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A Comparative Study of the Effects of Electoral Institutions on Campaigns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2017

Laura Sudulich  and
Siim Trumm
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Abstract

A long tradition of studies in political science has unveiled the effects of electoral institutions on party systems and parliamentary representation. Yet their effects on campaign activities remain overlooked. Research in this tradition still lacks a strong comparative element able to explore the nuanced role of electoral institutions in shaping individual-level campaigns during first-order parliamentary elections. This study uses data from a variety of national candidate studies to address this lacuna, and shows that the structure of electoral institutions affects the electoral mobilization efforts put in place by candidates. Candidate-centred electoral systems incentivize more intense and complex mobilization efforts, and shift the campaign focus towards individuals rather than parties. By directly addressing the effects of electoral institutions on campaign behaviour, this study contributes to the wider debate on their role in promoting political engagement and mobilization. These results indicate that electoral institutions affect political competition much more than previously thought.

Keywords

campaignselectoral institutionsvoter mobilizationcandidate studies

Information

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 381 - 399
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent (email: l.sudulich@kent.ac.uk); School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham (email: siim.trumm@nottingham.ac.uk). Data replication sets are available at http://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123416000570.

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Supplementary material: Link

Sudulich and Trumm Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KNXSY7
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Sudulich and Trumm supplementary material

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