Suchergebnisse

Legislative votes can be taken by roll call—noting the position of each individual member—or by some form of indication (sitting or standing, shouting yea or nay, etc.)—noting only an aggregate outcome. Cameral rules define one method of voting as the standard operating procedure and how to invoke any alternative voting methods. We develop a series of hypotheses related to position taking to explain why, when procedures would typically lead to a vote taken by indication, legislators choose to vote by roll call—a means that makes it much easier for actors outside the chamber to observe the positions taken by individual legislators and partisan blocs. With data from Argentina and Mexico, we test these hypotheses regarding the strategic choice of vote procedures and their relationship to observed party unity.

Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies. By Mark P. Jones. (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Pp. 246).Legislative Politics in Latin America. Edited by Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 503).Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Centroamérica, Mexico, y República Dominicana. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 776).Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Cono Sur. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 628).Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Paises Andinos. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 680).Patterns of Legislative Politics: Roll Call Voting in Latin America and the U.S. By Scott Morgenstern. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 224).1Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies. By Kent Eaton. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Pp. 351).1Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America. Edited by Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Soberg Shugart. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. 493).Term Limits and Legislative Representation. By John M. Carey. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 216).

AbstractLegislators are likely to substantively represent groups to which they belong or with which they have some particular affinity. However, there are electoral systems that diminish this tendency and systems that promote it. More precisely, as district magnitude increases, representatives will be freer to focus on issues that are not decisive of vote choice for most voters. In this letter, we use a case of electoral reform and the nature of the post-reform chamber (Chile's Chamber of Deputies) to test whether increasing district magnitude makes it more likely that women will focus on women's issues. A series of tests on multiple sets of observations show robust results for the conclusion that as the number of candidates elected in a district increases, elected women become more likely to pursue women's issues.

Democratic institutions provide incentives for voters and candidates. When reformers tinker with multiple institutions, the likely effect of each individual change may be well understood, but their potential interaction may go unanticipated. Prior to elections in 2002, the French legislature adopted a gender parity candidate quota for parties participating in parliamentary elections. In addition, voters ratified a constitutional referendum making the president's term match that of parliament, and presidential elections were set to be held immediately prior to parliamentary ones. We show that the unanticipated consequence of these separate institutional reforms was to make the fate of female candidates for parliament very much a function of presidential coattails. When the party of the president failed to fulfill the candidate quota, the number of women in parliament showed little change. Conversely, in years when the party of the president took the candidate quota seriously, the number of women in parliament increased.

Electoral systems vary in terms of the choice and influence they offer voters. Beyond selecting between parties, preferential systems allow for choices within parties. More proportional systems make it likely that influence over who determines the assembly's majority will be distributed across relatively more voters. In response to systems that limit choice and influence, we hypothesize that voters will cast more blank, null, or spoiled ballots on purpose. We use a regression discontinuity opportunity in French municipal elections to test this hypothesis. An exogenously chosen and arbitrary cutpoint is used to determine the electoral rules municipalities use to select their assemblies. We find support for our reasoning—systems that do not allow intraparty preference votes and that lead to disproportional outcomes provoke vote spoilage. Rates of vote spoilage are frequently sufficient to change control over the assembly if those votes had instead been cast validly for the second-place party.

"Electoral Systems and System Reforms in Latin America" published on by Oxford University Press.

RESUMEN: El sistema democrático venezolano presenta luces y sombras. Las luces se apoyan en el hecho de que este sistema ha desarrollado, a lo largo de cuatro décadas de funcionamiento, una serie de rutinas y prácticas que hacen que resulte un sistema suficientemente enraizado entre la población y con bases sólidas como para no dudar de su continuación. Las sombras se derivan de la situación de crisis en que se encuentra durante la última década, consecuencia precisamente de su propio funcionamiento y de la influencia de determinados factores que han contribuido a un alejamiento de las institituciones con respecto a una sociedad en constante transformación. La partidocracia, en particular, ha constituido uno de los principales factores de crisis. En el otro extremo, la maduración y organización autónoma de la sociedad puede significar la autosuperación de la crisis por parte del sistema democrático.ABSTRACT: Democracy in Venezuela has lights and shadows. Lights are founded in the fact that democracy has promoted, during the last four decades, a serie of routines and practices that have worked out a system rooted enough among the citizenship, with solid bases as to avoid the doubt of its maintenance. Shadows are derived of crisis situation that is suffering the system during the last decada, as a result of its own functioning and of the influence of different factors that promoted a removal of links between political institutions and a society in continous transformation. Partidocracia, in particular, is one of the main factors of this crisis. En the other end, maduration and autonomous organization of civil society can signify the resolution by itself of democracy.