The following are previously published works that have used similar data on candidates and parliamentarians and that have informed our project.  We present this previous research as a resource to scholars interested in these kinds of data around the world. The entries are listed in alphabetical order according to the last name of the first author.

Title	Satisfaction with democracy: Do institutions matter?
Type	Journal Article
Author	Kees Aarts
Author	Jacques Thomassen
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379407001072
Volume	27
Issue	1
Pages	5-18
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	March 2008
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2007.11.005
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	Previous research has shown that people in consensual democracies with a proportional electoral system are more satisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country than people in majoritarian democracies. We assess to what extent this relationship can be explained by people’s perception of the accountability and representativeness of the political system in their country. Our findings show that people’s satisfaction with democracy primarily depends on their perception of the representation function, and to a lesser degree on the accountability function. Surprisingly, perceived accountability rather than representation is enhanced by a proportional-type electoral system. Moreover, our evaluative measure of satisfaction with democracy is negatively related to proportional electoral systems. The macro-level satisfaction with democracy is primarily affected by the age of the democracy one lives in.

Title	Social Capital and Democratisation: Roots of Trust in Post-Communist Poland and Ukraine
Type	Book
Author	Martin Aberg
Author	Mikael Sandberg
Publisher	Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN	9780754619369
Date	2003
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
# of Pages	360

Title	Does political knowledge erode party attachments?: A review of the cognitive mobilization thesis
Type	Journal Article
Author	Jeremy J. Albright
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026137940900002X
Volume	28
Issue	2
Pages	248-260
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	June 2009
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2009.01.001
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	This article re-examines one of the most prominent theories explaining partisan dealignment in the advanced democracies: cognitive mobilization. Utilizing a diverse collection of cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a variety of countries, it is shown that measures of cognitive skills and access to mass media consistently predict an increase in the probability that a citizen will express an attachment to a party. What is more, this positive relationship is not diminishing over time. The essay concludes with a summary of key questions that remain about the relationship between political knowledge and party identification.

Title	Economic Voting and Multilevel Governance: A Comparative Individual-Level Analysis
Type	Journal Article
Author	Cameron D. Anderson
URL	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00194.x/abstract
Volume	50
Issue	2
Pages	449–463
Publication	American Journal of Political Science
ISSN	1540-5907
Date	2006
DOI	10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00194.x
Library Catalog	Wiley Online Library
Language	en
Abstract	An important component of incumbent support is the reward/punishment calculus of economic voting. Previous work has shown that “clarity of responsibility” within the central state government conditions national economic effects on incumbent vote choice: where clarity is high (low), economic effects are greater (less). This article advances the “clarity of responsibility” argument by considering the effect of multilevel governance on economic voting. In institutional contexts of multilevel governance, the process of correctly assigning responsibility for economic outcomes can be difficult. This article tests the proposition that multilevel governance mutes effects of national economic conditions by undermining responsibility linkages to the national government. Individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Module 1 are used to test this proposition. Results demonstrate that economic voting is weakest in countries where multilevel governance is most prominent. Findings are discussed in light of the contribution to the economic voting literature and the potential implications of multilevel governance.

Title	Left Parties, Poor Voters, and Electoral Participation in Advanced Industrial Societies
Type	Journal Article
Author	C. J. Anderson
Author	P. Beramendi
URL	http://vivo.cornell.edu/display/n73216
Volume	45
Issue	6
Pages	714-746
Publication	Comparative Political Studies
ISSN	0010-4140, 1552-3829
Date	2012-04-25
DOI	10.1177/0010414011427880
Library Catalog	CrossRef
Abstract	Although income inequality is an important normative issue for students of democratic politics, little is known about its effects on citizens’ electoral participation. The authors develop a formal model of the incentives for left parties to mobilize lower income voters. It posits that countries’ income distributions and competition on the left provide different incentives for left parties to mobilize lower income voters. In the absence of political competition, higher levels of income inequality reduce the incentives of dominant left parties to target lower income voters. However, competition on the left creates incentives for a dominant left party to mobilize lower income voters, thus counteracting the negative impact of inequality on parties’ incentives to target them. As a consequence, the negative association between inequality and turnout at the aggregate level is muted by the presence of several parties on the left side of the political spectrum. Using aggregate data on elections in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries between 1980 and 2002 and election surveys collected in the second wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project, the authors find strong and consistent support for their model.

Title	Ideological Voting: A Cross-national Analysis of Left-Right Orientations on Voting Behavior
Type	Journal Article
Author	Gabriel Badescu
Author	Paul Sum
Volume	53
Issue	1
Pages	52-73
Publication	Studia Politica
Date	2008
Abstract	In this article, we evaluate the relationship between left-right orientations and voting preferences through analyzing voter behavior in 24 countries, by using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We first evaluate the propensity for individuals to place themselves on a left-right scale as individual recognition of political space. We then estimate the strength of certain social characteristics and attitudes that correlate with use of the left-right schema as a form of ideological identification, as well as the relative strength of the left-right schema as an indicator of voter choice. In the final section, we consider macro-level factors that influence the variance found in ideological voting across cases. One of the main findings of the article is that in countries that had greater income disparity, we are more likely to observe ideological voting. The finding points to the importance that the left-right scale plays in structuring social conflict in the more traditional sense along class lines.

Title	Elections, electoral systems and volatile voters
Type	Book
Author	Gianfranco Baldini
Author	Adriano Pappalardo
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN	9780230574489
Date	2009
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	This book gives a full account of past experience, present structures and processes, and probable developments, of the voters- party-electoral systems nexus in twenty-one advanced Western democracies. The analysis is based on an original 1945-2007 comparative data set including all relevant political and institutional variables.
# of Pages	256

Title	Political parties and partisanship: social identity and individual attitudes
Type	Book
Author	John Bartle
Author	Paolo Bellucci
Publisher	Routledge
ISBN	9780415460965
Date	2009
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	This volume provides an up-to-date examination of the conceptualisations, causes, and consequences of partisanship, one of the most fundamental concepts in contemporary political science. Presenting a comprehensive account and assessment of partisanship in comparative empirical research, contributors to this volume not only assess past literature in this area, but also advance current debates. Focussing on three key aspects of partisanship, the volume covers theories of partisanship, the dynamics of partisanship and the behavioural consequences of partisanship in both new and established democracies. Particular features of the volume include: up-to-date data on partisanship across a wide range of countries including the new democracies in Eastern Europe contributions from well-established and well-recognised scholars in the field new theoretical insights presented alongside existing literature Political Parties and Partisanship will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, political behaviour, sociology and political psychology.
# of Pages	264

