Shane P. Singh

Not all election winners are equal: satisfaction with democracy and the nature of the vote

It is well known that individuals who voted for the winning party in an election tend to be more satisfied with democracy than those who did not. However, many winners deviate from their first choice when voting. It is argued in this article that the mechanisms that engender satisfaction operate less forcefully among such winners, thereby lessening the impact of victory on satisfaction. Results show that the gap in satisfaction over electoral losers among these �non-optimal winners� is, in fact, much smaller than that of �optimal winners�, who voted in line with their expressed preferences. A win matters more for those who have a bigger stake in victory. The article further explores how the effect of optimal victory on satisfaction varies across electoral systems.

Compulsory Voting and the Turnout Decision Calculus

By altering the turnout decision calculus, compulsory voting should alter the character of the voting population. Employing survey data across countries and Swiss cantons, I examine how the turnout decision calculus varies across voluntary and compulsory voting systems. Results indicate that many of the demographic, socio-economic and political factors known to correlate with turnout play a relatively weak role in motivating electoral participation where voting is mandatory. Thus, voting populations should be more reflective of the entire electorate in countries with compulsory voting. I conclude with a discussion of the potential implications of my findings.

The Surprising Non-Impact of Radical Right-Wing Populist Party Representation on Public Tolerance of Minorities

The presence of radical right-wing populist (RRP) parties presents a challenge to liberal democracies, which are inclined to allow the representation of parties that reject their principles of diversity and inclusiveness. Addressing this concern, we use the World Values Survey and other data sources to demonstrate that the representation of RRP parties in parliament, in fact, has no discernible effect on individual levels of intolerance. The anti-outgroup messages of RRP parties are mitigated by the tolerance-boosting effect of the information diversity present in the multiparty systems that allow for their representation. In addition, even those predisposed to be intolerant of outgroups are unaffected by the representation of such parties, as the attitudes of these individuals are least likely to be shaped by new information. Bans on political parties that espouse intolerance, often considered or implemented by modern democracies, are unlikely to achieve their desired effect.

Election outcomes, legislative representation, and satisfaction with democracy:

This paper disentangles the relationship between election outcomes and satisfaction with democracy. As the first comparative study to employ a measure of satisfaction immediately before and after elections, we can be unusually confident that any changes we observe are attributable to election outcomes. Following previous work, we affirm that voting for parties that win more votes, more legislative seats, and more cabinet seats boosts satisfaction with democracy. In addition, we demonstrate for the first time that voters are sensitive to deficits in representation; satisfaction with democracy decreases when one’s party’s seat share falls short of its vote share.

Linear and quadratic utility loss functions in voting behavior research

Numerous studies examine voting behavior based on the formal theoretical predictions of the spatial utility model. These studies model individual utility from the election of a preferred party or candidate as decreasing as the alternative deviates from one’s ideal point, but differ as to whether this loss should be modeled linearly or quadratically. After advancing a theoretical argument for linear loss, this paper uses a wealth of data across 20 countries to empirically examine the predictive power of these two loss functions in terms of both voter choice and voter turnout. Results indicate that the linear loss function outperforms the quadratic loss function. The findings have important implications for theoretical scholars seeking to model voter behavior, for observational scholars, who must assign utility values across parties to individuals under study, and for experimental researchers, who must entice individuals with particular utility loss functions.

