Michael Jankowski

Reassessing the European Union in the United Nations General Assembly

ABSTRACT In this article, we compare the European Unions (EUs) voting cohesion in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to other regional organizations like the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Caribbean Community, the Economic Community of West African States and the Mercado Común del Sur by using a novel index of voting cohesion. The analysis confirms previous findings that the EU member states vote, at first glance, surprisingly incoherent. However, we are able to show that the EU is the only regional organization that can increase its level of voting cohesion in contested votes. We argue that this is a better indicator for the EUs successful vote co-ordination in the UNGA than the average level of voting cohesion, which is commonly used in studies on voting behaviour.

Are populist parties fostering women’s political representation in Poland? A comment on Kostadinova and Mikulska

In a recent contribution to Party Politics, Kostadinova and Mikulska analyze women’s political representation by populist parties in Poland and Bulgaria. The presented findings for Poland suggest that the main right-wing populist party PiS (1) elected more women to parliament, (2) nominated more women to promising ballot positions, and (3) that voters of PiS were more likely to support women in the elections compared to leftists parties. We disagree with all three findings. While the first finding is due to an error in the descriptive statistics, we argue that the other two findings are the result of an inappropriate research design. We replicate the analysis based on an altered research design and show that PiS did not elect more women to parliament, did not nominate more women to promising ballot positions and that voters of PiS were not more likely to vote for female candidates.

The Unsolved Puzzle: Pacific Asia's Voting Cohesion in the United Nations General Assembly—A Response to Peter Ferdinand

Research Highlights and Abstract This article Offers a refined research design for analysing voting cohesion in the United Nations General Assembly; Demonstrates that ASEANs integration process is unlikely to explain the observed high level of voting cohesion in Pacific Asia; Specifies the ASEAN-China and ASEAN-Japan alignment; Shows that the alignment of South Korea is closer with the USA than with North Korea in contested votes in the United Nations General Assembly. In this paper, we propose a refined research agenda for analysing voting cohesion in the United Nations General Assembly. Although we respond specifically to Ferdinand, our four points of critique and suggestions concerning the research design are applicable to a larger corpus of literature. First, we include a longer period of observation to interpret the effects of regional integration. Second, we demonstrate the necessity to control for the year of accession of member states. Third, we propose to look at time series rather than arithmetical means to compare changes in voting cohesion. Finally, we exclude nearly unanimous votes from our analysis to enhance the explanatory values of our cases. This refined design has important effects on the analysis of Pacific Asias voting cohesion in the UNGA. We conclude from our findings that regional integration is unlikely to explain the high level of voting cohesion within ASEAN and the region.

Ideological alternative? Analyzing Alternative für Deutschland candidates’ ideal points via black box scaling

This study applies black box scaling to the German Longitudinal Election Study candidate survey 2013 to shed light on an emerging right-wing party in Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The scaling procedure extracts two meaningful and robust ideological dimensions described as socialism versus liberalism and libertarian versus authoritarian. Placing the ideal point of candidates from all parties into this two-dimensional space shows that AfD candidates are significantly more market liberal than Christian Democratic Union candidates but not more authoritarian. On these grounds, the AfD can hardly be regarded as a right-wing extremist party. Yet exploring ideological heterogeneity within parties indicates that East German AfD candidates are generally more authoritarian than their West German colleagues, highlighting a potential source of the party’s recent shift from primarily Eurosceptic toward more nationalist conservative positions.

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.

One voice or different choice? Vote defection of European Union member states in the United Nations General Assembly

Existing research suggests that European Union member states are increasingly able to act in concert in the United Nations General Assembly. Based on several hundred co-ordination meetings per year, the European Union ‘speaks with one voice’ on most of the resolutions voted upon in the United Nations General Assembly. However, little is known about instances where the European Union member states do not vote coherently. Three questions remain unanswered. First, what factors determine deviating voting behaviour of European Union member states? Second, who are the most frequent defectors from the European Union’s majority position? Third, which voting blocs within the European Union can be identified? The article answers these questions in a quantitative design by controlling for domestic factors, issues of resolutions and the position of the United States. The results suggest that domestic factors determine deviating voting behaviour far less than agenda-related issues and the position of the United States.

Do voters really prefer more choice? Determinants of support for personalised electoral systems

ABSTRACT Which voters prefer having more choice between parties and candidates in an election? To provide an answer to this question, we analyse the case of a radical change from a closed-list PR system to a highly complex open-list PR system with cumulative voting in the German states of Bremen and Hamburg. We argue that the approval of a personalised electoral system is structured in similar ways as support for direct democracy. Using representative surveys conducted prior to all four state elections under cumulative voting in 2011 and 2015, we analyse which individual factors determine the approval, disapproval, or indifference towards the new electoral law. The results indicate that younger voters as well as supporters of left parties are much more likely to support a personalised electoral system. In contrast to previous studies, political interest only has an impact on the indifference towards the electoral system. More generally, our results show that a large proportion of voters does not appreciate personalised preferential electoral systems which seems to be a result of the complexity and magnitude of choice between parties and candidates.

Social Heterogeneity and Choice Failure Under Condorcet and Borda

Taking advantage of recent progress in simulation techniques, this study replicates and extends previous research on social heterogeneity and choice failure under Condorcet and Borda. The simulation results can be summarized in three points: First, under a uniform distribution of preference profiles (Impartial Culture, IC), Borda is less likely to fail in selecting a group winner than Condorcet. With empirical preference profiles, obtained from the Inglehart (The silent revolution: changing values and political styles among western publics, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1977) item battery presented in the GGSS (German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) 1980–2012. Study-No. 4578, GESIS—Leibniz-Institut fur Sozialwissenschaften, Cologne, 2014), however, Condorcet is less likely to fail in selecting a group winner. Second, under IC, the probability that Condorcet and Borda provide identical group winners strongly decreases with group size, whereas with the GGSS sample, the probability of identical winners slowly increases with group size. Third, while unimodality has hardly any effect on choice failure, higher levels of bimodality are associated with a strong decrease in the probability of choice failure under both methods. In sum, these results corroborate conclusions from previous simulations that Riker’s (Liberalism against populism: a confrontation between the theory of democracy and the theory of social choice, Waveland, Illinois, 1982) general dismissal of majoritarian democracy as inaccurate remains incorrect. However, our results also indicate that making a well informed choice for either Condorcet or Borda becomes more important with higher degrees of preference polarization.

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.