• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.61-64
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• 2013

In 2008, Taiwan adopted a new mixed member system which is significantly different from the long-implemented SNTV-MMD system for the election of legislators. The new system cuts the number of legislative seats from 225 to 113, extends legislators' terms of office from three years to four, and most importantly, adopts a new mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) electoral system to replace the SNTV system for legislative elections. The election of legislators in 2008 was the first time that this new mixed electoral system was implemented in Taiwan. Mainstream literature continues to discuss the electoral impact on political parties and candidates by the new system while citizens' knowledge of the new system and its concomitant effects on citizens' behavior receive less attention. Worse still, almost all of the literature assumes that voters were fully aware of the operation and impact of the new electoral system and cast their ballots wisely. The purpose of this paper is to explore citizen's perceptions, participation and evaluation of this new system.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.7-43
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• 2023

This study examines and identified a series of strategies of Russia's political elites to maintain and strengthen their dominance by reviewing the case of revisions in the election laws of Russia in 2014. At that time, a mixed-member electoral system was newly introduced, and on the surface, it seemed that the new system was a step toward meeting the demands of the people for "enhanced democracy". However, in 2016 and 2021, the ruling party of Russia won the general elections by making the most of the factors that could distort the election results inherent in the mixed-member electoral system. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze whether the revision of election laws was a mere vehicle used by the ruling party, United Russia, to maintain its political power, or whether it was a leap forward to achieve democracy. The study result indicate that the revision of election laws in 2014 was part of the policy responses to the internal conflicts in the circle of Russia's political elites, which had been rising since 2008, as well as to the public resistance. In other words, it was confirmed that the revision of election laws was one of the measures taken to "minimize competition" and "reproduce political power on a stable basis".

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.35-71
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of electoral competition on voters deciding on strategic split-ticket voting under the mixed-member electoral system. As result, the more competitive the constituencies are, the more voters choose to vote for the major parties. The results of logistic regression analysis including interaction terms showed that the more competitive the constituencies are, the more voters choose for candidates from the major parties. Also, the finding shows that major party supporters are less affected by electoral competition than minor party supporters in choosing a candidate in the single-seat districts. In the case of minor party supporters, the more competitive the constituencies were, the more likely they were to choose the major party candidate instead of the minor party candidate. Based on these results, it can be inferred that voters are affected by the presence or behavior of other voters in local constituencies under the first-past-the-post rule. Because of the psychology of not wanting their votes to be useless, voters cast their ballots more strategically as the competition in constituencies intensifies, and as the competition in constituencies slackens, such tendencies weaken, and this trait is particularly evident among minor party supporters.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.4-16
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• 2016

A large literature identifies perceptual differences between citizens that support winning parties versus losing parties. These analyses fail to capture the complexity of mixed member legislative systems where one can be a winner or loser at both the national and district level. This paper proposes a two-level framework for the analysis of mixed system. An analysis of Taiwan’s first election under a mixed system provides evidence that both support for a national winner and district level winner produce boosts in positive perceptions of the electoral system. National success appears to be a larger motivator of perceptions.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.5-32
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• 2020

This study analyzes the political dynamics of the election law reform in December 2019, from a perspective of the veto player theory combined with the partisan theory. Three features are revealed in the reform process of the electoral system. First, the number of cooperative veto players was higher than that of competitive veto players, that provided a favorable condition for policy changes. Second, concerning the ideological distance between veto-players (congruence) the possibility of policy change was evaluated as quite small. Especially in the fourth to fifth periods, the congruence between the cooperative veto players and competitive veto players was extremely weak. Third, the internal coherence of cooperative veto players was relatively weak, while the internal coherence of competitive veto players was relatively strong. That acted as a limiting factor in policy changes. In other words, there was a high possibility of policy changes in the number of cooperative veto players, but the possibility of policy change was relatively restricted in the congruence between veto players and the cohesion of veto players. That explains the limited nature of the election law reform.