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Mixed-member electoral systems may well be the electoral reform of the 21st century. In the view of many electoral reformers, mixed systems offer the best of both the traditional British single-seat district system and PR systems. This book seeks to evaluate: why these systems have recently appealed to many countries with diverse electoral historie.

Research indicates that affective polarization pervades contemporary democracies worldwide. Although some studies identify party leaders as polarizing agents, affective polarization has been predominantly conceptualized as a product of in-/out-party feelings. This study compares levels of party affective polarization (PAP) and leader affective polarization (LAP) cross-nationally, using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Applying like–dislike scales and an identical index to both concepts, we reveal that while the two strongly correlate, LAP is systematically lower than PAP. The United States emerges as an exceptional case, being the only country where LAP significantly exceeds PAP. Drawing on regime input/output and institutions as theoretical building blocks, we explore cross-national variations and show that the relative strength of LAP vis-à-vis PAP is increased by presidential regime type, poor government performance, and low party system fragmentation. The findings of this study contribute to the thriving research on affective polarization and personalization of politics.

This article develops a theory to account for the variation in electoral systems in electoral authoritarian regimes. We argue that resource-rich dictators are incentivized to employ proportional representation systems to alleviate the threat from the masses and pre-empt the emergence of new opposition, while resource-poor dictators tend to choose majoritarian systems to co-opt ruling elites in the legislature. Using cross-national data on electoral authoritarian regimes, we find strong empirical evidence supporting our theory. We also explicitly illustrate the causal links between natural resources and electoral systems with additional statistical analyses and comparative case studies on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

This paper investigates the phenomenon of presidential constitutional engineering (PCE) in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2020. It introduces a novel conceptual framework and classification system that captures the most frequent and impactful strategies used by political elites to retain power through legal-constitutional means. These include manipulating term limits, adopting new constitutions to reset term counts, altering electoral systems, and imposing restrictive candidacy conditions. Unlike broader notions of electoral manipulation, the paper focuses specifically on legal-constitutional reforms that reshape the structure of presidential competition. Drawing on our dataset of documented PCE attempts, it offers comparative insights into institutional fragility and the concentration of executive power. The framework contributes to both academic debate and policy design by offering a clear typology that scholars and practitioners can adapt to assess democratic resilience and constitutional stability across presidential systems.

Electoral abstention has emerged as a critical challenge to democratic legitimacy, with rising rates observed globally. For example, in Portugal, the turnout declined from 91.5% in 1975 to 51.4% in 2022. This systematic review synthesizes multidisciplinary literature to identify key determinants of voter nonparticipation and their interactions, aiming to inform adaptive strategies to enhance civic engagement amid social, organizational, and technological changes. Following PRISMA guidelines, we searched five databases (Academic Search Complete, MEDLINE, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, PsycINFO, and Web of Science) from 2000 to August 2025 using terms such as “electoral abstention” and “non-voting.” Inclusion criteria prioritized quantitative empirical studies in peer-reviewed journals in English, Portuguese, Spanish, or French, yielding 23 high-quality studies (assessed via MMAT, with scores ≥ 60%) from 13 countries, predominantly the USA and France. Results reveal abstention as a multidimensional phenomenon driven by three interconnected categories: individual factors (e.g., health issues like smoking and mental health trajectories, institutional distrust); institutional factors (e.g., electoral reforms such as biometric registration reducing abstention by up to 50% in local contexts, but with mixed outcomes in voluntary voting systems); and contextual factors (e.g., economic inequalities and urbanization correlating with lower turnout, exacerbated by events like COVID-19). This review underscores the need for integrated public policies addressing these factors to boost participation, particularly among youth and marginalized groups. By framing abstention as an adaptive response to contemporary challenges, this work contributes to the political psychology and democratic reform literature, advocating interdisciplinary approaches to resilient electoral systems.

This study examines the relationship between malapportionment and islandness in three European archipelagos (Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Azores), employing a comparative analysis of electoral systems. Using the Loosemore-Hanby index, we quantify representational imbalances, revealing systematic overrepresentation of smaller islands. Findings suggest that malapportionment is not an anomaly but a structural feature of island governance, shaped by geographic and institutional factors. The paper contributes to island studies by integrating electoral disproportionality into the broader framework of islandness.

