How the Tailor of Marrakesh Suit Has Been Altered: Advantage Ratio as a Tool in Post-Communist Electoral Reforms Research

The text analyzes the character of the second wave of electoral system reform in post-communist countries. It describes the direction of the change in status quo after the first reform, which was usually implemented by participants on the basis of imperfect or incomplete information. We claim that the character of the second reforms favored the bigger and established parties and accentuated the tendencies towards establishing electoral competition between political parties at the expense of other participants (independent candidates). We furthermore use a sample of 40 electoral events in 15 post-communist countries to analyze the potential of the strongest electoral parties and other parliamentary parties to transform votes into seats, and we connect this characteristic with the electoral changes made, arguing that the logic of the electoral rules and the effects arising from the actual shares of the vote won in elections sometimes reinforced one another but at least in some electoral events - also ran in opposite directions

Can (Inter-party) Politics “Disappear”?

Based on observational as well as experimental accounts, this meta-analytical article deals with the structure of opportunities and limitations that is encountered in party competition by political actors (especially parties, but, in more personalized contexts, also candidates) when they try to decide whether to prioritize between strategies based on the differentiation of positions on political issues and strategies based on factors that are not directly related to competing on issues. Further, the article outlines the mechanisms that serve to interconnect these two strategies and thus lead to a full-fledged political competition with sufficiently developed positional differentiation. In contrast, emphasizing the disappearance of “the politics of goals” in favour of “the politics of outcomes” is not, according to the current state of knowledge in the field, a rewarding strategy of political competition among parties

Emerson, Peter (ed.): Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy. Consensual Voting Procedures for Use in Parliaments, Councils and Committees

Knižní recenze / Book review.Knižní recenze / Book review

Peter Emerson: From Majority Rule to Inclusive Politics. Electing a Power-Sharing Coalition

Knižní recenze / book review.book revie

Elections 2004 and Strategic Effects of the Electoral Systems

This paper aims to introduce the concept of „strategic effects“ of electoral systems and offer its aplication on three electoral contests being held in the Czech Republic in 2004 (European Parliament, Regional Councils, The Senate). We argue that the strategic effects of the three electoral systems used to select representatives for above mentioned bodies are rather weak. At the same time, there were incentives – exogenous of the electoral systems- that tended to weaken these effects even more, preventing relevant actors from any possibility of successful electoral coordination. These incentives are briefly discussed. Special consideration is given to the prominence of the exogenous factors in the case of the electoral system to the Senate that clearly diminish its -on its own viable- strategic effects. Alternative electoral design (supplementary vote) is therefore proposed and its strategic effects (in the form of the subset of hypotheses) are discussed

Sebejisté a troufalé, ale ne vzrušující. Osobnost značek českých politických stran v perspektivě prvovoličů

Článek se věnuje jedné z dimenzí konceptu politické značky – její osobnosti. Představuje dosavadní výzkum v dané oblasti a metodou případové studie vnímání osobnosti značky hlavních českých politických stran prvovoliči se snaží prověřit možnosti přenosu konceptuálních nástrojů na zkoumání osobnosti značky převážně britské provenience do českého prostředí. Ukazuje se, že šestidimenzionální měřicí nástroj (Smith 2009) je i v našem prostředí víceméně použitelný, osobnost značky ani jedné z českých politických stran však prozatím není vnímána respondenty příliš jednotně. U všech stran dále nacházíme vzorec, který ukazuje, že shoda o tom, jaká je osobnost značky, je větší mezi sympatizanty strany než mezi ostatními respondenty

Distribution of Seats in the Government and the Chamber of Deputies in the Czech Republic

The article presented is theoretically grounded in the office-seeking approach to the study of coalitions. It takes the most influential theories of portfolio distribution in the executive and legislature (voting weights, proportionality, formateur) and tests it on the data pertaining to coalition negotiations in the Czech Republic between 1992 and 2006. We follow the distribution of portfolios in the government, in the presidium of the Chamber of Deputies, as well as in the presidiums of permanent parliamentary committees. The approach based on voting weights seems best for studying portfolio distribution in the Czech Republic, although it is not entirely satisfactory. In the theoretical discussion of the results, we also point out that the voting weights approach is somewhat less rigorous than others. At the same time, we show that even ostensibly exact approaches to the study of coalitions can lead to arbitrariness on the part of the researcher, as theoretical assumptions about portfolio distribution operate with decimal numbers, whereas in reality one operates with natural numbers