Title	Can’t get no satisfaction with the Westminster model? Winners, losers and the effects of consensual and direct democratic institutions on satisfaction with democracy
Type	Journal Article
Author	Julian Bernauer
Author	Adrian Vatter
URL	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2011.02007.x/abstract
Rights	© 2011 The Author(s). European Journal of Political Research © 2011 European Consortium for Political Research
Volume	51
Issue	4
Pages	435–468
Publication	European Journal of Political Research
ISSN	1475-6765
Date	2012
DOI	10.1111/j.1475-6765.2011.02007.x
Library Catalog	Wiley Online Library
Language	en
Abstract	Are citizens in consensus democracies with developed direct democratic institutions more satisfied with their political system than those in majoritarian democracies? In this article, individual-level data from the second wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and an updated version of Lijphart’s multivariate measure of consensus and majoritarian democracy covering 24 countries are used to investigate this question. The findings from logistic multilevel models indicate that consensual cabinet types and direct democratic institutions are associated with higher levels of citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, consensus democracy in these institutions closes the gap in satisfaction with democracy between losers and winners of elections by both comforting losers and reducing the satisfaction of winners. Simultaneously, consensus democracy in terms of electoral rules, the executive–legislative power balance, interest groups and the party system reduces the satisfaction of election winners, but does not enhance that of losers.

Title	Voting and Protesting: Explaining Citizen Participation in Old and New European Democracies
Type	Journal Article
Author	Patrick Bernhagen
Author	Michael Marsh
URL	http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510340601024298
Volume	14
Issue	1
Pages	44-72
Publication	Democratization
ISSN	1351-0347
Date	2007
DOI	10.1080/13510340601024298
Library Catalog	Taylor and Francis+NEJM
Abstract	This article analyses the differences and similarities in citizen participation between the new democracies of central and eastern Europe and the established democracies of the west. Citizens in the post-communist countries participate less in politics than their western neighbours. The article asks why this is the case and finds that no satisfactory answers have been offered in the literature so far. Developing a set of propositions about the factors that explain participation differences between old and new European democracies it shows that only a small part of the difference in political engagement is due to regional variation in the socio-demographic, attitudinal, and mobilization-related characteristics of citizens. The analysis also finds that, while the factors explaining election turnout have a largely similar impact in old and new democracies, the causes of protest participation, in particular those relating to left-right semantics, are significantly different between the two sets of countries. While many components of tried-and-tested models of political participation work equally well in new and old democracies, some of the differences in political engagement cannot be accounted for without reference to contextual variables specific to the post-communist democracies, in particular the different pre-democratic regime types and modes of the transition process.

Title	Electoral systems and party systems in Europe East and West
Type	Journal Article
Author	Sarah Birch
URL	http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1570585018458768
Volume	2
Issue	3
Pages	355-377
Publication	Perspectives on European Politics and Society
ISSN	1570-5854, 1568-0258
Date	09/2001
DOI	10.1080/1570585018458768
Library Catalog	CrossRef
Abstract	This article assesses the differences in the design of electoral institutions and electoral outcomes in 20 Eastern and 20 Western European democracies. It finds broad similarities between the types of electoral systems that have been adopted in the two parts of the continent. The size and shape of the party systems that have been generated by these systems are also similar overall. Yet statistical analysis demonstrates that the electoral systems of Eastern Europe are doing far more ‘work’ than their Western counterparts to reduce the size of party systems, and that they are more likely to use exclusionary thresholds to achieve this end than manipulation of constituency size. Possible reasons for these differences are discussed with reference to the factors that impinge on electoral system design.

Title	Electoral Systems and Electoral Misconduct
Type	Journal Article
Author	S. Birch
URL	http://cps.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0010414006292886
Volume	40
Issue	12
Pages	1533-1556
Publication	Comparative Political Studies
ISSN	0010-4140
Date	2007-09-17
DOI	10.1177/0010414006292886
Library Catalog	CrossRef
Abstract	This article is a cross-national study of the impact of electoral system design on electoral misconduct. It argues that elections held in single-member districts (SMD) under plurality and majority rule are more likely to be the object of malpractice than those run under proportional representation (PR). Two reasons are advanced in support of this argument: Candidates in SMD systems have more to gain from individual efforts to manipulate elections than is the case for candidates in PR contests; and malfeasance is more efficient under SMD rules, in that the number of votes that must be altered to change the outcome is typically smaller than it is under PR. This hypothesis is tested and confirmed on a new data set of electoral manipulation in 24 postcommunist countries between 1995 and 2004. The proportion of seats elected in SMDs is found to be positively associated with levels of electoral misconduct, controlling for a variety of contextual factors.

Title	The Effects of Mixed Electoral Systems in Eastern Europe
Type	Conference Paper
Author	Sarah Birch
URL	http://www2.essex.ac.uk/elect/database/papers/sbmixedee.pdf
Place	Budapest
Date	2000
Conference Name	30th Annual Conference of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies

Title	Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-communist Europe
Type	Book
Author	Sarah Birch
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN	9780333946305
Date	2003
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
# of Pages	212

Title	Embodying Democracy: Electoral System Design in Post-Communist Europe
Type	Book
Author	Sarah Birch
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN	9780333993606
Date	2002
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	Embodying Democracy analyzes the politics of electoral reform in eight postcommunist states including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine. By exploring the multiple factors that shaped the design of electoral institutions during the first ten years of postcommunist transition, it accounts for an important element of the postcommunist reform process and illuminates general features of institutional design in post-transition states.
# of Pages	241

Title	Elections and Democratization in Ukraine
Type	Book
Author	Sarah Birch
Publisher	Macmillan Publishers Limited
ISBN	9780333800454
Date	2000-01-01
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	Annotation. Elections and Democratization in Ukraine analyses the role of competitive elections in Ukraine’s crucial democratic transition period of 1989 to 1998. The series of four parliamentary elections, two presidential elections and three referendums which punctuated Ukraine’s road to democracy provide important insights into the social and political forces shaping the new state’s identity. Two specific research questions are addressed: – How do Ukranian voters make vote choices? – Which electoral cleavages are the most important? Contrary to those who claim that the Soviet Union left in its wake an atomized society with weak social divisions, this study argues that the Ukrainian electorate has, from the advent of competitive elections, exhibited relatively stable patterns of voting behaviour which can be explained to a great extent in terms of social divisions that developed in Soviet Ukraine and were made politically salient by the events of the transition period.
# of Pages	212

