Reasoning about institutional change: Winners, losers and support for electoral reforms

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 37, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 455-476

  Bowler, Shaun ^a   Donovan, Todd ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249993198     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123407000245     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Kenneth Shepsle, 'A Comment on Institutional Change', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 13 (2001), 321-5.
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3. Susan Banducci and Jeffrey Karp, 'Perceptions of Fairness and Support for Proportional Representation", Political Behavior, 21 (1999), 217-38.
4. Others have presented theoretical explanations of the stability of democratic institutions based on the motives of elites. See Adam Prezworski, Democracy and the Market (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Shepsle, 'A Comment on Institutional Change'. Our goal here is to develop an alternative if complementary understanding of this phenomenon based on an understanding of the mass public.
5. Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
6. Christopher J. Anderson, André Blais, Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan and Ola Listhaug, Losers' Consent: Elections and Democratic. Legitimacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Christopher J. Anderson and Christine Guillory, 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy', American Political Science Review, 91 (1997), 66-81; Jeffrey Karp and Susan Banducci, 'To Know It Is to Love It? Satisfaction with Democracy in the European Union', Comparative Political Studies, 36 (2003), 271-92.
7. Max Kaase and Kenneth Newton, Beliefs in Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Hans-Dieter Klingermann and Dieter Fuchs, Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Pippa Norris, Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
8. Douglass North, 'Nobel Laureate Lecture', Les Prix Nobel (Stockholm: Nobel Foundation, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1993).
9. Ola Listhaug, 'The Dynamics of Trust in Politicians', in Hans-Dieter Klingermann and Dieter Fuchs, eds, Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 261-98; Karp and Banducci, 'To Know It Is to Love It? Satisfaction with Democracy in the European Union'; Morris, Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance; Kaase and Newton, Beliefs in Government.
10. Anderson and Guillory, 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy'; Listhaug, 'The Dynamics of Trust in Politicians'.
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17. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, 'Choices, Values, and Frames', American Psychologist, 39 (1984), 341-50.
18. Kahneman and Tversky, 'Choices, Values, and Frames'.
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20. Susan Banducci and Jeffrey Karp, 'How Elections Change the Way Citizens View the Political System: Campaigns, Media Effects, and Electoral Outcomes in Comparative Perspective', British Journal of Political Science, 33 (2003), 443-67.
21. Hans-Dieter Klingemann, 'Mapping Political Support in the 1990s: A Global Analysis', in Pippa Norris, ed., Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 31-56; Arendt Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999); Anderson and Guillory, 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy'.
22. Banducci and Karp, 'How Elections Change the Way Citizens View the Political System'.
23. Harold D. Clarke, Nitish Dutt and Allan Komberg, 'The Political Economy of Attitudes Toward Polity and Society in Western European Democracies', Journal of Politics, 55 (1993), 998-1021; Anderson and Guillory, 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy'.
24. Paul Abramson, Brian Silver and Barbara Anderson, 'The Effects of Question Order in Attitude Surveys', American Journal of Political Science, 31 (1987), 900-8; George F. Bishop, Robert W. Oldendick and Alfred Tuchfarber, 'Political Information Processing: Question Order and Context Effects', Political Behavior, 4 (1982), 117-200; Howard Schuman and Stanley Presser, Question and Answers in Attitude Surveys: Experiments on Question Form, Wording, and Context (New York: Academic Press, 1981).
25. John Zaller and Stanley Feldman, 'A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions vs. Revealing Preferences', American Journal of Political Science, 36 (1992), 579-616.
26. David Brockington, 'The Paradox of Proportional Representation: The Effect of Party Systems and Coalitions on Electoral Participation', Political Studies, 52 (2004), 469-90; Banducci and Karp, 'How Elections Change the Way Citizens View the Political System'.
27. These 700 interviews came from four survey modules having 2,015 interviews of 7,631 eligible or potentially eligible contact attempts (residential or personal telephone-lines). Our questions appeared first in each module; 28 per cent of all eligible contacts and contacts of unknown eligibility responded (AAPOR RR3); 33 per cent refused, 11 per cent were never available and the eligibility of 26 per cent of contacts was unknown (no answer, always busy, etc.). If contacts of unknown eligibility are excluded, 35 per cent participated, 44 per cent refused, 16 per cent were never available and 3 per cent were excluded due to language problems.
28. Anderson and Guillory, 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy'; Banducci and Karp, 'How Elections Change the Way Citizens View the Political System'.
29. Allan J. Cigler and Russell Getter, 'Conflict Reduction in the Post-Election Period', Western Political Quarterly, 30 (1977), 363-76; Anderson et al., Losers' Consent.
30. Gerald C. Wright, 'Misreports of the Vote in the 1988 Senate Election Study', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 15 (1990), 543-63.
31. Democrats controlled the House and Senate for decades until 1995, broken by a period of Republican control of the Senate from 1981 to 1987. Republicans controlled both chambers from much of 1995 through 2005, with neither party having more than 51 per cent of Senate seats from 2001 to 2004.
32. Anderson et al., Losers' Consent.
33. Recall that the Electoral College over-represents states with smaller populations, at the expense of states with larger populations.
34. Kahneman and Tversky, 'Prospect Theory'; Kahneman and Tversky, 'Choices, Values, and Frames'.
35. The average state had eleven EC votes, with the median value being eight.
36. In populous states (twenty-one EC votes or more) on average there were 600,000 people represented per EC vote. In smaller and median-size states (fewer than twelve EC votes), on average there were 400,000 people represented per EC vote. Given this mallapportionment, and that geographic dispersion of presidential campaign activity in states was inversely related to state population (see http://www.fairvote.org/whopicks/), we assume it is valid that people in large (small) states might perceive they lose (win) under this status quo. This assumption may be suspect: formal game theoretic logic demonstrates that under certain conditions voters in larger states can have a greater chance of playing a 'pivotal' role in presidential election outcomes. For a review, see Bernard Grofman and Scott L. Feld, 'Thinking about the Political Impacts of the Electoral College', Public Choice, 123 (2005), 1-18. These formal models make assumptions about states as actors in coalition formation games that may not be consistent with the perceptions of actual voters. Moreover, the question was designed to prompt voters to consider that large (small) states would have more (less) influence under the proposed reforms, so we are able to test the effect of that prompt.
37. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.