Browsing by Author "Kitschelt, Herbert P"

Chapter 1: Forcing Consent: Information and Power in Non-Democratic Elections. Why do governments hold elections that lack credibility? What explains variation in repression levels across non-democratic elections? While the literature has suggested many explanations for elections in autocracies, it has not yet provided a theory that would explain both the incidence of non-democratic elections and the variation in their degree of competitiveness. In this paper, we build an informational model of non-democratic elections explaining when elections may stabilize an autocrat's rule and when they may fail to do so. We argue that to achieve stability, elections must yield a sufficiently high vote-share for the incumbent and be optimally repressive. The degree of optimal repression is shown to increase with the incumbent's expected popularity. The model is then applied to explain some stylized facts about non-democratic elections and to derive a set of novel research hypotheses about the effects of non-democratic elections, variation in electoral repression, and fraud technology. We test the chief implication of the model using an original dataset on political arrests in the Soviet Union. We find that even if elections present no choice, they reduce the expression of anti-government sentiments.

Chapter 2: A Ballot Under the Sword: Political Security and the Quality of Elections in Autocracies. What explains the democratic quality of elections outside established democracies? We argue that when a government does not have to convince the opposition of its wide support in the society, it holds repressive elections. Conversely, when a government needs to send a strong signal about its popularity, it takes a riskier strategy of holding more competitive, and hence more informative elections. Using cross-national panel data, we find that the incumbents facing political insecurity -- measured through the incidence of economic crises and coup threats -- tend to hold higher quality elections than their more secure counterparts. In addition, via structural equation modeling, we find evidence that economic crises affect the quality of elections only indirectly through increased political insecurity. These findings reject the conventional view that autocrats use electoral repression when they are afraid of losing due to low expected support. This analysis has important implications for modernization theory and for understanding the role of political and economic instability in the democratization process.

Chapter 3: The Calculus of Dissent: Rigged Elections, Information, and Post-Election Stability. Why do some elections result in concession speeches while others spiral into protests, riots, and conflicts? This paper draws attention to the informational content of the electoral process and its outcome. We argue that elections induce stability when they communicate that the winners are truly popular and derive several novel predictions as to when such communication can succeed or fail. First, unfair elections lead to instability only if they are won by slim margins. Second, excessively large victory margins increase instability \emph{irrespective} of the unfairness of elections. The theory is then applied to explain the incidence of post-election protests across the world and the patterns of mandate denial in sub-Saharan Africa. We find that structural conditions (e.g., poverty and ethnic diversity) contribute little to post-election instability. Instead, the quality of elections and their results affect post-election politics in an interactive and non-linear fashion as predicted by the model.

Chapter 4: An Experimental Study of Fraudulent Elections and the Post-Election Protests. How can a winner of elections marred by fraud and voter intimidation convince the loser that he has large support in the society? Using an experimental setting, this paper studies how the information about election results and the competitiveness of the electoral process affect citizens' beliefs about the true popularity of the government and, subsequently, the success of a protest. We theoretically derive and evaluate the following hypotheses: (1) There will be no information update if elections are sufficiently manipulative and are won with great margins; (2) There will be positive updating in elections with medium levels of manipulation and high vote margin for the government; (3) There will be negative information updating if elections are highly manipulative but do not yield high margin for the government. We find relatively strong support for the first two hypotheses but none for the last one. The study also points to difficulties in studying rigged elections experimentally. The first difficulty has to do with the heterogeneity of the experimental population and the second one with the operationalization of electoral manipulation in a laboratory environment.

A majority of formal theoretic research in political science treats political parties as unitary actors, and endows them with decision-making powers not unlike those of strategic individuals. This is true both of most research in the spatial-theoretic tradition, as well as most game theoretic research in the field of comparative political-economy. In contrast, my dissertation examines strategic equilibria which arise when competition takes place simultaneously within parties over organizational control and between parties over political office. I first distinguish between three intra-organizational elements: a party's parliamentary group, its activist cadre, and its executive leaders. Chapters 2-4 develop a set of foundational game theoretic models which identify the equilibrium balance of power among these 3 organizational elements as a function of a country's electoral institutions and voters' relative responsiveness to marginal policy changes. In turn, this more complete understanding of intra-party competition sheds light on a number of important questions in comparative politics and comparative political-economy. For example, it helps to identify conditions under which Downsian vote-maximization is in fact a viable assumption in spatial theoretic models; conditions under which Duverger's argument that proportional representation (PR) should tend to generate multi-party competition may not apply; and, in contrast to Lijphart's famous argument, conditions under which PR may instigate rather than mediate social conflict. Ten months of intensive field research conducted in Turkey provide both the quantitative and the qualitative data which constitute the dissertation's most basic empirical material. This data includes primary and secondary source material on the history of intra-organizational competition in Turkey; observational and informant-based information on contemporary Turkish politics and the events of 2006-2008; and a data set of over 4,000 observations on party-switching in the Turkish Parliament (1987-2007).