Title	Electoral Malpractice
Type	Book
Author	Sarah Birch
Publisher	Oxford University Press
ISBN	9780199606160
Date	2011-12-22
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	Elections ought in theory to go a long way toward making democracy ‘work’, but in many contexts, they fail to embody democratic ideals because they are affected by electoral manipulation and misconduct. This volume undertakes an analytic and explanatory investigation of electoral malpractice, which is understood as taking three principal forms: manipulation of the rules governing elections, manipulation of vote preference formation and expression, and manipulation of the voting process. The study – which is comparative in nature – starts out by providing a conceptual definition and typology of electoral malpractice, before considering evidence for the causes of this phenomenon. The principal argument of the book is that factors affecting the costs of electoral malpractice are crucial in determining whether leaders will, in any given context, seek to rig elections. Among the most important factors of this sort are the linkages between elites and citizens, and in particular the balance between relations of the civil-society and clientelist types. These linkages play an important role in determining how much legitimacy leaders will lose by engaging in electoral manipulation as well as the likely consequences of legitimacy loss. The study also shows how electoral malpractice might be reduced by means of a variety of strategies designed to raise the cost of electoral manipulation by increasing the ability of civil society and international actors to monitor and denounce it. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr. The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.
# of Pages	220

Title	Electoral institutions and popular confidence in electoral processes: A cross-national analysis
Type	Journal Article
Author	Sarah Birch
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379408000048
Volume	27
Issue	2
Pages	305-320
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	June 2008
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2008.01.005
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	There is a growing interest among comparative political scientists in electoral integrity, yet little is known about what motivates citizen confidence in the electoral process. This article explores the factors that shape perceptions of electoral conduct in a cross-national context, testing the hypothesis that institutional structures that promote a ‘level playing field’ at each stage of the electoral process will enhance the extent to which voters perceive their elections to be fair. The analyses carried out here are based on 28 elections that formed part of Module 1 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Project. Multilevel models including both individual- and election-level variables demonstrate that proportional electoral systems and the public funding of parties have positive impacts on confidence in the conduct of elections, while the formal independence of electoral management bodies is negatively associated with this variable.

Title	Single-member district electoral systems and democratic transition
Type	Journal Article
Author	Sarah Birch
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379404000290
Volume	24
Issue	2
Pages	281-301
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	June 2005
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2004.06.002
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	A considerable number of democratizing states have made the transition to competitive politics on the basis of single-member district electoral systems. This paper argues that such electoral systems often do not provide viable mechanisms for the consolidation of democracy. This is because the use of single-member districts works against the institutionalization of democratic politics in a newly competitive state. If the party system is geographically heterogeneous and/or poorly entrenched, a single-member law will encourage the multiplication of small, regionalized political support bases and the dominance of one large party. This aspect of electoral institutional design is therefore likely to be destabilizing, making it possible to predict that states which inherit or adopt single-member systems will either change their electoral systems or fail to democratize. This hypothesis is tested and largely confirmed on an exhaustive set of 78 cases from the ‘third wave’ of democratization.

Title	Perceptions of Electoral Fairness and Voter Turnout
Type	Journal Article
Author	Sarah Birch
URL	http://cps.sagepub.com/content/43/12/1601
Volume	43
Issue	12
Pages	1601-1622
Publication	Comparative Political Studies
ISSN	0010-4140, 1552-3829
Date	12/01/2010
Journal Abbr	Comparative Political Studies
DOI	10.1177/0010414010374021
Library Catalog	cps.sagepub.com
Language	en
Abstract	Previous research has established a link between turnout and the extent to which voters are faced with a “meaningful” partisan choice in elections; this study extends the logic of this argument to perceptions of the “meaningfulness” of electoral conduct. It hypothesizes that perceptions of electoral integrity are positively related to turnout. The empirical analysis to test this hypothesis is based on aggregate-level data from 31 countries, combined with survey results from Module 1 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems survey project, which includes new and established democracies. Multilevel modeling is employed to control for a variety of individual- and election-level variables that have been found in previous research to influence turnout. The results of the analysis show that perceptions of electoral integrity are indeed positively associated with propensity to vote.

Title	Post-Soviet Electoral Practices in Comparative Perspective
Type	Journal Article
Author	Sarah Birch
URL	http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668136.2011.566431
Volume	63
Issue	4
Pages	703-725
Publication	Europe-Asia Studies
ISSN	0966-8136
Date	2011
DOI	10.1080/09668136.2011.566431
Library Catalog	Taylor and Francis+NEJM

Title	Electoral Systems and Party System Stability in Post-Communist Europe
Type	Conference Paper
Author	Sarah Birch
Place	San Francisco
Date	2001
Conference Name	97th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association
Abstract	“This paper analyses the impact of electoral institutions on party system stability and change in twelve countries of post-communist Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. It argues that in the post-communist context it is necessary to break party system change down into two components: volatility and replacement. Volatility, a concept already well developed in the literature, refers to changes over successive elections in the balance of party support. Replacement is understood as the extent to which new political formations are successful in drawing support. Empirical analysis of these two variables demonstrates that they exhibit different patterns and that they are influenced by separate sets of factors. Electoral institution variables are found to have a strong impact on volatility by not replacement, which is influenced instead by sub-regional location and rates of electoral participation.”

Title	Electoral Management Bodies and the Conduct of Elections: Evidence from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
Type	Journal Article
Author	Sarah Birch
URL	http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/1/2/0/3/p212031_index.html?phpsessid=sl3qafvn94d36ve320bdqiq734
Date	2007-08-30
Library Catalog	citation.allacademic.com
Abstract	Electoral Commissions have recently begun to be an object of analysis for scholars of electoral institutions. This paper assesses the impact of various aspects of electoral management body design on electoral integrity in 24 states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Two competing hypotheses are advanced one emphasising the independence and professionalism of electoral commissions and another emphasising the role of checks and balances in ensuring that such bodies conduct elections in an impartial and transparent manner.

Title	Political corruption, economic performance, and electoral outcomes: a cross-national analysis
Type	Journal Article
Author	Eunjung Choi
Author	Jongseok Woo
URL	http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569775.2010.501636
Volume	16
Issue	3
Pages	249-262
Publication	Contemporary Politics
ISSN	1356-9775
Date	2010
DOI	10.1080/13569775.2010.501636
Library Catalog	Taylor and Francis+NEJM
Abstract	The current study examines how the incumbent government’s economic performance plays a role in mediating the impact of political corruption on electoral outcomes in 115 developing countries with relatively higher levels of corruption than Western consolidated democracies. Borrowing theoretical insights from the information-processing theory of voting, this study finds that political corruption becomes a formative electoral factor when the regime fails to sustain a sufficient level of economic growth. Otherwise, political corruption is not a significant factor that shapes electoral outcomes, irrespective of the level of perceived corruption, because the economy occupies voters’ minds as the most important issue, making it a more accessible issue than political corruption.

