Comparative Democratic Institutions: Study Guide Exam 2- Descriptive Representation: the representatives in the legislature accurately reflect their constituencieso Example: if 42% of the population is Native American, then 42% of the legislature is also- Political/ideological Representation: the legislature accurately represents the constituency in regards to their political and ideological opinionso Example: the legislature feels the same way about abortion, healthcare, and taxes that the constituency does- Party Representation: the % of the population that is x party is equally represented in governmento Example: if 42% of the population belongs to the Republican party, then 42% of Congress is Republican- Geographic Representation: the constituents are represented geographicallyo Example: NYC has more people in it than Tallahassee, they have more representatives toadequately represent them- Legislative quota: there is a minimum number of seats that a legislature sets aside for typically representation of women- Reserved seats: different from legislative quota because quota is in ratio to the rest of the candidates, whereas reserved seats are blocks allotted specifically to typically a racial minorities- Party quotas: where an individual party sets forth a goal of representation of minorities (the party has to have x amount of women on their ticket or x amount of cultural minorities)- Arguments for Gender quotas: right to equal representation, women should not be tokens, mainstreaming, compensating for exclusionary barriers- Arguments against gender quotas: violates the principal of equal opportunity, undemocratic, selected on basis of gender rather than qualifications- Electable positions: in the institutional context, electable positions are positions where seats areable to be given and the position is elected (Supreme court is appointed, Congress is elected) - Effectiveness of gender quotas and electoral rules: it usually disproportionately affects women such that politicians wives and daughters get elected over others who would deserve the position, so it’s not effective in its execution- Gender, ethnicity, and party cleavages: these are inherent in in society; gender- women vs men; ethnicity- white versus black; party- conservatives versus liberals- Origins of gender quotas: gender quotas originate in the constitution, typically a certain numberof seats will be allotted for women; Peru, Namibia, Bolivia have 30% of the candidates list with a quota for women- Origin of reserved seats: solely for minorities; Typically adopted in majoritarian systems in sub-Saharan Africa in former british colonies, adopted with other legislation for minorities as well; frequently in post-conflict societies; Uganda, Rwanda, Somalia, Morocco- Centrifugal tendency of multiparty system: Duverger’s law: FPTP= 2 parties which cluster around the median voter, moving to proportional should open the possibility that policy will be moving away from the median voter- Effective number of legislative parties: smaller amounts of legislative parties are more effective because they form more coalescing governments- Six issue dimensions of party competition: main characteristics and where they are found: o 1. the socioeconomic dimension (social issues pursued left versus right)o 2. The religious dimension (secular versus religion debates)o 3. Cultural/ethnic dimension (differences in cultural practices and ethnic tendencies)o 4. Urban-rural dimension (location differences farmers versus city dwellers)o 5. Regime support dimension (may occur in democracies as a result of the presence of important parties that oppose democratic regime)o 6. The foreign policy dimension (supranational issues, sovereignty)- Correlation between the electoral system and the number of parties: the electoral system and the number of parties is a recounting of Duverger’s Law: FPTP= majoritarian 2 party system, proportional= multipartism- Correlation between the number of issue dimensions and the number of parties: the more parties, the more issues are brought out because there is less tendency toward the median voter- Relationship between the electoral system and issue dimensions: Issue dimensions are more varied in a proportional electoral system and go more towards the median voter in a FPTP system- Two party system: has a lot fewer cleavages because of the tendency toward the median voter; also has a propensity to exacerbate dimensions 1, 4, and 6- Multiparty system: exacerbates dimensions 2,3, and 5 more than two party systems- Electoral rules and politicized cleavages: cleavages are politicized based on what would create amajority in government, if 54% of the population speaks Spanish, then the linguistic cleavage would be politicized; it also depends on the personalization; in FPTP the candidates run open listand therefore politicize differently than in closed list proportional representation (they would politicize all dimensions as opposed to a single one)- Cross cutting cleavages: cleavages that span across lineso Women are in both the democratic and republican party- Coinciding cleavages: cleavages that tend to reinforce themselveso African Americans are only in the Democratic party, they aren’t scattered across dimensions- Cross cutting and coinciding cleavages in the context of the follow (where A, B, C, and D) correspond to different proportions of the population with particular attributesEast WestSpanish A CFrench B Do these are explained basically reading the chart, if there is a majority in one section, either East, West, Spanish, or French, that cleavage gets politicized- Extreme multipartism: when there is a no majority of any kind in government and the presidentis usually part of the minority party in congress- Empirical distribution of multiparty presidential systems: - Origins of multiparty presidential systems: they originated in proportional representation systems where in governments like the Netherlands there are approximately 35 parties with elected members of Congress; it is now used a lot in South America- Pitfalls of extreme multipartism: is generally bad, can cause issues for the president and is commonly associated with the dictatorial issues in Latin America in the 1970s; the scholarly preference is for a two party system (because of the scholars being from the US)- Institutional arrangements that undermine party discipline: things like open list PR because thecandidates compete in their open
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