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While electoral research has become one of political sciences most fertile areas, to date no empirical contribution has addressed the three mechanisms of the electoral chain strategic entry, strategic voting, and the electoral systems mechanical effect in a unified analytical framework. This paper addresses this shortcoming by analysing the effect of electoral systems on party system size, accounting for all three mechanisms. Our study yields three major findings drawing on constituency-level data covering 462 electoral districts in Finland and Portugal between 1962 and 2011. First, macro-sociological context, measured as cleavages, operate at the district level: An increase in the heterogeneity within a constituency significantly increases party system size. Second, in the two established democracies we examine, we observe that district-level bottom-up coordination takes places. Finally, while our analyses reveal that some strategic voting takes places, it is blurred by a comparatively large amount of non-strategic behaviour by voters. The variance we find surrounding psychological effects is too large to exert a targeted impact. In sum, the mechanical effect turns out to be the most decisive link of the electoral chain. (VLID)2617126

Previous research has shown that voters perception of electoral fairness has an impact on their attitudes and behaviors. However, less research has attempted to link objective measurements of electoral integrity on voters attitudes about the democratic process. Drawing on data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Quality of Elections Data, we investigate whether cross-national differences in electoral integrity have significant influences on citizens level of satisfaction with democracy. We hypothesize that higher levels of observed electoral fraud will have a negative impact on evaluations of the democratic process, and that this effect will be mediated by a respondents status as a winner or loser of an election. The articles main finding is that high levels of electoral fraud are indeed linked to less satisfaction with democracy. However, we show that winning only matters in elections that are conducted in an impartial way. The moment elections start to display the telltale signs of manipulation and malpractice, winning and losing no longer have different effects on voters levels of satisfaction with democracy. (VLID)4484407

International audience; Many academics and commentators argue that Europe is suffering from a democratic deficit. An interesting proposal that has been put forward to address this problem is to elect some members of the European parliament in a pan-European district. In this article, we evaluate this proposal using an online experiment, in which thousands of Europeans voted on a pan-European ballot we created. We find that the voting behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or absence of candidates from their own country on the lists. If a pan-European

Am Beispiel von zehn parlamentarischen Demokratien in Mittelosteuropa (1995-2004) werden neue Demokratiemuster nachgewiesen, welche die Kombination von machtkonzentrierenden und machtdispersiven Effekten von Akteurskonstellationen und formal-institutionellen Entscheidungsregeln (elektoral und legislativ) erfassen. Damit leistet die vorliegende Untersuchung einen theoretischen und empirischen Beitrag zur Wirkungslogik von Institutionen und Akteuren auf die Politikperformanz parlamentarischer Demokratien. Taking ten Central Eastern European parliamentary democracies (1995-2004) as examples, this article introduces new patterns of democracy that are based on a combination of power-concentrating and power-dispersing effects of political actors as well as electoral and legislative decision-making rules. Thus, this article contributes to the theoretical and empirical debate about the impact of institutional and actor-oriented factors on the policy performance of parliamentary democracies.

Philipp Harfst untersucht den demokratischen Wandel von Wahlsystemen in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Er formuliert theoriegeleitete Hypothesen zum Wahlsystemwandel und führt eine empirische Bestandsaufnahme der Veränderungen von Wahlgesetzen in Mittel- und Osteuropa von 1990 bis 2003 durch. Abschließend prüft der Autor die Plausibilität der Hypothesen zum Wahlsystemwandel.

"Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage der parlamentarischen Kontrolle der Exekutive in 22 westlichen Demokratien. Ausgehend von der Principal-Agent-Theorie zielt er darauf ab, die Instrumente und Ressourcen zu analysieren, die Parlamenten in westlichen Demokratien zur Kontrolle ihrer Exekutiven zu Verfügung stehen. Zunächst wird erörtert, über welche Mittel Parlamente verfügen, um Informationsungleichgewichte zwischen Parlament und Regierung auszugleichen. Die ständigen Parlamentsausschüsse werden in dieser Diskussion als die wichtigste Ressource zur Erlangung von Informationen und zur Ausübung von Kontrolle gegenüber der Exekutive bezeichnet. Neben den Ausschüssen werden weitere parlamentarische Kontrollstrukturen wie Rechungshöfe und parlamentseigene Informationsdienste sowie Informations- und Fragerechte der Parlamente gegenüber den Exekutiven betrachtet. Nach der theoretischen Diskussion der Kontrollmöglichkeiten werden empirische Informationen präsentiert, die strukturelle, formale und personelle Informationsressourcen der Parlamente charakterisieren. Mithilfe dieser Daten wird versucht, insbesondere die Frage zu beantworten, ob es systematische Zusammenhänge zwischen der politischen Stärke einer Exekutive und den parlamentarischen Ressourcen zur Kontrolle der Exekutive gibt. Ein solcher Zusammenhang kann jedoch nicht gefunden werden. Selbst starke Regierungen sind nicht systematisch in der Lage, die Kontrollfähigkeit ihrer Parlamente zu beeinflussen." (Autorenreferat), "This paper deals with the question of parliamentary control of the executives of 22 Western democracies. Based on principal-agent theory, it aims to analyze the instruments of control and the control capacity of parliamentary principals vis-a-vis their governmental agents. In a first step, parliamentary resources are discussed as an important means to bridge the information gap between parliament and the executive. In doing so, the paper focuses on parliamentary committees, their institutional structure, their membership, and their formal powers without neglecting further parliamentary information resources like question times, accounting offices, or scientific and library services. Based on this discussion, data is presented to characterize structural, formal, and personal parliamentary information resources. This presentation is summarized by an empirical mapping of the character and properties of parliamentary control structures in Western democracies. The data is then used to answer questions about systematic relationships between parliamentary control resources and the political strength of the executive. The most important result of this analysis is that there is no systematic relationship between political strength of executives and parliamentary control resources. Even politically strong governments are not able to systematically curtail the control resources of their parliaments." (author's abstract)

"Da die Stabilität einer Regierung eine der Voraussetzungen ihrer Effektivität ist und gerade mittelosteuropäische Regierungen mit einem beachtlichen Problemdruck konfrontiert waren und sind, kommt der Regierungsstabilität in dieser Region eine besondere Bedeutung zu. Dieses Papier analysiert die Bedingungen stabiler Regierungen auf der Grundlage institutioneller Regelsysteme sowie Charakteristika des Parteiensystems. Grundlage der Untersuchung sind 76 Regierungen in 16 osteuropäischen Mitgliedsstaaten des Europarats bis Januar 1999. Die Analyse ergibt, dass sowohl institutionelle Regelsysteme wie auch die Zahl der im Parlament vertretenen Parteien einen messbaren Einfluss auf die Stabilität einer Regierung haben: Einerseits lässt sich mit Hilfe der institutionellen Regeln zu Investitur, Parlamentsauflösung und Misstrauensvoten das Instabilitätsrisiko einer Regierung bestimmen, andererseits sind vor allem fragmentierte Parteiensysteme nicht in der Lage, stabile Regierungen hervorzubringen." (Autorenreferat), "Governments in Eastern European transition countries are confronted with comparatively large problems. Therefore, and as far as the stability of a government can be considered one of the prerequisites of its efficiency, this paper analyses the conditions of stable government on the basis of institutional rules and the characteristics of party systems. Empirical evidence is drawn from data on 76 governments in 16 Eastern European member states of the Council of Europe till January 1999. The result is that institutions matter as well as the number of parliamentary parties: On the one hand, institutional rules on investiture, dissolution of parliament, and votes of non-confidence determine the risk of governmental instability, on the other hand fragmented party systems cannot produce stable governments." (author's abstract)