Commentators suggest that the UK is entering a period in which general election results are unlikely to produce a clear winner. In such a situation, how and where the constituency boundaries are drawn is crucial, as different configurations of seats in particular places could have a significant impact on an election outcome. Although those configurations are recommended to Parliament by non-partisan Boundary Commissions, research has shown that Labour has been significantly advantaged by their recent proposals because they incorporated the equivalents of two well-known American electoral abuses – malapportionment and gerrymandering. This article illustrates how and why they have operated and discusses how the Conservatives’ failed attempt to remove one of them (malapportionment) and influence the other (gerrymandering) might have impacted on its position prior to the 2015 general election.

Green parties promote decentralization as a functional organizing principle but also a normative goal. This has been most vividly realized through the creation of comparatively devolved party structures. In federations, this can assume a territorial dimension and may lead to the adoption of confederal or federal models of party organization. Surprisingly little work has been undertaken on these arrangements when they have been implemented by green parties. This article explores whether the normative commitment by green parties to decentralized party arrangements is sufficient to preserve the integrity of dispersed party structures. This is done by examining the Australian Greens. We find that there has been gradual growth of the party’s national stratum, even in spite of formal provisions which guarantee the autonomy of the state organizations. It is argued that one of the main agents driving this outcome has been the Greens’ expanding federal parliamentary wing.

While the existence of pre-electoral coalitions fundamentally modifies the bargaining environment in which potential cabinet formulas are negotiated, the survival chances of cabinets that include them follow predictable yet different patterns to those of ‘regular’ coalition governments. This article combines original and existing data sets on Western and Central and Eastern European cabinets with information about pre-electoral coalitions (1944–2008) in order to estimate the impact of such alliances on government survival rates. In doing so, I employ a Cox Proportional Hazard model and a ‘competing risks’ research design which distinguishes between replacement and early election hazards. The findings indicate that both Western and post-communist cabinets formed by pre-electoral coalitions exhibit considerably lower rates of discretionary terminations. This effect is reversed in the case of incumbent pre-electoral coalitions. Last but not least, Western European cabinets that replicate pre-electoral coalitions are significantly less likely to end through dissolution and early elections.

In this article the special issue on the future of democracy is introduced with a discussion of the rationale and a brief overview of the contributions that follow. In addition the authors highlight four major themes that run through the special issue. These themes are: the measurement of democracy, the importance of time and context for understanding democracy, the importance of institutions in the process of democratization, and the differential role of government and opposition in democracy. The article finishes with a conclusion about the plural nature and possible futures for democracy.

Capitalism and democracy have transformed the world, but not in a harmonious way. This article provides a broad overview of the major driving forces of democracy, its relationship with ongoing socioeconomic developments and some of the countervailing factors. It points to the inherently conflictive nature of democratic procedures and decision-making, but also emphasizes the potentially universal implications of basic democratic values. Against this background, the future prospects of democracy and possible alternatives in the age of globalization are assessed. All this is based, as far as space permits, on the huge body of available theoretical and empirical literature, but also on the author’s long-term preoccupation with this topic and some of his personal views and experiences.

Memories of wrongdoings are often viewed as an obstacle to reconciliation in divided societies. Is it due to the past or the present politics of the past? To examine the dilemma of essentialism versus presentism, this article investigates the impact of transitional justice on memories of wrongdoing. It theorizes that using different transitional justice strategies to deal with the same wrongdoing shapes memories in different ways. The theory is tested via vignette-based surveys in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which adopted distinct lustration laws. The results show that wrongdoing is viewed through lustration laws, reflecting present power constellations, not history.

In the last few decades, ethno-regionalist parties have become leading players in many regional political systems across Europe. This increased representation has opened up new strategic opportunities for these parties, and in particular it has offered them the chance to participate in regional government. Based on a newly compiled data set of 282 governmental formations in Italian and Spanish regions during the period 1945–2011, this study develops and tests several hypotheses regarding the governmental participation of ethno-regionalist parties at regional level. These have been partly drawn from similar studies of ‘outsider’ party families, such as the Green parties or the radical right. A specific focus is then placed on multilevel dynamics, based on the idea that there is a relationship between party strategies at regional and state levels, and in particular on the perception that parties are willing to adopt compatible alliance strategies at the two levels (vertical congruence), at least under certain conditions. Both types of hypothesis (single-level and multilevel) are shown to be plausible when empirically tested on the cases of Italy and Spain. Special attention is given to the conditions under which vertical congruence is used by ethno-regionalist parties as an effective way of minimizing the risks associated with inclusion in governmental coalitions at regional level.

