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Mixed compensatory systems (some call them “mixed-member proportional systems”), are praised for combining "the best of both worlds.” Yet, we know fairly little about their outcomes in practice. We still lack a genuine model that explains how many compensation seats are needed for the outcome to be proportional. Without this knowledge we will neither be able to estimate how many parties we expect to compete and to win representation in parliament under mixed compensatory systems; a key question of comparative research on electoral systems and party systems. This paper provides a quantitative model that shows under which conditions a mixed compensatory system might lead to proportional vote-seat conversion.

Es wird untersucht, wie sich das Neue Zürcher Zuteilungsverfahren auswirken würde, wenn es zur Wahl des Schweizer Nationalrats eingesetzt würde. In den Modellrechnungen werden diverse Sperrklauseln durchgespielt. Außerdem wird versucht abzuschätzen, wie die Parteien auf eine solche Wahlsystemänderung reagieren würden. Im Ergebnis erweist sich, dass das neue System wohl zu einer "Nationalisierung" des Parteiensystems führen würde, weil es die Parteien motiviert, in möglichst vielen oder gar allen Kantonen mit Listen präsent zu sein. The paper investigates how the New Zurich Apportionment Method would operate for the election of the Swiss Nationalrat. Various models are evaluated, with a particular emphasis on the role of admission hurdles. We also propose a prediction how the political parties might react to a change in the electoral systems. Our conclusion is that the new system may lead to a "nationalisation" of the party activities, in that parties are motivated to present candidate lists in as many Cantons as possible.

Die Zahl der Konkordate ist seit den 1970er-Jahren stark angestiegen. Umfassende regionale und nationale Konkordate dürften aufgrund einer neuen institutionellen Regelung in den nächsten Jahren viel häufiger werden, da der Bund neu Konkordate in neun Bereichen für obligatorisch erklären kann. Der Beitrag untersucht die Bedeutung der Konkordate und der Regierungskonferenzen auf nationaler und regionaler Ebene, zeigt auf, wie sich die neue Regelung auf die Bedeutung auswirken wird und welche Faktoren bei der Bildung von Konkordaten eine Rolle spielen.

The electoral system for the state presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina guarantees the representation of the three constituent people, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, but it violates the political rights of other ethnic minorities and of citizens who do not identify themselves with any ethnic group. Following the 2009 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, Bosnia was urged to reform its electoral law. This paper discusses alternative practices of ethnically based political representation and their possible application in the Bosnian state presidency elections. Several innovative electoral models that satisfy fair political and legal criteria for desirable electoral dynamics in divided societies can be envisaged in the Bosnian context. Specifically, these are: the introduction of a single countrywide electoral district, the adoption of the single non-transferable vote, and the application of a geometrical mean rule. They guarantee the representation of the three constituent people, while strengthening...

Das Verhaltniswahlrecht verschiedener Lander erlaubt es verschiedenen Parteien ihre Wahllisten zu verbinden. Indem die verbundenen Listen bei der Erstverteilung der Sitze als Einheit betrachtet werden, und somit mehr Stimmen in die Waagschale werfen, verschafft ihnen dies unter der Zuteilungsformel nach D’Hondt substanzielle Vorteile. In der Schweiz, wo Listenverbindungen in den nationalen Wahlen und in einer Reihe von Kantonen praktiziert werden, gehoren die linken und grunen Parteien zu den Gewinnerinnen von Listenverbindungen. Diese Studie untersucht, wie linke und grune Parteien die Listenverbindungen in den nationalen Parlamentswahlen 1995-2007 genutzt haben, und zeigt, wieso und dies ihnen zu Mandatsgewinnen verholfen hat. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Listenverbindungen ihrem Zweck nachkommen, Ungleichheiten im D’Hondtschen Verfahren zu beheben, allerdings nur, weil im Schweizer Wahlrecht auch Unterlistenverbindungen zugelassen sind