Title	Polish ‘Exceptionalism’: Voter Turnout in Poland in the light of CSES data
Type	Conference Paper
Author	Mikolaj Czesnik
Place	Warsaw
Date	2008
Conference Name	Political Institutions – Rationality – Electoral Behavior. Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Conference

Title	The collective action of data collection: A data infrastructure on parties, elections and cabinets
Type	Journal Article
Author	H. Doring
URL	http://eup.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/1465116512461189
Volume	14
Issue	1
Pages	161-178
Publication	European Union Politics
ISSN	1465-1165, 1741-2757
Date	2012-12-21
DOI	10.1177/1465116512461189
Library Catalog	CrossRef
Abstract	Here, I introduce a novel approach towards data collection for comparative research and present a new data infrastructure on parties, elections and governments, the Parliament and Government Composition Database (ParlGov). This data infrastructure combines a database, data presentation in webpages and software scripts in order to generate more dynamic datasets and to facilitate cooperation. So far, it includes information about more than 1000 parties, around 600 elections (national and European Parliament) and almost 1000 governments with their party composition. These observations are linked to a wide set of information about party positions and make it possible to derive various datasets for studies in political science. To provide a first glance into the potential of this new data infrastructure, I map the political space of the European Union (EU) by drawing on this source.

Title	Party-System Extremism in Majoritarian and Proportional Electoral Systems
Type	Journal Article
Author	Jay K. Dow
Volume	41
Issue	02
Pages	341-361
Publication	British Journal of Political Science
Date	2011
DOI	10.1017/S0007123410000360
Library Catalog	Cambridge Journals Online
Abstract	This study evaluates the extent of party-system extremism in thirty-one electoral democracies as a function of electoral-system proportionality. It uses data from the Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems project to estimate the extent of party-system compactness or dispersion across polities and to determine whether more proportional systems foster greater ideological divergence among parties. Electoral system characteristics most associated with party-system compactness in the ideological space are investigated. The empirics show that more proportional systems support greater ideological dispersion, while less proportional systems encourage parties to cluster nearer the centre of the electoral space. This finding is maintained in several sub-samples of national elections and does not depend on the inclusion of highly majoritarian systems (such as the United Kingdom).

Title	Reconstructing Galicia: Mapping the Cultural and Civic Traditions of the Former Austrian Galicia in Poland and Ukraine
Type	Journal Article
Author	Andrew J. Drummond
Author	Jacek Lubecki
URL	http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668136.2010.504385
Volume	62
Issue	8
Pages	1311-1338
Publication	Europe-Asia Studies
ISSN	0966-8136
Date	2010
DOI	10.1080/09668136.2010.504385
Library Catalog	Taylor and Francis+NEJM
Abstract	Abstract This article examines the cultural legacy of Galicia, a region comprising parts of Poland and Ukraine, once united under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Using survey data compiled by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we reconstruct the region of Galicia electoral district by electoral district, finding that Galicians today are far more civic than their compatriots. Sharing higher levels of political efficacy, Galicians are more likely to vote, and when they do, they are more likely to support parties who oppose the successor left. The vehicle for this cultural persistence, we argue, could be the (Greek) Catholic Church, which Galicians attend at far higher rates than the rest of Ukraine or Poland.

Title	Moc slabih: Politicke stranke u Madarskoj [The Power of the Weak: Political Parties in Hungary]
Type	Journal Article
Author	Zsolt Enyedi
Author	Gabor Toka
URL	hrcak.srce.hr/file/39288?
Volume	XXXVIII
Issue	2
Pages	68–90
Publication	Politicka Misao
Date	2001
Abstract	The authors analyse the evolution and the strength of the political parties as actors in the processes of democratic transition and consolidation in Hungary. Their starting point is that the political parties in transitional countries are faced with the same rivals in the political arena as the parties in the West: powerful interest groups, the increasing market competition, the supranational media, and the state administration. The authors conclude that the parties in Hungary, though not as stable and as developed, are nevertheless dominant in shaping and controlling the political processes in that country. The reason for that primarily lies in the fact that the party system systematically generates very competitive elections, clear alternations of the parties in power, and a strong link between the electoral outcomes and the government composition. Being in the position to shape the contemporary political and social transformation of their countries, these political parties find themselves in an excellent position to sui eneris set up party systems in their societies.

Title	Institutions and Legacies: Electoral Volatility in the Postcommunist World
Type	Journal Article
Author	Brad Epperly
URL	http://cps.sagepub.com/content/44/7/829
Volume	44
Issue	7
Pages	829-853
Publication	Comparative Political Studies
ISSN	0010-4140, 1552-3829
Date	07/01/2011
Journal Abbr	Comparative Political Studies
DOI	10.1177/0010414011401226
Library Catalog	cps.sagepub.com
Language	en
Abstract	The postcommunist states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have witnessed levels of electoral volatility higher than both Western Europe and Latin America, levels that have deleterious effects on party consolidation and representative democracy in the region. This article presents a model of postcommunist legislative electoral volatility, testing explanations developed in Western Europe and Latin America and refining them for the different experi ence of the twin transition to both democracy and capitalism. Pooled cross-sectional time series regression analysis is conducted on 67 legislative elections in 19 countries, covering the 1991-2006 period. Results demonstrate that, contrary to previous studies in other regions and of the first decade of the postcommunist era, economic determinants of volatility are of minimal salience. Rather, the institutional arrangement of the electoral system is found to be critically important, as is the more thorough “Leninist” or “Soviet” legacy in the states of the former Soviet Union.

Title	Coalition government and electoral accountability
Type	Journal Article
Author	Stephen D. Fisher
Author	Sara B. Hobolt
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379410000156
Volume	29
Issue	3
Pages	358-369
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	September 2010
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2010.03.003
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	Single-party governments are commonly thought to be more clearly responsible for government policy than coalition governments. One particular problem for voters evaluating coalition governments is how to assess whether all parties within a coalition should be held equally responsible for past performance. As a result, it is generally argued that voters are less likely to hold coalition governments to account for past performance. This article uses data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project to assess whether and how the composition of coalition governments affects the way in which people use their votes to hold governments to account, and which parties within coalitions are more likely to be held to account for the government’s past performance.

Title	Burger und Demokratie in Ost und West: Studien zur politischen Kultur und zum politischen Prozess : Festschrift fur Hans-Dieter Klingemann
Type	Book
Author	Dieter Fuchs
Author	Edeltraud Roller
Author	Hans-Dieter Klingemann
Author	Bernhard Wessels
Publisher	Westdeutscher Verlag
ISBN	9783531136417
Date	2002
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	de
# of Pages	612

Title	`Red versus Expert’: Candidate Recruitment and Communist Party Adaptation in Post-Soviet Politics
Type	Journal Article
Author	J. T. Ishiyama
URL	http://ppq.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/1354068898004003002
Volume	4
Issue	3
Pages	297-318
Publication	Party Politics
ISSN	1354-0688
Date	1998-07-01
DOI	10.1177/1354068898004003002
Library Catalog	CrossRef
Abstract	This paper focuses on the political evolution and behavior of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) from 1991 to 1995. In particular, it addresses two questions. What has the KPRF done to adjust to new political circumstances’ Was the ‘strategy’ successful and did it explain KPRF electoral gains in the parliamentary elections of 1995? The paper concentrates on one aspect of this adjustment process – comparing the KPRF’scandidate recruitment behavior for the State Duma elections of 1993 and 1995. However rather than describe what the party has done in terms ofcandidate recruitment, I derive a set of theoretical expectations from both the general literature on party behavior in the West and in Eastern Europe, and analyze the candidate recruitment behavior of the KPRF as an empirical test of these expectations. Second, this paper assesses the extent to which the types of candidates the party recruited for the single-mandate districts in 1995 affected the probability of their winning election.

