That tooting sound you are hearing is simply my own horn. Tipped off by a colleague, I found that the article that presents the theory of how different electoral systems affect the “personal vote” is the no. 1 “hottest” article at the journal, Electoral Studies. Not bad for having been published more than a decade ago!
TOP25 articles within the journal:
Electoral StudiesIncentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: a Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas • Article
Electoral Studies, Volume 14, Issue 4, 1 December 1995, Pages 417-439
Carey, J.M.; Shugart, M.S.
The full list of the 25 hottest is mostly articles from 2005 or 2004, and only two others as old as 1999.
The first F&V discussion of the personal vote was a post on Palestinian candidate nominations.
Core expectations* derived from this article were tested and confirmed in an article I co-authored in the American Journal of Political Science, April, 2004. (One could ask what took me so long, but I hope one doesn’t.) Continuing analysis of these matters is the topic of a National Science Foundation grant I am working on now.
*That personal vote-earning attributes of legislators–specifically, district nativity, and prior electoral experience (municipal, provincial, etc.)–would be more prevalent as district magnitue increases in open-list systems and as magnitude decreases in closed-list systems (see graph of predicted values based on data from several European countries). The logic is that high-magnitude open-list systems are more competitive, putting candidates with local connections that they can advertise at an increasing advantage, whereas in closed lists, only at low magnitudes can parties gain advantages over others by placing locally connected candidates on the list. Ongoing research is looking at other types of electoral systems besides purely open or closed lists, at losing candidates, and at specific ranks on lists. It will keep me (and co-authors and grad students–busy for a while. It’s good to know, from the Electoral Studies download evidence, that others find this interesting!
Well, apart from Seats and Votes, I think that the personal vote piece is probably the piece of yours that I have cited the most. Of course, given that I write on Colombia, there is a certain logic to that…
Seed planted by Steven Taylor — 12 January 2006 @ 11:25
Indeed there is, and thanks Steven. I suppose that article is one of my personal (no pun intended) favorites from The Collected Works.
Seed planted by Professor Matthew Søberg Shugart — 12 January 2006 @ 12:19
Israel: Party-list formation updates
Meanwhile, with Russian immigrants a large enough bloc of voters to swing up to 15 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, several parties are making an effort to appeal to this electorate by placing Russians in electable list ranks–annother example of parties using the ‘personal vote‘ of specific candidates as a way to attract votes even in a system where the only vote choice a voter gets is a party slate (and even in a very high-magnitude closed-list system). the Likud is banking on having two well-known Russian candidates in realistic spots on the party list: Natan Sharansky at number 10 and Yuli Edelstein at number 15.
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 26 January 2006 @ 11:27
Well, just over a year later, and it has slipped to no. 2. Going on a dozen years since publication. I’ll take that ranking. No. 1 (B. Geys, “Explaining voter turnout”) was published in December, 2006, and one of the only two other articles in the journal’s top 10 to have been published before 2004 is also by yours truly.
Of course, in this business, it’s always, what you have done lately…?
Seed planted by MSS — 15 July 2007 @ 22:29
Did it pass the quota of 3.846% on personal votes alone, or was it bumped over the line by surplus votes from the Shugart Party ticket as a whole?
Seed planted by Tom Round — 16 July 2007 @ 22:45
Repairing Iraq’s party system
Luminaries from Lipset to Lijphart have taught that stable democratic politics are about more than race, religion or language. The challenge is to get Iraqi elites talking about more than sectarian interest. What candidates need are incentives to cultivate a personal vote.
Scion grafted by The Democratic Piece — 17 April 2008 @ 15:43