De Bei Claudia Comparative Politics – EPS

The origins and change of

Electoral Institutions

Duverger’s law: “The simple-majority single ballot system favours the two party

system”

Two forces working together:

“Mechanical and psychological factor” “Cox’s M + 1 rule”

Endogenous Electoral System

“The changes in the number of political parties usually preceded changes in electoral rules”

“Electoral system designers lack complete information at the design stage”

Who or What affects Change in the Electoral System?

Political partiesNon party political actorsExternal actorsNon political expertsHistorySocietyEconomyChance

What Makes Politics Choose in Favour of a system or another?

• Office seeking• Policy seeking• Balancing representation with governability• Social and political engineering• Maximizing legitimacy and fairness• Other general motivations

What rules Governments change?

Electoral rules governed by institutional rules

Electoral system constitutionally entrenched

Exception and Special Circumstances

• Transitional contexts

• Electoral system stability and institutional equilibrium in long standing democracies

Three General Tendencies about The Electoral System

Electoral system will remain unchanged if no party or coalition will try to change the rules even if they can

Electoral system will remain unchanged when it will be too costly or practically impossible for interested parties to change the rule

Electoral change may occur due to unexpected political events (regime changes, popular movements or externally driven events)

Pasquini Valentina Comparative Politics – EPS

What CSES is about?

Comparative Study of Electoral Systems

• Collaborative program of research• Election studies• Survey questions• More than 50 countries

How does the study work?

Three linked parts

• “micro” level data• discrit level data• “macro” level data

Results

The aim of CSES is adressing the effects of electoral institutions on citizens, social and political cleavages and democratization among all different political regimes.

Variables avalaible

Three modules

• Full release of CSES module 1• Advance release of CSES module 2• Advance release of CSES module 3

• CSES module 1 : 1996-2001survey, demographic,district level and macro data.

• CSES module 2 : 2001-2006representation and accountability.

• CSES module 3 : 2006-2011voteres perceptions of assessment and responses to the variety and quality of political choices in an election.

Sections of variables

Sources of variables are divided in 5 sectors

• Administrative• Social demographic• Survey model• Discrict level• Macro level

Example

Example of questionnaire• Example of Survey of Module 1

Viganò Sara Comparative Politics – EPS

EESEuropean Election Studies

What EES are about?

• They study electoral participation and voting behaviour in European Parliament elections

•They are concerned with the evolution of an EU political Community and a European public sphere, with citizens' perceptions of and preferences about the EU political regime, and with their evaluations of EU political performance

Content of the web siteElections to the European Parliament are held every five years, and theyare conducted in a co-ordinated fashion by universal suffrage throughout the countries of the European Union.

At each of these elections, the academic community has fielded surveys ofvoters in all the countries that took part.

This web site gives access to materials describing these surveys, from 1979to 2009, the studies of which they formed part, and the findings of these studies.

European Election Study 1979 European Election Study 1984 European Election Study 1989 European Election Study 1994 European Election Study 1999 European Election Study 2004 European Election Study 2009

Scholars involved (from 1979 on) Useful tools for the Voter Studies

Integrated Data

EES European Election Study 1989• Study Design: Is a survey study of the electorates of the member states of the European Community:

Belgium Germany Greece Ireland Denmark Italy Luxemburg the Netherlands France Portugal Spain United Kingdom

This study consist on three surveys: 1-2 waves took place before the election in October-November1988 and March-April 1989 3 wave was conducted after the elections in June 1989 The data of the study have been organized in a set of interconnected data files, one of each wave and one of each different political system

• Variables: A description list of variables has been created, listing for all the 315 variables its name, its presence (x), absence (-) in each of the three waves A documentation variable presents information on the variables as for example: - variable name - label of the variable in the dataset - full text of the questionnaire - a list of the precode response options presented to the respondent

VOTE INTENTIONAL/RECALL, EUROPEAN AND NATIONAL

1 2 3VAR017 X X - Intended electoral participationVAR018 X X - Intended party choiceVAR019 - - X Electoral participationVAR020 - - X Recall party choiceVAR021 - - X Reason for non-votingVAR022 - - X National vs. European reason party choiceVAR023 - - X Expressed attitude to national governmentVAR024 X X X Intended electoral participation in NEVAR025 X X X Intended party choice in NEVAR026 X X X Electoral Participation in last NEVAR027 X X X Party choice in last NEVAR028 X X X EP party group (84) of party choice in 89VAR029 - - X EP party group (89) of party choice in 89

POLITICAL INTEREST AND COMMUNICATION

1 2 3VAR213 X X X Interested in politicsVAR214 X X X Interested in EC politicsVAR215 X X X Frequency of political discussionVAR216 X X X Political interest scaleVAR217 X X X Frequency trying to persuade othersVAR218 - X - Frequency of watching TV newsVAR219 - X - Frequency of reading newspapersVAR220 - X - Frequency of listening news on radio