Title	Pocketbook or rosary?: economic and identity voting in 2000-2001 elections in Poland
Type	Book
Author	Krzysztof Jasiewicz
Author	University of Strathclyde Centre for the Study of Public Policy
Publisher	Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde
Date	2003
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
# of Pages	32

Title	When politics is not just a man’s game: Women’s representation and political engagement
Type	Journal Article
Author	Jeffrey A. Karp
Author	Susan A. Banducci
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379407001096
Volume	27
Issue	1
Pages	105-115
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	March 2008
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2007.11.009
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	Although women appear to be less interested and less engaged in politics than men, some evidence suggests that the presence of women as candidates and office holders can help to stimulate political engagement among women. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), we investigate how the election of women in national legislatures influences women’s political engagement and attitudes about the political process across 35 countries. We find that sex differences in political engagement as well as political attitudes are apparent in a large number of countries. We find also that female representation is positively associated with attitudes about the political process; however, these effects, while weak, are seen among both men and women.

Title	Political Efficacy and Participation in Twenty-Seven Democracies: How Electoral Systems Shape Political Behaviour
Type	Journal Article
Author	Jeffrey A Karp
Author	Susan A Banducci
Volume	38
Issue	02
Pages	311-334
Publication	British Journal of Political Science
Date	2008
DOI	10.1017/S0007123408000161
Library Catalog	Cambridge Journals Online
Abstract	Advocates of proportional representation (PR) often cite its potential for increasing citizen involvement in politics as one of PR’s fundamental advantages over plurality or first-past-the-post systems. The assumption is that plurality electoral systems distort the translation of votes into seats, discouraging and alienating small party supporters and other political minorities. In contrast, PR systems are believed to provide greater opportunities for representation which are assumed to instil greater efficacy and increase participation. We examine this theory linking institutions to electoral participation across a diverse set of countries using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Using a multi-level approach we find evidence consistent with the expectations about the negative influence of disproportional systems on political minorities. Voters are also likely to have stronger partisan preferences in PR systems, which enhances political efficacy and increases voter participation. The effects of PR, however, are not all positive; broad coalitions, which are likely to be a feature of these systems, reduce political efficacy.

Title	Benchmarking across Borders: Electoral Accountability and the Necessity of Comparison
Type	Journal Article
Author	Mark Andreas Kayser
Author	Michael Peress
Volume	106
Issue	03
Pages	661-684
Publication	American Political Science Review
Date	2012
DOI	10.1017/S0003055412000275
Library Catalog	Cambridge Journals Online
Abstract	When the economy in a single country contracts, voters often punish the government. When many economies contract, voters turn against their governments much less frequently. This suggests that the international context matters for the domestic vote, yet most research on electoral accountability assumes that voters treat their national economies as autarkic. We decompose two key economic aggregates—growth in real gross domestic product and unemployment—into their international and domestic components and demonstrate that voters hold incumbents more electorally accountable for the domestic than for the international component of growth. Voters in a wide variety of democracies benchmark national economic growth against that abroad, punishing (rewarding) incumbents for national outcomes that underperform (outperform) an international comparison. Tests suggest that this effect arises not from highly informed voters making direct comparisons but from “pre-benchmarking” by the media when reporting on the economy. The effect of benchmarked growth exceeds that of aggregate national growth by up to a factor of two and outstrips the international component of growth by an even larger margin, implying that previous research may have underestimated the strength of the economy on the vote.

Title	Tarsadalmi Riport 2000 (Social Report 2000)
Type	Book
Editor	Tamas Kolosi
Editor	Istvan Gyorgy Toth
Editor	Gyorgy Vukovich
Place	Budapest
Publisher	TARKI
Date	2000
Language	hu

Title	Abstain or Rebel: Corruption Perceptions and Voting in East European Elections
Type	Journal Article
Author	Tatiana Kostadinova
URL	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009.00194.x/abstract
Rights	© The Policy Studies Organization
Volume	37
Issue	4
Pages	691–714
Publication	Politics & Policy
ISSN	1747-1346
Date	2009
DOI	10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009.00194.x
Library Catalog	Wiley Online Library
Language	en
Abstract	This paper argues that corruption, threatening democratic governance in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, is another influential determinant of voter turnout. I hypothesize that its impact is complex in that it generates distinct incentives for participation. A recursive model of voting specifies a direct effect where voters get mobilized to bring to power politicians of greater integrity, and an indirect effect in which perceptions of corruption corrode faith in the democratic process and consequently, depress voting. The analysis uses CSES survey data from eight post-communist countries and the results provide empirical support for the theoretical model. The results also suggest that at least in 2001-05, the two opposing incentives for voting balanced each other out, with a slight gain for the mobilization effect.Este articulo argumenta que la amenaza de la corrupcion dentro de los gobiernos democraticos de Europa del Este es un factor influyente en la participacion de votantes. Planteo que su impacto es complejo puesto que genera incentivos contrapuestos para la participacion. Un modelo de voto recursivo especifica un efecto directo donde los votantes se movilizan para llevar al poder a los politicos de mayor integridad, y un efecto indirecto en el cual las percepciones de corrupcion corroen la fe en el proceso democratico y en consecuencia, reduce el voto. El analisis utiliza la investigacion de datos del Estudio Comparativo de los Sistemas Electorales (CSES, por sus siglas en ingles) de ocho paises post-comunistas y los resultados proveen el respaldo empirico para el modelo teorico. Los resultados sugieren tambien que por lo menos en 2001-05, los dos incentivos opuestos para el voto se equilibran mutuamente, con un ligero triunfo del efecto de la movilizacion.