By what means can legislative committees exercise influence on policy outputs? How and why do committees in different countries differ in their abilities to do so? This dissertation argues that legislative committee power is a multidimensional concept. Committee procedures can be distinguished into three analytic dimensions: 1) committees' positive agenda power, their power to ensure the placement of legislative versions preferred by them on the floor; 2) committees' negative agenda power, their power to delay or block the progress of legislation; and 3) committees' information capacity, institutional incentives granted to them to gather and transmit information. These distinct dimensions benefit different legislative actors. Therefore, they reflect different features of a political system, and may not be consistently strong or week.

Based on an original cross-national data set, the dissertation shows that committee procedures cluster empirically in these three distinct dimensions. Furthermore, the dissertation also demonstrates how legislators' electoral incentives, the composition of multiparty governments, preexisting authoritarian incumbents' uncertainty and bargaining power, and the changes in legislative memberships affect different dimensions of committee power.

Intertemporal choice refers to how people weigh different outcomes happening at different times. It is called delay discounting in economics, future orientation in psychology, and patience in everyday life. In political science, the concept of intertemporal choice is widely discussed by political theorists and is formalized as a discounting factor in game theoretical models. Despite its theoretical importance, empirical examinations linking intertemporal choice and political behavior are scarce. Through representative surveys and survey experiments in the United States, Taiwan, and Ukraine, this dissertation first shows that intertemporal choice explains the rationality behind sociotropic voting; future-oriented people are much more likely to take into account the future impacts of current national economic changes. Second, patience reduces polarization between rich and poor people on redistributive policy by accounting for future social mobility. Third, patience can increase turnout only if voters perceived enough ideological difference between the candidates; otherwise, higher patience will decrease the willingness to vote. Fourth, intertemporal choice is key to understanding the mobilization in the risky mass protests. In the 2004 Ukraine Orange Revolution, future-oriented citizens were much likely to join the protest in the early stages. Finally, a country-level analysis shows that the average level of patience among citizens correlates with democratic consolidation. These results point to the importance of including the time dimension in the study of political behavior and show that democracy can be improved by extending patience among citizens.

How are voters’ perceptions of party positions affected by the formation of coalition governments? Voters perceive parties that form coalitions together as more ideologically similar than they would have had otherwise. This framework endogenizes perceptions of parties to the coalition formation process. Instead of relying exclusively on the policies that parties are advocating in election campaigns, voters assess partners relationally based on their mutual interactions. This dissertation extends the existing literature by examining various aspects of how coalition formation impacts voters’ perceptions.

Chapter 2 explores whether voters’ perceptions of opposition parties are altered by coalition formation. Using survey data from the European Election Study 1989-2019, I find that the impact of coalition formation on voters’ perceptions of opposition parties is comparable in size to that of coalition members. However, when distinguishing between different opposition relationships the effect is much larger. Voters perceive two opposition parties divided by a centrist coalition as further apart and opposition parties located in the same bloc as closer together, holding everything else constant. Unlike previous accounts of coalition heuristics, I find that highly sophisticated voters appear more sensitive to coalition signals.

Chapter 3 analyses how cooperation between mainstream and niche parties af- fect voters’ perceptions of party positions on specific policy issues. I compare the perceptions of Dutch parties before and after collaborating with the radical right: the coalition with the List Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and the support agreement with the Freedom Party in 2010. Furthermore, I examine the long-term effects of the Danish government relying on the support of the Danish People’s Party in 2001-2011. I find that mainstream parties are perceived as more restrictive towards immigration and multiculturalism after cooperating with the radical right than they would have been otherwise.

Finally, chapter 4 tests whether coalition formation has a causal effect on the perceived ideological distance between the coalition partners. Observational studies are insufficient to establish a causal relationship between coalition formation and changing perceptions. I present four survey experiments with variation in context, measurement, and treatment. I mainly find an effect of coalition formation when voters have no other information about parties.

