Dataset presentation: Comparative Study of Electoral Systems http:// www.cses.org /

1. Dataset presentation: Comparative Study of Electoral Systemshttp://www.cses.org/ Agata Kwiatkowska

2. Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) CSES is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. Participating countries include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies. The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district and macro variables. The studies are then merged into a single, free, public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis.

3. Process • A Planning Committee, comprised of, selected by, and informed by collaborators, designs and oversees each Module • After the Planning Committee selects a theme for a Module, a stimulus paper is written • The full Planning Committee uses the stimulus paper to guide development of a questionnaire for the Module • After the questionnaire is finalized, collaborators raise funds locally and run the questionnaire in their country in a post-election survey

4. CSES is designed to study variations in electoralsystems (and other political institutions) • A CSES Module is a 10-15 minute respondent questionnaire with a specific substantive theme • The CSES Module is included in national post-election surveys around the world • Each Module last approximately five years

5. Module 1 (1996-2001) • July 2002 Full Release: • 39 election studies, 33 countries • Module 2 (2001-2006) • June 2007 Full Release: • 41 election studies, 38 countries • Module 3 (2006-2011) • March2013 Full Release: • 50 election studies, 40 countries

7. Every survey module covers certain basic political attitudes and perceptions such as party identification, a left-right placement of each major political party, and satisfaction with the workings of democracy; these are repeated in each. • In addition, each module addresses some particular theoretical question.: • The first module addressed especially questions of strategic voting behavior; • the second focused on the distinction between majoritarian and consensus-based democratic institutions; • thethird featuredthe nature of the political choices offered to individuals, and how those choices affect individual decisions.

8. Mode of Interviewing

9. Samplesize Module 1: • Average of 1,600 interviews per election study Module 2: • Average of 1,567 interviews per election study Module 3: • Average of 1,603 interviews per election study

12. POLITICAL PARTIES AND DEMOCRATICCONSOLIDATION IN POST-COMMUNISTSOCIETIESArticle by Ian McAllister and Stephen White This article examines the role of political parties in representing socialcleavages in the established and emerging democracies. Focusing mainly on20 countries. The questions authors ask are: (1) how do voters in theemerging democracies align themselves politically? (2) Do the direction andstrength of the social cleavages in the emerging democracies correspond tothose of the established democracies? (3) How effective are political parties in translating social cleavages into political divisions?

13. Data The countries included in the analysis come from modules 1 and 2 of theComparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project. In order to gain asaccurate a comparison between the established democracies and the newlymerging post-communist societies as possible, the established democraciesare defined as countries with a continuous history of democracy since atleast 1950.

14. Data The established democracies thatare used in the multivariate analyses is 14 countries.Theuniverse of post-communist societies for the multivariate analyses is six countries. Since the sample sizes vary considerably between the country surveys, thesurveys are weighted to ensure that no country unduly influences the overallresults.

15. MeasuringPoliticalCleavages • Ideally, the strength of a political cleavage is measured by the relationshipbetween various social attributes and the parties that voters choose atelections. • To avoid the cross-national methodological problems in measuring party support across 20 countries authors use,instead, left–right self-placement as a surrogate measure of party support.

16. MeasuringPoliticalCleavages To understandiftheconcept of left- rightisunderstood, McAllister andWhiteanalisedtheasnwers for positioningtheparties. The results suggest that theconcept is more familiar to the public in the established than in the emergingdemocracies. In the 16 established democraciesexamined in this section, a total of 13 percent failed to provide a validresponse, compared to more than twice that figure – 31 percent – in theemerging democracies.

17. MeasuringPoliticalCleavages Sources: CSES, modules 1 and 2.

18. MeasuringSocialCleavages In their lengthy essay, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) identified four social cleavages : • centre–periphery (region), • state–church (religion), • land–industry(urban–rural) • owner–worker (class)

19. Analysis The first stage in the analysis is to examine thepolitical importance of thefour social cleavages, together with controls for age and gender, for the 14established and the 6 emerging democracies.

24. Results The results show thatthe social cleavages in the emerging democracies are similar to those ofthe established democracies, with religion and class predominating.Parties appear to be less effective in representing social cleavages in theemerging than in the established democracies.