Kamil Marcinkiewicz

Contesting climate change: mapping the political debate in Poland

We examine the effectiveness of norm diffusion by the European Union (EU) using the example of the climate debate in Poland. To explore the relationship between the salience of an issue and the internalisation of the externally initiated debate, we analyse both quantitatively and qualitatively votes and speeches in the Polish parliament. We find that the Members of Parliament regardless of their placement on the right–left dimension or their participation in government have paid growing but still little attention to climate change. Furthermore, when climate change is concerned the political debate is mostly characterised by negative assessments of the EUs initiatives.

Voting Behavior and Political Institutions: An Overview of Challenging Questions in Theory and Experimental Research

Voting and committee decisions can be considered the two core elements of the democratic political process. By voting, the members of a constituency determine whom they entrust as representatives with the right to decide on their behalf. By voting, the members of a committee decide which course of action they will take collectively. Hence, voting determines both the input and the output of politics, or in other words, the way in which individuals contribute to a collective outcome. We cannot, however, infer policy from the distribution of individual preferences but in very simple constellations because the chosen policy depends on the interaction between different voters who may have heterogeneous preferences and form different coalitions. These issues have been the main topic of the spatial theory of politics. The role of this chapter in this volume is to give readers some understanding of the broader context of the experiments described in subsequent chapters.

Ineffective and Counterproductive? The Impact of Gender Quotas in Open-List Proportional Representation Systems

Research on the impact of gender quotas in open-list proportional representation systems has described quotas as ineffective or even paradoxical. While some authors argue that gender quotas without a placement mandate will be essentially ineffective since most women will be nominated to unpromising positions, others suppose that women will be disadvantaged by gender quotas because the increase in the number of female candidates will decrease the average number of preferential votes cast for women. We reexamine the evidence for these claims by analyzing the case of Poland. We demonstrate that the gender quota introduced there in 2011 increased the number of women placed at promising ballot positions and had very little impact on the number of preferential votes cast for women. Additionally, using simulations, we show that the quota had a positive impact on the number of elected women.

The Effects of Electoral Rules on Parliamentary Behavior A Comparative Analysis of Poland and the Czech Republic

Do different types of preferential-list PR systems create different incentives for how Members of Parliament vote? To examine this, we compare the quasi-list system of Poland, where only preference votes determine which candidates win seats, to the flexible-list system in the Czech Republic, where the 5 percent preference vote threshold required to override the party ranking of candidates gives the party greater power in influencing which candidates become MPs. We analyze roll call votes in the 2007–2011 Sejm and the 2010–2013 Czech Chamber of Deputies and, after controlling for party and MP characteristics, we find that in both countries, MPs with lower preference vote shares are more likely to vote along with their party. But, when we compare the strength of this relationship, we observe substantial differences. The magnitude of this relationship in the Czech Republic is ten times stronger than in Poland, which can be attributed to the more prominent role Czech electoral rules give to the party.

The Economy or an Urban–Rural Divide? Explaining Spatial Patterns of Voting Behaviour in Poland

This article contributes to the debate on spatial variance of voting behaviour in Poland. Using empirical data from the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, two alternative explanations of observed patterns are tested. The first focuses on the role of economy while the second emphasises the importance of the urban–rural divide. The empirical analysis demonstrates higher relevance of the differences between urban and rural areas. Even after controlling for historical legacies, urbanization offers the best explanation of the differences in electoral results between spatial units. Furthermore, the effects related to the urban–rural divide are similar within the two broadly defined clusters of parties. Economic variables, on the contrary, matter only in certain socio-cultural contexts.

Die Bundestagswahl 2013 im historischen Vergleich

Das Kapitel skizziert den Kontext des Wahlkampfes zur Bundestagswahl 2013 und stellt die Wahl in einen historischen Vergleich. Als wichtige institutionelle Neuerung wird die Veranderung des Wahlrechts vor der Bundestagswahl 2013 beschrieben. Auserdem werden die Wahlbeteiligung, das Wahlergebnis sowie die Parteien- und Kandidatenkonstellation wahrend des Wahlkampfs erlautert und historisch verglichen. Das Kapitel kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die Bundestagswahl 2013 als eine der Wahlen gelten kann, in der die Spitzenkandidaten eine besonders starke Rolle spielten und die Beliebtheit von Kanzlerin Angela Merkel von groser Bedeutung fur den Wahlerfolg der CDU/CSU war. Eine dramatische Zasur war das Jahr 2013 aber vor allem fur die FDP, die zum ersten Mal nicht in den Bundestag einziehen konnte.