Together forever? Explaining exclusivity in party-firm relations

Parties and firms are the key actors of representative democracy and capitalism respectively and the dynamic of attachment between them is a central feature of any political economy. This is the first article to systematically analyse the exclusivity of party-firm relations. We consider exclusivity at a point in time and exclusivity over time. Does a firm have a relationship with only one party at a given point in time, or is it close to more than one party? Does a firm maintain a relationship with only one party over time, or does it switch between parties? Most important, how do patterns of exclusivity impact on a firm’s ability to lobby successfully? We propose a general theory, which explains patterns of party-firm relations by reference to the division of institutions and the type of party competition in a political system. A preliminary test of our theory with Polish survey data confirms our predictions, establishing a promising hypothesis for future research

On the institutionalization of party regimes in emerging democracies

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:8491.303(351) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The Psychological effect of electoral systems in founding elections

In this research note, I revisit the conventional wisdom about when the psychological effect of electoral systems is observed. I rely on data from the first presidential and legislative elections in 45 third- and fourth-wave presidential and semi-presidential regimes to show that the psychological effect of electoral systems manifests itself in the first election. The effective number of legislative parties is significantly higher than the effective number of presidential candidates in the first election when the electoral system in legislative elections is more permissive than in presidential elections.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain under the research project CSO2013-40723-C2-1-R