5.4. Data and research design 5.4.1. Dependent variable
My dependent variable is the existence (or absence) of an electoral reform, and its different types. For an extensive definition and typology of electoral reform, see Chapter 3.176 The identification of a case of electoral reform without specifying the direction in which the rules of the game change is clearly insufficient. On this basis, it is very useful to distinguish between party-centred and candidate-centred reforms, which decrease and increase the amount of
176 Sources: Birch (2003), Birch et al. (2002), Bowler and Grofman (2000), Colomer (2004a), Gallagher and Mitchell (2005a), Golder (2004), Grofman et al. (1999), Grofman and Lijphart (2007 [2002]), the Inter-Parliamentary Union (n.d.), Johnson and Wallack (2010 [2003]), Jones (1995 and 1997), Lijphart (1994), Lundell and Karvonen (2003), Negretto (2009), Payne (2007), Remmer (2008), Renwick (2011), Shugart and Wattenberg (2001), Shvetsova (1999), Wills Otero and Pérez-Liñán (2005), Zovatto and Orozco Henríquez (2008), and electoral laws of each country.
165 candidates’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote, respectively. In general, incentives to cultivate a personal vote can be conceptualized as “the portion of a candidate´s electoral support which originates in his or her personal qualities, qualifications, activities, and record” (Cain et al.
1987: 9). Hence, voters in party-centred systems “vote on the basis of broad policy options rather than on the basis of promised particularistic benefits” (Carey and Shugart 1995: 433). Further details of all the episodes of electoral reform identified are given in the Appendix 1 to this thesis.
5.4.2. Independent variables
The main independent variable is the mean satisfaction with democracy among the citizenry of each country in any given point in time. For the purpose of this chapter, the following question in several surveys is used as an indicator of political discontent at the level we need: “On the whole, are you not at all satisfied, not very satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in [country]?” This question clearly asks for a general evaluation of the performance of democratic institutions. I take the lagged mean (by one year) on a 4-point scale, running from 1 (not at all satisfied) to 4 (very satisfied).177 This measure considerably improves the merits of other measures of political discontent because it is comparable across very diverse country cases.
I also include as explanatory factor the Johannes Moenius and Yuko Kasuya’s Weighted Party System Inflation Score (2004). It builds upon Gary Cox’s measure (1997 and 1999) and provides an estimation of party system inflation on a percentage basis. As Inflation (I) gets larger, the nationalization of party systems is worse. If for instance I is 20, then about 20 percent of the overall size of the national party system can be attributed to different parties obtaining votes in different sub-units of the country, and 80 percent to the average size of the local party systems (Cox 1999a: 155-156). But, given that district size is not a constant in most countries,
177 Sources: The Mannheim Eurobarometer Trend File, 1970-2002 (ICPSR 4357); Eurobarometer 60.1 (ICPSR 3991); Eurobarometer 62.0 (ICPSR 4289); Eurobarometer 63.4 (ICPSR 4564); Eurobarometer 65.2 (ICPSR 20322);
Eurobarometer 68.1 (ICPSR 23368); Eurobarometer 72.4 (ICPSR 30461); Eurobarometer 73.4 (ICPSR 34384);
Central and Eastern Eurobarometer 1990-1997: Trends (ICPSR 4153); Candidate countries eurobarometer 2002-2004; Comparative study of electoral systems modules 1-3; Latinobarometer 1995-2009; 1998, 2001 and 2010 Australia Election Studies; 1993, 2000 and 2008 Canada Election Studies; 1995, 1999 and 2003 Croatia Election Studies; 1999 and 2009 Israel Election Studies; 1999 and 2005 New Zealand Election Studies; and 2009 Norway Election Studies.