A focus on crisis is a mainstay of the literature on contemporary populism. However, the links between populism and crisis remain under-theorized and undeveloped. This article puts forward a novel perspective for understanding this relationship, arguing that crisis does not just trigger populism, but that populism also attempts to act as a trigger for crisis. This is because crises are always mediated and ‘performed’. The article presents a six-step model of how populist actors ‘perform’ crisis, drawing on empirical examples from Europe, Latin America, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. It explains how the performance of crisis allows populist actors to pit ‘the people’ against a dangerous other, radically simplify the terrain of political debate and advocate strong leadership. It ultimately suggests that we should move from thinking of crisis as something purely external to populism, towards thinking about the performance of crisis as an internal core feature of populism.

This article examines the effect that municipality size and local office have on election candidates’ results. We argue that candidates from the larger municipalities have comparatively larger relevant networks, both in terms of constituents and party grassroots volunteers. In addition, these candidates appeal to a relatively larger share of voters within the constituency. We expect that the relative size of the candidates’ municipality will have a positive effect on the relative number of preferential votes they receive in the constituency and will interact with the effect that holding local office has on the individual election result. While the empirical analysis does not show support for the idea that municipality size will have a significant effect, the expected interaction between local office and municipality size is confirmed. The electoral advantage of being mayor, alderman or local councillor seems to increase with the relative size of the municipality in the district.

The focus on female MPs and leftist and feminist issues in traditional studies of women's substantive representation has supported the overall conclusion that women, feminists and left-wing parties promote women's interests in parliament. But our analysis of the ‘critical actors’ in women's substantive representation in 10 European countries confirms this finding only to a certain extent. Our inductive research design reveals an important group of less obvious actors: non-left, non-feminist and male MPs. That they speak out on behalf of women points to the necessity of revisiting our theories on women's substantive representation.

The organization of primaries in which all party members can participate is increasingly used by political parties to select their leader. We focus here on one of the consequences of these procedures – participation rates. Based on general participation theories (mobilization theory, instrumental motivation theory and learning theory) in combination with insights into the introduction and functioning of leadership primaries, we expect that the first time a party organizes leadership primaries, participation rates will be high, but that they will decline gradually afterwards. We have focused on direct member votes for the selection of party leaders in Belgium, Israel and Canada. Our results show that participation rates are not influenced by how many times such a contest is held in a party (only first-time participation tends to be higher), but mainly by how competitive the contest is.

Politics in Latin America continued to be about democracy after the democratic transitions in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s. An old concern – securing the minimal standard of democracy that had served as the goal of democratic transitions – remained relevant. But a new concern – the attainment of more than a minimal democracy – transformed politics about democracy. Actors who supported and opposed neoliberalism – the key axis of ideological conflict – advocated and resisted political changes in the name of different models of democracy. And the conflict over which model of democracy would prevail shaped Latin America’s post-transition trajectories, determining how democracy developed and, in turn, whether democracy endured.

In this article, we examine the structure of party competition in Italy in the February 2013 elections. We rely on the spatial approach to party competition to analyse the most salient dimensions of the policy space in the Italian context. Our analysis is based on quantitative estimates from expert survey data. These data highlight the salience of the socioeconomic policy dimension and capture the change in the importance of the EU dimension. Finally, this study provides an analysis of potential coalition governments in the aftermath of the 2013 general election that is grounded on the spatial approach to coalition formation.

How is it that the Swedish populist nationalist party the Sweden Democrats receives its strongest support from the established working class, in spite of the high degree of class voting and left–right mobilization which is known to characterize Swedish politics? Based on surveys from the SOM (Society, Opinion, Media) Institute as well as the Swedish National Elections Studies, this article shows that this is not a result of increasing anti-immigrant attitudes in the working class or of decreasing left–right polarization among voters. Rather, we present the argument that the weakening alignment between the working class and the Social Democratic Party and the weakened left–right polarization between the main parties have created a structure which has left room for a realignment between large parts of the working class and the Sweden Democrats along the alternative underlying ideological dimension of authoritarianism/libertarianism.

