The Unintended Costs and Unfulfilled Promises of Concurrent Elections: A Natural Experiment on Turnout and Invalid Voting

Holding two second-order elections simultaneously is expected to increase electoral participation. We exploit a natural experiment in which one group of Czech precincts was “as if” randomly assigned to holding subnational elections concurrently with senatorial ones. Using a unique data set containing variables on more than thirteen thousand precincts in five elections between 2000 and 2016, we detect a modest effect of concurrency only in the first election but no or inconsistent effect in the four subsequent contests. Furthermore, we report a strong effect of concurrency on invalid voting. We check for robustness using difference-in-differences design and matching techniques. Incongruent with existing theories, concurrency does not deliver on its promises and may come at a substantial cost to political representation. The surprising null effect on turnout is attributable to analyzing the effect of concurrency of the less salient on more salient elections.

Is the Low Electoral Turnout of Indigenous People a Myth? Evidence from Subnational Elections in Chile, 2012-2017

Abundant evidence exists of the low electoral turnout of indigenous people. Among the reasons that explain this result are the weakness of political parties in representing indigenous people, the economic circumstances of ethnic minorities, and their experiences of discrimination. In general, these findings are based on analyses of national elections, and it is unclear if they hold equally at the subnational level. This study of the Mapuche ethnic group in Chile analyzed the electoral turnout in Chile’s 345 municipalities for the national elections of 2013 and 2017 and the subnational elections of 2012 and 2016. The study found the following. First, the electoral turnout in municipalities with the highest concentration of Mapuche is above the average for subnational elections and comparable to the average for national elections. Second, the electoral turnout in these municipalities increases in those subnational elections in which candidates with Mapuche surnames compete. Third, the electoral turnout increases even more in those municipalities in which Mapuche mayoral candidates win in subnational elections.

Governance and Electoral Integrity: Evidence from Subnational India

This article presents the findings of perceptions of electoral integrity survey for subnational elections in India between 2015 and 2017. The perceptions of electoral integrity survey is an attempt to provide a comprehensive, impartial and independent source of information derived from experts about elections conforming to internationally recognized principles and standards. The article then evaluates the factors that account for differences in the perceptions of electoral integrity in India. We show that higher-income states in India tend to have higher levels of electoral integrity. However, we argue that differences in the quality of governance best explain subnational variation in the perceptions of electoral integrity in India.

Multi-Level Democracy

All federal systems face an internal tension between divisive and integrative political forces, striking a balance between providing local autonomy and representation on one hand and maintaining an integrated political community on the other hand. How multi-level systems strike this balance depends on the development of styles of either integrated politics, which creates a shared framework for political competition across the units of a federation, or independent politics, preserving highly autonomous arenas of political life. This book argues that the long-term development of integrated or independent styles of politics in multi-level systems can be shaped by two key elements of federal institutional design: the degree of fiscal decentralization, or how much is ‘at stake’ at each level of government, and the degree to which the allocation of policy jurisdiction creates legislative or administrative interdependence or autonomy. These elements of federal institutional design shape integrated and independent politics at the level of party organizations, party systems, and voter behaviour. This book tests these arguments using a mixed-method approach, drawing on original survey data from 250 subnational party leaders and aggregate electoral data from over 2,200 subnational elections in seven multi-level systems: Canada, the United States, Australia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain. It supplements this with configurational analysis and qualitative case studies.

Party System Linkage

This chapter examines two forms of integrated politics at the party system level, party system congruence and party system nationalization. Drawing on data from over 2,220 subnational elections in seven multi-level systems, it assesses three forms of party system congruence across the units of a multi-level system: similarity of the number of parties, electoral support, and similarity of the magnitude and direction of the electoral swing. Using the index of cumulative regional inequality (CRI), it measures the territorial concentration of party systems. The analysis shows that fiscal centralization and administrative interdependence predict integrated politics in the form of more congruent patterns of electoral support. There are limits to the institutional explanation. The electoral system and social cleavage structure are important explanations of variation in party system structures and territorial concentration.

