Election threshold

Abstract: This book is a political history of democratic elections in Poland from the first fully competitive parliamentary elections in 1991 to the unexpected, most recent election in 2007. Until now, there has been no equivalent study covering similar developments in this, or any other, post-communist country; this book fills the gap and provides a detailed electoral perspective on the trajectory of political development in the context of post-authoritarian change. It also provides an invaluable account of the evolution of electoral processes and institution-building in the context of democratic regime development. The major themes of the book centre on the complex, problematic development of Poland’s political parties and the parties’ failure to gain public support and win the confidence of the electorate. Frances Millard examines the failure of Polish elites; the lack of a stable party system and how elections have had a destabilizing effect, and she argues that the interaction of leadership volatility, party volatility, and electoral volatility have created uncertainty and undermined political parties as effective vehicles of representation. Poland is a large and important country, worthy of study in its own right, but equally many of the problems experienced are not unique to Poland; so this book also constitutes a comparative benchmark for analysis of democratic developments elsewhere.

Abstract: In contrast to many other countries, the Finnish open-list proportional representation (PR) system with its mandatory preferential voting provides an opportunity to study gender-based voting empirically. Using the 2007 Finnish national election study, the article presents an analysis of the grounds for same-gender voting, including motivations related to descriptive and substantive dimensions of representation. None of the motivations is able to account men's higher propensity to vote for a candidate of their own gender. The motivations linked to securing the descriptive and substantive representation of one's own gender in politics play a more decisive part on women's vote choice of same-gender candidates. Voting for a same-gender candidate is connected to younger age among both women and men, while the propensity to vote for female candidates increases with support for the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Swedish People's Party. Finally, gender, party choice, and descriptive and substantive motivations seem to be related to gender-based voting for both parliamentary and presidential elections.

Abstract: In an election of the Chamber of Deputies, Italians vote for a party list, but may additionally select up to three or four particular candidates within it. While the party votes determine the allocation of seats among parties, the individual preference votes determine which candidates will be elected. Only about 35 percent of the possible preference votes are cast, but they play an important role in parliamentary renewal. It is shown that the ability of the parties to determine which candidate will be elected by structuring their lists is substantially less than often suggested.

Abstract: The Single Transferable Vote, or STV, is often seen in very positive terms by electoral reformers, yet relatively little is known about its actual workings beyond one or two specific settings. This book gathers leading experts on STV from around the world to discuss the examples they know best, and represents the first systematic cross-national study of STV. Furthermore, the contributors collectively build an understanding of electoral systems as institutions embedded within a wider social and political context, and begins to explain the gap between analytical models and the actual practice of elections in Australia, Ireland, and Malta. Rather than seeing electoral institutions in purely mechanical terms, the collection of essays in this volume shows that the effects of electoral system may be contingent rather than automatic. On the basis of solid empirical evidence, the volume argues that the same political system can, in fact, have quite different effects under different conditions.Contributors to the volume are Shaun Bowler, David Farrell, Michael Gallagher, Bernard Grofman, Wolfgang Hirczy, Colin Hughes, J. Paul Johnston, Michael Laver, Malcom Mackerras, Michael Maley, Michael Marsh, Ian McAllister, and Ben Reilly.Shaun Bowler is Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside. Bernard Grofman is Professor of Political Science, University of California, Irvine.