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Electoral Laws as Political Consequences: Explaining the Origins and Change of Electoral Institutions. De Bei Claudia. Comparative Politics – EPS . The origins and change of Electoral Institutions. Duverger’s law:
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Electoral Laws as Political Consequences: Explaining the Origins and Change of Electoral Institutions De Bei Claudia Comparative Politics – EPS
The origins and change of Electoral Institutions Duverger’s law: “The simple-majority single ballot system favours the two party system” Two forces working together: “Mechanical and psychological factor” “Cox’s M + 1 rule”
Endogenous Electoral System “The changes in the number of political parties usually preceded changes in electoral rules” “Electoral system designers lack complete information at the design stage”
Who or What affects Change in the Electoral System? • Political parties • Non party political actors • External actors • Non political experts • History • Society • Economy • Chance
What Makes Politics Choose in Favour of a system or another? Office seeking Policy seeking Balancing representation with governability Social and political engineering Maximizing legitimacy and fairness Other general motivations
What rules Governments change? • Electoral rules governed by institutional rules • Electoral system constitutionally entrenched
Exception and Special Circumstances Transitional contexts Electoral system stability and institutional equilibrium in long standing democracies
Three General Tendencies about The Electoral System • Electoral system will remain unchanged if no party or coalition will try to change the rules even if they can • Electoral system will remain unchanged when it will be too costly or practically impossible for interested parties to change the rule • Electoral change may occur due to unexpected political events (regime changes, popular movements or externally driven events)
Pasquini Valentina Comparative Politics – EPS
What CSES isabout? Comparative StudyofElectoralSystems • Collaborative programofresearch • Electionstudies • Surveyquestions • More than 50 countries
Howdoes the study work? Three linkedparts • “micro” level data • discritlevel data • “macro” level data
Results The aimof CSES isadressing the effectsofelectoralinstitutions on citizens, social and politicalcleavages and democratizationamongalldifferentpoliticalregimes.
Variablesavalaible Three modules • Full releaseof CSES module 1 • Advancereleaseof CSES module 2 • Advancereleaseof CSES module 3
CSES module 1 : 1996-2001 survey, demographic,districtlevel and macro data. • CSES module 2 : 2001-2006 representation and accountability. • CSES module 3 : 2006-2011 voteresperceptionsofassessment and responsesto the variety and qualityofpoliticalchoices in anelection.
Sectionsofvariables Sourcesofvariables are divided in 5 sectors • Administrative • Social demographic • Surveymodel • Discrictlevel • Macro level
Exampleofquestionnaire • Example of Survey of Module 1
Viganò Sara Comparative Politics – EPS
EESEuropean Election Studies What EES are about? • They study electoral participation and voting behaviourin European Parliament elections • They are concerned with the evolution of an EU political Community and a European public sphere, with citizens' perceptions of and preferences about the EU political regime, and with their evaluations of EU political performance
Content of the web site Elections to the European Parliament are held every five years, and they are conducted in a co-ordinated fashion by universal suffrage throughout the countries of the European Union. At each of these elections, the academic community has fielded surveys of voters in all the countries that took part. This web site gives access to materials describing these surveys, from 1979 to 2009, the studies of which they formed part, and the findings of these studies. European Election Study 1979 European Election Study 1984 European Election Study 1989 European Election Study 1994 European Election Study 1999 European Election Study 2004 European Election Study 2009 Scholars involved (from 1979 on) Useful tools for the Voter Studies Integrated Data
EES European Election Study 1989 • Study Design: Is a survey study of the electorates of the member states of the European Community: Belgium Germany Greece Ireland Denmark Italy Luxemburg the Netherlands France Portugal Spain United Kingdom This study consist on three surveys: 1-2 waves took place before the election in October-November1988 and March-April 1989 3 wave was conducted after the elections in June 1989 The data of the study have been organized in a set of interconnected data files, one of each wave and one of each different political system
Variables: • A description list of variables has been created, listing for all the 315 variables • its name, • its presence (x), absence (-) • in each of the three waves • A documentation variable presents information on the variables as for example: • - variable name • - label of the variable in the dataset • - full text of the questionnaire • - a list of the precode response options presented to the • respondent