Revisiting Electoral Volatility in Post-Communist Countries: New Data, New Results and New Approaches

This article provides a detailed set of coding rules for disaggregating electoral volatility into two components: volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit, and volatility caused by vote switching across existing parties. After providing an overview of both types of volatility in post-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:British journal of political science Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 123 - 147
Main Authors: Powell, Eleanor Neff, Tucker, Joshua A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.01.2014
Subjects:
Alliances
Coding
Communism
Communist societies
Datasets
Democracy
Economic recovery
Elections
Electoral behaviour
Electoral College
Electoral districts
Memberships
Political parties
Political power
Political science
Political systems
Post-communist societies
Postcommunism
Postcommunist Societies
Presidential elections
Robustness
Statistical significance
Volatility
Votes
Voting
Western Europe
Europe
ISSN:0007-1234, 1469-2112
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This article provides a detailed set of coding rules for disaggregating electoral volatility into two components: volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit, and volatility caused by vote switching across existing parties. After providing an overview of both types of volatility in post-communist countries, the causes of volatility are analysed using a larger dataset than those used in previous studies. The results are startling: most findings based on elections in post-communist countries included in previous studies disappear. Instead, entry and exit volatility is found to be largely a function of long-term economic recovery, and it becomes clear that very little is known about what causes ‘party switching’ volatility. As a robustness test of this latter result, the authors demonstrate that systematic explanations for party-switching volatility in Western Europe can indeed be found.
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ISSN:0007-1234
1469-2112
DOI:10.1017/S0007123412000531