Shaun Bowler

Election Systems and Voter Turnout: Experiments in the United States

Theory suggests that majoritarian/plurality elections depress voter participation and that proportional election systems encourage greater voter mobilization and turnout. We examine the effect that cumulative voting (CV) has on turnout in local elections in the U.S. Variation in social/cultural context is largely held constant by our design while election system varies, allowing us to identify the unique effect CV has on turnout. We test if turnout is higher when CV is used in the same context as plurality rules. Consistent with expectations about institutional effects, turnout is about 5 percentage points higher under CV than in similar plurality elections.

The Informed Electorate? Voter Responsiveness to Campaigns in Britain and Germany

Previous studies of party competition and of voting behaviour often seem to talk past, rather than to, each other (for further discussion see Bowler, 1990; Budge and Farlie, 1983a; Budge and Farlie, 1983b). This separation of voting and party behaviour is particularly striking in the terms of the academic literature on the impact of campaigning. Campaigns seek to mobilise and/or persuade voters, yet relatively little work has been done in establishing that it is actually the party campaign that produces such results. As other chapters in this volume make clear, party managers and campaign advisers pay a great deal of attention to the way voter attitudes and allegiances shift in response to campaign themes. The study of this interaction between voters and campaigns is, however, much less developed than other branches of the voting studies literature.

Popular Control of Referendum Agendas: Implications for Democratic Outcomes and Minority Rights

One of the major concerns voiced repeatedly in discussions of direct democracy is that it raises the possibility of abusive majority rule (Gamble, 1997; Bell, 1978; Butler and Ranney, 1994; Eule, 1990; Linde, 1993; Magleby, 1984). Three major assumptions underlie this concern. The first is that the process of direct democracy allows a majority relatively free rein over drafting and implementing laws. The second is that popular majorities are expected to be intolerant of minorities and civil rights, and especially intolerant when compared to elites. A third, albeit often implicit, assumption is that elites play little or no role in a process which is shaped by (intolerant) voters themselves. In this paper, we examine each of these assumptions. We demonstrate that nearly all forms of direct democracy require legislative elites to draft policies, and suggest that this constrains the potential for directly abusive effects of referendums on minority rights. The assumptions both of elite tolerance and also of elites as passive bystanders are thus brought into question. Because it is the initiative, as used in Switzerland and the US, that conforms most closely to the paradigmatic version of popular majority rule, we examine the initiative in detail. We find that citizens voting on these measures are not as intolerant as many commentators fear.

Determinants of cabinet size

A large literature examines the composition of cabinets in parliamentary systems, but very little attention has been paid to the size of those cabinets. Yet not only is the size of the cabinet related to the division of portfolios that may take place, cabinet size is also related to policy outcomes. In this article, a theory of party size is considered which examines how coalition bargaining considerations, intra-party politics and efficiency concerns affect the size of cabinets. Hypotheses derived from the theory are examined using an extensive cross-national dataset on coalition governments which allows us to track changes in cabinet size and membership both across and within cabinets.