An influential approach in the scholarship has stressed the ‘robustness of authoritarianism’ in the Arab world. While this approach has generated a rich research programme yielding valuable insights, it has also contributed to a widespread tendency to downplay the significance of the 2011 uprisings. A perspective that is broader both temporally (going back to the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse) and spatially (to include Turkey, another successor state to that same empire which may serve as a useful negative case) can illuminate not only variations between regional states, but also convergences – such as the expansion of political mobilization and participation, or the emergence of Islamism versus secular nationalism as a key axis of ideological conflict – that suggest less pessimistic conclusions about the prospects for democracy in the longer-term future.

Co-decisions between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament are increasingly adopted as early agreements. Recent EU studies have pinpointed how this informal turn in EU governance has altered the existing balance of power between EU actors and within EU institutions. However, the implications of accelerated EU decision-making are expected to have repercussions beyond the EU system and in other institutions impinging on the role of national parliaments. This study examines the implications of an alteration of EU political time on national parliaments’ ability to scrutinize their executives in EU affairs. A mixed method approach has been applied. This strategy combines survey data on national parliaments’ scrutiny process and response to early agreements for 26 EU countries with a case study examination of national parliaments in Denmark, the UK and Germany. The burgeoning research agenda on EU timescapes is applied. This study finds that the clocks of most national parliaments are out of time with the EU decision-mode of early agreements, which severely hampers the national parliaments’ ability to scrutinize national governments.

The current research examines the ability of legislators to be re-elected through fulfilling their three roles: legislation, oversight and representation. This study also re-examines Mayhew's claim (1974) that most legislators are motivated by a desire to be re-elected, and that this desire drives their legislative activity through its utility in advertising, credit claiming and position taking. We argue that the skills required for selection and re-election are different from those required for enacting legislation. Thus, we distinguish between two types of legislators – those who are electable and those who are successful in the legislature.

Although semi-presidentialism is a popular form of governance in new democracies, we have little empirical evidence supporting its popularity. In this study, I attempt to reassess democratic performance of new semi-presidential regimes from 1974 to 2009 as a function of four broadly cited risk factors: divided minority government, cohabitation, presidential powers and president-parliamentarism. The results are more encouraging than previous research has suggested. First, divided minority government is positively associated with higher levels of democracy, even though it, along with a strong presidency and president-parliamentarism, makes executive instability more likely. Second, perils of cohabitation are not substantiated with regard to executive instability and quality of democracy. Third, none of the caveats against semi-presidential systems makes them more vulnerable to democratic breakdown. However, a failure to check presidential powers appears to be a serious risk for semi-presidentialism. As presidents enjoy more powers, the levels of democracy tend to decrease. This finding has a substantive implication for countries that already practise semi-presidential governance or contemplate a move in that direction: checking presidential powers is critical to facilitate democratic consolidation in semi-presidentialism.

Despite the proliferation of instruments of public consultation in liberal democracies, little is known of how the design and use of these instruments affect stakeholder participation in practice. The article examines participation in written government consultations in an analysis of approximately 5,000 responses to consultations in Denmark and the UK in the first half of 2008. It shows that participation is highly conditional upon system- and actor-level characteristics in practice. Our findings indicate that, even if liberal democracies have adopted similar procedures for actor consultation in the last decades, the design and application of crucial rules vary considerably between systems. They emphasize how the conduct of consultation is heavily conditioned by the design of these processes, which is in turn constrained by the historical legacy of state–society structures of the system in question.

Strong institutionalized parties are often seen as vital for healthy democracies. The Indian case, therefore, represents a strange paradox: many parties are weak, corrupt and personalistic, yet democracy as a whole seems to be thriving, with increasing turnout and apparently strong popular support for democratic procedures and norms. This article explores some of the reasons for this strange outcome and suggests that the existing literature on party institutionalization might need some revision.