Social democratic parties have experienced considerable electoral decline recently, which has often been attributed to their rightward policy movement. This paper advances this literature by examining who benefits from this moderation strategy and who is abandoning the social democrats. It does so by analyzing aggregate-level election results and individual-level Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data, on a sample of 21 advanced democracies, over 327 elections, from 1965 to 2019. I find little support for the assertion that social democrats are defecting to one party. However, in agreement with the spatial theory of party competition, results reveal that the radical left increasingly and significantly benefit from social democratic economic rightward positions, which is magnified when combined with rightward sociocultural positions. This predominantly occurs because left-leaning voters migrate to the radical left. The findings provide notable ramifications for party strategy and contribute to explanations for the rise of challenger parties, at the expense of mainstream parties.

This article explores the indirect impact of gender quota legislation on the election of women to the South Korean national parliament. Although quotas mainly apply to the proportional representation portion of the mixed electoral system, pressures on parties to comply with quotas for single-member districts has brought about a 'spillover effect', whereby women elected via proportional representation quotas are later nominated and re-elected to single-member district seats for which parties do not apply quotas. This effect stems from a 'no re-election' norm in the proportional representation system that emerged after electoral reform in the 2000s, combined with the fact that being elected through quotas enhances women's political experience and thus their chances to run for district seats. While the 'no re-election' norm initially exerts a negative impact by preventing women from winning the same seat at the next election, it has a positive prolonged impact on women's sustainable representation by relocating women incumbents to district seats while also continuing to elect women via quotas. Cet article explore l'impact indirect de la législation sur les quotas de genre sur l'élection des femmes au parlement national en Corée du Sud. Bien que les quotas s'appliquent principalement à la partie de représentation proportionnelle du système électoral mixte, la pression que subissent les partis à se conformer aux quotas pour les circonscriptions uninominales a provoqué un « effet d'entraînement », par lequel les femmes élues sur quotas au scrutin proportionnel sont ensuite nommées et réélues aux sièges de circonscriptions uninominales où les partis n'appliquent pas de quotas. Cet effet découle d'une norme de « non-réélection » du système de représentation proportionnelle qui a émergé après la réforme électorale des années 2000, combinée au fait qu'être élu par quota améliore l'expérience des femmes en politique et ainsi leurs chances de concourir pour des sièges de circonscription. Bien que la norme de « non-réélection » exerce a priori un impact négatif en empêchant les femmes de gagner les mêmes sièges aux élections suivantes, il a un impact prolongé favorable à la représentation durable des femmes en installant celles titulaires de sièges de circonscription, tout en continuant à faire élire des femmes via les quotas. Este artículo explora el impacto indirecto de las leyes de cuotas de género en la elección de mujeres al parlamento nacional en Corea del Sur. Aunque las cuotas principalmente se aplican al aspecto de la representación proporcional en un sistema electoral mixto, la presión sobre los partidos para que cumplan con las cuotas de los distritos uninominales ha producido un \"efecto derrame\", por lo que las mujeres elegidas a través de cuotas de representación proporcional pues leugo son nombradas y reelectas para ocupar cargos de distritos únicos para los que los partidos no aplican cuotas. Este efecto se deriva de una norma de \"no reelección \" en el sistema de representación proporcional que surgió después de la reforma electoral de la década del 2000, combinado con el hecho de que ser elegidas a través de cuotas mejora la experiencia política de las mujeres y por lo tanto sus posibilidades de correr para los cargos del distrito. Si bien la norma de \"no reelección\" inicialmente ejerce un impacto negativo al prevenir que las mujeres ganen los mismos escaños en las elecciones siguientes, tiene un impacto positivo prolongado en la representación sostenible de las mujeres mediante la reubicación de las mujeres titulares en los escaños de distrito a la vez que se continúa eligiendo mujeres a través de las cuotas.

This research note investigates how the voting behavior of middle-income citizens explains why right-wing parties tend to govern under majoritarian electoral rule. The growing literature that investigates the ideological effects of electoral systems has mostly focused on institutional explanations. However, whether the electoral rules overrepresent parties with some specific ideologies is also a matter of behavior. Building on Iversen and Soskice (2006), we test two arguments. First, middle-income groups are more likely to vote for the right under majoritarian rules because they fear the redistributive consequences of a victory of the left in these contexts. Second, middle-income earners particularly concerned with tax rates are particularly prone to vote differently across electoral systems. Combining survey evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the New Zealand Election Study, we show that the voting behavior of middle-income citizens is indeed responsible for the predominance of the right under majoritarian systems.