Revisiting electoral personalism
| Author | Monika Nalepa,José Antonio Cheibub |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629819898365 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2020, Vol.32(1) 3–10
ÓThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0951629819898365
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Revisiting electoral
personalism
Jose
´Antonio Cheibub
Texas A&M University,USA
Monika Nalepa
The University of Chicago,USA
This issue continues with the journal’s theme of sustaining and furthering research
into how, and why, institutional details affect things such as policy outcomes and
individual welfare. Specifically, it tackles the question: ‘What is the effect of elec-
toral personalism on policy outcomes and party organization?’
Fifteen years ago, the Journal of Theoretical Politics published ‘A Comparative
Theory of Electoral Incentives: Representing the Unorganized Under PR,
Plurality, and Mixed-Member Electoral Systems’ by Kathleen Bawn and Michael
Thies (2003). At that time, the study of electoral systems was in dire need of unco-
vering the properties of mixed member systems—the combination within one elec-
toral system of proportional representation (PR) and plurality rules. Several
countries had just adopted mixed member systems, among them: Venezuela,
Japan, New Zealand, Italy, Russian, Hungary, Bolivia, and Mexico, and Germany
had already been using the system since 1949.
Yet in their significant study, Bawn and Thies (2003) implicitly equated PR list
systems with closed lists, that is, lists that do not let voters choose which candidate
from their preferred party should represent them. Consequently, the scope of ‘elec-
toral personalism’ and potentially the ‘personal vote’ phenomenon was only dis-
cussed in the context of plurality systems. This limitation was justifiable given that,
at the time, few PR electoral systems gave voters the opportunity for casting a pre-
ference vote. Only three countries— Poland, Finland, and Brazil—employed what
is known as open list PR, in which preference votes within the party list are the sole
basis for determining which individual candidate receives a legislative seat within
the party. Flexible list or free list systems,both of which give voters the opportunity
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