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A conference paper about European politics and society is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the institutional multiplicity of democracy, and the choice of fair elections through the comparison of two electoral episodes in Portuguese history.

Popular participation in the electoral process plays a very important role in enhancing the legitimacy of democratic regimes. However, democracies differ widely in the degree to which voters exercise their franchise. This paper examines the effect of political institutions on electoral turnout in the new democracies of East Central Europe (Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia). The paper considers a number of hypotheses. First, electoral turnout should increase with the proportionality of the electoral system (Blais and Carty 1990, Cox 1999). Second, electoral turnout should be greater where concurrent elections are held to multiple political offices, such as a strong presidency or a second chamber. Conversely, nonconcurring elections should reduce voter turnout. Finally, the party system may also have an impact both on electoral turnout as well as the magnitude of the effect of political institutions: the more competitive the party system, the higher the turnout and the stronger the impact of the political institutions are expected to be. The selection of the four cases from a well defined geo-political region allows to control the comparison for a number of sociological and historical variables. At the same time, the institutional diversity among the four new democracies provides for an excellent laboratory to test the above hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research on turnout in European parliamentary elections has focused on explaining why turnout in these elections is low. Explanations for low turnout include the second order nature of EP elections, negative attitudes about European integration, negative news and lack of mobilization. In this paper, we examine the role of television news coverage in mobilizing voters during the 1999 EP election campaign. The effect of the tone of coverage depends on how visible the campaign is. When the campaign is most visible, negative news can demobilize voters, but campaign news is less visible, negative news has the potential to mobilize electorates. We also find that the mobilizing effects of campaign visibility news are conditioned by levels of attention to political news. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature that has sought to explain the affects of the economy on voting is extensive. However, these findings are for the most part based on Western democratic models. Consequently, political scientists have failed to take advantage of the emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe to see if these models are robust. Given the changes over the past decade, this paper tests the extent to which extant theories can be used to explain election outcomes in this region of the world. In this particular study, Polish monthly public opinion data is utilized to determine more accurately whom the electorate holds accountable during periods of economic stress in semi-presidential systems?the president or the prime minister. The findings in this paper suggest that a strong determinant of electoral accountability and the allocation of blame are dependent upon whether the government is unified or divided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament (EP) is heralded as one of the most gender-equal elected bodies in the world. One the most important achievements of representation in the EP is the more egalitarian representation of women when compared to the member states' lower houses. Several studies have found that the use of proportional representation (PR) in elections for the EP holds a large part of the explanation (Vallance and Davis, 1986, Freedman, 2002, Kantola, 2010). However our evidence suggests that despite the adoption of PR for all EP elections, electoral rules have only very limited impact on descriptive representation in the EP, which is in stark contrast to what can be observed in the composition of lower houses across Europe (Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger, Forthcoming). In this paper, we investigate the effect of party nomination structures on women's representation in the context of EP elections. Our findings suggest that the inclusiveness of the selectorates in the early stages of candidate selection processes is one of the key determinants of representativeness of lists in terms of their gender composition. Moreover, we find that neither territorial centralization nor the inclusiveness of the selectorate in the later stages of candidate selection play a significant role: They key to the puzzle therefore lies in the composition of the initial pool of potential candidates and those who nominated it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a complete analysis of the online presence (website and social media activity) of those 163 incumbent political parties competing in the 28 member-countries during last 2014 European Parliament Elections. It cross-nationally examines the main functions and intensity of their overall activity by accounting for possible political and institutional explanations. The findings show that while there are significant differences across countries confirming the constraining effect of national institutions, the size or the government/opposition condition do not affect parties' individual campaign intensity, confirming the existence of observable equalization tendencies in the context of this well-known second-order election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the electoral consequences of catch-all parties' shifts to the political center. Although the move to the center of many European Social Democratic parties in the 1990s was first rewarded with victories, these parties have since faced a remarkable electoral drought that is surprisingly carrying through the current "hard times" of the international economic order. What explains the seeming inability of these catch-all parties to cast a wider, but sustainable net for voters? This inability is particularly puzzling given that Social Democratic parties should be well positioned to address the current economic troubles. This development challenges standard explanations that apply variations of the Downesian spatial model. It is necessary to add a temporal dimension to explain when and why the broadening of party platforms fails and produces counterintuitive electoral outcomes. Of particular concern in explaining the outcomes of catch-all strategies are the existence of viable parties to the left of the catch-all party on the left-right continuum and the electoral institutions of a given country. Scholars of European political parties have called into question the adequacy of standard left/right indicators as measures of party