Pluralistic conditioning: social tolerance and effective democracy

Modern democracy is based in dissent and diversity. The essential defining aspect of democracy is the existence of competitive and fair elections; an element which emphasizes diversity of opinion and serves to place one party (or group of parties) in power, while relegating the other(s) to dissent. The diversity inherent to democratic systems instills in a countrys inhabitants an awareness of difference, which in turn propagates more tolerant individuals. In autocratic regimes, expression of diversity is restrained, being considered the basis of disorder and thereby detrimental to the state. In liberal democratic societies, freedom of expression and speech and a free media are widely accepted principles. Political parties and social groups in liberal democratic societies are therefore able to express varied and opposing opinions on societal concerns, and such opinions are broadcast to large swaths of the population. Exposure to such variety indicates to even the most inattentive of individuals that they reside in a diverse and heterogeneous society. For many individuals, exposure to diversity promotes tolerance of difference. While diversity tends to breed tolerance, there is a critical exception to this generality. Exposure to diversity only facilitates tolerance of difference when such exposure occurs under positive or neutral conditions. Those who are exposed to diversity under aversive conditions are instead pushed toward intolerance of difference. Our thesis in this article is thus one of pluralistic conditioning. In general, when individuals are exposed to diversity under positive or neutral conditions, they become more tolerant of diversity. However, when individuals are exposed to diversity under aversive conditions, they become less tolerant of difference. This thesis unites findings from multiple disciplines under a single theoretical framework.

Veto Players, the Policy‐Making Environment and the Expression of Authoritarian Attitudes

The number of veto players – actors with the ability to halt a change to the status quo – is consistently linked to the fluidity of the policy-making process across countries. Building upon previous work on authoritarianism, we theorize that the nature of the policy-making process, as influenced by the number of veto players, serves to shape attitudes among the public. Specifically, we argue that fractionalization of powerful political actors leads to a conflictual policy-making process, which in turn exacerbates the expression of authoritarian attitudes among those predisposed to such by portraying an image of a heterogeneous and divided society. To test this, we gather data on thousands of individuals and several countries from the World Values Survey and other sources. Results indicate that those with authoritarian predispositions are much more likely to express authoritarian attitudes where the number of veto players is high, where the preferences of these players are diverse and where the overall capacity for political change is diminished.

Compulsory Voting and Dissatisfaction with Democracy

Compulsory voting is often linked to pro-democracy orientations in the public. However, there is reason to question the strength and universality of this link. Engaging research on the effects of coercion and punishment, this article argues that forced participation inflates the tendency of those with negative orientations towards democracy to see the democratic system as illegitimate, and to be dissatisfied with democracy. The study finds support for these expectations in analyses of three separate cross-national surveys and a natural experiment. Compulsory voting heightens dissatisfaction with democracy within key segments of the population.

Contradictory Calculi: Differences in Individuals' Turnout Decisions across Electoral Systems

Existing theories of turnout model individuals’ decisions to vote as a function of the utility they would gain from their favored party’s election, the costs of voting, and the intrinsic benefits associated with democratic participation. This project shows that such utility calculations are conditional on electoral rules. In electoral systems with low incentives for strategic behavior, the traditional model of voter turnout is accurate. However, in plurality systems, in which there are stronger incentives for individuals to abandon their true preferences, less importance is placed on the utility associated with the possible success of favored parties.

Get off my lawn

It is argued that threat related to territorial civil wars generates negative interpersonal attitudes that are both more intense and more broadly oriented than previously thought. That is, civil wars fought over issues of autonomy or secession foment social intolerance, a broad orientation that extends well beyond members of former enemy groups to an aversion to interpersonal differences in general. The expectation that the issue the civil war is fought over is consequential is tested with data from the World Values Survey and the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. The empirical domain consists of over 130,000 individuals across 123 surveys in 69 countries over the 1989–2008 period. Results from multilevel models indicate a positive and statistically significant relationship between domestic territorial conflicts and subsequent social intolerance. Substantively, territorial civil wars have a far greater impact on individuals’ attitudes than do ‘standard’ correlates of social intolerance that are well established in the literature. Further, non-territorial civil war is unrelated to attitudes of social intolerance. Empirical results are robust to several model specifications and are not a mere artifact of the potential reverse relationship, whereby intolerant societies are (erroneously) presumed to be at a higher risk of civil wars in the first place. The findings have implications for the understanding of civil war resolution, civil war reoccurrence, and the contextual correlates of interpersonal intolerance.