scholarly journals Fragmentation Without Cleavages? Endogenous Fractionalization in the Brazilian Party System

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cesar Zucco ◽  
Timothy J Power
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Party System ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Political Ambition ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
Party Funding ◽  
Rule Out ◽  
Legislative Parties

This article investigates the causes of party system hyperfragmentation in Brazil. We ask why hyperfragmentation—understood as extreme multipartism that continues to fractionalize—occurs despite significant changes to social cleavages or to electoral rules. Using survey data from federal legislators, we rule out the possibility of new issue-based multidimensionality. Using new estimates of the ideological position of legislative parties, we show that new party entry was not driven by polarization or convergence among traditional parties. We advance an alternative explanation of “fragmentation without cleavages,” arguing that changing dynamics of electoral list composition, federal party funding, and coalition management have changed the context of political ambition. For strategically minded elites, it is more attractive than ever before to be a dominant player in a small party.

scholarly journals The effects of district magnitude and social diversity on party system fragmentation in majoritarian systems

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-326
Author(s):  
Christopher D Raymond
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Social Diversity ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
District Magnitude ◽  
National Model ◽  
National Models ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

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.

The Impact of Campaign Finance Laws on Party Competition

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Potter ◽  
Margit Tavits
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
System Size ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Campaign Finance Laws ◽  
The Impact

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.

Gender Gaps in Electoral Turnout: Surveys versus Administrative Censuses

2021 ◽  
pp. 147892992110195
Author(s):  
Paulo Cox ◽  
Mauricio Morales Quiroga
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Electoral Participation ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Electoral Turnout ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Official Data ◽  
Rule Out

Gender gaps in voter turnout are usually studied using opinion surveys rather than official census data. This is because administrative censuses usually do not disaggregate turnout according to voters’ sex. Without this official information, much of the research on gender gaps in electoral turnout relies on survey respondents’ self-reported behavior, either before or after an election. The decision to use survey data implies facing several potential drawbacks. Among them are the turnout overstatement bias and the attrition or nonresponse bias, both affecting the estimation of factors explaining turnout and any related statistical analysis. Furthermore, these biases may be correlated with covariates such as gender: men, more than women, may systematically overstate their electoral participation. We analyze turnout gender gaps in Chile, comparing national surveys with official administrative data, which in Chile are publicly available. Crucially, the latter includes the official record of sex, age, and the electoral behavior—whether the individual voted or not—for about 14 million registered individuals. Based on a series of statistical models, we find that analysis based on survey data is likely to rule out gender gaps in electoral participation. Carrying out the same exercises, but with official data, leads to the opposite conclusion, namely, that there is a sizable gender gap favoring women.

Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation in Parliamentary Democracies

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
SONA NADENICHEK GOLDER
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Electoral Coalitions ◽  
Vast Literature ◽  
Coalition Size ◽  
Government Coalition

Political parties that wish to exercise executive power in parliamentary democracies are typically forced to enter some form of coalition. Parties can either form a pre-electoral coalition prior to election or they can compete independently and form a government coalition afterwards. While there is a vast literature on government coalitions, little is known about pre-electoral coalitions. A systematic analysis of these coalitions using a new dataset constructed by the author and presented here contains information on all potential pre-electoral coalition dyads in twenty industrialized parliamentary democracies from 1946 to 1998. Pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form between ideologically compatible parties. They are also more likely to form when the expected coalition size is large (but not too large) and the potential coalition partners are similar in size. Finally, they are more likely to form if the party system is ideologically polarized and the electoral rules are disproportional.

scholarly journals Hacia el estudio de lo preocupante en nuestro régimen de partidos = The worrying state of our party system

2015 ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Óscar Alzaga Villaamil
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Full Control ◽  
El Sistema ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
Party Funding ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Spanish Legislation

