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There is perennial debate in comparative politics about electoral institutions, but what characterizes this debate is the lack of consideration for citizens' perspective. In this paper, we report the results of an original survey conducted on representative samples in 15 West European countries (N = 15,414). We implemented an original instrument to elicit respondents' views by asking them to rate "real but blind" electoral outcomes. With this survey instrument, we aimed to elicit principled rather than partisan preferences regarding the kind of electoral outcomes that citizens think is good for democracy. We find that West Europeans do not clearly endorse a majoritarian or proportional vision of democracy. They tend to focus on aspects of the government rather than parliament when they pass a judgment. They want a majority government that has few parties and enjoys wide popular support. Finally, we find only small differences between citizens of different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While electoral reforms clearly affect how seats are (re)distributed among parties immediately after their adoption, they do not significantly change the (re)distribution of votes among parties. As political knowledge is positively related to turnout, we argue that the effect of majoritarian electoral reforms on the number of parties is contingent upon the turnout in the last election prior to the reform. Specifically, the lower the turnout level in the previous election, the more effective the majoritarian reform will be. However, the psychological effect of proportional reforms relies on the interplay between elites and voters and is highly uncertain. The argument is tested using aggregated data from 43 major electoral reforms worldwide from 1945 to 2020 and individual data from the first election held in New Zealand after the 1993 electoral reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conditions under which women's national football teams do better or worse in international tournaments remains an open question. Using data from 116 countries worldwide, we have examined three arguments accounting for the gender gap in international football success, focusing on positive externalities from economic development and women's empowerment, and the active policies promoting women's football. Our findings show that the international performance of women's national football teams compared to men's national football teams increases with women's empowerment and in countries committed to the promotion of women's football, while economic development is not relevant. The general question we address is whether gender gaps disappear because of economic and social development, or if active policies promoting women are required to achieve gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores an alternative mechanism for understanding the drivers of the nomination of women for elective office in single-member electoral systems. Previous research has generally examined two sources of gender-based politics: party ideology, with leftist parties being more female-friendly than rightist parties, and the strategic nomination of candidates depending on whether the party is expected to win or lose in the district, with women more likely to be used as 'sacrificial lambs' in hopeless contests. We argue that the nomination of male and female candidates across districts reflects an interdependence of party strategies – in particular, the actions of the main opposition party. We hypothesise that when the trailing party is not committed to gender equality, its equilibrium strategy in a given district is the nomination of a candidate of the same gender as that of the front-running party. Secondary data from 1,017 single-member Australian districts and more than 2,000 candidates from 2001–2019 confirm our hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]