Karel Kouba
Biographic Data
| ID | 335767 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karel Kouba |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karel |
| FAMILY NAME | Kouba |
| SIGNATURE | KOUBA K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hradec Králové |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0974-9144 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The 2025 Czech parliamentary election
The 2025 election to the Czech Chamber of Deputies marked a continuation of long-term transformations rather than a rupture in the country’s political development. The contest reaffirmed the electoral dominance of ANO, led by Andrej Babiš, against a fragmented bloc of centre-right and liberal parties that governed between 2021 and 2025, while further consolidating the decline of the traditional left. The campaign was strongly shaped by culture wa…
Variations of Democratic Decline in Central America
Central American countries have experienced a persistent decline in the quality of their democracies, including a shift toward authoritarian or even sultanistic regimes. Despite their shared historical trajectories and socio-political experiences, these countries’ paths toward democratic decline and autocratization differ markedly—not only from each other, but also from broader global patterns. Drawing on the concept of contingent consent as a ke…
The determinants of the gender gap in university leadership: The case of Czech academic senates
Are academic elections an effective means of countering the persistent underrepresentation of women in higher education governance? Focusing on a unique case of university senates in the Czech Republic, this article for the first time explores the determinants of women candidates’ emergence and electoral success in a higher education setting. Identifying a gender gap between the share of female academics and female senators, it considers explanat…
Legislative Turnover in Latin America: Introducing a New Dataset and Analyzing Its Temporal Dynamics
The article examines the patterns of turnover of Latin American legislators. It contributes (1) by introducing a large original dataset of turnover rates in 204 elections between 1985 and 2023 based on manually coded lists of all Latin American legislators elected since 1985, (2) by describing the cross-national and temporal patterns of turnover in Latin America, and (3) by examining empirically the relationship between turnover rates and tempora…
Understanding the effect of term limits on voter turnout: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Costa Rica based on a registered report
Imposing term limits on elected officials is expected to increase turnout due to enhanced competition by one theoretical perspective, while another predicts depressed turnout as a result of clientelist turnout buying. These puzzling contradictory predictions are examined by a quasi-experiment (using a difference-in-differences approach) based on a 2022 reform which introduced term limits for Costa Rican mayors that were applied for the first time…
More Electoral Competition Without More Voter Participation: Quasi-Experimental Test of a Term Limit Reform in Ecuador
Term limits are theoretically expected to boost voter participation which has been confirmed by multiple empirical examinations. This study uses a robust causal assessment within the difference-in-differences framework to evaluate this hypothesis. It leverages an exogenous 2018 term limit reform in Ecuador which prohibited some, but not all, incumbent mayors from running in elections. Contrary to expectations, the results indicate null findings: …
The Return of Sultanism and Political Repression in Nicaragua
The article examines Nicaragua’s transformation towards a sultanistic regime.Describing the Nicaraguan developments in 2023 through the sultanistic perspectiveis useful for understanding the type of repression unleashed by the regime, thepolitical strategy of the Ortega-Murillo governing couple, as well as for understandingthe possible future fate of the regime which faces succession dilemmas due toits evident dynasticization. The article focuses…
Democracy and Institutional Change in Times of Crises in Latin America
Latin American democracies have gone through a series of perfect storms over the recent years. In what ways have these challenges transformed the institutional infrastructure of democracy? How have institutional reforms impacted the democratic prospects? This review article analyzes four recent edited volumes that approach the problems of institutional change against the backdrop of the multiple crises unfolding throughout the region. It describe…
How Czech Democracy Defies the Illiberal Trend
Democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland has raised questions as to whether Czech politics would follow a similar path. Focusing on transformations in the country’s political system over the past decade, this article argues that Czech democracy has proved resilient and defied the Central European illiberal trend. The starkly divergent outcomes are attributable to differences that set the Czech political tradition apart from those of Poland an…
Democratizing urban governance through mayoral term limits: Quasi-experimental evidence from a reform in Chilean municipalities
Term limits on elected mayors are often advocated because they eliminate the incumbency advantage and promote higher representativeness and citizen participation through a more open and reinvigorated electoral competition in local governments. We examine whether key dimensions of local democracy (election competitiveness, turnout, invalid voting, descriptive representation of women) are affected by the imposition of term limits. This article uses…
The Democratic Cost of Consecutive Re-election and Presidential Term-Limit Evasion in Latin America
