Electoral Systems and Political Context: How the Effects of Rules Vary Across New and Established Democracies

Electoral Systems and Political Context illustrates how political and social context conditions the effects of electoral rules. The book examines electoral behavior and outcomes in countries that use “mixed-member” electoral systems – where voters cast one ballot for a party list under proportional representation (PR) and one for a candidate in a single member district (SMD). Based on comparisons of outcomes under the two different rules used in mixed-member systems, the book highlights how electoral systems' effects – especially strategic voting, the number of parties, and women's representation – tend to be different in new democracies from what one usually sees in established democracies. Moreover, electoral systems such as SMDs are usually presumed to constrain the number of parties irrespective of the level of social diversity, but this book demonstrates that social diversity frequently shapes party fragmentation even under such restrictive rules.

Robert G. Moser is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas and the author of Unexpected Outcomes: Electoral Systems, Political Parties, and Representation in Russia (2001). He has co-edited (with Zoltan Barany) Russian Politics (2001), Ethnic Politics after Communism (2005) and Is Democracy Exportable? (2009). His articles have appeared in World Politics, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Electoral Studies and Post-Soviet Affairs.

Ethan Scheiner is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Democracy without Competition in Japan. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Annual Review of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, the Japanese Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Japanese Studies and Legislative Studies Quarterly.