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AbstractGovernment responsiveness to citizens' preferences is considered a sign of a well-functioning representative democracy. While the empirical literature has grown significantly, scholars have given less scrutiny to the conceptualization of government responsiveness and its relationship to policy/ideological congruence. We show that government responsiveness represents dynamic changes from governments in order to improve policy/ideological congruence. In addition, we consider how electoral systems influence governments' incentives to be responsive as well as their capacity to be responsive. Building on a veto player approach, we argue that government responsiveness decreases as the number of parties in cabinet increases. We examine government responsiveness to citizens' ideological preferences in 16 advanced democracies in 1980–2016 with respect to social spending. In line with our veto player framework, we show, first, that governments are generally more responsive under majoritarian than PR electoral systems and, second, that government responsiveness decreases under PR electoral systems as the number of parties increases in cabinet.

Sundhaussen reviews 'The People's Representatives: Electoral Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region' edited by Graham Hassall and Cheryl Saunders.

Ritual and Rhythm in Electoral Systems: A Comparative Legal Account. By Graeme Orr (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), pp.xiv + 223. £70.00 (cloth).

Scholars studying electoral systems have consistently found that single-member plurality elections tend to constrain the number of parties operating in a polity to a much greater extent than multimember proportional representation systems. This article tests this hypothesis in the post-communist context by examining the effects of proportional representation and single-member district elections on the number of parties in five postcommunist states. It is shown that some postcommunist states, most notably Poland and Hungary, have followed the standard pattern of party consolidation over time in reaction to incentives of electoral systems, while others, most notably Russia and Ukraine, have not. The author argues that the different effects of electoral systems can be attributed to different levels of party institutionalization found in postcommunist states.These findings have policy implications. Under conditions of extreme party underdevelopment, the electoral system that promotes the use of party labels—proportional representation—may be more effective than the plurality system in constraining the number of parties, provided a legal threshold is used. This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that plurality elections offer the greatest constraint on the number of parties.

The purpose of the research.The paper wants to answer a current problem and very important to come before the Albanian politics and society, the problem of changing the electoral law and electoral system in Albania. Two recent elections in our country, general elections of 2009 and 2011 local elections were marred by numerous irregularities which have influenced the outcome of the election and brought numerous disputes strong opposition. Political parties, the Albanian society and international community are in discussion adjustments should be made to election legislation that elections are fair, credible and acceptable by both parties. In Albania, all elections are influenced by the election legislation. But have influenced the conduct of elections and election results election systems. Therefore the object of work is mainly the influence of electoral systems on the elections in AlbaniaMethods. Evidence of the election legislation in Albania and its comparison with European and international legislation in this field. Analysis of the election and election results in Albania in the period 1991-2011.Evidencing the influence of electoral systems on election and election results, comparing the results in all elections.Results. From the search derived these results: election systems and distribution formulas of seats have influenced and defined the party in the election outcome; political parties have made adjustments and changes constantly in election systems, passing by a majority system based on absolute majority, combined electoral systems up in regional proportional electoral system. The 2009 elections showed that the regional proportional system had not sustainable governance, and real representation of parties in parliament.Conclusions. The main conclusion. For Albania was wrong application of the regional proportional electoral system. More convenient for Albania is the majoritarian system corrected. Electoral formula of distribution of additional seats bring the number of seats to the number of votes each party receives nationwide. Voter to have available only one ballot and one vote only, that belongs candidate single-member zone and the party the candidate represents. In this way the votes that the voter will cast is a sincere vote.

Most studies of candidate-centered electoral systems, that encourage politicians to seek personal votes, have focused on the impact of such institutions. This paper focuses instead on their origins in new democracies. It hypothesizes that voter demands for local and individual benefits and party access to government resources for such benefits are likely to lead politicians to choose a candidate-centered electoral rule during a transition to democracy. Cross-national quantitative studies of 97 new democracies from 1950 to 2008 support these claims, revealing that (1) the poorer the average voter, the more likely a candidate-centered electoral institution will be adopted and (2) where incumbent governing parties are more influential in selecting new rules, candidate-centered electoral systems are more likely to be selected. Nonetheless, (3) in highly developed countries even those governing party members tend to opt for a party-centered system; conversely, (4) in extremely less-developed countries even opposition politicians, who would otherwise select a party-centered electoral system, are likely to choose a candidate-centered system if they are dominant at the time of writing the new institution. These findings shed light on the endogeneity of electoral systems and suggest a powerful impact of social context on institutional choice. The paper also contributes more generally to theories of electoral system choice.

Electoral systems shape party systems by constraining voters' choices, but the choices voters make may also compel political parties to change the electoral system. Thus, an electoral system changes endogenously if the voters' choices it induces vary over time, and political parties are motivated by the voters' new choices to modify the electoral system. This article applies this logic to explain the change in the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) system. When SNTV fosters the formation of a dominant-party system, the ruling party needs to maintain steady economic growth so that enough resources can be turned into private goods to satisfy the majority of voters. But economic growth necessarily increases the anonymity of the voters, and hence the difficulty for the dominant party to garner votes using this strategy. The demise of one-party dominance and the shift in government power then urge some parties to replace SNTV with other electoral systems. This hypothesis is confirmed by the electoral reforms in Japan and Taiwan.