Despite theoretical arguments suggesting the strong effects of presidential term limits and re-election on democracy, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence to evaluate them. We test both the effect on democracy of the existence of a consecutive re-election rule and of reforms introducing it for incumbent presidents. Using evidence from Latin American countries between 1945 and 2018, we test their relationship to both vertical and horizo…
The return of silent elections: Democracy, uncontested elections and citizen participation in Czechia
Even when robust competition becomes institutionalized for national elections in democracies, this is no guarantee that elections to subnational governments will be equally competitive there. This article documents a recent disconcerting worldwide return of “silent elections'' - electoral races in which citizens are unable to choose among political alternatives and their vote makes no difference to the outcome. Holding such uncontested elections …
Understanding the dual glass ceiling of selecting and electing women candidates: Evidence from Latin American mayoral elections
Women politicians face two distinct glass ceilings – when becoming candidates and when turning these candidacies into elected offices. While existing research posits important explanatory accounts of both these processes, both stages are often studied separately when the determinants of women’s descriptive representation are analyzed. This generates possible inferential issues, because one stage conditions the other and individual variables might…
The Proscription Paradox: Banning Parties Based on Threshold Requirements and Electoral Volatility in Latin America
Banning political parties is an extreme institutional measure that democracies tend to use sparingly. Nevertheless, Latin American countries frequently proscribe their parties through rules that activate dissolution for not reaching a certain number of votes or seats in an election. Such rules are expected to stabilize and simplify party systems. However, a competing theory suggests that such rules instead promote electoral volatility by injectin…
Municipal size and local democracy: Understanding the trade-off between participation and contestation in Latin America
Municipal size affects local democracy through two mechanisms – participation and contestation. By drawing on national-level theories of democracy, this article identifies a necessary tradeoff: decreasing municipal size maximises the participatory dimension of local democracy but reduces the level of contestation, which is similarly crucial for a healthy democracy. Employing multilevel models that simultaneously account for national-level and loc…
Commentaries
The 2020 Czech regional elections: A story of a winner that lost
The Czech 2020 regional elections were won by ANO, a party led by prime minister Andrej Babiš. ANO received a plurality of votes in 10 of the 13 regions, but joined the regional government in only 3 of them. This election report explains this puzzling outcome as a result of three main causes: the national political polarization which facilitated coordination between the fragmented opposition parties against the winner, the electoral collapse of t…
The Unintended Costs and Unfulfilled Promises of Concurrent Elections: A Natural Experiment on Turnout and Invalid Voting
Holding two second-order elections simultaneously is expected to increase electoral participation. We exploit a natural experiment in which one group of Czech precincts was “as if” randomly assigned to holding subnational elections concurrently with senatorial ones. Using a unique data set containing variables on more than thirteen thousand precincts in five elections between 2000 and 2016, we detect a modest effect of concurrency only in the fir…
When do voters boycott elections with participation quorums
Where is the class bias attenuation? The consequences of adopting compulsory voting in Austria-Hungary in 1907
Adopting compulsory voting (CV) legislation is expected to produce near-universal turnout, which in turn is assumed to iron out class-based differences in political influence and representation. The article traces the historical process generating the sequential adoption of CV in 8 of the 17 Cisleithanian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1907 and 1911, and leverages a difference-in-differences (DiD) method to estimate its causal effec…
Explaining voter turnout in local elections: A Global Comparative Perspective
The determinants of voter turnout in local elections are examined using global cross-national time-series comparative evidence from 97 countries. Despite the vast research agenda on turnout, only a few comparative tests at the local level are available. Filling this lacuna, the article explores how seven institutional features are related to local turnout. It analyses both the effects of rules applicable exclusively to local politics (size of mun…
The Causes of Disease Impact Denialism in Nicaragua's Response to Covid ‐19
The response of the Nicaraguan government to the COVID‐19 emergency is an extreme case of disease denialism. Such denialism is a major threat to public health, so understanding the sources of this attitude is paramount. Three explanations are offered: (a) the autonomous logic of a polarised political conflict; (b) an explanation based on an economic rationale; and (c) the regime's mystical and religiously‐inspired discourse. The denialist respons…
Nicaragua in 2019: The Surprising Resilience of Authoritarianism in the Aftermath of Regime Crisis
The April 2018 protests in Nicaragua inaugurated the Latin American protest wave that subsequently spread across the region in 2019. The protests and their governmental suppression ushered Nicaraguan politics into a regime crisis. Yet, despite international pressure, the harsh reality of a serious economic downturn, low and diminishing public support and the continued opposition resistance throughout 2019, the orteguista regime has proven to be r…