competition, suggesting that a multi-dimensional space is necessary to accurately depict contemporary European politics. Without dismissing other factors, we stress the enduring relevance of material-based competition in today's European politics, a competition still well captured by left/right measurements. Our empirical study analyzes the votes of individuals in six European countries in the past three decades in comparison to an individual's distance from Social Democratic catch-all parties' left-right position. The individual level allows us to observe current votes as they relate to previous votes, which is an essential part of our argument, but necessarily omitted from studies using aggregate vote shares. Our findings indicate that current analyses of the electoral effects of strategy shifts are misleading inasmuch as they fail to account for individual-level motivations for vote switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects that a country's electoral rules have on the electoral success of extreme right parties (ERPs) in Europe using a new dataset that includes election returns compiled at the electoral-district level for 18 European countries from 1980-2004 (N=12,050). Much of the extant research on the electoral success of extreme right parties suffers from at least two methodological problems. The first involves the selection of cases and occurs when only those national elections that were contested by ERPs are included in the cross-national analysis. The second major problem occurs in analyses that rely on aggregate-level statistics that conceal data censoring at a lower geographic level. The correct specification allows the causal factors that determine whether an extreme right party contests an election to differ from those that influence its share of the vote if it does appear on the ballot, and recognizes that ERPs' decisions about when and where to field candidates are observable at the level of the election district. I argue that the appropriate way to model this process is as a Heckman sample selection model estimated at the electoral district level. The results of this model indicate that a country's electoral system has a strong effect on the electoral success of ERPs: the likelihood an ERP will contest an electoral district and their expected vote share are both higher in countries with more proportional electoral systems. At the same time, this effect is conditioned on the stringency of a country's ballot access requirements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electoral rise of anti-establishment parties (AEPs) in recent East European elections raises some puzzling questions about electoral dynamics in new democracies: Why did the healthy power alternation of the mid 1990s not result in party system consolidation, as suggested by some earlier studies (Olson 1998, Miller et al 2000, Tavits 2005) but instead give way to a much more chaotic environment in which established mainstream political parties lost considerable ground to new political formations based on personalist and populist appeals? Why did this reversal happen during a period of economic recovery, remarkable Western integration progress and a broad acceptance of electoral democracy as the only game in town in Eastern Europe?This paper suggests that these electoral dynamics can be explained by focusing on the interaction between protest voting and election sequence. While protest voting to punish unpopular incumbents has been a widespread but understudied practice since the collapse of communism, the beneficiaries of these protest votes have changed in recent elections. Whereas in the first two generations of post-communist elections, disgruntled voters could opt for untried mainstream alternatives, in third-generation elections (defined as elections taking place after at least two different ideological camps have governed in the post-communist period) voters had much fewer untried mainstream alternatives, and therefore opted in greater number for anti-establishment parties. This explanation receives strong empirical support from statistical tests using data from 76 parliamentary elections in 14 East European countries from 1990-2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the collapse of communist in Central and Eastern Europe, political actors in several transitioning democracies became temporary electoral engineers, either adopting election systems commonly used in established democracies (e.g. Latvia, Estonia, and Romania) or producing hybrid systems with a combination of plurality and proportional representation rules (e.g. Lithuania and Hungary). The effect of the new election rules on voter behavior was unpredictable and, at times, surprising. As a result, several of these countries made subsequent changes to their electoral systems, from modifications of the electoral formula in proportional representation systems (i.e. Poland changed from Sainte-Laguë to D'Hondt in 2005) to a new electoral system (i.e. Ukraine changed from a mixed electoral system a proportional representation system in 2006). However, elites and political parties enacted several of these changes with little information on how voters would behave following the implementation of the new rules. One important factor to consider is whether voters learn to coordinate their votes strategically to the degree seen in established democracies. This is important for what Cox (1997) calls the equilibrium of the party system and is evidence of party system institutionalization. This paper attempts to test for learning effects on the strategic coordination of voters using an experimental technique and election results from Germany. The focus is on a pilot experiment from Germany analyzing strategic coordination of voters under three electoral rules: plurality, plurality runoff and majority runoff. The theoretical argument is straightforward: the frequency of strategic coordination will increase with repeated exposure to new voting rules. The results of the pilot experiment are preliminary and insignificant, thus suggesting further refinements to the experiment design and procedure. Future iterations of the experiment and supplemental empirical analysis will reveal the probability and frequency at which voters "learn" to behave strategically and have the potential to inform electoral engineers of the consequences of different voting arrangements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control over government portfolios is the key to power over policy and patronage and is commonly understood to lie with parties in European democracies. But since the democratic transitions of the 1990s, Europe has had nearly equal numbers of parliamentary and semi-presidential regimes, and there is evidence that the ability of parties to control government posts in these two regime types differs. As yet, political scientists have a limited understanding of the scale and causes of these differences. In this paper we propose a