scholarly journals Sistemi elettorali e comportamento di voto: una comparazione fra Germania e Nuova Zelanda

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-104
Author(s):  
Marco Calabrò
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
The Impact

The article analyses the impact of mixed-member proportional electoral systems (MMP) on the party systems and electoral behaviors in Germany and New Zealand. The MMP grants proportional representation while reducing party fragmentation. The latter effect is stronger in Germany than in New Zealand, due to a difference in the electoral thresholds. Mixed member systems that allow citizens to cast two ballots for two different competitive arenas are much interesting for analyzing the impact of electoral systems on electoral behaviors. A voter can choose to split her vote, thus supporting a party in the multimember constituency and the candidate of another party in the single-mandate constituency. MMP is not theoretically supposed to strongly favor such choice. Yet, in the two countries many citizens split their votes; thus, in single-mandate constituencies votes typically concentrate on fewer candidates than in the proportional arena. This seems to be particularly the case in New Zealand. Voters act strategically while splitting their vote. There are evidences that this can be due both to a seat maximizing and to a localistic logic. Evidences are stronger for the latter.

Electoral System Changes and Voter Turnout: Reflections on New Zealand Local Elections

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-162
Author(s):  
Jacky Yaakov Zvulun
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Single Transferable Vote ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Impact

Voter turnout in local and general elections is a key element in measuring citizen participation. From 2004, New Zealand local elections were unique in that local councils had the choice of two different electoral systems: plurality majority and proportional representation. We have here the opportunity to study more about New Zealand local elections and changes in electoral systems. This article analyses the impact of the "Single Transferable Vote” electoral system in those councils that adopted it, comparing it to those councils which used "First Past the Post". This article explains how the STV electoral system has not increased voter turnout and was not the cause of low voter turnout in the 2004-2007 local elections. It might, however, offer voters a better way to choose their preferences.

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 Relationship Between Regional and National Level of Electoral Competition and Parameters of Party System Structuring in the Countries of the Visegrad Group

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-139
Author(s):  
Oleksandra Cholovska
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Political Process ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Regional Elections ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Visegrad Group

The vast majority of party and electoral researches, including the countries of the Visegrad Group,  focuses on the impact of elections and electoral systems on the institutionalization of parties and party systems, predominantly at the national level. However, the proposed article broadened this analysis mainly at the national level, in particular by analyzing regional elections and regional party systems. This is due to the fact that party-electoral interconnection is not one-tier, but instead is determined territorially, including territorial or administrative heterogeneity during elections. In other words, the study aims to show how region and regional elections (in the format of party system regionalization) affect the national political process, and, conversely, how national elections (in the format of party system nationalization) influence the regional political process in the context of the countries of the Visegrad Group. In this regard, the indicators of voter turnout, electoral volatility, influence of regional parties and coalitions, peculiarities and consequences of electoral blocsʼ and coalitionsʼ formation, parameters of territorial and socio-political cleavages and constructions of electoral systems and formulas were the directories of this relationship, both at national and regional levels, in the proposed study. Their use at the example of the Visegrad countries has made it possible to argue that the relationship between regional and national level of electoral competition and the parameters of the structuring of party systems in the analyzed region is largely reflected in nationalization processes at both national and regional level. Although it is theoretically found that such a relationship is bilateral and counter-dependent on the processes of regionalization of national elections and national electoral systems, or instead on nationalization of regional elections and regional party systems. Keywords: national elections, regional elections, party systems, nationalization and regionalization of party systems, the countries of the Visegrad Group.

scholarly journals Is Proportional Representation More Favourable to the Left? Electoral Rules and Their Impact on Elections, Parliaments and the Formation of Cabinets

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Döring ◽  
Philip Manow
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Regional Distribution ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Right ◽  
Established Democracies ◽  
The Impact

How do electoral rules affect the composition of governments? It is a robust finding that countries with majoritarian rules more often elect conservative governments than those with proportional representation (PR) electoral systems. There are three explanations for this pattern. The first stresses the impact of voting behaviour: the middle class more often votes for right-wing parties in majoritarian electoral systems, anticipating governments’ redistributive consequences. The second explanation is based on electoral geography: the regional distribution of votes may bias the vote-seat translation against the Left in majoritarian systems due to the wide margins by which the Left wins core urban districts. The third explanation refers to party fragmentation: if the Right is more fragmented than the Left in countries with PR, then there is less chance of a right-wing party gaining formateur status. This study tests these three hypotheses for established democracies over the entire post-war period. It finds the first two mechanisms at work in the democratic chain of delegation from voting via the vote-seat translation to the formation of cabinets, while party fragmentation does not seem to co-vary as much as expected with electoral rules. These findings confirm that majoritarian systems have a substantive conservative bias, whereas countries with PR show more differentiated patterns.

