Jack H. Nagel

Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout in Senatorial and Gubernatorial Elections

Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout favors Democrats. Previous studies of this hypothesis rely on presidential and House elections or on survey data, but senatorial and gubernatorial elections offer better conditions for directly testing turnout effects in U.S. politics. In a comprehensive analysis of these statewide elections since 1928, we find that the conventional theory was true outside the South through 1964, but since 1965 the overall relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes has been insignificant. Even before the mid-1960s, the turnout effect outside the South was strongest in Republican states and insignificant or negative in heavily Democratic states. A similar but weaker pattern obtains after 1964. In the South, which we analyze only since 1966, higher turnout helped Republicans until 1990, but in 1990–94 the effect became pro-Democratic. The conventional theory cannot account for these complex patterns, but they are impressively consistent with DeNardos (1980) theory.

Social Choice in a Pluralitarian Democracy: The Politics of Market Liberalization in New Zealand

Applying insights from social-choice theory to illuminate the functioning of pluralitarian Westminster institutions, this article develops a coherent political answer to four puzzling questions about the economic liberalization that transformed New Zealand in 1984–93: why an anti-statist programme was initiated (and largely accomplished) by a labour party, why restructuring was more radical in New Zealand than in other democracies, why reformers were able to prevail through two elections and a change of government, and why they committed costly policy-sequencing errors. Understanding this remarkable case has implications for empirically grounded social-choice theory, the political theory of policy reform, and the evaluation of pluralitarian democracy – which New Zealanders themselves repudiated in 1993 by adopting proportional representation.

Approval voting in practice

Several leading professional associations have recently decided to use approval voting (AV). The largest of them, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE), with more than 300,000 members, adopted AV in response to practical political problems with conventional plurality elections of precisely the sort that AV was designed to solve. This paper analyzes results of the first three multicandidate elections conducted by the IEEE using the new system. Issues examined include participation rates, use of multiple votes, patterns of shared support, majority rule, AV-dominance, effects on outcomes, and encouragement of candidate entry. In general, AV appears to have had a successful test.

Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections

Previous studies of turnout effects in U.S. elections have reported perplexingly different results for presidential as opposed to major statewide (senatorial and gubernatorial) contests. By justifying and applying a consistent methodology, the authors find that results for both types conform to the pattern previously reported by Nagel and McNulty for senatorial and gubernatorial races. Outside the South, higher turnout helped Democratic presidential candidates from 1928 through 1964. In 1968 through 1996, however, the impact of turnout in straight two-party contests was insignificant, except in the South, where Democrats benefited from higher turnout. In the earlier period, high turnout helped Democrats most in states where Republicans usually prevailed. Its effects became weaker or even pro-Republican in the most strongly Democratic states. All of these findings uphold DeNardos mathematical model, which provides an empirically supported theory of the partisan effects of turnout in U.S. presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections.

What Political Scientists Can Learn from the 1993 Electoral Reform in New Zealand

in November 1993, 100 years after becoming the first nation to enfranchise women, New Zealand again made electoral reform history as its citizens voted by a 54-46 margin to replace their venerable, U.S.-style first-past-the-post (FPP) method of electing legislators with a new mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. Political scientists in the United States and elsewhere may find New Zealands decision in-

Centre-Party Strength and Major-Party Divergence in Britain, 1945–2005

British elections exhibit two patterns contrary to expectations deriving from Duverger and Downs: centrist third parties (Liberals and their successors) win a large vote share; and the two major parties often espouse highly divergent policies. This article explores relations between the Liberal vote and left–right scores of the Labour and Conservative manifestos in the light of two hypotheses: the vacated centre posits that Liberals receive more votes when major parties diverge; the occupied centre proposes a lagged effect in which major parties diverge farther after Liberals do well in the preceding election. Data from elections since 1945 confirm the vacated-centre hypothesis, with Liberals benefiting about equally when the major parties diverge to the left and right, respectively. The results also support the occupied-centre hypothesis for Conservative party positions, but not for Labour’s. After considering explanations for this asymmetry, we identify historical events associated with turning points that our data reveal in post-war British politics.

