Sponsor
Political Science
Joint PE/PI & SPC Workshop: Andrew T. Little (Berkeley)
Thursday, March 5,
-
Andrew T. Little (Berkeley) will present his talk, "Electoral Systems and Resistance to Democratic Backsliding." (with Sean Gailmard and Carlo Prato)
Abstract:
We study how electoral institutions affect incentives for elected officials to resist democratic backsliding by a chief executive/party leader. Empirically, we find more legislative resistance to backsliders among party list proportional rule (PR) systems compared to single-member districts (SMD) with decentralized candidate selection. We examine this relationship with a formal model comparing resistance to backsliding and retaliation to resistance in SMD vs PR systems. If the leader is not removed, they have a stronger influence on co-partisans' electoral fortunes under list PR. However, the ability to threaten the electoral fortunes of their co-partisans after being removed is higher under SMD (e.g., due to primaries). We find that the latter effect dominates when resistance is not too likely to succeed or when the threat to be removed via primary is sufficiently strong. More broadly, when the leader's electoral influence is sufficiently high, SMD can provide weaker incentives for legislators to resist.
Abstract:
We study how electoral institutions affect incentives for elected officials to resist democratic backsliding by a chief executive/party leader. Empirically, we find more legislative resistance to backsliders among party list proportional rule (PR) systems compared to single-member districts (SMD) with decentralized candidate selection. We examine this relationship with a formal model comparing resistance to backsliding and retaliation to resistance in SMD vs PR systems. If the leader is not removed, they have a stronger influence on co-partisans' electoral fortunes under list PR. However, the ability to threaten the electoral fortunes of their co-partisans after being removed is higher under SMD (e.g., due to primaries). We find that the latter effect dominates when resistance is not too likely to succeed or when the threat to be removed via primary is sufficiently strong. More broadly, when the leader's electoral influence is sufficiently high, SMD can provide weaker incentives for legislators to resist.