Sona N. Golder

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...

A New Approach to the Study of Parties Entering Government

British Journal of Political Science / FirstView Article / December 2014, pp 1 16 DOI: 10.1017/S0007123414000015, Published online: 28 May 2014 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0007123414000015 How to cite this article: Garrett Glasgow and Sona N. Golder A New Approach to the Study of Parties Entering Government . British Journal of Political Science, Available on CJO 2014 doi:10.1017/ S0007123414000015 Request Permissions : Click here

Votes for Women: Electoral Systems and Support for Female Candidates

It is a well-established finding that proportional representation (PR) electoral systems are associated with greater legislative representation for women than single member systems. However, the degree to which different types of PR rules affect voting for female candidates has not been fully explored. The existing literature is also hampered by a reliance on cross-national data in which individual vote preferences and electoral system features are endogenous. In this study, we draw upon an experiment conducted during the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections to isolate the effects of different PR electoral systems. Participants in the experiment were given the opportunity to vote for real EP candidates in three different electoral systems: closed list, open list, and open list with panachage and cumulation. Because voter preferences can be held constant across the three different votes, we can evaluate the extent to which female candidates were more or less advantaged by the electoral system itself. We find that voters, regardless of their gender, support female candidates, and that this support is stronger under open electoral rules. It is a well-established finding that proportional representation (PR) electoral systems are associated with greater legislative representation for women than single member systems. However, the degree to which different types of PR rules affect voting for female candidates has not been fully explored. The existing literature is also hampered by a reliance on cross-national data in which individual vote preferences and electoral system features are endogenous. In this study, we draw upon an experiment conducted during the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections to isolate the effects of different PR electoral systems. Participants in the experiment were given the opportunity to vote for real EP candidates in three different electoral systems: closed list, open list, and open list with panachage and cumulation. Because voter preferences can be held constant across the three different votes, we can evaluate the extent to which female candidates were more or less advantaged by the electoral system itself. We find that voters, regardless of their gender, support female candidates, and that this support is stronger under open electoral rules.

Response to Martin and Vanberg: Evaluating a Stochastic Model of Government Formation

In a 2012 Journal of Politics article, we presented a zero-intelligence model of government formation. Our intent was to provide a “null” model of government formation, a baseline upon which other models could build. We made two claims regarding aggregate government formation outcomes: first, that our model produces aggregate results on the distributions of government types, cabinet portfolios, and bargaining delays in government formation that compare favorably to those in the real world; and second, that these aggregate distributions vary in theoretically intuitive ways as the model parameters change. In this issue, Martin and Vanberg (MV) criticize our model on theoretical and empirical grounds. Here we not only show how MV’s evaluation of our model is flawed, but we also illustrate, using an analogy to common statistical practice, how one might properly attempt to falsify stochastic models such as ours at both the individual and the aggregate level.

Addressing Europe’s democratic deficit: An experimental evaluation of the pan-European district proposal

Many academics and commentators argue that Europe is suffering from a democratic deficit. An interesting proposal that has been put forward to address this problem is to elect some members of the European parliament in a pan-European district. In this article, we evaluate this proposal using an online experiment, in which thousands of Europeans voted on a pan-European ballot we created. We find that the voting behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or absence of candidates from their own country on the lists. If a pan-European district is created, our findings provide an argument in favour of using a closed-list ballot and establishing a maximum number of candidates from each country on the lists.