What Affects Invalid Voting? A Review and Meta-Analysis
Research on invalid voting has expanded rapidly over the past few years. This review article for the first time examines its principal findings and provides a new theoretical perspective on the origins of invalid votes based on a two-dimensional framework. The main results of 54 studies using both individual-level and aggregate-level data as well as the results of experimental and qualitative studies are analysed. The meta-analysis of all existin…
Turning out but not voting: Invalid ballots in post-communist parliamentary elections
Institutional determinants of invalid voting in post-communist Europe and Latin America
Explaining voter turnout in local elections: A Global Comparative Perspective
The determinants of voter turnout in local elections are examined using global cross-national time-series comparative evidence from 97 countries. Despite the vast research agenda on turnout, only a few comparative tests at the local level are available. Filling this lacuna, the article explores how seven institutional features are related to local turnout. It analyses both the effects of rules applicable exclusively to local politics (size of mun…
Party Institutionalization and the Removal of Presidential Term Limits in Latin America
Institucionalización de partidos
Municipal size and local democracy: Understanding the trade-off between participation and contestation in Latin America
Municipal size affects local democracy through two mechanisms – participation and contestation. By drawing on national-level theories of democracy, this article identifies a necessary tradeoff: decreasing municipal size maximises the participatory dimension of local democracy but reduces the level of contestation, which is similarly crucial for a healthy democracy. Employing multilevel models that simultaneously account for national-level and loc…
The Democratic Cost of Consecutive Re-election and Presidential Term-Limit Evasion in Latin America
Despite theoretical arguments suggesting the strong effects of presidential term limits and re-election on democracy, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence to evaluate them. We test both the effect on democracy of the existence of a consecutive re-election rule and of reforms introducing it for incumbent presidents. Using evidence from Latin American countries between 1945 and 2018, we test their relationship to both vertical and horizo…
The Unintended Costs and Unfulfilled Promises of Concurrent Elections: A Natural Experiment on Turnout and Invalid Voting
Holding two second-order elections simultaneously is expected to increase electoral participation. We exploit a natural experiment in which one group of Czech precincts was “as if” randomly assigned to holding subnational elections concurrently with senatorial ones. Using a unique data set containing variables on more than thirteen thousand precincts in five elections between 2000 and 2016, we detect a modest effect of concurrency only in the fir…
Where is the class bias attenuation? The consequences of adopting compulsory voting in Austria-Hungary in 1907
Adopting compulsory voting (CV) legislation is expected to produce near-universal turnout, which in turn is assumed to iron out class-based differences in political influence and representation. The article traces the historical process generating the sequential adoption of CV in 8 of the 17 Cisleithanian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1907 and 1911, and leverages a difference-in-differences (DiD) method to estimate its causal effec…
Nicaragua in 2019: The Surprising Resilience of Authoritarianism in the Aftermath of Regime Crisis
The April 2018 protests in Nicaragua inaugurated the Latin American protest wave that subsequently spread across the region in 2019. The protests and their governmental suppression ushered Nicaraguan politics into a regime crisis. Yet, despite international pressure, the harsh reality of a serious economic downturn, low and diminishing public support and the continued opposition resistance throughout 2019, the orteguista regime has proven to be r…
Turning out but not voting: Invalid ballots in post-communist parliamentary elections
Should and Does Compulsory Voting Reduce Inequality
The principal defense of compulsory voting suggests that it bridges socioeconomic inequalities by fostering a higher, and hence less socioeconomically biased, turnout. However, this article argues that this does not automatically translate into a less biased political voice because compulsory voting also generates socioeconomically biased invalid votes, which is demonstrated on the case of Ecuador. Normatively, we deny the existence of a general …
The return of silent elections: Democracy, uncontested elections and citizen participation in Czechia
Even when robust competition becomes institutionalized for national elections in democracies, this is no guarantee that elections to subnational governments will be equally competitive there. This article documents a recent disconcerting worldwide return of “silent elections'' - electoral races in which citizens are unable to choose among political alternatives and their vote makes no difference to the outcome. Holding such uncontested elections …
The Czech Greens revived
After the June 2006 elections, the Czech Greens (SZ) were the surprise kingmaker, finally opting for a centre-right coalition with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Christian Democratic Unio
The 2020 Czech regional elections: A story of a winner that lost
The Czech 2020 regional elections were won by ANO, a party led by prime minister Andrej Babiš. ANO received a plurality of votes in 10 of the 13 regions, but joined the regional government in only 3 of them. This election report explains this puzzling outcome as a result of three main causes: the national political polarization which facilitated coordination between the fragmented opposition parties against the winner, the electoral collapse of t…
