Matt Golder

EXPLAINING VARIATION IN THE SUCCESS OF EXTREME RIGHT PARTIES IN WESTERN EUROPE

Methodological problems associated with selection bias and interaction effects have hindered the accumulation of systematic knowledge about the factors that explain cross-national variation in the success of extreme right parties. The author uses a statistical analysis that takes account of these problems to examine the effect of electoral institutions, unemployment, and immigration on the support for these parties. The data set used in this analysis is new and spans 19 countries and 165 national elections. There are four substantive conclusions. The first is that it is important to distinguish between neofascist and populist parties on the extreme right because their fortunes depend on different factors. The second is that populist parties do better in countries where the district magnitude is larger and more seats are allocated in upper tiers. The third is that although immigration has a positive effect on populist parties irrespective of the unemployment level, unemployment only matters when immigration is high. Finally, there is evidence that the permissiveness of the electoral system mediates the effect of immigration on populist parties.

Rehabilitating Duverger’s Theory Testing the Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effects of Electoral Laws

Although Duverger is traditionally seen as synonymous with the institution-list approach to party systems, this article shows that he believed social pressures were the driving force behind the multiplication of parties. Electoral institutions are important, but only because they determine the extent to which social forces are translated into political parties. Although the literature has finally come to realize that social and institutional forces interact to shape party systems, scholars still do not seem to fully understood the implications of Duverger’s theory. This article shows that existing research employs flawed statistical specifications, makes inferential errors, and does not calculate desired quantities of interest. Using a new data set that includes elections since 1946, the authors reexamine Duverger’s theory and find that modern tests largely bear out his expectations when properly specified and interpreted. This analysis also extends current research by specifically estimating the mechanical and strategic modifying effects of electoral institutions.

Improving Tests of Theories Positing Interaction

It is well established that all interactions are symmetric: when the effect of X on Y is conditional on the value of Z, the effect of Z must be conditional on the value of X. Yet the typical practice when testing an interactive theory is to (1) view one variable, Z, as the conditioning variable, (2) offer a hypothesis about how the marginal effect of the other variable, X, is conditional on the value of Z, and (3) construct a marginal effect plot for X to test the theory. We show that the failure to make additional predictions about how the effect of Z varies with the value of X, and to evaluate them with a second marginal effect plot, means that scholars often ignore evidence that can be extremely valuable for testing their theory. As a result, they either understate or, more worryingly, overstate the support for their theories.

Electoral Institutions, Unemployment and Extreme Right Parties: A Correction

In their 1996 article in the British Journal of Politic Science, Robert Jackman and Karin Volpert examine the conditions favoring parties of the extreme right in western Europe. They report strong evidence that unemployment, electoral thresholds and multi-partism aect the electoral success of extreme right parties. As a result, they conclude that support for the extreme right is sensitive to factors that can be modified through policy instruments. Although the article makes important contributions by emphasizing the role of electoral institutions and the methodological problems associated with selection bias, a reanalysis shows that a number of their inferences are open to question. I successfully replicate their original analysis, critique their interpretation of the causal eects, and question their model’s theoretical justification.

Modeling the Institutional Foundation of Parliamentary Government Formation

That neither the assumptions nor the predictions of standard government formation models entirely correspond to empirical findings has led some to conclude that theoretical accounts of government formation should be reconsidered from the bottom up. We take up this challenge by presenting a zero-intelligence model of government formation. In our model, three or more parties that care about office and policy make random government proposals. The only constraints that we impose on government formation correspond to the two binding constitutional constraints that exist in all parliamentary systems: an incumbent government always exists and all governments must enjoy majority legislative support. Despite its deliberately limited structure, our model predicts distributions over portfolio allocation, government types, and bargaining delays that approach those observed in the real world. Our analysis suggests that many formation outcomes may result from the institutional foundation of parliamentary democracies, i...