Title	Party system institutionalisation in east-central Europe: empirical dimensions and tentative conclusions
Type	Conference Paper
Author	Paul G. Lewis
URL	http://www.ecpr.org.uk/rennes/
Place	Rennes, France
Date	2008-04
Library Catalog	oro.open.ac.uk
Conference Name	Joint Sessions of European Consortium for Political Research
Abstract	The nationalisation of party systems is a topic closely related to processes of party system institutionalisation, an area that has developed its own literature and dimensions of analysis. Institutionalisation is understood to comprise four main dimensions: the growth of stability in the rules and nature of inter-party competition, the development of stable roots in society that help ensure a measure of regularity in how people vote, the acquisition of legitimacy by parties and the electoral process, and the establishment of party organisation that have an independent status and some value in their own right. The idea of party system institutionalisation was first presented by S. Mainwaring and T. Scully in 1995 and has been developed in a range of other publications, mostly by Mainwaring with a number of different contributors. It was first developed in a Latin American context but has an obvious relevance to developments in other newly democratising countries. In terms of outcomes, party system institutionalisation is understood to have a strong impact on the quality of democracy and to reduce tendencies to clientelism, political populism and the growth of anti-politics sentiments, and to foster mechanisms of democratic accountability and effective policy formulation. Over the years, a substantial literature on the process of party system institutionalisation has been produced and, in recent years, a growing proportion of this has concerned systems in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper will, firstly, survey and evaluate some of the most recent literature with a view to establishing what light it sheds on the process in East-Central Europe and, secondly, identify and assess the key data that enable any judgement to be made on the course of this process in the region and to identify the contributions in this area of various data-bases relating to party politics.

Title	Subjective vs. Objective Proximity in Poland: Controversies in the Choice of Measurement?
Type	Conference Paper
Author	Radoslaw Markowski
Author	Joshua A. Tucker
Place	Warsaw
Date	2008
Conference Name	Political Institutions – Rationality – Electoral Behavior. Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Conference

Title	Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Post-Communist Societies
Type	Journal Article
Author	Ian McAllister
Author	Stephen White
URL	http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/13/2/197
Volume	13
Issue	2
Pages	197-216
Publication	Party Politics
ISSN	1354-0688, 1460-3683
Date	03/01/2007
Journal Abbr	Party Politics
DOI	10.1177/1354068807073858
Library Catalog	ppq.sagepub.com
Language	en
Abstract	Political parties have a central role to play in democratic consolidation, yet we know comparatively little about how effectively they represent social cleavages in newly emerging democracies. Using the Lipset-Rokkan framework, this article examines the role of parties in articulating social cleavages in 14 established and 6 emerging democracies using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems datasets. The results show that the social cleavages in the emerging democracies are similar to those of the established democracies, with religion and class predominating. Parties appear to be less effective in representing social cleavages in the emerging than in the established democracies.

Title	Party Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: A Comparative Study of Political Institutionalization in the Baltic States, Russia, and Ukraine
Type	Book
Author	Andrey A. Meleshevich
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN	9781403974495
Date	2007-01-15
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	Too few investigations have attempted to shore up critical knowledge gaps about post-Soviet states by conducting comparative analyses of political institutions and developing rigorous methods suitable for cross-national longitudinal analysis. This book attempts to close a few of the gaps left by many previous publications in the post-Soviet field. It conducts a cross-country multiple-election examination of political party systems in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine in the past one and a half decades. The project measures and explains different degrees and dynamics of party system institutionalization in these five nations — an important factor bearing on the progress of a nation toward consolidating stable democracy.
# of Pages	282

Title	Voter Turnout Stability Evidence from Poland
Type	Journal Article
Author	Czesnik Mikolaj
URL	http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.4f6d734b-39b4-3279-80dd-9183acad5bef
Issue	1(165)
Pages	107-122
Publication	Polish Sociological Review
Date	2009
Library Catalog	yadda.icm.edu.pl
Abstract	One of the most fundamental issues in studies on voter turnout is its stability. The more stable citizens’ attitudes and behaviours, the healthier and more predictable the democratic system. Knowledge why voting is stable/unstable helps to understand the whole puzzle of voter turnout. Thus the main purpose of this paper is to analyze the issue of voter turnout stability in a very specific context of Polish parliamentary and presidential elections of 2005, when citizens were called to the polling stations three times every two weeks. Polish National Election Study panel dataset gives a unique opportunity to examine this issue in a more in-depth manner. The main finding of the paper is that many Polish citizens are rather unstable, both in long-term and short-term perspective. And although majority of the electorate still behaves in a stable manner, the number of unstable citizens is quite high, and, what is even more alarming, it tends to increase, which can imply serious challenges to democratic system.

Title	Elections in Poland 2001 : party chaos and electoral manipulation
Type	Conference Paper
Author	F. Millard
URL	http://www2.essex.ac.uk/elect/database/papers/MILLARDbassees.pdf
Place	Gambridge
Date	2002
Conference Name	British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies, conference

Title	Throwing out the Bums: Protest Voting and Unorthodox Parties after Communism
Type	Journal Article
Author	Grigore Pop-Eleches
Volume	62
Issue	02
Pages	221-260
Publication	World Politics
Date	2010
DOI	10.1017/S0043887110000043
Library Catalog	Cambridge Journals Online
Abstract	The electoral rise of unorthodox parties (UOPs) in recent East European elections raises some puzzling questions about electoral dynamics in new democracies. Why did the power alternation of the mid-1990s not result in party-system consolidation, as suggested by some earlier studies, but instead give way to a much more chaotic environment in which established mainstream political parties lost considerable ground to new political formations based on personalist and populist appeals? Why did this reversal in Eastern Europe happen during a period of economic recovery, remarkable Western integration progress, and a broad acceptance of electoral democracy as the only game in town? This article suggests that these electoral dynamics can be explained by focusing on the interaction between protest voting and election sequence. While protest voting to punish unpopular incumbents has been a widespread but understudied practice since the collapse of communism, the beneficiaries of these protest votes have changed in recent elections. Whereas in the first two generations of postcommunist elections, disgruntled voters could opt for untried mainstream alternatives, in third-generation elections (defined as elections taking place after at least two different ideological camps have governed in the postcommunist period) voters had fewer untried mainstream alternatives, and therefore opted in greater number for unorthodox parties. This explanation receives strong empirical support from statistical tests using aggregate data from seventy-six parliamentary elections in fourteen East European countries from 1990 to 2006, survey evidence from twelve postcommunist elections from 1996 to 2004, and a survey experiment in Bulgaria in 2008.