principal-agent theoretical explanation. We examine our account using data on 28 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies in Europe, and show that differences in party control over government portfolios cannot be understood without reference to the underlying principal-agent relationships between voters, elected politicians, and governments, that characterize Europe's semi-presidential and parliamentary regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I evaluate whether regional citizens are more likely to support greater autonomy because they find the idea of an independent region within Europe to be more viable. The devolution referenda in Scotland in two distinct time periods provide a quasi-experiment in which to explore this observable implication. In the first referendum, a slight majority voted for devolution but the margin was not enough to overcome the electoral threshold set by Westminster. In 1997, though, the result was overwhelmingly pro-devolution. I argue that the fear of independence, coupled with a preference ordering where the second choice for devolution supporters was the status quo, explained the strategic voting behavior in 1979. Increased support for independence, as both a first and second option for Scots, fuelled the dramatic increase in sincere voting for devolution in 1997. I also presented evidence to support the contention that European integration, especially the Scottish National Party's successful framing of the EU as a mechanism to reduce the costs of secession, contributed to this increase in support for independence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how voters decide in referendums on European integration. More specifically, it investigates how political information influences voting behavior. It argues that political information conditions the way in which people make decisions in referendums by altering the impact of the decision criteria that voters use. The impact of political information is examined not only at the individual, but also at the contextual level. It is hypothesized that variations in the context of the referendum - the intensity of the campaign - produce differences in the way in which citizens act in referendums. As the intensity of the referendum campaign increases, more information is available to citizens and voters will rely more heavily on sophisticated criteria, such as attitudes and issue positions on the EU. While the informational context influences voting patterns, individuals also vary in their awareness of politics. It is argued that people with high levels of political awareness receive more information, and consequently rely more on their own attitudes and less on elite cues when deciding. These theoretical propositions are tested by analyzing survey data from European referendums in Denmark, Ireland and Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do mixed electoral systems offer ethnic minority groups a better chance for representation in the institutions of power? While previous research has shown that minorities are better represented under proportional representation (PR) than under majority/plurality systems, little is known about the propensity of mixed election systems to provide ethnic groups with access to power. This paper examines the effects of mixed election systems on group political representation in post-Communist Europe through recognizing its various dimensions and focusing on fairness and election of ethnic minority deputies. I test two hypotheses: 1) a general institutional hypothesis, according to which minorities will elect fewer representatives under mixed systems than under PR; and 2) a demographic hypothesis specifying that if these groups are geographically concentrated, they will benefit from a combined system more than if pure PR is used. For the empirical test, data from fifteen East European states with PR and mixed election systems are analyzed using descriptive statistics, and multivariate regression. I find that mixed election systems produce intermediate levels of representation of group interests, and that under specific circumstances they have the potential to overrepresent ethnic minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the conditions under which nationalist political parties in Eastern and Western Europe are able to attract meaningful electoral support in national elections. Our aim is to explore how certain objective political, social, and economic conditions that inform voters’ subjective appraisals of nationalist parties’ claims and promises drive overall electoral results. As a second order concern, we are interested in understanding if and how the dynamics of nationalist political support differ substantively as we move geographically from Western to Eastern Europe. Here, we explore whether the same kinds of variables matter for nationalist parties in the West and the East and, if so, whether these variables play the same kind of role or have the same degree of importance for countries with quite dissimilar economic conditions, political legacies, social experiences, and historical memories. We argue that a full account of the determinants of nationalist voting must take into account this breadth in nationalist political parties and the diversity of country settings; we employ two-rounds of pooled regression analysis for more than 160 political parties in 89 national election cycles in 33 countries across Eastern and Western Europe. Our preliminary findings indicate economic, institutional, social and historical variables have significant effects across Europe, but in different ways. Our findings suggest that nationalist political parties in Eastern and Western Europe do well under different conditions, and that the dynamics of nationalist electoral support are, in some aspects, geographically bounded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining valence dimensions of candidate evaluation in American congressional elections has found that characteristics such as "competence" and "integrity" have an impact on voter decision-making, and thus, electoral outcomes. Here, we examine whether such characteristics can also be used to help us understand aggregate voter behaviour and election outcomes in Western European elections. Building from Clark's research on valence and election outcomes (Clark 2009), and using original data compiled from Keesing's Record of World Events, we examine which character-based valence attributes have the greatest electoral impact - competence, integrity, or unity. The results of our analyses should be of interest to scholars of voter behaviour, electoral, and party competition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines the representation of politics at different levels of political decision making in Europe. A comparison between regional and statewide elections is provided. The interaction between the regional and the national levels of political decision making is explored.

