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District magnitude and list type shape the incentives for politicians to develop a personal vote. If voters also react to these strategies, their knowledge about candidates should be influenced by these features of the electoral system. This article directly tests the responsiveness of voters by employing individual-level survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. As district magnitude increases, more people remember at least one candidate in closed list systems, but there is no such effect in open list systems. These influences are also larger for non-voters than for voters. A measure of political contact is not affected in this way. The differential effect of district magnitude can be explained by a different campaign focus.

District magnitude and list type shape the incentives for politicians to develop a personal vote. If voters also react to these strategies, their knowledge about candidates should be influenced by these features of the electoral system. This article directly tests the responsiveness of voters by employing individual-level survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. As district magnitude increases, more people remember at least one candidate in closed list systems, but there is no such effect in open list systems. These influences are also larger for non-voters than for voters. A measure of political contact is not affected in this way. The differential effect of district magnitude can be explained by a different campaign focus.

Cross-national models of party system fragmentation hold that social diversity and district magnitude interact: higher levels of district magnitude allow for greater expression of social diversity that leads to higher levels of party system fragmentation. Most models, however, ignore differences between majoritarian and proportional electoral rules, which may significantly alter the impact of district magnitude, as well as the way in which district magnitude impacts the translation of social cleavages into party system fragmentation. Examining the case of Singapore suggests majoritarian multimember districts limit party system fragmentation, particularly by reducing the degree to which ethnic and religious diversity are translated into political parties. Applying these insights to a standard cross-national model of party system fragmentation, the results suggest that majoritarian multimember districts produce lower levels of party system fragmentation than proportional multimember districts.

Members of parliament have more effective incentives to cater for the majority's preferences when they are elected in districts with few seats in parliament rather than in districts with many seats. We empirically investigate this hypothesis by matching voting behavior on legislative proposals of Swiss members of parliament with real referenda outcomes on the same issues for the years 1996 to 2008. This quasi-experimental data allows us to identify the impact of electoral systems through district magnitude on how members of parliament represent citizens' preferences. We find systematic, statistically significant and economically relevant evidence that members of parliament from districts with few seats vote along the majority's preferences.

Effective magnitude (M') and effective threshold (T') are important because they try to express quantitatively a major aspect of electoral systems, namely the degree of squeeze they put on representation of small parties. Three relationships have previously been proposed between M' and T'. Of these, T'=75%(M'+1) is found here to have the most desirable characteristics. However, regardless of the precise equation used, a disturbing discrepancy is observed in the case of single-member districts: the effective threshold predicted is much too high, if applied nationwide. This points out a more general need to keep district-level and nationwide indicators carefully separate. An appendix proposes a new formula to find effective magnitude when district magnitudes within a country vary.

Amorim Neto y Cox sentaron las bases de los determinantes del número efectivo de partidos electorales. Sin embargo, a partir de una nueva base de datos más fiable y con el doble de países demostraré que a pesar de que los datos que emplearon los autores eran robustos, incurrieron en un sesgo de selección en los países estudiados. Esto me lleva a matizar sus resultados, tanto por lo que se refiere a las variables independientes —y entre ellas, la principal aportación de su investigación: la interacción entre cleavage y la magnitud de distrito— como a la capacidad de los modelos para explicar la variabilidad de la variable dependiente. Por otra parte, también evaluaré el efecto de las arenas de competición multinivel sobre el número efectivo de partidos electorales y mostraré cómo el grado de descentralización de los estados se erige como un factor explicativo potente, abriendo la puerta al estudio de un ámbito de la Ciencia Política desatendido hasta el momento en términos empíricos. ; Amorim Neto and Cox established the determinants of the effective number of electoral political parties. However, through a new more reliable database containing twice the number of countries, the author demonstrates that, even though the data that the authors used was robust, they incurred in a selection bias regarding the countries studied. This led to a new approach to the results regarding both the independent variables (including their main contribution: the interaction between cleavage and magnitude of district) and the model's ability to explain variability in the dependent variable. The article assesses the effect of multilevel competition arenas upon the effective number of electoral parties, and demonstrates that the level of decentralization of the States is a powerful explicative factor. This opens the doors to a study of a field in Political Sciences that has been abandoned until the moment, at least empirically.

Electoral rules are a crucial institutional factor shaping the entry and success of new parties. However, testing how they affect voting behavior is problematic when using observational data in cross-national studies. As district magnitude is usually correlated with politically salient features affecting the likelihood of voting for new (and small) parties, the latent support of small parties differs across electoral systems. Using a quasi-experimental design in Spain focused on the district viability of a new party, Vox, in two elections held within 196 days, I provide a more robust estimate of the impact of electoral systems on the success of new parties. Strong evidence that the electoral system makes a difference for new parties has been identified: strategic considerations found in the districts where Vox was not successful prevented a significant number of voters from supporting the party. ; I acknowledge support from the Spanish Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant number AEI/FEDER CSO2017-85024-C2-1-P), and the ICREA under the ICREA Academia program.

This article proposes a new interpretation of the regional distribution of votes in the dispute for legislative offices in Brazil. The literature has traditionally understood regionalization to be evidence that politicians deliberately create zones of influences in certain areas. We argue, however, that other dimensions of the Brazilian electoral system, notably the large size and magnitude of electoral districts, reinforce the information that reaches voters and adds value to geographic aspects, such as the home city of the candidates, accounting for the spatial concentration of votes. Using new, previously unpublished, data on the hierarchy of cities, the results for São Paulo between 1998 and 2014 confirm this interpretation. This result suggests a new theoretical understanding about how the Brazilian political system works by introducing another explanation for how certain areas become influential, thereby revealing new research agendas.