scholarly journals The Prisoners' Dilemma and Political Systems: The Impact of Proportional Representation on Criminal Justice in New Zealand

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Lacey
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Political System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Prisoners Dilemma ◽  
The Impact

This is the text of the 2010 Shirley Smith Address delivered by Nicola Lacey on 8 December 2010, organised by the Wellington Women in Law Committee. The lecture offers an analysis of why New Zealand has attached itself to increasingly punitive criminal justice policies over the last 25 years, and considers in particular how far this has to do with the shape of New Zealand’s political system.

New Zealand

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Shugart ◽  
Matthew E. Bergman ◽  
Cory L. Struthers ◽  
Ellis S. Krauss ◽  
Robert J. Pekkanen
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Issue Ownership ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Impact

This chapter focuses on the impact of electoral reform in New Zealand, which changed from first-past-the post (FPTP) to mixed-member proportional (MMP). The chapter analyzes the National and Labour parties under both electoral systems. As expected, the expertise model becomes more important to parties’ allocation of legislators to House of Representatives committees after the electoral reform to MMP, due to the move to a system in which votes cast anywhere count toward seat maximization. Parties also change how they assign members under the electoral–constituency model, as the system moves from one in which winning districts is the exclusive way in which a party maximizes seats to one in which legislators representing districts may be leveraged to help the party win more votes from the party list. Both parties show strong issue ownership tendencies before and after electoral reform.

scholarly journals Electoral Institutions and Legislative Behavior: Explaining Voting Defection in the European Parliament

2004 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hix
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
European Union Member State ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Selection Rules ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Despite a sophisticated understanding of the impact of electoral institutions on macrolevel political behavior, little is known about the relationship between these institutions and microlevel legislative behavior. This article reviews existing claims about this relationship and develops a model for predicting how electoral institutions affect the relationship between parliamentarians and their party principals in the context of the European Parliament. The European Parliament is an ideal laboratory for investigating these effects, because in each European Union member state, different institutions are used to elect Members of European Parliament (MEPs). The results of this model, tested on four hundred thousand individual MEP vote decisions, show that candidate-centered electoral systems (such as open-list proportional representation or single-transferable-vote systems) and decentralized candidate-selection rules produce parliamentarians independent from their party principals. By contrast, party-centered electoral systems (such as closed-list proportional representation systems) and centralized candidate-selection rules produce parliamentarians beholden to the parties that fight elections and choose candidates: in the case of the European Parliament, the national parties.

scholarly journals It's Parties that Choose Electoral Systems (Or, Duverger's Laws Upside Down)

2005 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep M. Colomer
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Party Choice ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article presents, discusses and tests the hypothesis that it is the number of parties that can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way around. Already-existing political parties tend to choose electoral systems that, rather than generate new party systems by themselves, will crystallize, consolidate or reinforce previously existing party configurations. A general model develops the argument and presents the concept of ‘behavioral-institutional equilibrium’ to account for the relation between electoral systems and party systems. The most comprehensive dataset and test of these notions to date, encompassing 219 elections in 87 countries since the 19th century, are presented. The analysis gives strong support to the hypotheses that political party configurations dominated by a few parties tend to establish majority rule electoral systems, while multi-party systems already existed before the introduction of proportional representation. It also offers the new theoretical proposition that strategic party choice of electoral systems leads to a general trend toward proportional representation over time.

Electoral Systems and Electoral Misconduct

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (12) ◽  
pp. 1533-1556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Birch
Keyword(s):  
System Design ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
National Study ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Cross National Study ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

This article is a cross-national study of the impact of electoral system design on electoral misconduct. It argues that elections held in single-member districts (SMD) under plurality and majority rule are more likely to be the object of malpractice than those run under proportional representation (PR). Two reasons are advanced in support of this argument: Candidates in SMD systems have more to gain from individual efforts to manipulate elections than is the case for candidates in PR contests; and malfeasance is more efficient under SMD rules, in that the number of votes that must be altered to change the outcome is typically smaller than it is under PR. This hypothesis is tested and confirmed on a new data set of electoral manipulation in 24 postcommunist countries between 1995 and 2004. The proportion of seats elected in SMDs is found to be positively associated with levels of electoral misconduct, controlling for a variety of contextual factors.

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