The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems

Citizens living in presidential or parliamentary systems face different political choices as do voters casting votes in elections governed by rules of proportional representation or plurality. Political commentators seem to know how such rules influence political behavior. They firmly believe, for example, that candidates running in plurality systems are better known and held more accountable to their constituencies than candidates competing in elections governed by proportional representation. However, such assertions rest on shaky ground simply because solid empirical knowledge to evaluate the impact of political institutions on individual political behavior is still lacking. The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems has collected data on political institutions and on individual political behavior and scrutinized it carefully. In line with common wisdom results of most analyses presented in this volume confirm that political institutions matter for individual political behavior but, contrary to what is widely believed, they do not matter much.

Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Professor Emeritus, Social Science Research Center, Berlin.

Preface	p. xi
About the Contributors	p. xiv
List of Figures	p. xvi
List of Tables	p. xviii
Introduction
The Impact of Political Institutions: A Contribution of the "Comparative Study of Electoral Systems" (CSES) to Micro-Macro Theories of Political Attitude Formation and Voting Behavior	p. 3
The Project
"Big Social Science" in Comparative Politics: The History of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems	p. 31
Methodological Challenges: Research Opportunities and Questions for the Future	p. 50
Electoral Participation
Socioeconomic Status and Nonvoting: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis	p. 85
Electoral Systems, Efficacy, and Voter Turnout	p. 109
Political Parties, Candidates, and Issues
Multiple Party Identifications	p. 137
Candidate Recognition in Different Electoral Systems	p. 158
Who Represents Us Best? One Member or Many?	p. 171
Economic Voting: Do Institutions Affect the Way Voters Evaluate Incumbents?	p. 193
The Ease of Ideological Voting: Voter Sophistication and Party System Complexity	p. 220
How Voters Cope with the Complexity of Their Political Environment: Differentiation of Political Supply, Effectiveness of Electoral Institutions, and the Calculus of Voting	p. 237
Expressive and Instrumental Voting
Expressive Versus Instrumental Motivation of Turnout, Partisanship, and Political Learning	p. 269
District Magnitude and the Comparative Study of Strategic Voting	p. 289
Political Support
Institutional Variation and Political Support: An Analysis of CSES Data from 29 Countries	p. 311
Effectiveness and Political Support in Old and New Democracies	p. 333
Final Report of the 1995-6 Planning Committee	p. 347
The Micro-Level Questionnaire of Module 1	p. 380
The Macro-Level Questionnaire of Module 1	p. 387
References	p. 398
Index	p. 419
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems

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