Electoral district magnitude varies across German electoral constituencies and over legislative periods due to Germany's electoral system. The number of seats in parliament per constituency is effectively random. This setting permits us to investigate exogenous variations in district magnitude on federal resource allocation. We analyse the effect of having more than one federal representative per constituency on federal government resources by exploiting information from 1,375 German constituencies from 1998 to 2017. More representatives per constituency lead to statistically significantly more employment of federal civil servants in the respective constituencies. The size of the effect corresponds to about 34 federal civil servants once a constituency is represented by additional legislators from party lists. A battery of robustness tests supports our results. Further evidence points to some heterogeneity of the effect. In particular, constituencies represented by additional legislators who are experienced and who are members of larger, competing parties obtain more federal resources.

Electoral district magnitude varies across German electoral constituencies and over legislative periods due to Germany's electoral system. The number of seats in parliament per constituency is effectively random. This setting permits us to investigate exogenous variations in district magnitude on federal resource allocation. We analyse the effect of having more than one federal legislator per constituency on federal government resources by exploiting information from 1,375 German constituencies from 1998 to 2017. More federal legislators per constituency lead to statistically significantly more employment of federal civil servants in the respective constituencies. The size of the effect corresponds to about 37 additional federal civil servants (3.4% of average employment) once a constituency is represented by additional legislators from party lists. Numerous robustness tests support our results. Further evidence points to some heterogeneity of the effect. In particular, constituencies represented by additional legislators who are experienced and who are members of larger, competing parties obtain more federal resources.

Parties' motivation to include locals depends on the characteristics of the electoral system. This article analyzes where on the lists parties choose to position locals under closed-list proportional representation systems. Furthermore, it also investigates how that choice varies depending on two key district factors, namely district magnitude and whether or not the district is in a peripheral region. To that end, it draws on an original biographical data set of candidates for the Portuguese National Parliament (1983, 1995, 2002, 2005 and 2009). The findings show that there are fewer locals among the higher positions on the candidates' lists and among heads of lists. District magnitude and peripheral region effects go in the expected direction, but these effects are small. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

We analyze, both theoretically and empirically, the influence of direct democratic institutions on the size and development of shadow economies. Our model suggests that, as the extent of direct democracy increases, implemented fiscal policies more nearly reflect the preferences of citizens and so reduce their incentives to operate in the informal sector. This theory implies a negative relationship between the extent of direct democracy and the size of the country's shadow economy. We also theorize that direct democracy has a greater effect in reducing the informal sector when the former is at low or intermediate values and when the electoral system is characterized by a larger district magnitude. An empirical investigation of a sample of 57 democracies confirms our model's predictions.

This thesis is focused on the nationalization of party systems in Western Europe and combines four different approaches. Despite the literature claiming that political decentralization reduces party system nationalization, the first paper shows that this effect depends on the level of personalism that the electoral system allows. The second article shows a new effect of the nationalization of party systems. This variable is shown to be a crucial element to explain turnout differences across districts within a country. The third article of this thesis is centered on the impact of the electoral system on party system nationalization through a crucial-experimental approach based on electoral reforms in Western Europe. Finally, the last part of the thesis focuses on describing and analyzing the nationalization of political parties in Spain, paying particular attention to differences among national and subnational parties. ; Esta tesis doctoral está centrada en la nacionalización de los sistemas de partidos en Europa Occidental desde cuatro perspectivas diferentes. Una hipótesis clásica de la literatura es que la descentralización política reduce la nacionalización. En el primer artículo se muestra que el efecto de esta variable depende de que haya un grado suficiente de personalismo en el sistema electoral. En el segundo artículo se demuestra un nuevo efecto de la nacionalización de los sistemas de partidos; esta variable determina las diferencias en la participación electoral entre distritos dentro de un mismo país. El tercer artículo se aproxima al fenómeno mediante experimentos cruciales centrados en las reformas del sistema electoral en Europa Occidental a fin de estimar su efecto sobre la nacionalización. Finalmente, el último artículo analiza la nacionalización de los partidos en España y sus principales determinantes, distinguiendo particularmente entre partidos de ámbito nacional y subnacional.

The degree of predominance of the largest party in a representative assembly affects government formation and survival. The seat share of the largest party, in turn, is constrained by the interaction of assembly size and electoral district magnitude in the following way. When all S seats in an assembly are allocated in districts of magnitude M, a logical quantitative model proposes that the largest fractional share is s1 = (MS)-1/8. As a curve, the model is found to fit with R2 = 0.509, considering data from the averages of 46 periods in 37 countries, during which the electoral rules were essentially steady. As a worldwide average, the expression s1(MS)1/8 = 1 holds within 1%. Deviations from this average express the impact of various country-specific political and socio-cultural factors that can be investigated once the basic institutional constraints are controlled-for. This means that the degree of largest party predominance may be engineered to hover around a desired average by adjusting assembly size, and district magnitude, while keeping country-specific factors in mind. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Parties' motivation to include locals depends on the characteristics of the electoral system. This article analyzes where on the lists parties choose to position locals under closed-list proportional representation systems. Furthermore, it also investigates how that choice varies depending on two key district factors, namely district magnitude and whether or not the district is in a peripheral region. To that end, it draws on an original biographical data set of candidates for the Portuguese National Parliament (1983, 1995, 2002, 2005 and 2009). The findings show that there are fewer locals among the higher positions on the candidates' lists and among heads of lists. District magnitude and peripheral region effects go in the expected direction, but these effects are small. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion