Frank C. Thames

A House Divided Party Strength and the Mandate Divide in Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine

Mixed-member electoral systems embrace two views of representation by electing some legislators in single-member district elections and others in a proportional representation election. This can potentially create a “mandate divide” in legislatures, because single-member district legislators have an incentive to embrace parochial issues and proportional representation legislators have an incentive to center on national issues. Previous studies of this question have only found limited evidence of its existence. The author argues that the level of party system institutionalization will fundamentally determine whether a mandate divide will exist in a mixed-member legislature. Using roll-call voting data from the Hungarian National Assembly, the Russian Duma, and the Ukrainian Rada, the author analyzes patterns of party discipline in each legislature. The empirical results show that a mandate divide only existed in the legislature with the most weakly institutionalized party system, the Russian Duma.

Incentives for Personal Votes and Women's Representation in Legislatures

To explain the gender gap in legislatures, scholars have identified several socio-economic, political, and cultural factors that undermine women’s representation. One explanation focuses on electoral institutions. Proportional representation systems with higher district magnitudes have been shown to increase the percentage of women in legislatures.The authors contend that solely concentrating on district magnitude ignores other critical electoral rules that will affect women’s representation. To better understand electoral system effects, scholars must understand how electoral rules beside district magnitude create incentives for candidates to obtain personal votes.The authors argue that those systems with weak incentives for personal votes (party-centered systems) increase women’s representation in comparison with systems that feature strong incentives for personal votes (candidate-centered systems). Using a data set of 57 countries between 1980 and 2005, the authors show that party-centered systems are more conducive to women’s representation.

Contagious Representation: Women's Political Representation in Democracies around the World

1 Womens Political Participation and the Influence of Contagion2 Understanding Womens Legislative Representation3 Women and the Executive4 Gender and Cross-National Courts5 Contagion and the Adoption of Voluntary Party Quotas6 Contagion and the Adoption of National Quotas7 Conclusion: Why Contagion Matters

Differentiating Mixed-Member Electoral Systems Mixed-Member Majoritarian and Mixed-Member Proportional Systems and Government Expenditures

The increasing use of mixed-member electoral systems has led to an explosion of research attempting to specify their effects. Yet there has been no work on the economic policy effects of such systems, even though this has been a significant subject of debate for scholars analyzing other electoral systems. An analysis of mixed-member system policy effects is problematic, given the wide variation in institutional rules among different systems. This article attempts to determine whether the institutional differences between mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) and mixed-member proportional (MMP) systems lead to differences in policy outputs. The political economy literature finds that government expenditures are positively correlated with electoral system proportionality. Our statistical analysis of government expenditures in 17 mixed-member systems between 1990 and 2000 shows that MMP systems, which are more proportional than MMM systems, are correlated with higher levels of government spending. Thus the MMM-MMP distinction produces significant policy differences.

Searching for the Electoral Connection: Parliamentary Party Switching in the Ukrainian Rada, 1998-2002

PCT No. PCT/IT96/00065 Sec. 371 Date Dec. 4, 1996 Sec. 102(e) Date Dec. 4, 1996 PCT Filed Apr. 2, 1996 PCT Pub. No. WO96/31395 PCT Pub. Date Oct. 10, 1996Filter bags containing a substance from which to prepare an infusion are fashioned from tubular blanks of filter paper having an elongated appearance, each one filled with measured and separate quantities of the substance distributed along its length, which are doubled up and made secure, then provided with a label attached by a length of thread. A machine for automating the manufacture of such bags includes a wheel carrying grippers with radial arms, around which the thread is drawn peripherally as the grippers are indexed in turn through a station where the blank is folded double initially, a forming station at which the two joined ends are folded together to effect a closure, a cutting station at which the thread is divided into single lengths, a feed station supplying the labels, and a fastening station at which the length of thread is knotted both to the label and to the closure.

Women's Representation on High Courts in Advanced Industrialized Countries

Recent scholarship increasingly considers the representation of women in cross-national legislatures, often examining how the characteristics of the countries in a particular region affect the representation of women in these elected bodies. No studies have examined the representation of women on the high courts in a cross-national context. We attempt to fill this void by collecting an original data set of women’s participation on high courts in the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2006 to 2007. Using this data, we examine how institutional choices of judicial selection and structural factors within the country affect women’s representation. We find that the variation in women’s participation on these courts, from 0% on some to 60% on others, is affected by the prestige of the court, the method of selection, and the tradition of and importance placed upon women’s participation within the country. Our results suggest that choices made during the design of high courts can influence the representative nature of the institution.

Party System Nationalization and Women's Legislative Representation

Many scholars have sought to explain the wide variation in womens legislative representation found across the globe. In this article, we open a new line of inquiry that seeks to determine whether differences in the nationalization of the party system help explain the variation in womens representation. In more nationalized party systems, there is little variation in the patterns of party votes across the countries. In more regionalized systems, patterns of party vote vary widely among regions. The existing literature on party system nationalization argues that more nationalized systems focus policy debates and policy outcomes at the national level. We argue that the incentive to focus on national as opposed to regional outcomes can overcome obstacles to womens representation similar to the way in which electoral system incentives create more opportunities for women. Using a data set of 45 democratic countries, we test this argument. We find no direct impact of party system nationalization on womens legislative representation. Yet, we find an interactive effect of party system nationalization and the electoral system. Increases in party system nationalization improve womens representation in concert with electoral system incentives that spur womens representation.

The Effect of Governor Support on Legislative Behaviour in the Russian Duma

Abstract Until the 2007 Duma election, the Russian polity displayed several characteristics that should have allowed regional leaders to have an impact on deputies: a federalist system, an electoral system that encouraged regional representation, weak political parties, and regional leaders with electoral resources. Recent research on Russian mixed-member Duma elections argues that governors influenced the election of single-member district deputies. This raises the spectre that governors could have influenced the behaviour of these deputies. Using data from the third post-communist Duma, I demonstrate that single-member district deputies backed by regional leaders in the 1999 Duma election behaved differently from others in two critical areas: parliamentary party choice and support for the presidential legislative agenda. Governor support did not, however, affect committee choice.

The Effects of Economic and Political Development on GDP Growth Volatility

The existing literature argues that both higher levels of political and economic development can dampen real GDP growth volatility. The problem, however, is that both forms of development are thought to be highly correlated. Using a dataset of 94 countries, we address this problem and find that not only does economic and political development have non-linear relationships with volatility, but that the effect of the former is more substantively significant than that of political development after a certain level of development is attained.

The Legislative Logic of Electoral Reform in Ukraine

Abstract Since the end of Communist rule, Ukraine has undertaken three major electoral reforms, moving from a single-member district majoritarian system, to a mixed-member system, to a closed-list proportional representation system, and back to the mixed-member system. Some argue that political parties are primarily motivated by the desire to maximise seats or improve their ability to impact on policy. I argue that existing theories of electoral reform often assume that parties are unitary actors during electoral reform. My analysis of electoral reform in Ukraine clearly demonstrates significant intra-party dissonance on electoral system preferences. This result questions the usefulness of the party unity assumption.