Elections and Democracy: Representation and Accountability

301 Pages·2014·1.81 MB·English

by  Jacques Thomassen

Elections and Democracy
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative program of
research among election study teams from around the world. Participating coun-
tries include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies.
The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district, and
macro variables. The studies are then merged into a single, free, public dataset for
use in comparative study and cross-level analysis.
The set of volumes in this series is based on these CSES modules, and the vol-
umes address the key theoretical issues and empirical debates in the study of elec-
tions and representative democracy. Some of the volumes will be organized
around the theoretical issues raised by a particular module, while others will be
thematic in their focus. Taken together, these volumes will provide a rigorous and
ongoing contribution to understanding the expansion and consolidation of
democracy in the twenty-first century.
Further information on CSES activities can be obtained from:
CSES Secretariat
Center for Political Studies
Institute for Social Research
The University of Michigan
426 Thompson Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 481042321
USA
CSES web site: http://www.cses.org
Elections and Democracy
Representation and Accountability
Edited by Jacques Thomassen
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1
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Series Editors’ Preface
Few topics generate as much interest among observers and practitioners of
politics as the quality of the democratic process. The expansion of democracy
during the twentieth century, which accelerated rapidly after the collapse of
communism in 1990, has meant that a majority of the world’s countries are
now electoral democracies. But not all democracies can be considered equal;
they differ widely in terms of institutional arrangements and practices and in
the levels of public support that they attract. It is the public support for
democracy that the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project is
designed to investigate. This volume series presents the key findings from this
major research project that commenced in 1994.
The first CSES volume, edited by Hans-Dieter Klingemann, has document-
ed much of its historical background, the basic principles of data collection,
and provided sample chapters showing many of the analytical possibilities of
this unique data collection. This volume is based on the first module of sur-
vey questions in the CSES, completed in 2001, which examines the interac-
tion of political institutions and political behaviour regarding attitudes
towards the democratic regime, the political authorities, and the quality of
the political process generally.
As with the first volume, the second one, edited by Russell J. Dalton and
Christopher J. Anderson, addresses the fundamental question of whether the
institutional structure of elections affects the nature of the public’s choices.
The first question looks at explanations of turnout, and how institutions
structure the likelihood of voting. The second question discusses determi-
nants of individual electoral behaviour and examines the role of institutions
in shaping what kinds of political information voters acquire.
The third volume in the series, by Russell J. Dalton, David Farrell, and Ian
McAllister, describes and explains the role of political parties in election cam-
paigns, in forming the electoral choice of voters and their role in government
and opposition. The theoretical arguments relate to the logic of the responsi-
ble parties model. It is the first study that tests these ideas using a comprehen-
sive and comparative design. It demonstrates the importance of the left–right
schema to enable political positioning, political communication, and politi-
cal representation.
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Series Editors’ Preface
Elections and Democracy: Representation and Accountability, edited by Jacques
Thomassen, constitutes the fourth volume of the series. Inspired by Arend
Lijphart’s theory, the analyses contrast voting and elections in countries of
majoritarian Westminster and consensus democracies. The volume asks the
question: do consensus models of democracy serve the interests of their citi-
zens better than majoritarian systems? The answer is that formal institutions
such as the electoral system matter less than might be expected. What does
matter is the characteristics of the party system, such as the level of polariza-
tion and the clarity of accountability.
Jack Vowles and Georgios Xezonakis have edited the fifth volume, to follow
soon. The authors ask how globalization affects democratic mass politics, and
in particular the political attitudes and behaviour of ordinary citizens and the
policies of political parties—not just governments.
All of the books in the series raise key questions for extending our under-
standing of individual citizen behaviour. Most studies of voting behaviour
have been based on single country studies, often covering just a single elec-
tion. By comparing a wide range of countries, for the first time the CSES pro-
ject enables the institutional environment to be brought into the equation,
enhancing our understanding of the complex relationship between individ-
ual choice and institutional context. Indeed, such analyses were impossible
until the CSES was established.
All of the CSES data are freely available and can be downloaded from our
website <http://www.cses.org>.
Hans-Dieter Klingemann
Ian McAllister
Series Editors
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Preface
This book is based upon the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). The
most innovative characteristic of CSES is that it collects data from a great
number of countries both at the country level and at the level of individual
citizens. This makes it possible to study the effects of different institutional
