Re-examining Electoral Reform: The Role of Voters and Party Backbenchers Öffentlichkeit
Heller, Abigail (Spring 2021)
Published
Abstract
Existing accounts of electoral reform often obscure three issues: 1) electoral reforms are more varied than the literature’s focus on changes to the electoral formula (the way votes are translated into seats) suggests, 2) ordinary voters play an important role even when electoral reforms are passed through the legislature, and 3) parties are not unitary actors, as traditionally assumed. In my three-paper dissertation, I address each of these, largely overlooked, elements.
In “The Battle over Gerrymandered Districts: How Americans Balance Fairness and Partisanship,” I explore public support for electoral reform — specifically, how voters balance competing preferences for fair elections versus elections that result in preferred policy outcomes. Using a survey experiment focusing on redistricting in the United States, I explore how elite-level polarization affects this tradeoff. I find that concerns about fairness affect the willingness of respondents to support redistricting proposals, but the effects are conditional on the level of party polarization and the strength of respondents’ partisanship.
In “Public Support for Electoral Reform: The Role of Electoral System Experience,” I consider how experience with different electoral systems affects citizen support for electoral reform. I leverage subnational electoral system variation in the United Kingdom and difference-in-differences designs to estimate the causal effect of experience with alternative electoral systems on support for changes to the electoral formula. I find that negative subnational experiences with an electoral system similar to that under consideration for national elections decrease support for reform.
In “Legislating Themselves Out of Office: Electoral Reform and Parties as Non-Unitary Actors,” I examine the conditions under which rank-and-file legislators support electoral reform when they expect it to damage their reelection prospects. I explore this question using data on the careers of members of Parliament and the 1885 Redistribution of Seats Act in the United Kingdom. I find that those who supported reform, despite the reelection risks, are more likely to receive a peerage the following year and may be more likely to receive parliamentary office. This suggests that party leaders can use conventional inducements, but also extra-parliamentary rewards, to ensure support for reform among backbenchers.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Overview of the Dissertation........................... 5
2 The Battle over Gerrymandered Districts: How Americans Balance Fairness and Partisanship 10
2.1 Preferences Over Electoral Reform ....................... 15
2.2 Experimental Design ............................... 19
2.2.1 Sample................................... 23
2.2.2 Estimation................................. 24
2.3 Analysis...................................... 25
2.3.1 Robustness ................................ 33
2.4 Conclusion..................................... 38
3 Public Support for Electoral Reform: The Role of Electoral System Experience 41
3.1 The Effect of Electoral System Experience ................... 45
3.2 Research Design.................................. 49
3.2.1 Data and Empirical Strategy....................... 49
3.2.2 Empirical Expectations.......................... 53
3.3 Analysis...................................... 57
3.4 Robustness Tests ................................. 62
3.4.1 Constituency-level Preferences...................... 62
3.4.2 Placebo Tests ............................... 63
3.5 Conclusion..................................... 65
4 Legislating Themselves Out of Office: Electoral Reform and Parties as Non-Unitary Actors 68
4.1 Why Legislate Oneself Out of Office? ...................... 72
4.2 Empirical Context ................................ 76
4.2.1 The 1885 Redistribution of Seats Act.................. 77
4.2.2 Compensation in 1880s Britain ..................... 78
4.2.3 Theoretical Expectations in this Case.................. 80
4.3 Research Design.................................. 82
4.4 Analysis...................................... 86
4.5 Robustness Tests ................................. 92
4.6 Conclusion..................................... 95
Appendix A Appendix to “The Battle over Gerrymandered Districts: How Americans Balance Fairness and Partisanship” 98
A.1 Descriptive Statistics ............................... 98
A.2 Supplementary Analyses and Robustness.................... 104
A.3 Survey Instrument ................................ 112
Appendix B Appendix to “Public Support for Electoral Reform: The Role of Electoral System Experience” 124
B.1 Survey Data.................................... 124
B.2 Party Cues .................................... 130
B.3 Additional Results and Tables.......................... 132
Appendix C Appendix to “Legislating Themselves Out of Office: Electoral Reform and Parties as Non-Unitary Actors” 145
C.1 Data and Descriptive Statistics ......................... 145
Bibliography 150
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