How single-member districts are reinforcing local independents and strengthening mayors: on the electoral reform in Polish local government

Disentangling the fiscal effects of local constitutions

“…To further substantiate this choice, we report the results from the recent CBOS 8 surveys. According to this survey, conducted on a representative sample of Poles, 80% of respondents knew the name of the mayor of their municipality, while only 52% knew the name of at least one council member (Gendźwiłł and Żółtak, 2017). This further confirms that the mayor is a recognizable local figure and that the political identity of the mayor is of crucial importance.…”

“…The mobilization and selection of candidates creates costs, which may be more easily internalized by well-established and well-resourced national political parties, compared to independents and local political associations. One could also argue that ballot cards bearing the names of many candidates are much more conducive to the use of recognized party labels (Gendźwiłł and Żółtak, 2017). All in all, we hypothesize that the greater the requirements concerning the number of candidates on an electoral list, the less likely it is that independents and local political associations will compete in the election and the more likely it is that national political parties will do so.…”

“…From Table 1, it is apparent that in municipalities with proportional elections, the costs of entering political markets were much higher (Szczepanowska, 2010), due to the fact that a higher number of signatures was required to register a party list in a district and a larger number of candidates needed to be registered on the list. Furthermore, proportional systems usually introduce the idea of competing elites, ideologies and sectoral interests, where party labels give important cues (Shugart and Carey, 1992;Gendzwill and Zoltak, 2014;Gendźwiłł and Żółtak, 2017). All this leads us to reason that it was much more difficult for local political associations to penetrate local political markets under proportional elections, but rather easy for national political parties, which are well-organized and well-resourced 5 .…”

Local-Level Democratic Backsliding? The Consolidation of Aspiring Dominant-Party Regimes in Hungary and Poland

“…Poland shifted from using party lists to single-member districts in most city council elections in 2012, although lists were retained in larger cities. While independent lists were already dominant in local elections, the reform further strengthened those lists affiliated with elected mayors (Gendźwiłł and Żółtak 2017). Party politics have not penetrated municipal elections significantly, though parties are increasingly interested in contesting local elections (Gendźwiłł and Żółtak 2014).…”

“…To view the supplementary material for this article, please go to https://doi.org/ 10.1017/gov.2021.12. electoral system changes in city council elections (cities over 20,000 in Poland and over 10,000 in Hungary), which some argue impact mayoral elections (Gendźwiłł and Żółtak 2017;Soós 2015). Appendix E includes a dummy variable accounting for urban-rural status.…”