arrangements on people’s political behaviour and their perception and evalu-
ation of the democratic process. It hardly needs to be argued how important
it is to know what these effects are. There is a growing body of literature argu-
ing that elections are no longer an effective instrument of democracy as they
are failing to connect the policy preferences of the electorate to government
policy. Also, people allegedly are losing their confidence in politicians, politi-
cal parties, and political institutions. Against this background, trying to find
out which kind of political-institutional arrangements serve electoral democ-
racy best and which institutions are better able to sustain people’s confidence
in them is like a quest for the Holy Grail.
Of course, the political institutions of different countries can differ in many
ways. Fortunately, there is some structure in these differences. Following
Lijphart’s seminal work Patterns of Democracy we make a distinction between
majoritarian and consensus models of democracy. These models are the embod-
iment in institutional structures of two different views of democracy. In the
majoritarian view the single most important function of an election is the
selection of a government. The concentration of power in the hands of an
elected majority government makes it accountable to the people. In consen-
sus models of democracy, or proportional systems, the major function of elec-
tions is to elect the members of parliament who together should be as
representative as possible of the electorate as a whole. The criterion for the
democratic quality of the system is how representative parliament really is.
This book explores how far these different views and their embodiment in
institutional structures influence vote choice, political participation, and sat-
isfaction with the functioning of democracy.
Unfortunately, we did not find the Holy Grail. Our major finding is that
formal political institutions and in particular the distinction between a con-
sensus and a majoritarian system of democracy are far less relevant for peo-
ple’s political behaviour and their perceptions and evaluations of the process
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Preface
of democracy than often presumed. Rather than formal political institutions
like the electoral system it seems to be the characteristics of the party system
like polarization and the clarity of responsibility that really matter. This
might be a disappointing message for institutional engineers: whatever the
cure for a poorly functioning democracy or people’s dissatisfaction with the
functioning of democracy is, a makeover of political institutions in all likeli-
hood will not make much of a difference. It is politics that really matters.
This book is the fourth volume in a series of books based on CSES. CSES has
evolved into a collaborative, cross-national programme of electoral behav-
iour among over 60 election study teams from around the world. The first
ideas for bringing together the principal investigators of national election
studies in order to develop a comparative programme of election studies were
developed in the context of the International Consortium for Research into
Elections and Representative Democracy (ICORE) which was founded at the
ECPR Research Sessions in Rimini in 1989. This at first was an organization of
the established election studies in Western Europe, which decided to focus on
the development of a longitudinal common database of European Election
Studies at the Central Archive (now GESIS) in Cologne. Later on this led to
the publication of The European Voter. But ICORE initially did not develop any
plans for a worldwide comparative programme of election studies. It was Ste-
ven Rosenstone, the then principal investigator of the American National
Election Studies who first made the ANES member of ICORE in 1993 and then
immediately took the initiative for CSES. The idea for it was born in the con-
text of ANES, but Steven Rosenstone wanted it to be organized under the
umbrella of ICORE, being afraid that researchers in many parts of the world
would otherwise shy away from what they might consider as American intel-
lectual imperialism. That concern was totally unjustified. Being affiliated
with the famous election studies at the University of Michigan was an impor-
tant incentive for many of them to join. Without Steven Rosenstone CSES
would not have seen the light of day, at least not at any time soon. Co-
directing the first planning committee with him was an adventurous but
pleasant experience.
The authors of this book are indebted to many people and institutions.
First, we are standing on the shoulders of giants in our discipline, Arend
Lijphart’s in particular. His distinction between majoritarian and consensus
models of democracy is the major independent variable in this book. His
measures were updated and somewhat amended for the countries participat-
ing in CSES by Julian Bernauer, Nathalie Giger, and Adrian Vatter. The second
module of CSES on which this book is almost entirely based was developed by
the second planning committee under the benevolent leadership of Phil
Shively. Dave Howell of the CSES secretariat has been supportive throughout
the project. The Institute of Governance Studies at the University of Twente
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Preface
hosted and funded a research meeting at which first drafts of the chapters
were discussed. Janine van der Woude transformed the chapter drafts into a
single style manuscript. Dominic Byatt of Oxford University Press and the
series editors, Ian McAllister and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, have been sup-
portive and patient from the very beginning. As always, the staff at OUP did
a wonderful job preparing the final manuscript. I’m especially grateful to my
co-authors for their patience and perseverance. They never complained about
yet another revision, at least not in my presence.
Enschede, February 2014
Jacques Thomassen
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