Electoral Systems and Political Context

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.

“This is the most important study to date on the most widespread electoral reform phenomenon of the 1990s and the first decade of this century – mixed-member systems. Moser and Scheiner take nothing for granted. They subject everything we thought we knew about the effects of electoral rules to renewed scrutiny. In the process, they turn much of the conventional wisdom on its head, and they set a new standard for scholarship on institutional design in new democracies.” – John Carey, Dartmouth College

• 1. Introduction: why don't electoral rules have the same effects in all countries?; 2. When do the effects of electoral systems diverge from our expectations?; 3. Mixed-member electoral systems: how they work and how they work for scholars; 4. How democratic experience and party system development condition the effects of electoral rules on disproportionality and the number of parties: theory, measurement, and expectations; 5. How democratic experience and party system development condition the effects of electoral rules on disproportionality and the number of parties: what we actually see; 6. Political context, electoral rules, and their effects on strategic and personal voting; 7. How democratic experience and party system development condition the effect of electoral rules on strategic defection; 8. Social diversity, electoral rules, and the number of parties; 9. How political context shapes the effect of electoral rules on women's representation; 10. Conclusion: why and how political context matters for electoral system effects.