal ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact

Abstract How should citizens be educated about complicated political issues like electoral reform? Are there basic principles that should be followed? This article tests one potential principle for government bodies, the media and educators to follow when conducting information campaigns: namely, lowering the reading level of information. Educators have long argued that texts can be confusing when written at a literacy level higher than the reader is able to digest. This article tests the impact of reading level on knowledge, interest and opinion on an electoral reform proposal. It employs an experimental design, conducted in person in fall 2018 with college students in Ontario, Canada. The experiment asked the students to read a text on a single transferable vote (STV) electoral system at one of three reading levels (or a control text) and then answer a series of questions gauging their knowledge, interest and opinion on the electoral reform proposal. The results provide an assessment of the impact of different levels of information on these factors and suggest concrete recommendations for election management bodies (EMBs) and other actors seeking to educate the public on complex political issues.

scholarly journals Coordinating nominations: how to deal with an incumbent surplus after electoral reform

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jochen Rehmert
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
System Reform ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Electoral Reforms ◽  
Micro Level

Abstract How do parties and candidates react to electoral system reform? While the literature on causes and consequences of electoral reforms is receiving increasing attention, we lack a systematic micro-level account on how parties and candidates adopt to changes in electoral rules and district boundaries. This paper examines the case of the Japanese Liberal Democrats to explore how the party has managed to accommodate a surplus of incumbents to a reduced number of nominal tier seats following the 1994 electoral reform. By using micro-level data, I examine how the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has matched candidates based on their expected electoral strength and ideological positioning to new districts. Moreover, I investigate how the newly instituted party-list allowed the LDP to avoid its disintegration at the local level by systematically defusing local stand-offs through the handing out of promising list positions. My findings help to understand how the LDP could avoid its disintegration and could continue to dominate Japanese politics until today.

Proportional Representation and its Impacts on Multi Ethnic Society of Sri Lanka

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Seeni Mohamed Aliff
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
Institutional Affiliation ◽  
Secondary Data Sources ◽  
The Impact

This paper will examine the impact of PR electoral systems in a divided society. This research will explore the strength and weakness of the current electoral system and institutional design of Sri Lanka and will recommend changes to decrease the risk of minority exclusion in decision making and ethnic violence. The objectives of this research are to examine the character of the merits and demerits of the PR, and to investigate and assess the impacts of the PR in the multi ethnic societies of Sri Lanka. The study is a qualitative case study, and primary and secondary data sources have been employed to gather relevant data. The My Fieldwork was conducted in Sri Lanka, with the intention of gaining a better and more thorough understanding of the current situation. The interviews conducted were as such not structured or semi-structured, due to the interviewees’ varying professional background and institutional affiliation. Accordingly, unstructured interviews, as well as informal conversations and meetings, were conducted throughout Sri Lanka.

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