Title	Representation in Context: Election Laws and Ideological Congruence Between Citizens and Governments
Type	Journal Article
Author	G. Bingham Jr. Powell
Volume	11
Issue	01
Pages	9-21
Publication	Perspectives on Politics
Date	2013
DOI	10.1017/S1537592712003635
Library Catalog	Cambridge Journals Online

Title	The Ideological Congruence Controversy The Impact of Alternative Measures, Data, and Time Periods on the Effects of Election Rules
Type	Journal Article
Author	G. Bingham Powell
URL	http://cps.sagepub.com/content/42/12/1475
Volume	42
Issue	12
Pages	1475-1497
Publication	Comparative Political Studies
ISSN	0010-4140, 1552-3829
Date	12/01/2009
Journal Abbr	Comparative Political Studies
DOI	10.1177/0010414009332147
Library Catalog	cps.sagepub.com
Language	en
Abstract	Focusing on the left-right scale as a summary measure of citizens’ and representatives’ preferences, a growing body of literature has used a variety of approaches and data in measuring positions of citizens and representatives. The most recent studies, contrary to previous ones, show no significant difference between ideological congruence in single member district (SMD) and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems. This article examines the major alternative measurement approaches and data sets, finding that recent results are due to differences in time period, not differences in measurement approach. The associations between election rules and ideological congruence are relatively robust to various measurement approaches, as are estimations of the causal processes shaping ideological congruence. The association between election rules and congruence has declined in the past decade, as shown by all three major approaches, due primarily to convergence toward the median of plurality parties in the SMD elections.

Title	Elections in Western European parliaments: Elections in Western European parliaments
Type	Journal Article
Author	Ulrich Sieberer
URL	http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/1475-6765.12007
Volume	52
Issue	4
Pages	512-535
Publication	European Journal of Political Research
ISSN	03044130
Date	06/2013
DOI	10.1111/1475-6765.12007
Library Catalog	CrossRef
Abstract	Parliaments often elect holders of important extra-parliamentary offices such as heads of state, constitutional judges, heads of audit institutions and ombudsmen. What drives the behaviour of parliamentary actors and the outcome of such elections? This article explains actor behaviour theoretically, drawing on spatial factors, principal-agent arguments about the importance of nonspatial candidate characteristics and signaling arguments about competitive considerations beyond the specific election. Empirically, it provides the first comparative analysis of such elections outside the United States Senate using original data on 100 elections for four external offices in 14 Western European parliaments. The findings show that spatial variables, nonspatial candidate characteristics and features of the competitive context systematically affect the election outcome. The article contributes to comparative parliamentary research in general by demonstrating how parliamentary activities, other than lawmaking, can be analysed using established theories and by showing that consensual aggregate outcomes can be explained within a competition-based rational choice model.

Title	Who Says “It’s the Economy”? Cross-National and Cross-Individual Variation in the Salience of Economic Performance
Type	Journal Article
Author	Matthew M. Singer
URL	http://cps.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/10/20/0010414010384371
Volume	44
Issue	3
Pages	284-312
Publication	Comparative Political Studies
ISSN	0010-4140, 1552-3829
Date	2010-10-21
Journal Abbr	Comparative Political Studies
DOI	10.1177/0010414010384371
Library Catalog	cps.sagepub.com
Language	en
Abstract	Theories of government approval usually assume that voters care about economic outcomes. This assumption frequently does not hold. Data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems demonstrate that although the economy is often the most important issue in an election, its place on the issue agenda varies across individuals and electoral contexts. The economy is more likely to dominate other issue concerns under conditions of economic recession, volatility, and economic underdevelopment. Moreover, at the individual level the salience of economic performance rises with unemployment and economic vulnerability. Governance crises related to corruption and human rights reduce attention to the economy, as do large-scale terrorist attacks. If the economy is not perceived as important, its effect on government approval is strongly mitigated. Thus, variations in the economy’s salience need to be further incorporated into studies linking economic and political outcomes.

Title	Representation of Post-Communist European Countries in Cross-National Public Opinion Surveys
Type	Journal Article
Author	Kazimierz Slomczynski
Author	Irina Tomescu-Dubrow
URL	http://mesharpe.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,4,5;journal,45,60;linkingpublicationresults,1:110914,1
Volume	53
Issue	4
Pages	42-52
Publication	Problems of Post-Communism
ISSN	1075-8216
Date	2006-7-1
DOI	10.2753/PPC1075-8216530404
Library Catalog	CrossRef
Abstract	The degree of political rights and the level of economic well-being of a given country can indicate how much this country collaborates with other countries on survey research.

Title	Party organizational strength and party unity in post-communist Europe
Type	Journal Article
Author	Margit Tavits
Volume	4
Issue	03
Pages	409-431
Publication	European Political Science Review
Date	2012
DOI	10.1017/S1755773911000257
Library Catalog	Cambridge Journals Online
Abstract	The existing comparative literature focuses on political institutions to explain party unity in parliament, and largely ignores the role of party characteristics in this process. This study argues that the strength of political party organization directly and independently influences the level of party unity. Organizational strength makes the party a valuable asset to individual legislators, thus increasing their willingness to be disciplined. Therefore, parties with strong organizations are likely to be more unified in parliament than those with weak organizations. I find support for this argument with data from four post-communist democracies: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Poland. Narratives suggest that the proposed causal mechanism is plausible.

Title	Discipline and Party Institutionalization in Post-Soviet Legislatures
Type	Journal Article
Author	Frank C. Thames
URL	http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/13/4/456
Volume	13
Issue	4
Pages	456-477
Publication	Party Politics
ISSN	1354-0688, 1460-3683
Date	07/01/2007
Journal Abbr	Party Politics
DOI	10.1177/1354068807077956
Library Catalog	ppq.sagepub.com
Language	en
Abstract	Fearing that weak or poorly institutionalized party systems may undermine democratic consolidation, scholars have examined party systems in a myriad of contexts. The vast majority of these studies utilize aggregate measures of party system institutionalization to assess the relative merits of individual systems. While laudable, relying on aggregate measures may obscure the effects of the variation in party institutionalization in different systems. This article examines legislative politics in postCommunist Russia and Ukraine to determine whether variation in party institutionalization, even in weakly institutionalized party systems, has significant effects. The empirical results show that variation in party institutionalization creates variation in levels of parliamentary party discipline in both contexts. This raises the possibility that systemic level analyses of party system institutionalization are ignoring the effects of within-system variation.

Title	Citizen information, election outcomes and good governance
Type	Journal Article
Author	Gabor Toka
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379407001084
Volume	27
Issue	1
Pages	31-44
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	March 2008
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2007.11.006
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	This paper provides a new empirical test of the common sense proposition that a better informed electorate helps producing greater collective welfare. The innovation lies in an arguably more adequate measurement of both the independent and the dependent variable than those found in previous studies. The data come from the cross-national post-election surveys of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project plus World Bank data on the quality of governance across the globe. The findings show some significant effects of citizens’ ability to emulate fully informed choices on the quality of governance after the elections in question. However, the effect only materializes over multiple elections, and may not extend to all aspects of good governance.

