Suchergebnisse

This case study highlights the advantages and challenges of using hierarchical competing risks models to analyze the determinants of party mortality from a comparative perspective. I review how these models can be used to simultaneously examine the impact of electoral, political, and institutional factors on two distinct but potentially correlated forms of party death, dissolution, and merger, while controlling for other observed and unobserved characteristics of the parties and of the democracies in which these operate. I illustrate the workings of this model by examining a data set covering the complete life cycles of 184 new parties that entered 21 consolidated democracies between 1968 and 2016. A key issue with hierarchical competing risks models is that standard statistical techniques and software packages for survival analysis either impose the assumption that the hazards (probabilities or risks) of both types of death are independent, or only model their dependence at the party or country level (but not both). Overcoming these limitations was the most important technical challenge faced during the project. In addition, over the course of the investigation, the members of the research team had to make several important methodological choices, such as how to select the parties to be included in the analysis, how to operationalize the different types of death, and how to deal with potential collinearity between the explanatory variables. I discuss how these challenges were handled in practice, and draw some lessons for researchers interested in party mortality and survival analysis more generally.

This case study underscores the importance of using ag??periodcohort models to disentangle life cycle, generational, and election-specific effects when examining the determinants of long-term political change. I illustrate how these models can be used to study the impact on turnout of the decline in the competitiveness of British elections over the last 50?years, while controlling for other factors that may mask the relationship of interest. A key issue with ag??periodcohort models is that standard statistical techniques and software packages are unable to handle relatively large data sets such as the one used in this study, with roughly 40,000 observations from 13 U.K. general elections. During the course of the project, I also had to make hard methodological choices to tackle some of the common challenges that arise when working with electoral surveys, such as turnout over-reporting, high proportion of missing values, and the difficulties in operationalizing relevantdependent and independentvariables. A fundamental lesson from this case study is that careful consideration of alternative measurement strategies and estimation methods is crucial for the application of ag??periodcohort models to repeated cross-sectional electoral surveys, as decisions in these areas can radically affect the substantive conclusions drawn from the data. At a more practical level, the study highlights that researchers may not always be able to rely on canned estimation routines to fit their models. Being able to tailor the estimation approach to the data at hand may thus be critical for the projects success.

This paper implements a unified model of individual abstention and vote choice, applying it to analyze policy-based alienation and indifference in Brazil's historical 2002 presidential election. The results indicate that both alienation and indifference have a negative impact on turnout, with indifference contributing slightly more to voter abstention. Also, the determinants of alienation and indifference differ considerably, the former being determined by structural factors such as voters' information and perceived efficacy levels, while the latter was related to short-term aspects such as parties' mobilization efforts. More importantly, the evidence shows that while alienation and indifference are strongly influenced by attitudinal and protest variables, they are also affected by citizens' evaluation of candidates' ideological locations. The main conclusion is that abstention in Brazil's 2002 election had a policy-driven component and that spatial considerations played a substantive role in citizens' electoral behavior, a fact that has been largely overlooked in previous research on the determinants of abstention in Latin America.

Invalid voting and absenteeism are alternative sources of abstention under compulsory voting. Previous research failed to systematically study the mechanisms behind each form of non-voting and the relationships between them. We develop an analytical framework and an empirical strategy to jointly examine invalid voting and absenteeism in Brazil, the world's largest democracy with mandatory voting. Using Bayesian inferential methods and analyzing both individual and district-level data, we show that less educated and politically knowledgeable citizens are less likely to vote and, when they do, they are typically unable to successfully complete their ballot. Unlike absenteeism, invalid voting also has a political dimension reflecting voters' disenchantment with elections and democratic performance. Both sources of abstention coexist and, together, undermine electoral participation.

We study the conditions under which members of Congress incorporate policy‐specific considerations in their decisions. To do this, we estimate a model that accounts for the influence of private information about legislation quality on voting patterns in the House and Senate. We find that minority party members are more likely to evaluate proposals on their merits than majority members, but institutional and electoral considerations significantly attenuate these partisan differences. In particular, seniority, electoral safety, and constituents' political knowledge have a balancing effect on partisan predispositions to rely on policy‐relevant information, making minority (majority) members less (more) likely to vote informatively.

During each electoral period, the strategic interaction between voters and political elites determines the number of viable candidates in a district. In this paper, we implement a hierarchical seemingly unrelated regression model to explain electoral coordination at the district level in Uruguay as a function of district magnitude, previous electoral outcomes and electoral regime. Elections in this country are particularly useful to test for institutional effects on the coordination process due to the large variations in district magnitude, to the simultaneity of presidential and legislative races held under different rules, and to the reforms implemented during the period under consideration. We find that district magnitude and electoral history heuristics have substantial effects on the number of competing and voted-for parties and lists. Our modeling approach uncovers important interaction-effects between the demand and supply side of the political market that were often overlooked in previous research. Adapted from the source document.

During each electoral period, the strategic interaction between voters and political elites determines the number of viable candidates in a district. In this paper, we implement a hierarchical seemingly unrelated regression model to explain electoral coordination at the district level in Uruguay as a function of district magnitude, previous electoral outcomes and electoral regime. Elections in this country are particularly useful to test for institutional effects on the coordination process due to the large variations in district magnitude, to the simultaneity of presidential and legislative races held under different rules, and to the reforms implemented during the period under consideration. We find that district magnitude and electoral history heuristics have substantial effects on the number of competing and voted-for parties and lists. Our modeling approach uncovers important interaction-effects between the demand and supply side of the political market that were often overlooked in previous research. (GIGA)

During each electoral period, the strategic interaction between voters and political elites determines the number of viable candidates in a district. In this paper, we implement a hierarchical seemingly unrelated regression model to explain electoral coordination at the district level in Uruguay as a function of district magnitude, previous electoral outcomes and electoral regime. Elections in this country are particularly useful to test for institutional effects on the coordination process due to the large variations in district magnitude, to the simultaneity of presidential and legislative races held under different rules, and to the reforms implemented during the period under consideration. We find that district magnitude and electoral history heuristics have substantial effects on the number of competing and voted-for parties and lists. Our modeling approach uncovers important interaction-effects between the demand and supply side of the political market that were often overlooked in previous research.