Pedro Riera

Ticket-splitting in mixed-member systems: on the importance of seat linkage between electoral tiers

Abstract In mixed-member electoral systems, voters usually have two votes: a nominal and a list vote. According to some studies, voters are increasingly using them to cast a split-ticket vote. However, very little is known about whether the type of mixed-member system, and in particular whether the allocation of seats across tiers is linked or not, creates different sets of incentives for this behaviour. This article provides new insights into the topic by analysing survey data from seven countries and 18 elections since 1990. It is found that the proportion of split-ticket votes is greater in mixed-member proportional than in mixed-member majoritarian systems. The results suggest that voters understand the operation of the electoral system and its consequences for the distribution of seats among parties, and adapt their behaviour accordingly.

The international diffusion of electoral systems: The spread of mechanisms tempering proportional representation across Europe

There is an assumption in much of the electoral engineering literature that domestic episodes of electoral system choice occur in a vacuum, isolated from international influences. Yet this assumption remains largely untested, despite the comparative focus of much of that literature. This article focuses on part of this gap by considering two electoral mechanisms that seek to limit party system fragmentation under proportional representation - low district magnitudes and high electoral thresholds - and shows that the mechanisms have spread across many European countries during the post-1945 period.Analyses reveal that national legislators are more likely to adopt one of these electoral mechanisms when a large number of peer countries have made similar choices within the last two or three years.This effect is robust to various model specifications and to the inclusion of multiple controls. The article also offers some qualitative evidence from case studies and parliamentary debates.

Determinants of legislative committee membership in proportional representation systems

This article explores the determinants of the allocation of parliamentary posts to specific legislators. Using an original data set of biographical information and committee assignments for almost 10,000 legislators in five non-presidential democracies (i.e. Finland, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, and Spain), we provide evidence that distributive posts are more likely to be allocated to electorally vulnerable members of parliament, mainly under candidate-centered electoral rules. We also show that posts in high-policy committees are usually assigned to prominent legislators within the parties. Contrary to what one could expect based on the literature on candidates’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote, we find that the effect of district magnitude on the distribution of legislative posts does not depend on the type of list.

Do European Parliament Elections Impact National Party System Fragmentation

Why have European large parties lost electoral ground in recent decades? Whereas most explanations draw on theories of dealignment, this article advances a novel, institutional, argument by focusing on the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament (EP) in 1979. Archetypes of second-order elections, EP elections are characterized by lower vote shares for (a) large and (b) incumbent parties. Bridging the second-order elections theory with theories of political socialization, we posit that voting patterns in EP elections spill over onto national elections, especially among voters not yet socialized into patterns of habitual voting. In so doing, they increase the national vote shares of small parties. This proposition is examined using an instrumental variables approach. We also derive a set of testable propositions to shed light on the underlying mechanisms of this pattern. Our findings show that EP elections decrease support for big parties at the national arena by inculcating voting habits.

Economy, Type of Government, and Strategic Timing of Elections: Calling Opportunistic Early Elections in OECD Democracies

Although mainstream models of accountability assume that the election date is exogenously fixed, in almost any parliamentary democracy governments may choose it. This article proposes a theory of the strategic timing of elections that highlights the role of the economy and the type of government. First, incumbents will call early elections when the economy is growing and inflation rates are low. Nevertheless, coalition and majority governments will fall short of the ability and the incentives to do so, respectively. As a result, the effect of the state of the economy on the opportunistic dissolution of the parliament will be stronger when there is only one party in government, and it lacks a majority in the lower house. These patterns are examined by using data from 21 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development democracies between 1945 and 2010.