Electoral Systems, Parties, and Representation

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel brings together four new papers at the frontier of research on electoral systems and the dynamics of competitiveness and representation within parties. In keeping with this year’s theme of “Democracy: Retrenchment, Renovation, and Reimagination,” the papers explore various aspects of how electoral systems shape democracy and party organization, including the motivations behind historical reforms and how alternative voting rules influence competition and the representation of political minorities.

In the first paper, Leonardo Carella and Klaudia Wegschaider consider the role of parties and elites in the historical decisions of European democracies to adopt (or not) proportional representation, using process-tracing to argue for a “party-building” account of reforms. Next, Gustavo Guajardo and Lucia Motolinia focus on how parties respond to district competitiveness in nominating women candidates for office, using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that leverages the introduction of a gender parity law and data from Mexican states.

The second set of papers focuses on the dynamics of competitiveness and representation under ranked-choice voting (RCV). Yuki Atsusaka, Agustín Vallejo, and Silviya Valeva provide the first large-scale computation and analysis of the margin of victory under RCV, leveraging cast vote records from 444 RCV elections in the U.S. Finally, Karen Nershi and Selina Hofstetter estimate the impact of RCV on the electoral chances of women and racial minorities using difference-in-differences design and data from California.

Together, these four studies bridge comparative politics and American politics––with data from national and local elections in Europe, Latin America, and the United States––and showcase diverse research designs at the cutting-edge of research on electoral systems, intraparty power dynamics, and representation. Presenters also represent different career stages and come from around the world. Tine Paulsen and Jon Fiva will provide expert discussant comments, and Daniel M. Smith will chair the panel.

Sub Unit

• Division 34: Representation and Electoral Systems

Individual Presentations

• Intra-party Sources of Electoral Reform in the “PR Wave” - Leonardo Carella, University of Oxford; Klaudia Wegschaider, Yale University, University of Vienna

• Candidate Gender Selection and Competitiveness - Gustavo A Guajardo, Rice University; Lucia Motolinia, Washington University in St Louis

• The Margin of Victory in Ranked-Choice Voting - Yuki Atsusaka, University of Houston; Agustin Vallejo, University of Houston; Silviya Valeva, Saint Joseph's University

• Ranked Choice Voting and Minority Candidates’ Electoral Chances - Karen Nershi, Middlebury Institute of International Studies; Selina Hofstetter, Tecnológico de Monterrey

Chair

• Daniel M. Smith University of Pennsylvania

Discussants

• Tine N Paulsen University of Southern California

• Jon H. Fiva Norwegian Business School