Ballot Structure and Satisfaction with Democracy

Abstract

This article analyses the influence of ballot structure over satisfaction with democracy. In line with previous literature, we hypothesize that some ballot structures – such as preferential ballots – generate more satisfaction with democracy than closed ones. Yet, we expect these differences to be especially relevant among the more knowledgeable electorate, since any open ballot structure requires more sophisticated voters. Using CSES surveys, our results do not show a clear and simple relation between ballot openness and satisfaction with democracy as some previous research seems to suggest. Our findings rather suggest a more limited effect. Preferential ballots and open lists are the only ballot structures that generate more satisfaction, when compared to most of the remaining ballot structures. Yet, this relation is restricted only among the more knowledgeable electorate. The liberty of choice that ballot structure offers only concerns a reduced portion of the electorate, namely the more politically sophisticated one.

Notes

1. See also Rose (1992) and Castles (1994). Lijphart (1999) Anderson and Guillory (1997) and Brockington (2003) are on the proportional side; while Aarts and Thomassen (2008), Castles (1994) and Listhaug et al. (2009) are on the majoritarian.

2. This list only refers to mechanisms linking ballot structure with satisfaction with democracy. The consequences of other elements of the electoral system, as well as other antecedents of satisfaction with democracy, are deliberately ignored here.

3. Notice such a process is observable even in turnout data: Carey and Enten (2011: 90–95) show how some openness in the ballots (such as primaries) increases turnout.

4. Two caveats should be noted. First, they also compute a third element (the information the voter receives about the chosen candidate), but we shall not take this into account since the authors do not derive this information from the ballot structure – which is our subject. Second, they do not exactly rank the ballot structures, but country specific electoral systems.

5. Incidentally, these sorts of disagreements would not be addressable with the traditional ordinal operationalization of ballot structure.

6. This sentence clearly suggests an additional hypothesis (let's call it “hypothesis 1b”) where “political efficacy” would act as an intervening variable. Unluckily, CSES does not have a question on political efficacy, so hypothesis 1b would not be testable with the data we have to use.

7. The elections included are the following: Albania (2005), Australia (1996, 2004, 2007), Austria (2008), Belgium (1999), Brazil (2002), Canada (1997, 2004), Switzerland (1999, 2003, 2007), Chile (2005), Czech Republic (1996, 2002, 2006), Germany (1998, 2002, 2005, 2009), Spain (1996, 2000, 2004), Finland (2003, 2007), France (2002, 2007), UK (1997, 2005), Hong Kong (1998, 2000, 2004, 2008), Croatia (2007), Hungary (1998, 2002), Ireland (2002, 2007), Iceland (2007, 2009), Israel (1996, 2003, 2006), Italy (2006), Japan (1996, 2004, 2007), Korea (2004, 2008), Mexico (1997, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009), Netherlands (1998, 2002, 2006), Norway (1997, 2001, 2005), New Zealand (1996, 2002, 2008), Peru (2006), Poland (1997, 2001, 2005, 2007), Portugal (2002, 2005, 2009), Romania (1996, 2004), Russia (2004), Slovenia (2004), Sweden (1998, 2002, 2006), Thailand (2007), Taiwan (1996, 2001, 2004), Ukraine (1998), USA (1996, 2004). Most dropped cases are due to the political knowledge variable, which is essential to test one of our hypotheses. Yet, when not necessary, the exclusion of this variable (and thus the substantial increase of countries and elections in our sample) does not substantially change the conclusions reached in this article.

8. However, note that in the original article which set up the topic, Shugart (2001: 176) did not have a linear relationship in mind. Quite the contrary, he termed the two extremes of the intraparty continuum as “hyperpersonalistic” and “hypercentralised”, thus illustrating that he presumed both extremes would eventually generate negative effects.

9. We have classified the countries into the four ballot structures as follows: open lists and preferential ballots (Finland, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland), ordered list (Brazil, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Czech Republic), personalized ballot and personalized ballot plus closed list (New Zealand, UK, Taiwan, Germany, Japan, Canada, USA, Hungary, South Korea, Ukraine, France, Hong Kong), closed list (Portugal, Mexico, Spain, Israel, Rumania).

10. Some examples of previous comparative studies using CSES three-items political knowledge are: Birch (2010), Singh and Thornton (2012) and Tóka (2009).

11. Formally, the Gallagher index (often called Least squared index) is: , where s_i is the percentage of seats of party i and v_i the vote share of party i. Higher values indicate greater disproportionality.

12. Our data show a correlation between ballot structure and our measure of proportionality. Although this correlation is not dramatic (0.36), we estimate the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) in order to test the presence of multicollinearity in our models. All VIF scores are below 2.05 (including ballot structure and proportionality), which indicates that there is no evidence of multicollinearity.

13. To be fair, the authors already acknowledged the multilevel structure of the data (Farrell & McAllister, 2006: footnote 13, 746–747) but they argued that the limited number of elections prevented them from using a multilevel analysis. After three waves of CSES elections, we are in a privileged position to solve the problem.

14. Our conclusions remain essentially the same if we use education as a proxy of political sophistication. This alternative model shows no significant differences among individuals with primary (or incomplete primary) education, but the effect of open ballot on satisfaction with democracy emerges among those with a university degree. Although we do not consider education as a good proxy of political sophistication, this alternative specification helps to make our results more robust. This model is not reported in the table but it is available upon request.