166 Moenius and Kasuya (2004: 550) (see also Kasuya and Moenius 2008: 130) introduce a weighted measure that is calculated according to the following formula:
1
where votnat is the total number of votes cast at the national level; voti is the total number of votes cast in district i; ENPnatis the effective number of electoral parties at the national level; and ENP is the effective number of electoral parties in district i.i 178 In mixed member systems, the figures are based on district and total votes in the nominal tier. Figures for France are based on first-round votes.
The third independent variable of interest is electoral volatility, which is measured on the basis of the Pedersen’s Index in the current term (Pedersen 1979). This index is created by adding the net difference (i.e., in absolute terms) in the percentage of votes obtained by each of the parties in a given pair of elections and dividing it by two, and ranges from 0 to 100.179 Scott Mainwaring, Peter Mair and Joshua Tucker kindly shared their data on electoral volatility with me.180
To sum up, I do not examine the long-term effect of any of these variables on electoral reform. In fact, it could be argued that the effect of these explanatory factors occur mostly over a series of two or three elections. However, this issue is far from having been completely demonstrated in the literature. Moreover, the way in which satisfaction with democracy, party system nationalization and electoral volatility could be theorized and calculated to affect the likelihood of electoral system change in the long-term (e.g., averaging their value in the last
178 Sources: Bochsler (2010), Caramani (2000), Constituency Level Electoral Archive (CLEA) from the University of Michigan and the Constituency Level Elections (CLE) dataset from Washington University at St. Louis.
179 To be more precise, electoral volatility is calculated according to the following formula:
TV = ½ Σ | ∆ pi |,
where the variation in vote share for each party is ∆ pi = pi(t + 1) - pi(t), i = 1, ..., n.
180 Ideally, the amount of available voters in Bartolini and Mair’s sense (1990) would have been proxied by some other more precise measure (i.e., the proportion of non-identified citizens with a party). However, the lack of appropriate data in this respect has led me to employ Pedersen’s Index as a second best option.
167 years or elections, respectively) and the limited data availability lead me to exclude this idea from the empirical analysis.
Finally, I also include in the models as an additional independent variable the duration of the current democratic period. A regime qualifies as democratic if all of the following conditions are met: one, direct or indirect election of the effective executive; two, election of the legislature;
three, multiple parties are legally allowed; four, existence of parties outside of the ruling coalition; five, the alternation rule is not violated; and six, at no time during their current tenure in office the incumbent (person, party, military or hierarchy) unconstitutionally closed the lower house of the national legislature nor rewrote the rules in their favour.181
5.4.3. Control variables
I use the following three controls: Henisz’s Political Constraints Index, the real GDP per capita (in 1,000s), and the ideology of the government. For an exhaustive discussion of the rationale behind their inclusion and their exact operationalization, see Section 4.4.3.
5.4.4. Econometric technique
With regard to the econometric technique, the detail does not need to be repeated here, given that it is introduced in section 4.4.4 of the previous chapter.
5.5. Empirical results
Before the multivariate evidence, the effect of democratic experience on electoral reform is evident in the differences between old and young democracies displayed in Table 5.1. Drawing on comparisons across all the democracies included in the sample, the data indicate that the probability of adopting a new electoral system in the intraparty dimension is directly related to the level of democratic experience. The second interesting finding is that the movement towards electoral systems that increase the incentives to cultivate a personal vote described in the literature is very weak and is only observable in old democracies. The number of candidate-centred and party-candidate-centred reforms in young democracies is almost exactly the same. Hence, the
181 Source: Cheibub et al. (2009).
168 Table 5.1. Democratic age and the types of electoral reforms in the intraparty dimension, 1945-2010
Model 1 only measures the effect of the overall satisfaction with democracy, while Models 2-4 introduce sequentially party system nationalization, electoral volatility and democratic age.