Contemporary political discussion in Serbia sometimes reads like a history book of Serbia in the twentieth century. Figures such as Dragoljub ‘Draža’ Mihailovic (Chetnik2 leader in the Second World War), Josip Broz ‘Tito’ (Partisan leader and then president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRJ), Slobodan Milosevic (Serbian and Yugoslav president in the 1990s), or Vojislav Seselj (paramilitary leader in the 1990s) would fit in very well among the members of today’s parliament. Indeed, the most recent bloody episodes of Serbia’s history are so little distant that the two latter persons on this list were still both influential players in Serbian party politics in the early twenty-first century, which is the subject of this chapter. Seselj is still running in parliamentary elections, and would be an MP if he were not facing trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

‘Condorcet cycles’ (or ‘paradoxes of cyclical majorities’) are an empirically rare phenomenon. A referendum in the Swiss canton of Bern on 28 November 2004 presents a rare occurrence. This study presents a new multi-option referendum procedure that makes Condorcet cycles visible, and it argues that in this case, the paradox might have resulted from strategic voting patterns.

The study of the territorial distribution of votes in elections has become an important field of the political party research in recent years. Quantitative studies on the homogeneity of votes and turnout employ different indicators of territorial variance, but despite important progresses in measurement, many of them are sensitive to size and number of political parties or electoral districts. This article proposes a new ‘standardised party nationalisation score’, which is based on the Gini coefficient of inequalities in distribution. Different from previous indicators, the standardised party nationalisation score weights for the sizes of territorial units (such as electoral districts) within a country, and considers the different numbers of territorial units in different countries.

Party nationalisation, defined as the homogeneity of party strength across a country, has recently become a major issue in research. Even though territory is a salient political question in the post-communist countries in Europe, party nationalisation in these countries has been neglected by the literature so far. This article presents data on party nationalisation for 20 countries over the period 1990–2007. It shows that the nationalisation of party systems in post-communist democracies is closely related to the territorial structure of social divisions, except for cases where the electoral systems provide for a high degree of nationalisation, or where super-presidentialism inhibits the creation of strong nationalised parties.

Mixed electoral systems have been celebrated enthusiastically in the literature and by political practitioners, arguing that they combine the best of both worlds with regards to several aspects of political representation. This article calls this view into question, arguing that the mixed incentives of mixed electoral systems might hamper the stabilization and institutionalization of party systems in young democracies. Empirical results from 19 democracies in Central and Eastern Europe suggest that the learning and stabilization effect that is exerted through simple electoral systems fails under mixed systems. Using a variance model analysis, this study rejects the common belief that mixed systems lead to more moderate party systems with regards to party system fractionalization. Rather, outcomes under mixed systems vary much more widely than under proportional representation, are associated with higher disproportionality, and tend to increase volatility. Los sistemas electorales mixtos, que combinan sistemas electorales de mayoria con los de representacion proporcional (RP), han sido alabados con entusiasmo por la literatura y los politicos, argumentando que combinan lo mejor de ambos mundos con relacion a los diversos aspectos de la representacion politica. Este articulo cuestiona tal punto de vista, senalando que los incentivos contradictorios de los sistemas electorales mixtos podrian dificultar la estabilizacion e institucionalizacion de los sistemas de partido en democracias emergentes. Los resultados empiricos de diecinueve democracias en Europa Central y del Este sugieren que el efecto de aprendizaje y de estabilizacion que es ejercido en los sistemas electorales simples fracasa bajo los sistemas mixtos. Utilizando un analisis de modelos de varianza, este estudio rechaza la creencia comun que los sistemas mixtos conducen a un sistema de partidos mas moderado en referencia a su grado de fragmentacion. En cambio, bajo sistemas mixtos, los resultados varian mucho mas extensamente que bajo RP. Mas aun, los sistemas mixtos estan asociados con una superior desproporcionalidad que en RP y tienden a incrementar la volatilidad.

Swiss cantonal governments cooperate intensively with each other. Inter-governmental treaties (concordats) are a crucial element of the Swiss federalism, but, the intensity of collaboration varies widely. Based on a two-step regression model, this article aims at explaining the different intensities of cooperation. A ‘Quadratic assignment procedure regression’ (QAP), identifies relational factors among pairs of cantons (common language, political proximity, neighbourhood), whereas an OLS regression, based on attribute data, explains why different cantons (nodes) have different strong motivations for collaboration.