Has European integration affected national electoral politics beyond the margins? Experts describe its main impact as empowerment of radical voices. Mainstream parties avoid EU issues that divide their left/right-based organizations; extreme parties attack the EU and the center's silence. But EU issues also generate important dynamics inside mainstream parties. We theorize cross-cutting EU issues as an example of a general model of cross-issue interference. Two mechanisms of interference alter party strategizing. When electoral victories have strengthened leaders, cross-cutting issues produce muffling of more recently-emerged issues. Divided parties cling to left/right issues and suppress fights over integration. But interference also runs the other way. When leadership is weak, muffling fails, and challengers aggravate dissent. Internal fights on newer (EU) issues affect the selection of leadership on older (left/right) issues, generating displacement from electorally-competitive positions. We document these mechanisms and their generality with mixed methods: pan-European panel analysis and interview-based accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on elections in mixed regimes in postcommunist Europe and Eurasia from 1996 to 2005. It states that democratic oppositions do win sometimes inspite of efforts of authoritarian leaders to stop them. It mentions diffusion, which is an approach to defeat dictators with the help of elections. It discusses defeat of dictators in elections which began in countries like Serbia and Romania.

Between 2002 and 2003, a European constitutional convention drafted a constitution for Europe. Two actors in particular influenced the negotiations in the Convention: the President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and the Praesidium. We first examine how the Praesidium was able to structure the agenda inside the Convention due to the absence of voting on amendments. The Praesidium was able to conclude every particular proposal-amendment round by accepting, rejecting or amending proposed amendments. We then analyze cases which show how the Presidency was able to control the agenda of the Convention. By investigating institutions, we demonstrate that the Presidency used several tricks to manipulate the result. We find evidence that (1) the Presidency filtered proposed amendments, considering only some of them, (2) it determined consensus in the Convention without saying how many members approve of a particular measure, and (3) it juxtaposed proposed amendments and concluded that the Praesidium proposal constitutes the best compromise.The second part of our agenda-setting analysis complements these cases by examining the timing of the Praesidium proposals. Analyzing the entire set of amendments in the Convention, we show that the Praesidium structured the agenda by presenting its draft proposals in multiple sequences. While the Praesidium could have proposed the entire constitution at once, such an iterated procedure resulted in fewer amendments over time. This suggests that timing was used for strategic reasons by the Praesidium. We support our hypothesis by showing that (1) some of the most important issues were presented at the end of the Convention, and that (2) the actual timing of proposals does not correlate highly with either the initial timetable or with the final constitution. We conclude that in the absence of majority or unanimity voting, agenda control mattered and thus the possibility of political manipulation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the effect of electoral systems on citizens' likelihood of behaving either as the delegate model or the psychological model predicts in five European countries. In all European countries, key findings suggest that attitudes toward political parties are influenced both by citizens' established orientations and by the alignment of party positions with citizens' positions. In the context of a representation system, citizens are more likely to have knowledge of a political party's ideological position.

The article examines whether the radical right and their parties have fostered an enduring social base among core voters in the U.S., Europe and in other parts of the world. The researcher discusses the alternative theoretical frameworks and considers the rival hypotheses about the social basis of radical right support, as well as compares evidence to analyze the social basis of the radical right vote across 15 nations, using data from the European Social Survey, 2002, and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996-2001.

Presents a study on coalition governance and communist successor parties in Eastern Europe. Success of CSPs in elections; Effect of CSPs on coalition formation; Treatment on CSPs in government formation; Government participation of CSPs; Allocation of portfolios to parties in a governing coalition.

Scholars have tended to dichotimize the study of presidential power. Presidents are either popularly elected or not (with some slight variations), and regimes are either presidential or parliamentary depending in large measure on how the president is selected. Furthermore, it is asserted by many that for a variety of theoretical reasons popularly elected presidents are more powerful and more dangerous for democratic consolidation than those elected by the assembly. However, recent constitutional revisions in the post-communist states suggest that law makers do not see their options in such stark terms. Therefore, it is not surprising that some scholars are beginning to suggest that ?the operation of a political system cannot be entirely derived from the mode of government formation? and to propose that scholars examine the way that decision making is organized instead (Cheibub and Limongi 2002). This study examines the constitutional powers granted to presidents in the East Central European states to determine whether there is indeed a chasm between those that are popularly elected and those that are elected by the assembly or between those regimes better classified as parliamentary and those better classified as semi-presidential. It begins by examining the electoral format, and it then examines the authority granted to the executive in each of the East Central European constitutions using a list of powers developed by Shugart and Carey (1992) and modified by Metcalf (2000). Finally, it compares and contrasts the powers granted to popularly elected presidents and those granted to presidents elected by the assembly as well as those granted to presidents in parliamentary systems and those granted to presidents in semi-presidential systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]