Models 5-7 test the validity of the interactive hypotheses, and Figures 5.1-5.4 show the marginal effects of satisfaction with democracy on candidate-centred reforms as electoral volatility changes, on candidate-centred reforms as democracy ages, and on party-centred reforms as democracy ages, respectively. According to Thomas Brambor et al. (2006) and Cindy Kam and Robert Franzese (2007), the effect of an interaction term cannot be evaluated through the p-value shown in the regression table. Thus, it is necessary to graphically illustrate the marginal effect of the overall satisfaction with democracy on the likelihood of electoral reform in the intraparty dimension as the value of the modifying variable changes.
Although the overall lack of satisfaction with democracy among the citizenry is a good predictor that the current electoral system will be replaced by a more party-centred one in the first and second models, this is no longer the case as the public discontent with how democracy works in a given country goes up once we control for either the level of electoral volatility or the length of the current democratic period (Models 3 and 4). In overall terms, the likelihood of
169 Table 5.2. Descriptive statistics
Variable Mean Std. Dev. Min. Max. N
Satisfaction with Democracy 2.505 0.32 1.53 3.17 690 Party System Inflation 17.46 25.46 -0.1 154.2 690
Electoral Volatility 17.97 15.1 0.9 73.08 690
Democratic Age(logged) 3.66 0.94 0 4.94 690
Time 24.6 17.02 1 62 690
Political Constraints Index 0.44 0.13 0.09 0.708 689 Real GDP per Capita(in 1,000s) 19.58 93.68 3.06 59.29 637
Colour of the Government 2.07 0.91 1 3 637
Corruption -0.74 1.02 -2.6 1.03 406
candidate-centred reforms seems to be initially unaffected by the overall satisfaction with democracy. Moreover, the additive models tell us that neither party system inflation, electoral volatility nor democratic age shape politicians’ incentives to adopt electoral system changes in the intraparty dimension.
Next, I explore the role of party system nationalization, electoral volatility, and democratic age more in depth. Specifically, I aim to investigate the extent to which they modify the negative effect of satisfaction with democracy on intraparty electoral reform. I do this by re-estimating Models 2-4 but including as additional independent variables the following interaction terms: Satisfaction with Democracy*Party System Inflation Index, Satisfaction with Democracy*Electoral Volatility Index and Satisfaction with Democracy*Democratic Age. Party system inflation and electoral volatility are effective at changing the negative effect of satisfaction with democracy on candidate-centred and party-centred reforms, respectively.
Finally, the estimates for the last of the interactions suggest that dissatisfaction with democracy only explains party-centred reforms in democracies that have reached a certain age. The first two results indicate that political actors lack incentives to enact candidate-centred and party-centred electoral reforms when satisfaction with democracy increases only if party system inflation at the national level and electoral volatility are low enough, respectively. Moreover, the positive
170 Table 5.3. Determinants of electoral reform in the intraparty dimension: Discrete time duration models/Binary times-series cross-section models
VARIABLES Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7
Candidate-Centred coefficient coefficient coefficient coefficient coefficient coefficient coefficient
Reform (se) (se) (se) (se) (se) (se) (se)
Satisfaction with Democracy -0.802 -1.044 -0.6 -0.749 -2.663* -2.513 0.438
(0.55) (1.162) (0.758) (0.688) (1.366) (1.728) (2.817)
Party System Inflation -0.976 -35.65* -3.726 -3.434
(1.707) (19.87) (2.458) (2.267)
Electoral Volatility 0.014 -0.017 -0.15 -0.017
(0.0207) (0.027) (0.198) (0.026)
Democratic Age(logged) -0.0404 0.603 0.65 1.958
(0.325) (0.518) (0.527) (2.131)
Party System Inflation -0.251 -1.204 -1.212 -2.503**
(0.87) (7.955) (1.207) (1.073)
Electoral Volatility 0.0207 0.051 -0.143 0.0806**
(0.015) (0.035) (0.11) (0.034)
Democratic Age(logged) -0.165 1.193 1.491 29.27**
(0.385) (1.33) (1.514) (12.76)
171
N (Observations) 1,166 679 1,123 1,166 690 658 690
Chi2 23.70*** 31.73*** 30.46*** 25.13*** 61.14*** 51.77*** 120.11***
Pseudo-R2 0.05 0.10 0.04 0.05 0.13 0.14 0.201
Note: The dependent variable takes value 0 if there is no reform or the reform that takes place has an ambiguous impact in the intraparty dimension; 1 if it is supposed to produce more incentives to cultivate a personal vote; and 2 if it is supposed to produce fewer incentives to cultivate a personal vote. Cluster standard errors by terms in parentheses. * Significant at 0.10; ** Significant at 0.05; *** Significant at 0.01 (two-tailed tests). The counter of stability years and the cubic splines are included but not shown.