Federal and Subnational Elections in Russia: Coherence and Divergence in Electoral Outcomes

This article examines the differences between Russian voting at federal elections and regional legislature elections, both combined and conducted independently. The authors analyse these differences, their character and their dynamics as an important characteristic of the nationalisation of the party system. They also test hypotheses about a higher level of oppositional voting and competitiveness in subnational elections, in accordance with the theory of second-order elections, as well as the strategic nature of voting at federal elections, by contrast with expressive voting during subnational campaigns. The empirical study is based on calculating the differences in votes for leading Russian parties at subnational elections and at federal elections (simultaneous, preceding and following) from 2003, when mandatory voting on party lists was widespread among the regions, to 2019. The level of competitiveness is measured in a similar way, by calculating the effective number of parties. The study indicates a low level of autonomy of regional party systems, in many ways caused by the fact that the law made it impossible to create regional parties, and then also by the 2005 ban on creation of regional blocs. The strong connection between federal and regional elections in Russia clearly underlines the fluid and asynchronic nature of its electoral dynamics, where subnational elections typically predetermine the results of the following federal campaigns. At the same time, the formal success of the nationalisation of the party system, achieved by increasing the homogeneity of voting at the 2016 and 2018 federal elections, is not reflected by the opposing process of desynchronisation between federal and regional elections after Putin’s third-term election. There is also a clear rise in the scale of the differences between the two. At the same time, the study demonstrates the potential presence in Russia of features common to subnational elections in many countries: their greater support for the opposition and presence of affective voting. However, there is a clear exception to this trend during the period of maximum mobilisation of the loyal electorate at the subnational elections immediately following the accession of Crimea in 2014–2015, and such tendencies are generally restrained by the conditions of electoral authoritarianism.

Small versus Statewide Parties: How Subnational Contestation and Decentralisation Influence Presidential Elections in Europe and Latin America

Shugart and Carey were among the first scholars to recognise that there is a relationship between regional and local – or subnational – electoral forces and the presidential race. Yet because of a lack of subnational electoral data, this relationship has largely remained unexplored. We elaborate on Shugart and Carey’s theory to argue that the effects of decentralisation are conditional on a party’s presence in subnational elections for determining when and why parties enter the presidential race. Using an original dataset of subnational electoral results and presidential strategies in 17 countries in Europe and Latin America from 1990 to 2013, we find that parties with a small presence in subnational elections are more likely to compete for the presidency under more extensive decentralisation. Statewide parties, however, contest presidential elections regardless of level of decentralisation. These findings have important implications for understanding Shugart and Carey’s expectation that subnational contestation influences national party systems, presidential elections and democratic representation more generally.

On digital front-runners and late-comers: Analyzing issue competition over digitization in German subnational elections

Despite the sweeping societal and economic transformation brought about by digitization, it has remained a relatively marginal topic in elections, with parties having few incentives to signal commitment to digitization. Why then would parties start to do so? We address this question by examining party manifestos from German subnational elections in the period between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis contributes to the research on issue competition by looking at why parties engage with the topic of the digitization even though it has neither become politicized nor salient, at present. We find, first, that parties emphasize digitization more in regions belonging to the mid-tier in terms of their degree of digital modernization. Second, parties with more resources and greater ideological compatibility signal more commitment to digitization. Finally, electoral success of the Pirate Party as a credible challenger has been followed by greater emphasis on digitization, especially among the ideologically closest competitors.

THE ELECTORAL CONNECTION IN AN OPEN-LIST PR SYSTEM: INFORMAL CONSTITUENCIES, BUDGET AMENDMENTS AND PUBLIC POLICIES IN RIO DE JANEIRO

This article aims to highlight the effects of the electoral connection on the behavior of Brazilian legislators, examining specifically the Rio de Janeiro chamber of councillors. The analysis covers the fourteen-year period from 1997 and 2010. The decisive influence of the electoral connection on the councillors’ process of decision making in relation to the financing of public policies is presented through a set of multiple regressions. The results show contrasts between the mutually excluding perspectives of comparatists and specialists in Brazil. A more diversified description of the electoral connexion in OLPR system emerge. The discoveries show that the transformation of the constituent group from several formal members into many informal groups accommodates geographical and non-geographical representations. Although focused on Brazil, this article approaches a gap in the literature about OLPR systems, which are adopted in other aspects of national elections, in places such as Peru and Colombia, and in subnational elections, as in many states from Germany.