Title	Can Voters Be Equal? A Cross-National Analysis
Type	Journal Article
Author	Gabor Toka
Volume	9
Issue	2
Pages	51-72
Publication	Review of Sociology of the Hungarian Sociological Association
Date	2003-11-11T00:00:00///
Journal Abbr	Review of Sociology of the Hungarian Sociological Association
Library Catalog	IngentaConnect
Abstract	The paper empirically tests the proposition that because of unequal social distribution of politically relevant resources, some groups of citizens may be less successful in expressing their specifically political preferences in the vote than others. Hence, the electoral arena may give different people different degrees of political influence even when the formal equality of all citizens before the law is rigorously upheld in the electoral process. The first part of the paper explores the assumptions behind the proposition itself and the further assumptions that need to be made in order to test it empirically. The second part of the paper (forthcoming in the next issue of this periodical) offers an empirical test. Survey data on voting behavior in 18 democratic party systems from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and Larry Bartels’ (1996) simulation procedure – now extended to the analysis of multiparty-systems, turnout effects and non-linear information effects on the vote – are utilized to explore the question. The results show that social differences in both turnout and political knowledge may lead to the hypothesized inequalities but their size is remarkably modest.

Title	The Impact of Preference Voting Systems on Women’s Representation and the Legitimation of Quota-based Nomination Results
Type	Conference Paper
Author	G. Toka
Author	M. Popescu
Author	F. Millard
Place	Mainz, Germany
Date	11-16 March 2013
Conference Name	Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research
Abstract	Previous cross-national research on electoral-system effects on women’s legislative representation suggests that candidate-centered systems – including list PR preference systems – are disadvantageous for women candidates precisely because they allow citizens to have some direct say in the election of individual members of parliament. We develop a dynamic theoretical model of agent-mediated electoral-system effects on women’s representation that implies some potentially positive effects of preference voting systems, except where women are exceptionally active in politics or are temporarily overrepresented among less resourceful candidates. In the latter contexts our model predicts neutral or even negative effects of preference voting on the standing of women candidates, but predominantly positive though modest effects across the large majority of elections. We test the theory’s propositions with a new dataset covering over 90,000 candidates in East Central Europe, where we predict different effects than previous scholarship. The results suggest that PR preference systems cannot do much to promote women’s representation directly, but do no worse than closed-list PR. Overall, since preference voting systems give reassurance against the normatively controversial aspects of mandatory quota and placement rules and thus can reduce suspected negative effects of and opposition to the latter’s introduction, they may serve women’s representation better than closed-list systems.

Title	Political Parties and Electoral Preferences in Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Type	Conference Paper
Author	Sergei Tumanov
Author	Alexander Gasparishvili
Author	David Rotman
Place	Sevilla
Date	2006
Conference Name	A Conference on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)

Title	Does Globalization Affect Public Perceptions of “Who is in Power Can Make a Difference”? Evidence from 37 Countries, 1996-2005
Type	Conference Paper
Author	Jack Vowles
Place	Cologne
Date	2007
Conference Name	CSES Conference on Monitoring Democracy Development and Electoral Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe

Title	Information Dissemination and Access in Russia and Eastern Europe: Problems and Solutions East and West
Type	Book
Author	Rachel Walker
Author	Marcia Freed Taylor
Publisher	IOS Press
ISBN	9789051994209
Date	1998-01-01
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	This book is the outcome of an international workshop held at Essex University in August 1997. It fulfils three unique functions. It examines obstacles and solutions to the promotion of access to and the dissemination of social science information. In general, little attention has been paid to the dissemination of social science information either nationally of internationally, despite the fact that the information revolution is constantly in the headlines. It brings together specialists from Russia, Eastern and Western Europe to discuss these issues from the broad European perspective, although particular attention is paid to the problems of dissemination and access in Russia and Eastern Europe which are rarely addressed in the Western literature. It also brings together specialists from the three major communities involved in the circulation of information, groups which rarely speak to each other: data providers, data brokers and data users. The result is a series of illuminating insights into the access and dissemination issues confronting these different geographical and functional communities and some imaginative proposals about ways in which obstacles and problems might be overcome.
# of Pages	250

Title	Relative Extremism and Relative Moderation Strategic Party Positioning in Democratic Systems
Type	Journal Article
Author	Paul V. Warwick
URL	http://prq.sagepub.com/content/62/2/276
Volume	62
Issue	2
Pages	276-288
Publication	Political Research Quarterly
ISSN	1065-9129, 1938-274X
Date	06/01/2009
Journal Abbr	Political Research Quarterly
DOI	10.1177/1065912908320663
Library Catalog	prq.sagepub.com
Language	en
Abstract	This article investigates the ways in which parties stake out left—right positions that deviate from the mean positions of their supporters. Previous research has shown that parties tend to adopt positions that are more extreme than those of their supporters, but there are at least two arguments that also imply the presence of relative moderation—a tendency for moderate parties to be more moderate than their supporters. Using surveys covering 34 countries compiled by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this investigation shows that parties in coalitional systems display both phenomena.

Title	Party Politics in New Democracies (Paperback)
Type	Book
Author	Paul D. Webb
Author	Stephen White
Publisher	Oxford University Press, Incorporated
ISBN	9780199289660
Date	2009
Library Catalog	Google Books
Language	en
Abstract	The sister volume to Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, this book offers a systematic and rigorous analysis of parties in some of the world’s major new democracies. Drawing on a wealth of expertise and data, the book assesses the popular legitimacy, organizational development and functional performance of political parties in Latin America and post-communist Eastern Europe. It demonstrates the generational differences between parties in the old and new democracies, and reveals contrasts among the latter. Parties are shown to be at their most feeble in those recently transitional democracies characterized by personalistic, candidate-centered forms of politics, but in other new democracies–especially those with parliamentary systems–parties are more stable and institutionalized, enabling them to facilitate a meaningful degree of popular choice and control. Wherever party politics is weakly institutionalized, political inequality tends to be greater, commitment to pluralism less certain, clientelism and corruption more pronounced, and populist demagoguery a greater temptation. Without party, democracy’s hold is more tenuous.
# of Pages	375

Title	Meaningful choices, political supply, and institutional effectiveness
Type	Journal Article
Author	Bernhard Wessels
Author	Hermann Schmitt
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379407001060
Volume	27
Issue	1
Pages	19-30
Publication	Electoral Studies
ISSN	0261-3794
Date	March 2008
Journal Abbr	Electoral Studies
DOI	10.1016/j.electstud.2007.11.010
Library Catalog	ScienceDirect
Abstract	This article explores the degree to which the meaningfulness of electoral choices is a result of the political supply structure and the institutional setup of an electoral system. We argue that meaningful choices require both a differentiated choice set and effective elections. In testing this claim, we follow two strategies. First, we take the level of turnout as an indicator of the meaningfulness of electoral choices and determine the impact of political supply and institutional structures on it. Second, we explore whether and how political supply and institutional effectiveness affect the calculus of voting. We test a set of specific hypotheses by determining the relevance of different criteria for choosing a party with conditional models of macro-micro interactions. Empirical data come from the second wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES).