Comparative Democratic Institutions Study Guide Exam 2 Descriptive Representation the representatives in the legislature accurately reflect their constituencies is also o Example if 42 of the population is Native American then 42 of the legislature Political ideological Representation the legislature accurately represents the constituency in regards to their political and ideological opinions o 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 government o Example if 42 of the population belongs to the Republican party then 42 of Congress is Republican Geographic Representation the constituents are represented geographically o Example NYC has more people in it than Tallahassee they have more representatives to adequately 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 are able 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 number of 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 a majority 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 list and 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 lines o Women are in both the democratic and republican party Coinciding cleavages cleavages that tend to reinforce themselves o 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 attributes Spanish French East A B West C D o 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 president is 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 the candidates compete in their open party generating intraparty rivalry as well as gender quotas within parties because the members have certain seats they can and cannot have Five things