estimates of the interaction terms also suggest that public satisfaction towards politics could lead to intraparty reforms as party system nationalization and/or electoral volatility increases.
By contrast, the results regarding democratic age are puzzling and deserve future research. In this regard, the evidence provided in Model 7 suggests, first of all, that satisfaction with democracy increases the likelihood of movements towards more party-centeredness in new democracies (i.e., when democratic age is equal to zero the coefficient of Satisfaction with Democracy is positive and statistically significant at the 5 percent level). However, this positive effect declines as the number of years under democracy increases. In fact, as will be seen below, satisfaction with democracy stops having a statistically significant positive effect on the likelihood of party-centred reforms beyond a particular democratic age. This indicates that an unconditional model specification that did not take account of the modifying impact of the number of democratic years would misleadingly suggest that a citizenry that is dissatisfied in overall terms with how democracy works in a given country always finds itself facing a increase in the likelihood of a party-centred reform.
Simulations using the CLARIFY software (King et al. 2000; Tomz et al. 2003) and reported in Figures 5.1-5.4 facilitate the interpretation of the marginal effect of the main independent variables. While the information provided in Table 5.3 is informative, it remains somewhat limited. First of all, since these are in the end multinomial logistic regressions, the magnitude of the effects cannot be assessed just by looking at the coefficients. Second, the results in the interactive models do not indicate after all whether satisfaction with democracy has a statistically significant impact on electoral reform when the value of the modifying independent variables is greater than zero. As a result, I graphically illustrate the probability of a
172 Figure 5.1. Probability of electoral reform in the intraparty dimension as satisfaction with democracy changes
Note: Results are derived from Table 5.3, Model 1.
given electoral reform to happen according to the variation of satisfaction with democracy (Figure 5.1), and the marginal effect of the overall level of satisfaction with democracy on the likelihood of institutional change across the observed range of party system nationalization, electoral volatility and democratic age (Figures 5.2-5.4). The solid sloping line in this second group of figures indicates how the marginal effect of satisfaction with democracy changes as the value of the conditioning independent variable increases. One can see whether this effect is statistically significant by considering the two-tailed 90% confidence intervals that are drawn around it (i.e., the dashed lines). The effect of satisfaction with democracy is distinguishable from zero whenever the upper and lower bounds of the confidence interval are both above (or below) the zero line. Superimposed over the marginal effect plot is a histogram portraying the frequency distribution for the modifying variables (i.e., party system nationalization, electoral
173 Figure 5.2. Marginal effect of satisfaction with democracy on electoral reform in the intraparty dimension as party system inflation changes
Note: Results are derived from Table 5.3, Model 5.
volatility and democratic age). In the four figures, the observation is at the mean of all other variables included in the model.
The first important conclusion derived from the probability calculus plotted in Figure 5.1, based on Model 1, is that satisfaction with democracy shows a stronger effect on the likelihood of party-centred reforms than when predicting candidate-centred reforms. This is so because of the lack of statistical significance of the satisfaction with democracy term regarding the occurrence of candidate-centred reforms reported in Table 5.3, showing once again an asymmetric effect of my main explanatory factor on the occurrence of different types of electoral reform.
174 Figure 5.3. Marginal effect of satisfaction with democracy on electoral reform in the intraparty dimension as electoral volatility changes
Note: Results are derived from Table 5.3, Model 6.
