Electoral systems, veto players, and substantive representation: when majoritarian electoral systems strengthen the citizen-policy nexus
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
The dissertation addresses a question that is at the very heart of democratic representation and the functioning of democracy: what kind of electoral system fosters the correspondence between what the public wants and what the public gets? In light of recurring debates about reform of the electoral system in Canada and abroad, this question remains crucial to address. In the first part of the dissertation, this question is examined thoroughly building on two influential literatures on political representation. On the one hand, we examine whether governments' ideological positions correspond to citizens' positions over the course of government mandates under majoritarian and proportional representation electoral systems. On the other hand, we examine the adjustments that governments make to their welfare spending over time in response to citizens' preferences under majoritarian and PR electoral systems. In both cases, we show that the citizen-policy nexus is strengthened under majoritarian electoral systems rather than under proportional representation systems. We explain these results based on a veto player approach that accounts for the capacity of a government to change its policies and the incentives that governments have to adopt policies that match the preferences of citizens. In the second part of the dissertation, we examine the impact of electoral systems on citizens' satisfaction with the way democracy works. We are interested first in the impact of correspondence between government policies and citizens' preferences on citizens' assessment of the functioning of the political system. We show that citizens are responsive to the policies adopted by governments and that this influences their satisfaction with the way democracy works. In the last chapter of the dissertation, we address an unresolved question related to the impact of electoral representation on citizens' democratic satisfaction. While there is a consensus in the literature that PR electoral systems foster an accurate translation of votes into seats it remains unclear whether citizens' satisfaction is enhanced by such "accurate" electoral representation. Building on new insights from the political participation literature, we offer an answer to this conundrum by showing that citizens' satisfaction with the way democracy works is bred by rationality rather than virtue. Overall, the dissertation contributes to a better understanding of the institutional arrangements that maximize the citizen-policy nexus by offering evidence about the superiority of majoritarian electoral systems over proportional representation electoral systems in fostering this substantive component of the representational process. While scholars have generally accepted the view that majoritarian systems enhance accountability and PR systems favour political representation we show throughout the dissertation that majoritarian systems could actually score high on both dimensions.
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction machine sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Le volet Gemma est une étiquette directe du modèle pour chaque travail de la base, lue sur la notice réduite au titre. Le volet Codex est un classifieur appris des 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et calibré sur les taux pondérés de l'échantillon; les champs sans appui suffisant ne portent aucun appel Codex. Le mode candidate est l'union des deux volets; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont pas des étiquettes humaines.
Scores du classifieur distillé par catégorie (deux têtes)
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,005 | 0,017 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,002 | 0,005 |
| Communication savante | 0,006 | 0,004 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,004 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,009 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule source (Gemma direct ou Codex distillé), pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».