V5

Question 1

Electoral Systems: Features

Answer 1

• District magnitude
• Ballot structure
• Electoral formula

Question 1

Majoritarian Systems

Answer 1

• Relative majority (plurality) in single‐member districts (“first past the post”)

or

• Two‐round systems

– First round: candidate with absolute majority wins
– Second round:
* Only top two candidates compete (Example: French presidential election)

• Only candidates above a certain threshold compete in plurality vote (French legislative elections: 12.5%)
• Single nontransferable vote
  – Multimember districts, candidates with the most votes win the seats
  – More proportionality

Question 2

Proportional Systems

Answer 2

• Proportional allocation of seats in multimember districts
• Extremecase: Israel’s Knesset
  – Nationwide electoral district
  – 12 parties (2009), the smallest has 2.5% of the seats
• Hybrid or mixed systems
  – Compensatory systems
  – Germany

Question 3

Effects of the Electoral System on Voting

Answer 3

• “mechanical” and psychological effects
• disproportionality
  – Gallagher’s Least Square index
  – use percent of votes and percent of seats
  – Ranges from 0 to 100

Question 4

Effects of the Electoral System on Political Parties and Competition

Answer 4

• Political parties are central actors in democratic politics
  1. VotingforParties
  2. Representation by parties
  3. Government composition
• Duverger’s “laws” (1954):
• Majoritarian systems produce party dualism
• PR systems produce multiparty systems

Question 5

Effects of the Electoral System on Representation

Answer 5

• Elected members of society “stand in” for all citizens
• Mode of representation
  – Delegate
  – Trustee
• Types of representation
  – formalistic
  – descriptive
  – substantive

Question 6

Lijphart

Answer 6

• Two main dimensions
  – executives‐parties dimension
  – federal‐unitary dimension
• Two types of democracies:
  – majoritarian model -> concentration of power
  – consensus model -> power sharing
• Cases: 36 democratic countries, 1945‐1996

Question 7

Majoritarian Model: United Kingdom

Answer 7

‐ One‐party cabinet(?)
‐ Cabinet dominance
‐ Two‐party system(?)
‐ Majoritarian electoral system(?)
‐ Interest group pluralism
‐ Unitary and centralized government(?)
‐ Unicameral legislature(?)
‐ „Unwritten“constitution: set of basic laws
‐ Absence of judicial review(?)
‐ Dependent centralbank(?)

Question 8

Consensus Model: Switzerland

Answer 8

‐ Coalitiongovernment
‐ Power balance between executive (Federal Council) and legislative
‐ Multi‐party system
‐ PR system
‐ Interest group corporatism
‐ Federalism
‐ Bicameralism
‐ Written constitution
‐ Weak supreme court (deviation from CM)
‐ Independent centralbank

Question 9

Lijphart: Pros and Cons

Answer 9

• Majoritarian model:
  – „simple“ political situation
  – Policy change more likely
  – But: tyranny of the majority
• Consensus model:
  ‐ Broad consensus possible
  ‐ Stable, but slow policy change
  ‐ But: danger of deadlock, tyranny of the minority

 Type of democracy closely tied to the structure of the society

Question 10

Lijphart‘s Models: Discussion

Answer 10

Is the set of properties complete?
– Direct democracy missing, different varieties of federalism Are the cases comparable?

– Different levels of development
High level of aggregation

– Heterogeneous dimensions: central banks + judicial review

– Obscures causal effects
Conflates institutional design features with behavioral adjustments Presents functional logic

– lack of focus on actors

Question 11

Veto Player Theory

Answer 11

characterize democracies according to the “ease with which the political status quo can be changed”

Goal: identify institutional barriers of government

• Veto player is an actor whose agreement is necessary for policy change
• Institutional veto players: generated by the constitution
  – Example: upper chamber needs to approve a new law
• Partisan veto players: generated by the political game
  – Example: party in a coalition government

Assumptions:

• Complete information
• Choice is determined by ideological position
• Euclidian preferences with a single peak (ideal point), declining in all directions
• The decline is independent of direction
• Few underlying dimensions of the political space

Question 12

The Size of the Win set

Answer 12

• Size of the win set affects
  – Policy stability:
  large win set ⇨ less stable policy

– Policy shifts:
large win set ⇨ big policy shifts

– Variation in their size:
large win set ⇨ variance in policy shifts larger

– Agenda setting power:
large win set ⇨ more power for agenda setter

Question 13

Veto Player Theory: Discussion

Answer 13

• VPs driven by ideological position, not other strategic considerations
• Operationalization & application is challenging:
  – Institutional barriers not sufficient
  – Partisan VPs can change dynamically (parties vs factions, too)
  – Difficult to measure ideological distance
• Difficult to define whether VP is “necessary” for a policy change