Figure 5.2, based on Model 5, indicates that satisfaction with democracy can decrease the likelihood of candidate-centred reforms as long as we do not move beyond a given threshold of party system inflation –Moenius and Kasuya’s Index <= 0.1.182 Hence, this figure provides somewhat weak evidence in support of Hypothesis 2. This last result is perhaps not too surprising given that the interaction between satisfaction with democracy and party system inflation was positive and statistically significant in Model 5 when predicting candidate-centred reforms. Political parties may simply have incentives to keep the same electoral system when public satisfaction towards the way democracy works increases in contexts of low party system inflation, thereby bringing about these results.
182 I am grateful to Matt Golder for kindly providing in his web page the STATA codes to graph the marginal effects of the multiplicative models used in Brambor et al. (2006).
175 Figure 5.4. Marginal effect of satisfaction with democracy on electoral reform in the
intraparty dimension as democracy ages
Note: Results are derived from Table 5.3, Model 7.
As predicted by the third hypothesis, satisfaction with democracy has a negative effect on party-centred reforms when electoral volatility is low (Figure 5.3). However, this effect disappears as party competition becomes more instable. In fact, satisfaction with democracy stops having a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of institutional change once Pedersen’s Volatility Index is more than 15. Roughly more than 50 per cent of legislative elections in the sample have produced a volatility lower than this. Hence, the results presented here clearly indicate that satisfaction with democracy only has a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of party-centred reform when volatility is low. By contrast, it is interesting to note that this variable does actually have no impact if the value of the volatility index is sufficiently high. Moreover, this variable fails to have any distinguishable effect from zero on movements
176 towards more candidate-centeredness (i.e., those reforms that increase candidates’ incentives to cultivate a personal vote).
Finally, what about the effect of democratic age? Figure 5.4 plots the marginal effects of the overall satisfaction with democracy on reforms in the intraparty dimension as democracies get older. On the one hand, it should be clear that satisfaction with democracy does not have any effect on the likelihood of observing a candidate-centred reform in the intraparty dimension when the democracy is young. However, this null effect becomes negative and statistically significant as the number of years under democracy increases. Satisfaction with democracy starts having a noticeable negative effect on the likelihood of adopting a candidate-centred reform once the level of democratic experience becomes sufficiently high. On the other hand, Figure 5.4 shows that satisfaction with democracy will also decrease the likelihood of party-centred reforms after 70 years of democracy. However, contrary to my expectations, satisfaction with democracy has a strong positive effect on the likelihood of party-centred reforms in young democracies.
Hence, there is some evidence to support the hypothesis that the likelihood of popular electoral reforms, as measured by electoral system changes in the intraparty dimension when satisfaction with democracy is low, significantly increases once the country goes beyond the first decades of democracy.
As robustness checks, it needs to be noticed that the findings regarding the interactive hypotheses remain very similar (although a bit weaker) when a bunch of control variables are included in the models (see Table A3.1 in Appendix 3). By contrast, the significant coefficient regarding the interaction between satisfaction with democracy and party system inflation on the likelihood of candidate-centred reforms disappears when “extreme” electoral systems are excluded from the analyses (see Table A3.2 in Appendix 3). Single non-transferable vote systems and closed-list PR systems with multi-member districts are deemed to be “extreme”.183 However, satisfaction with democracy has for the first time a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of candidate-centred reforms in the bivariate regression (Model 1).
183 More specifically, the cases excluded from this part of the analysis are: Japan (before 1996), Colombia (before 2006), Argentina, Bolivia (before 1997), Bulgaria (except for 1990 and 2009), Costa Rica, Dominican Republic (before 2002), Ecuador (before 1998), El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras (before 2005), Israel, Moldova, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Portugal, Romania (before 2008), Spain, Ukraine (between 1998 and 2006), and Venezuela (before 1993).