Suchergebnisse

AbstractFederal systems create political competition at multiple territorial levels. While models of vertical bargaining conceptualise federal‐subnational relations as occurring between parties with exogenously defined interests, federalism also structures forms of interdependence between the federal and subnational levels. Political competition in multi‐level systems is marked by interdependence between the federal and subnational levels through barometer and second order voting effects. Findings of a more 'autonomous' form of political competition at the subnational level, through state‐level economic voting, are less common. This article examines Germany, a highly interdependent federation, to assess the extent to which voting in Land elections responds to Land level economic performance and whether political and institutional factors affect this. I find evidence that in Land level elections, voting for the federally incumbent party is responsive to federal economic performance. Alongside this, there is evidence of 'uncoupled' electoral behaviour at the Land level, with Land level economic voting. This is enhanced by single party government.

Second order election models predict that voter turnout will generally be lower in 'second order' subnational elections compared to 'first order' federal elections. In Canada, we find that this is not always the case: some provinces have higher turnout rates for provincial elections than federal elections. Using data from seven Canadian provincial elections, this article examines how attitudes such as trust, satisfaction with democracy and interest in politics compare across levels of government in order to explain cross-provincial differences in voter turnout. It finds that while contextual factors matter, interest in provincial politics is one of the strongest predictors of high provincial turnout relative to federal turnout.

Vertical integration is an important concept for political parties. In multi-level or federal contexts, it is said to affect party strength, national integration and federal stability. Despite this, difficulties with the conceptualization and operationalization of vertical integration and a lack of cross-national data impede research. This article clarifies the concept of vertical integration, distinguishing it from related concepts of strength, centralization and autonomy and distinguishing the indicators of integration from the effects of integration. It introduces the measures of vertical integration and autonomy used in the Party Organization in Multi-Level Systems (POMLS) dataset comprising data from survey responses from 204 state-level parties in eight countries. The data confirm the theoretical distinctions among forms of vertical integration and between vertical integration and autonomy and show that not all forms of vertical integration are mutually reinforcing. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]