Federico Ferrara

Get your Act Together

Research on elections to the European Parliament (EP) has consistently found that European elections are distinguished by a lack of European content. Such elections, in spite of the growing powers exercised by the EP, remain ‘second-order’. Clearly, however, EU-related issues have affected the performance of some political parties in EP elections, particularly in countries such as Sweden and Denmark. In our empirical analysis of the three most recent EP elections, we explain party choice as a function of both European and non-EU-related factors. Through the use of standard regression models, we find that the parties that have not ‘got their act together’ on European issues—whose internal fractionalization leads to ambiguities about their stance on EU integration—systematically perform worse. We also corroborate some of the implications of the ‘second-order’ model and resolve some empirical disputes.

Electoral coordination and the strategic desertion of strong parties in compensatory mixed systems with negative vote transfers

Abstract Through the analysis of the 1994 and 1996 elections of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, this article examines the incentives that partially compensatory mixed-member majoritarian systems with negative vote transfers provide to voters and parties. I find that the plurality tier of such systems is not affected by contamination from the PR tier. In the PR tier, however, negative vote transfers are found to affect election results, beyond the mechanical correction of disproportionality, by providing voters with the incentive to defect from strong lists when district magnitude is small. I show that the PR tier is characterized by a negative relationship between district magnitude and the number of parties. These results are consistent with recent findings indicating that mixed systems are empirically distinct from pure PR and plurality systems.

Why Regimes Create Disorder

Research on protest and repression has shown that state coercion may result in increased mobilization or effectively deter further challenges. The nature of dissident responses to repression is largely context-based. In Burma, as the military regime faced a massive uprising, although brutal coercion failed to quell the rebellion in August 1988, it succeeded in suppressing the democratic movement only a few weeks later. Such a difference is explained in terms of contextual transformations resulting from the governments strategic adaptation. Specifically, by suspending the supply of social order, the regime presented the population with Hobbess dilemma. Forced to choose between dictatorship and anarchy, the Burmese people overwhelmingly defected from the democratic movement and reluctantly accepted the reestablishment of a highly oppressive order. This analytic narrative seeks to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between protest and repression and enrich the literature on strategic adaptation.

Cleavages, Institutions and the Number of Parties: A Study of Third Wave Democracies

Abstract This article evaluates how social cleavages and institutions shape the number of parties in the world’s newest democracies. It supplements existing propositions about the interaction of institutions and ethnic heterogeneity with an argument about the geographic concentration/dispersion of relevant groups. And it reflects on the interaction between institutions such as the electoral system, the form of government, and the relative decentralization of governmental authority. A quantitative analysis leveraging returns collected for 255 elections held in 61 “third wave” democracies reveals that the interaction of ethnic cleavages and institutions is more complex than the existing work suggests. The territorial configuration of ethnic cleavages appears to be decisive to the effect of institutions, while the proportionality of the electoral system seems to work in interaction with decentralization. The findings have important implications for both the science and practice of constitutional engineering.

Thailand: Minimally stable, minimally democratic

This article, forming part of this volume’s effort to map the qualities of democracy in Asia, describes Thailand (as of mid-2011) as a formal democracy devoid of each of the ‘qualities’ that promote democracy’s full realization. Aside from offering an overall descriptive assessment, the article seeks to explain the relationship between the various qualities of democracy observed in Thailand over the past decade. While Thaksin Shinawatra’s tenure in office (2001–2006) offers a compelling illustration for the proposition that ‘not all good things go together,’ virtually every dimension of the ‘goodness’ or ‘quality’ of Thailand’s democracy has experienced a generalized decline since Thaksin’s ousting in 2006.

Eyeing the Future: Contamination and Legislative Behavior

Victory or defeat in an election is determined by the formal results, announced during the evening or early morning hours after the polls have closed. Confident candidates and their zealous supporters wait impatiently for the ballots to be tallied in polling stations, aggregated nationally by the proper authorities, and reported by the news media. The losers graciously concede to their opponents and the winners make jubilant speeches. While party tacticians immediately begin planning for the next campaign, victorious parties and candidates also turn to a pressing responsibility: governing the country.

A Taxonomy of Mixed Electoral Systems

The “father of taxonomy,” the eighteenth-century biologist Carl Linnaeus, organized the living world by collecting together and labeling similar organisms into increasingly detailed classes. Although he initially believed that the number of species—the most specific category of living creatures—was fixed, he later recognized that hybrids of existing species could produce new, previously unseen ones.1 The emergence and proliferation of mixed electoral systems has generated a similar quandary in the election studies literature. As we noted in chapter 1, some of the analytical literature on mixed electoral systems has emphasized their similarity to existing “species” of election rules. The contamination literature, however, suggests that mixed electoral systems constitute a new species of electoral rules, emerging from the miscegenation of majoritarian and proportional systems. How do we distinguish among different forms—or species—of election rules?2

Interactive Ballots: The Microfoundations of Contamination

The existence of contamination has important implications for the study of mixed electoral systems. Given that the interaction between their mechanical components is likely to generate outcomes that diverge from those observed under pure SMD or PR rules, mixed systems do not constitute a controlled laboratory setting that allows researchers to isolate and compare the independent effects of SMD and PR. Our study of SMD candidate placement’s effects on a party’s PR performance (chapter 3) and our empirical analysis of party nomination strategies in the SMD component of the election (chapter 4) have uncovered evidence supporting the proposition that mixed electoral systems are a different species of electoral institutions. However, our research thus far also suffers from a critical lacuna.

Better, Worse, or Just Different? Legislative Fractionalization in Mixed Systems

Since the adoption of mixed systems in many of the new democracies that emerged from the rubble of the Berlin Wall and in a number of countries with established democratic records, many scholars have theorized about the consequences that mixed systems exert on the configuration of national party systems. The normative judgments made by practitioners and academics alike about the “goodness” or “badness” of mixed electoral institutions have mostly been based on predictions about the kinds of party systems that these election rules should engender. Few, however, have investigated this issue cross-nationally. If mixed systems are to be judged based on their representativeness and their ability to produce cabinet stability, coherent and identifiable governing majorities, and a balance between local and national interests (Shugart and Wattenberg 2001b), no such evaluation can be complete without a thorough assessment of the kinds of legislatures they spawn.

Going it Alone? Strategic Nominations in Mixed Electoral Systems

In the study of the consequences of mixed systems on party strategy, a critical question remains unanswered: How does the strategic environment created by mixed electoral rules affect preelectoral coordination? As we demonstrated in chapter 3, placement of a candidate in an SMD race seems to boost the vote share of the PR list with which the candidate is affiliated. An implication of this finding is that, in an attempt to maximize their PR vote share, parties have an incentive to “go it alone” and nominate candidates in as many districts as possible, thereby eschewing cooperative agreements that would limit how they distribute candidacies in majoritarian elections.