The Burr Dilemma in Approval Voting

Problems of multicandidate races in U.S. presidential elections motivated the modern invention and advocacy of approval voting; but it has not previously been recognized that the first four presidential elections (1788–1800) were conducted using a variant of approval voting. That experiment ended disastrously in 1800 with the infamous Electoral College tie between Jefferson and Burr. The tie, this paper shows, resulted less from miscalculation than from a strategic tension built into approval voting, which forces two leaders appealing to the same voters to play a game of Chicken. Because the Burr Dilemma poses a significant difficulty for approval voting, this paper urges that researchers give more attention to “instant runoff” reform options, especially the alternative vote and the Coombs rule.

New Zealand: Reform by (Nearly) Immaculate Design

In 1993, a nationwide referendum replaced New Zealand’s long-established single-member district plurality (first-past-the-post) elections with German-style personalized proportional representation, there innovatively called the mixed-member proportional system (MMP from here on). The history of New Zealand’s switch to proportional representation is remarkable for the absence of political influence or bargaining in the design and adoption of MMP. The non-political Royal Commission on the Electoral System that proposed MMP sought to devise and recommend what its members considered the best possible system for New Zealand with little regard for political feasibility. Through an unexpected series of events, their proposal was adopted almost unaltered despite opposition from most leaders in both major parties. New Zealand’s experience suggests that models of electoral choice based on political bargaining are not always applicable, and that reformers who shape their proposals to meet the interests of dominant political actors may ultimately have less influence than those who appear more quixotic. The system adopted in New Zealand did, however, depart from the Royal Commission’s recommendation in one major respect, by retaining a distinctive dual-constituency system guaranteeing representation to the Maori minority. Attractive characteristics of the combination suggest that serendipity as well as conscious design can play a valuable role in the development of electoral institutions.

Populism, Heresthetics and Political Stability: Richard Seddon and the Art of Majority Rule

Because New Zealands majoritarian political system presents few institutional barriers to change, social choice theory would predict that it should experience frequent change in governments and policies. Although some periods in New Zealand history confirm this expectation, a striking exception is the Liberal era of 1890–1912. To explain the anomaly, this article applies Rikers concept of heresthetics , the strategic manipulation of decision processes and alternatives. The Liberal leader, Richard Seddon, masterfully exploited four main heresthetic devices that offer enduring insight about how to sustain a popular majority. While extending the scope of heresthetics as an explanatory principle, the article rebuts Rikers normative dismissal of populism. In terms compatible with social choice theory itself, Seddons strategies can be interpreted as having enabled the will of the majority to prevail.

Representation: Elections and Beyond

Introduction. The Multiplying Challenges of Modern Representation -Rogers M. Smith and Jack H. Nagel I. REPRESENTATION THROUGH ELECTIONS Chapter 1. Evaluating U.S. Electoral Institutions in Comparative Perspective -Andre Blais Chapter 2. Are American Elections Sufficiently Democratic? -Dennis F. Thompson Chapter 3. Barriers to Voting in the Twenty-First Century -Alexander Keyssar Chapter 4. Uneven Democracy: Turnout, Minority Interests, and Local Government Spending -Zoltan Hajnal and Jessica Trounstine Chapter 5. Fairness and Bias in Electoral Systems -Anthony McGann Chapter 6. Political Party Organizations, Civic Representation, and Participation -Georgia Kernell II. REPRESENTATION BEYOND ELECTIONS Chapter 7. The Paradox of Voting-for Republicans: Economic Inequality, Political Organization, and the American Voter -Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson Chapter 8. A Democratic Balance: Bureaucracy, Political Parties, and Political Representation -Pradeep Chhibber and Susan L. Ostermann Chapter 9. The Closing of the Frontier: Political Blogs, the 2008 Election, and the Online Public Sphere -Matthew Hindman Chapter 10. The Technological Basis of Organizational Membership: Representation of Interests in the New Media Age -Dave Karpf Chapter 11. The Principle of Affected Interests: An Interpretation and Defense -Archon Fung Chapter 12. Citizen Representatives -Mark E. Warren Notes List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments