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How Diffusion of Power in Parliaments Affects Voter Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Orit Kedar
Orit Kedar*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, ISR, 426 Thompson Street, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI, 48106. e-mail: oritk@umich.edu
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Abstract

I analyze how the diffusion of power in parliaments affects voter choice. Using a two-step research design, I first estimate an individual-level model of voter choice in 14 parliamentary democracies, allowing voters to hold preferences both for the party most similar to them ideologically and for the party that pulls policy in their direction. While in systems in which power is concentrated the two motivations converge, in consensual systems they diverge: since votes will likely be watered down by bargaining in the parliament, outcome-oriented choice in consensual systems often leads voters to endorse parties whose positions differ from their own views. In the second step, I utilize institutional measures of power diffusion in the parliament to account for the degree to which voters in different polities pursue one motivation versus the other. I demonstrate that the more power diffusion and compromise built into the political system via institutional mechanisms, the more voters compensate for the watering down of their vote by endorsing parties whose positions differ from their own views.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 13 , Issue 4: Special Issue on Multilevel Modeling for Large Clusters , Autumn 2005 , pp. 410 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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