My dissertation seeks to understand how and why governments make major changes in financial sector regulations. I focus on two specific puzzles. First why is financial sector regulation not normally central to electoral competition and why are changes in financial sector regulation rare events? Second, why do we observe substantive intellectual debates and efforts of policy persuasion despite the conclusion of many researchers and observers that financial regulatory policy outcomes are driven by the preferences of powerful special interest groups? What are the mechanisms precisely by which ideas versus interests shape policy outcomes in a domain that is not often central to electoral politics? I investigate these questions through a formal game theoretical model of the regulatory policymaking process and through case studies of historic episodes of financial regulatory change in the United States which draw upon a wide variety of primary and secondary source historical materials. I conclude that financial regulatory change is most likely to occur when events of different types cause heads of government to perceive that the existing regulatory status quo threatens the realization of broader policy objectives. Heads of financial sector policy bureaucracies shape outcomes by providing cognitive frameworks through which leaders understand regulatory consequences. Interest groups influence policy outcomes primarily through their ability to act as veto players rather than by controlling the policy agenda.

How can we explain variation in support for radical right parties over time and across post-communist democracies? This project suggests that support for radical right parties is driven by the politics of accommodation, and is aimed at counteracting the political inroads, cultural concessions and economic gains of politically organized minorities. It differs from other studies of extremist politics in three primary respects: (1) Unlike current approaches that focus on competition between the extreme and mainstream parties, I emphasize dynamics between the radical right party and non- proximate parties that promote minority rights. (2) Several approaches argue that xenophobia drives support for the radical right, whereas I show that xenophobia is not a distinct feature of the radical right party support base; what differentiates radical right voters from other voters is opposition to governmental transfers towards politically organized minorities. (3) I endogenize issue salience and identify coalition politics - i.e., coalitions of mainstream parties and parties supporting minority protection - as a key mechanism that increases the salience of identity issues in political competition, and benefits radical right parties. The project tests these propositions empirically, and finds supportive evidence using two unique micro-level surveys and an original party-election-level data set covering all post-communist democracies.

Only recently have scholars begun to focus directly on one of the starkest dimensions of variation in advanced welfare states - the extent to which aggregate social spending is geared specifically to the elderly. Progress toward an understanding of these differences would be aided by scholarly debate, but this field of inquiry remains characterized by lone theories advanced in isolation. This paper seeks first to situate the question within long-standing scholarly debates by identifying implicit hypotheses within the three major branches of welfare state theory and assessing them for their empirical and logical plausibility. A new theory is then advanced linking these differences to cross-national differences in the strength of employment protection. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of potentially fertile research avenues.

Less democratic countries conduct elections under the majoritarian electoral formula more often than under proportional representation by a wide margin. Yet, robust democratic systems utilize both majoritarian and PR electoral formulas with great success. This dissertation approaches this empirical puzzle and tries to unveil what role, if any, electoral formulas play in politics.

To do so, it focuses on the electoral process exclusively and utilizes Judith Kelley's recently completed comprehensive dataset on election quality to perform some large-sample statistical analyses of the relationship between the electoral formula, ethno-cultural polarization and election quality. Then, it presents three in-depth case studies of Nigeria, Ghana and Indonesia to unveil in more detail institutional origins and the mechanisms of electoral manipulation, as refracted through the electoral formula.

The conclusions reached are that PR is much better suited for conducting free and fair elections in ethno-culturally polarized countries. Yet, majoritarian and mixed formulas perform just as well when polarization is low. This finding is directly related to an ongoing debate by institutional designers and academics alike and provides systematic quantitative and detailed qualitative support. The study also suggests that PR might not only mediate inter-ethnic differences when disagreement is high, but also reduces the level of polarization if applied over several electoral cycles.

After initiating the economic reform in 1978 and the subsequent political decentralization, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) largely lost its political control in rural areas. To regain the power, the CCP senior leaders decided to introduce the elections as a strategy to rebuild the legitimacy. After enforced all over the country, the village elections did help ameliorate the local governance and prompt the provision of public goods. However, the unclear stipulation in the Organic Law of Village Elections simultaneously resulted in some institutional outcomes, leading to a power-sharing puzzle between local party branch and the elected village committee. Using the local public policy as an indicator, I will develop a formal model in this paper to explain this puzzle and argue that when facing unpopular policies mandated from above, the struggle between local party secretary and village chief is in equilibrium. To maintain the stability in rural areas, the government leaders in different provinces have put forward various solutions to deal with the conflict, including a political experiment, which was called "Qingxian Model" later, conducted in Qing County of Hebei Province. With a field study, I argue in this paper that by resurrecting the Villager Representative Assembly, this political reform essentially reconcentrates the power to the party branch and sabotages the local democracy in the long run.