Topic of the workshop

Early comparative work on electoral system choice often focused heavily on politicians: politicians were assumed to control the electoral system; and electoral reform would occur only if sufficiently many politicians found change to be in their power-seeking interests (e.g., Benoit 2004). From this perspective, citizens as well as other non-party actors were of little interest. Yet, as research into electoral reform has developed, their role has increasingly been recognized (e.g., Katz 2011, Norris 2011a; Rahat 2008). In particular, citizens’ influence has been pointed to by the literature (Renwick 2010). Quintal recognized long ago (Quintal 1970) that potential electoral reformers must attend to “the costs of voter affect”: that enacting reforms that voters dislike or failing to pursue reforms that voters demand could cost politicians support and hence power. Within the same logic, Reed and Thies (2001) have more recently proposed a distinction between “outcome-contingent” and “act-contingent” aspects of decision-making. This implies that, even if politicians do largely maintain control over the electoral system, they must attend to public opinion when thinking about reform.

Yet the degree of citizens’ influence may vary: electoral systems can change through a variety of channels (Renwick 2010). In some cases, as in Italy and New Zealand in 1993, citizens are central, while in others, as in France in 1985 or Greece in 1989, they are marginal. Still other cases occupy intermediate positions. In this workshop, we have decided to focus on the most extreme situations of citizens’ influence. The goal is to study and analyze cases of referendums on electoral system changes. Instances of electoral reform referendum have multiplied in recent years (including, notably, Italy, New Zealand, British Columbia, Ontario, United Kingdom, Romania, and Slovenia).

Nevertheless, though research has been published on most of these cases, there has been little attempt to compare across them. In particular we know little about the determinants of choice in electoral reform referenda, especially in comparison with what we know about voting motives in other referenda.

Starting form this observation, the goal of this workshop is to gather prominent scholars who have been involved in mass surveys held on the occasion of recent referendums on electoral system changes in order to open avenues for further comparative research on the topic. More specifically, our motivation is twofold. Firstly, we aim at drawing a more detailed comparative model of factors accounting for voters’ behaviors in these referendums, be it the decision to vote or to abstain as well as the decision to support or oppose the bill put to referendum. Secondly, we aim at linking voters’ behaviors with the role and action of other actors involved in these referendums: parties, experts, and the media (see Leduc 2011,Renwick et al. 2011).

Programme

9:30: Introduction and presentation of the ESCE project – JB Pilet

9:45: Jack Vowles - Explaining voters’ behaviour in the UK referendum on Alternative Vote of 2011 (20’ presentation and 25’ discussion)

10:30: Jeff Karp - Explaining voters’ behaviour in the NZ referendum of 2011

11:15: coffee break

11:30: Patrick Fournier - Explaining voters’ behaviour in the referendums on electoral system change in British Columbia and Ontario

12:15: Discussion and debate: Common patterns in voters’ behaviour in referendums on electoral system change?

12:30: Lunch break

13:30: Elwin Reimink – Turnout in referendums on electoral reform

14:00: Discussion

14:30: Alan Renwick - Media and referendums on electoral system changes

15:00: Discussion

15:30: Matthew Wall - Crowdsourcing the reform agenda? Measuring the public’s political reform agenda via a deliberative process

16:00: Discussion

16:30: End of workshop