Electoral Competition and Endogenous Political Institutions: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Germany
Electoral Competition and Endogenous Political Institutions: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Germany
复制标题
选举竞争与内生政治制度：来自德国的准实验证据
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
T. Baskaran
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mariana Lopes da Fonseca;T. Baskaran
如果新的政治参与者的选举前景有所改善，老牌政党是否会改变政治体制，使其处于不利地位？我们用一个来自德国联邦黑森州的自然实验来研究这个问题。这项试验是对地方选举的选举改革，改善了较小政党和政党叛军的选举前景。然而，来自大型主流政党的地方政客可以调整市政政治机构，以抵消改革的这种影响。一种这样的机构调整是缩小地方议会的规模，因为议会规模的缩小提高了隐含的选举门槛，从而对特别是较小的政党不利。使用一个涵盖1989-2011年期间所有426个黑森市的数据集，我们用间断差设计记录了在改革后较小政党的选举竞争力得到更大改善的城市，其议会规模出现了较大幅度的缩减。因此，一旦新的政治行为者成为可行的选举选择，老牌政党似乎就会通过调整政治机构来设置进入壁垒。
Do established parties change political institutions to disadvantage new political actors if the latters’ electoral prospects improve? We study this question with a natural experiment from the German federal state of Hesse. The experiment is an electoral reform for local elections that improved the electoral prospects of smaller parties and party rebels. However, local politicians from the large mainstream parties could adjust municipal political institutions in such a way as to counteract this effect of the reform. One such institutional adjustment was to reduce the size of the local council because a reduction in council size raises the implicit electoral threshold and thus disadvantages especially smaller parties. Using a dataset that covers all 426 Hessian municipalities over the period 1989–2011, we document with a difference-in-discontinuities design that municipalities where the electoral competitiveness of smaller parties improved more after the reform saw a larger reduction in their council size. Hence, established parties appear to erect barriers to entry by adjusting political institutions once new political actors become viable electoral alternatives.