Noting that in sociological studies at European level Spain is almost at the bottom of civic appraisal of its democracy and its political, the study explores the historical roots of poor political representation in the nineteenth century Spanish with management from the Crown Decrees of dissolution of parliament and full control by governments shift elections based on small districts and on a rooted cacique system. The 1977 Law for Political Reform conditioned the electoral system for the Parliament, distorting proportional representation in terms that have come down to us and who have devoted bipartisanship when none of the major parties has a majority depends on the Nationalist forces, they have made great revenues as unique representative map. The Spanish legislation regulating political parties with great precision how the upcoming ban terrorism forces, but hardly develops the constitutional requirements regarding the organization and internal functioning must be democratic, nor on party funding, for what you need to consider the reform of the parties Act 2002.Tras constatar que en los estudios sociológicos de ámbito europeo España se sitúa prácticamente a la cola de valoración ciudadana de su democracia y de sus políticos, el estudio profundiza en las raíces históricas de la mala representación política durante el Siglo XIX español con manejo desde la Corona de los Decretos de disolución de las Cortes y pleno control por los gobiernos del turno de unas elecciones basadas en distritos pequeños y en un arraigados sistema caciquil. La Ley de 1977 para la Reforma Política condicionó el sistema electoral para las Cortes, distorsionando la representación proporcional en términos que han llegado a nuestros días y que han consagrado un bipartidismo que cuando ninguno de los principales partidos tiene mayoría absoluta depende de las fuerzas nacionalistas, que han obtenido grandes réditos de tan singular mapa representativo. La legislación española de partidos políticos regula con gran precisión la forma de prohibir las fuerzas próximas al terrorismo, pero prácticamente no desarrolla los imperativos constitucionales en cuanto a que la organización y el funcionamiento interno deben ser democráticos, ni sobre la financiación de los partidos, por lo que procede abordar la reforma de la Ley de partidos de 2002.

scholarly journals Does Class-Based Campaigning Work? How Working Class Appeals Attract and Polarize Voters

2020 ◽  
pp. 001041402095768
Author(s):  
Joshua Robison ◽  
Rune Stubager ◽  
Mads Thau ◽  
James Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Limited Effect ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Candidate Evaluations ◽  
Voter Decision Making

Recent elections have featured various politicians directly appealing to the working class, yet we know little about how citizens react to class appeals from candidates. We investigate this question using survey experiments conducted in the United States and Denmark. We show that symbolic class rhetoric substantially influences candidate evaluations and ultimately polarizes these evaluations across class lines. We also unpack how class appeals work and find that while they increase perceptions of representation among working class voters, they have a more limited effect on perceptions of candidates’ ideological position. Our results help explain how class affects voter decision-making and contribute to broader discussions about the role of political elites in activating social cleavages.

Social Identity, Electoral Institutions and the Number of Candidates

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric S. Dickson ◽  
Kenneth Scheve
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Electoral Coalitions ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Election Results ◽  
The Relationship

The empirical literature in comparative politics holds that social cleavages affect the number of candidates or parties when electoral institutions are ‘permissive’, but it lacks a theoretical account of the strategic candidate entry and exit decisions that ultimately determine electoral coalitions in plural societies. This article incorporates citizen-candidate social identities into game-theoretic models of electoral competition under plurality and majority-runoff electoral rules, indicating that social group demographics can affect the equilibrium number of candidates, even in non-permissive systems. Under plurality rule, the relationship between social homogeneity and the effective number of candidates is non-monotonic and, contrary to the prevailing Duvergerian intuition, for some demographic configurations even the effective number of candidates cannot be near two. Empirical patterns in cross-national presidential election results are consistent with the theoretical model.

VOTE TRAFFICKING IN LEBANON

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Corstange
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Sensitive Questions ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
List Experiment ◽  
Original Survey

AbstractVote buying and vote selling are prominent features of electoral politics in Lebanon. This article investigates how vote trafficking works in Lebanese elections and examines how electoral rules and practices contribute to wide and lively vote markets. Using original survey data from the 2009 parliamentary elections, it studies vote selling with a list experiment, a question technique designed to elicit truthful answers to sensitive questions. The data show that over half of the Lebanese sold their votes in 2009. Moreover, once we come to grips with the sensitivity of the topic, the data show that members of all sectarian communities and political alliances sold their votes at similar rates.

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