Suchergebnisse

The design of election ballots can influence voters' behavior. Features of the ballot are particularly important if they systematically harm the electoral chances of some groups. In Brazil, voters type the four or five-digit number of their chosen candidate into an electronic voting machine to cast a ballot. Some numbers have sequences that are easier to memorize and recall than others. I show that candidates with memorable numbers receive a boost in their vote share. Moreover, I demonstrate that women are less likely to be assigned memorable numbers. This paper highlights the importance of thinking thoroughly about the implications of seemingly innocuous characteristics of voting procedures.

The international community invests heavily in democracy promotion, but these efforts sometimes embolden leaders not interested in true democratic reform. We develop and test a formal model explaining why this occurs in the context of electoral system reform—one of the most important signals of democratic quality. Our formal model characterizes leaders as either truly reform minded or pseudo-reformers, those who increase electoral system proportionality in order to receive international community benefits while engaging in electoral fraud. We hypothesize that the international community will be more (less) likely to detect fraud when leaders decrease (increase) proportionality, regardless of whether there is evidence of numerical fraud. Using a mixed-methods approach with cross-national and case study data from post-Communist states, we find that the international community is generally less likely to detect fraud following an increase in proportionality and vice versa. We suggest that democracy promoters over-reward perceived democratic progress such that pseudo-reformers often benefit.

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.