The module was administered as a post-election interview. The resulting data are provided along with voting, demographic, district and macro variables in a single dataset.

CSES Variable List
The list of variables is being provided on the CSES Website to help in understanding what content is available from CSES, and to compare the content available in each module.

Themes:
MICRO-LEVEL DATA:

Identification and study administration variables:
weighting factors;election type; date of election 1st and 2nd round; study timing (post election study, pre-election and post-election study, between rounds of majoritarian election); mode of interview; gender of interviewer; date questionnaire administered; primary electoral district of respondent; number of days the interview was conducted after the election

Demography:
age; gender; education; marital status; union membership; union membership of others in household; current employment status; main occupation; employment type - public or private; industrial sector; occupation of chief wage earner and of spouse; household income; number of persons in household; number of children in household under the age of 18; attendance at religious services; religiosity; religious denomination; language usually spoken at home; race; ethnicity; region of residence; rural or urban residence

Survey variables:
respondent cast a ballot at the current and the previous election; respondent cast candidate preference vote at the previous election; satisfaction with the democratic process in the country; last election was conducted fairly; form of questionnaire (long or short); party identification; intensity of party identification; political parties care what people think; political parties are necessary; recall of candidates from the last election (name, gender and party); number of candidates correctly named; sympathy scale for selected parties and political leaders; assessment of the state of the economy in the country; assessment of economic development in the country; degree of improvement or deterioration of economy; politicians know what people think; contact with a member of parliament or congress during the past twelve months; attitude towards selected statements: it makes a difference who is in power and who people vote for; people express their political opinion; self-assessment on a left-right-scale; assessment of parties and political leaders on a left-right-scale; political information items

DISTRICT-LEVEL DATA:

number of seats contested in electoral district; number of candidates; number of party lists; percent vote of different parties; official voter turnout in electoral district

MACRO-LEVEL DATA:

founding year of parties; ideological families of parties; international organization the parties belong to; left-right position of parties assigned by experts; election outcomes by parties in current (lower house/upper house) legislative election; percent of seats in lower house received by parties in current lower house/upper house election; percent of seats in upper house received by parties in current lower house/upper house election; percent of votes received by presidential candidate of parties in current elections; electoral turnout; electoral alliances permitted during the election campaign; existing electoral alliances; most salient factors in the election; head of state (regime type); if multiple rounds: selection of head of state; direct election of head of state and process of direct election; threshold for first-round victory; procedure for candidate selection at final round; simple majority or absolute majority for 2nd round victory; year of presidential election (before or after this legislative election); process if indirect election of head of state; head of government (president or prime minister); selection of prime minister; number of elected legislative chambers; for lower and upper houses was coded: number of electoral segments; number of primary districts; number of seats; district magnitude (number of members elected from each district); number of secondary and tertiary electoral districts; compulsory voting; votes cast; voting procedure; electoral formula; party threshold; parties can run joint lists; requirements for joint party lists; possibility of apparentement; types of apparentement agreements; multi-party endorsements; multi-party endorsements on ballot; ally party support; constitutional prerogatives of the head of state; constitutional powers of prime minister; methods of cabinet dismissal; dissolution of legislature

Existing theories of turnout model individuals' decisions to vote as a function of the utility they would gain from their favored party's election, the costs of voting, and the intrinsic benefits associated with democratic participation. This project shows that such utility calculations are conditional on electoral rules. In electoral systems with low incentives for strategic behavior, the traditional model of voter turnout is accurate. However, in plurality systems, in which there are stronger incentives for individuals to abandon their true preferences, less importance is placed on the utility associated with the possible success of favored parties.

This article analyses the impact of electoral institutions on the re-election campaigning and outreach strategies of Members of the European Parliament on the Twitter social media platform. Social media offers politicians a means to contact voters remotely and at low cost. We test the effect of diverse national proportional representation electoral institutions in European elections on a possible online electoral connection. We draw upon an original dataset of Members of the European Parliament Twitter activity before, during, and after the 2014 European elections. Our results confirm that variation in electoral institutions leads to meaningful differentiation in representatives' social media campaigning, which is further affected by national party, voter and legislator characteristics. Representatives make constructive use of Twitter, but there is no sustained online electoral connection.

This article draws on a comprehensive data set from the 1993-1999 Russian regional legislative elections to estimate the consequences of different plurality or majority rules, as well as their combinations with proportional representation (PR), for party formation in the country. The results of multiple regression analysis indicate that the system of single-member plurality does not support party formation. Mixed electoral systems involve PR support parties in two ways: first, mechanically, by excluding independents from party list competition, and second, as a result of contamination effects across these systems' components. Counterintuitively, the analysis reveals that the systems of multimember plurality and two-round majority tend to be relatively supportive of party formation. The article explains this phenomenon by developing a model that incorporates these systems' ability to set lower effective thresholds and to enhance the information value of party labels, thus facilitating the entry of party candidates and their electoral success.