Electoral Reform and Strategic Coordination

Fiva, Jon H.; Hix, Simon

doi:10.1017/s0007123419000747

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The substantive impact of the reform is consistent with existing theory (Cox 1997) and experimental evidence (Hix, Hortala-Vallve and Riambau-Armet 2017) showing that introducing a PR system substantively relaxes the incentives of voters and elites to coordinate on one of the two previously dominant parties. It is also well aligned with evidence from an electoral reform in Norway showing that the introduction of PR reduced voter coordination against the Labour Party (Fiva and Hix 2021).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

Proportional Representation and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from Electoral System Change in Europe

Becher

González

Stegmueller

2022

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How much do electoral institutions matter for the rise of populist parties? Evidence on this question is mixed, with some scholars arguing that the role of electoral rules is small. We provide new evidence for the impact of electoral system change. The UK's adoption of a proportional electoral system for European elections in 1999 provides a unique opportunity to study the link between electoral rules and the ascendancy of right-wing populist parties. Employing both synthetic control and difference-in-difference methods, we estimate that the electoral reform increased the vote share of right-wing populists by about 12 to 13.5 percentage points on average. During a time when populism was rising across Europe, the reform abruptly shifted populist votes in the UK above the European trend and above more plausible comparison cases. Our results also imply that caution is needed when empirical results based on partial reforms are extrapolated to electoral system change.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

Proportional Representation and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from Electoral System Change in Europe

Becher

González

Stegmueller

2022

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…But more importantly, parties and voters are more likely to take advantage of secondary mobilization in PR than in SMDs. In PR, more parties typically emerge and those parties typically occupy distinct ideological positions (Fiva and Hix 2021). This enhances secondary mobilization in strongholds in PR for two main reasons.…”

Section: Electoral Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing in the New Votes: Turnout of Women after Enfranchisement

Morgan-Collins

2023

Am Polit Sci Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Under what conditions did newly enfranchised women turn out to vote at levels approaching men? This question is important because if women’s turnout lagged behind men’s, politicians’ incentives to advocate for women’s interests could remain weak even after suffrage. I argue that women’s turnout approached parity with men’s in localities with strong incentives to vote and to mobilize among the general population. This is because women faced barriers to voting and were, therefore, more likely to vote and be mobilized under the most favorable circumstances. I then propose that electoral competition determines the strength of voting and mobilization incentives and, therefore, the gender turnout gap. Using sex-separated turnout data in Norway, I demonstrate that the gap narrows in high-turnout competitive districts in systems with single-member districts and in high-turnout within-district strongholds in proportional systems. I probe generalizability of my findings in New Zealand, Austria, and Sweden.

show abstract

“…The question we address in this article is why electoral reforms affect the (re)distribution of seats among parties in the short-term, but do not affect the (re)distribution of votes. This is a relevant question because the effect of electoral systems (and electoral reforms) depend on the interplay among the mechanical and psychological effects (Fiva and Hix, 2021) and, even more importantly, because electoral reforms are mainly a short-term phenomenon: data from Renwick (2010Renwick ( , 2011 show that when an electoral reform is adopted, it is quite likely than it will be followed by another one a few years later.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If they anticipate the mechanical impact of the new electoral systems and behave differently in the first post-reform election in comparison with the last pre-reform election, the distribution of votes among parties would change. When an electoral reform increases (decreases) permissiveness, the interplay among the mechanical and psychological effects should lead to an expected increase (decrease) in the number of parties (Fiva and Hix, 2021). Most of the empirical evidence from different regions and time periods, however, does not support this expectation about the psychological effect of electoral reforms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The short-term effects of electoral reforms

Lago

Coma

2022

Party Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While electoral reforms clearly affect how seats are (re)distributed among parties immediately after their adoption, they do not significantly change the (re)distribution of votes among parties. As political knowledge is positively related to turnout, we argue that the effect of majoritarian electoral reforms on the number of parties is contingent upon the turnout in the last election prior to the reform. Specifically, the lower the turnout level in the previous election, the more effective the majoritarian reform will be. However, the psychological effect of proportional reforms relies on the interplay between elites and voters and is highly uncertain. The argument is tested using aggregated data from 43 major electoral reforms worldwide from 1945 to 2020 and individual data from the first election held in New Zealand after the 1993 electoral reform.

show abstract

Electoral Reform and Strategic Coordination

Cited by 11 publications

References 20 publications

Proportional Representation and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from Electoral System Change in Europe

Proportional Representation and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from Electoral System Change in Europe

Bringing in the New Votes: Turnout of Women after Enfranchisement

The short-term effects of electoral reforms

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About