Re-evaluating the relationship between electoral rules and ideological congruence

Two new studies challenge the prevailing consensus that proportional representation (PR) systems produce greater ideological congruence between governments and their citizens than majoritarian ones. This has led to what has become known as the �ideological congruence controversy�. G. Bingham Powell claims to resolve this controversy in favour of PR systems. Specifically, he argues that the results from the two new studies are based on an anomalous decade and that PR systems generally do produce greater government congruence. In addition, he also asserts that PR systems exhibit less variability in government congruence. In this article, the empirical evidence for these two claims is re-evaluated using exactly the same data as employed by Powell. The analysis indicates that although PR systems produce better and more consistent representation in the legislature, they do not hold an advantage when it comes to representation at the governmental level.

Africa: Dictatorial and Democratic Electoral Systems since 1946

Elections have been an integral part of African politics since independence (Nohlen, Krennerich and Thibaut, 1999; Ellis, 2000). There have been 321 legislative and 167 presidential elections in Africa between 1946 (or independence) and 1996. These elections have occurred in both democratic and authoritarian periods. Although elections have been relatively common in Africa, very little scholarly attention has been paid to them. The dearth of electoral studies focused on Africa compared to other regions of the world can partly be explained by the widespread establishment of single-party regimes in the 1960s. It was not until the re-emergence of democratic multi-party elections following the third wave of democratization in the 1990s that African electoral studies began to grow (Bratton and van de Walle, 1997; Cowen and Laakso, 1997; Wiseman, 1992; Barkan, 1995; Sisk and Reynolds, 1998; Manning, 2002). This chapter represents an addition to this growing literature by providing an overview of elections and electoral systems in Africa. While focusing primarily on the electoral institutions employed in democratic elections, we also consider the role of elections in authoritarian periods. We describe the particular electoral rules employed, investigate why they were chosen and examine their impact on African party systems.

Fiscal Policy and the Democratic Process in the European Union

The construction of a monetary union with a single currency in Europe raises serious concerns for those who understand the democratic process as one in which social groups compete on different ideological programs. This is because it increasingly constrains national governments of different partisan hues to follow similar fiscal and monetary policies. Recent empirical studies indicate that these concerns might be somewhat misplaced since there is evidence that partisan convergence on macroeconomic policy predates these institutional developments. One problem with these studies, though, is that they fail to include the electoral system as a constraint on partisan behavior. Since electoral systems generate centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, we should expect to find strong evidence for partisan differences only where electoral rules encourage dispersion. We test this argument using data on fiscal policy from European Union countries between 1981 and 1992. We find that there is still no systematic evidence for partisan differences. Given this, it is hard to see how EMU can add to the democratic deficit in the European Union.

Religious Participation, Social Conservatism, and Human Development

What is the relationship between human development, religion, and social conservatism? We present a model in which individuals derive utility from both the secular and religious worlds. Our model is unusual in that it explains both an individual’s religious participation and her preferences over social policy at different levels of development. Using data from the pooled World Values Survey, we find that religious participation declines with human development and an individual’s ability to earn secular income. We also find that although social conservatism declines with development in absolute terms, religious individuals become more socially conservative relative to the population average. Paradoxically, our results suggest that human development may make it easier for religious individuals to overcome collective action problems and obtain disproportionate political influence, even as their numbers dwindle and society as a whole becomes less socially conservative. Our analysis has important implications for the debate about secularization theory.

Party System Volatility in Post-Communist Europe

In their 2014 article in the British Journal of Political Science, Eleanor Neff Powell and Joshua A. Tucker examine the determinants of party system volatility in post-communist Europe. Their central conclusion is that replacement volatility – volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit – is driven by long-term economic performance. We show that this conclusion is based entirely on a miscalculation of the long-term economic performance of a single country, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Our reanalysis suggests that we know little about what causes party system volatility in post-communist Europe. Given the negative consequences traditionally associated with party system volatility, this area of research cries out for new theoretical development.