When do voters boycott elections with participation quorums
Los efectos de las reglas electorales sobre el éxito de las mujeres en las elecciones presidenciales en América Latina
En la última década, varias mujeres han sido candidatas exitosas en las elecciones presidenciales latinoamericanas. Pero este logro histórico ha estado limitado a pocos países de la región. ¿Cuáles son las causas principales de que en unos países las mujeres sean candidatas exitosas y en otros países no? Este artículo desarrolla argumentos basados en la teoría institucionalista y propone que es necesario buscar las explicaciones en las caracterís…
Spatial Analysis of the Czech Party System. Institutionalisation and Spatial Regimes
This article explores the spatial infl uences that shape the contemporary Czech party system and their consequences for the institutionalisation of the party system. First, the regionalisation of the party system is measured to identify the specifi c regional clusters of votes for individual parties. Second, after controlling for the impact of social cleavages, the independent effect of two macro-regions on the differences in voting decisions is …
Legislative Turnover in Latin America: Introducing a New Dataset and Analyzing Its Temporal Dynamics
The article examines the patterns of turnover of Latin American legislators. It contributes (1) by introducing a large original dataset of turnover rates in 204 elections between 1985 and 2023 based on manually coded lists of all Latin American legislators elected since 1985, (2) by describing the cross-national and temporal patterns of turnover in Latin America, and (3) by examining empirically the relationship between turnover rates and tempora…
Democracy and Institutional Change in Times of Crises in Latin America
Latin American democracies have gone through a series of perfect storms over the recent years. In what ways have these challenges transformed the institutional infrastructure of democracy? How have institutional reforms impacted the democratic prospects? This review article analyzes four recent edited volumes that approach the problems of institutional change against the backdrop of the multiple crises unfolding throughout the region. It describe…
Democratizing urban governance through mayoral term limits: Quasi-experimental evidence from a reform in Chilean municipalities
Term limits on elected mayors are often advocated because they eliminate the incumbency advantage and promote higher representativeness and citizen participation through a more open and reinvigorated electoral competition in local governments. We examine whether key dimensions of local democracy (election competitiveness, turnout, invalid voting, descriptive representation of women) are affected by the imposition of term limits. This article uses…
Understanding the dual glass ceiling of selecting and electing women candidates: Evidence from Latin American mayoral elections
Women politicians face two distinct glass ceilings – when becoming candidates and when turning these candidacies into elected offices. While existing research posits important explanatory accounts of both these processes, both stages are often studied separately when the determinants of women’s descriptive representation are analyzed. This generates possible inferential issues, because one stage conditions the other and individual variables might…
The Proscription Paradox: Banning Parties Based on Threshold Requirements and Electoral Volatility in Latin America
Banning political parties is an extreme institutional measure that democracies tend to use sparingly. Nevertheless, Latin American countries frequently proscribe their parties through rules that activate dissolution for not reaching a certain number of votes or seats in an election. Such rules are expected to stabilize and simplify party systems. However, a competing theory suggests that such rules instead promote electoral volatility by injectin…
The Causes of Disease Impact Denialism in Nicaragua's Response to Covid ‐19
The response of the Nicaraguan government to the COVID‐19 emergency is an extreme case of disease denialism. Such denialism is a major threat to public health, so understanding the sources of this attitude is paramount. Three explanations are offered: (a) the autonomous logic of a polarised political conflict; (b) an explanation based on an economic rationale; and (c) the regime's mystical and religiously‐inspired discourse. The denialist respons…
Fragmentation of presidential elections and governability crises in Latin America: A Curvilinear Relationship
Part of the literature views high numbers of presidential candidates as a threat to political stability in presidential democracies. A contradictory model proposes that an overconcentration of the presidential party system is problematic. Both models are hard to reconcile. We approach this puzzle by arguing that the relationship between the level of presidential election fragmentation and governability crises is curvilinear: both very low and ver…
Economic Growth in Czechoslavakia
Journal Article J. Goldmann and K. Kouba. Economic Growth in Czechoslovakia Get access Economic Growth in Czechoslovakia. By J. Goldmann and K. Kouba. (White Plains, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1969. Pp. 150. $10.00.) A. Nove A. Nove University of Glasgow. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 80, Issue 317, 1 March 1970, Pages 140–141, https://doi.org/10.2307/22…
Spatial Analysis of the Czech Party System. Institutionalisation and Spatial Regimes
This article explores the spatial infl uences that shape the contemporary Czech party system and their consequences for the institutionalisation of the party system. First, the regionalisation of the party system is measured to identify the specifi c regional clusters of votes for individual parties. Second, after controlling for the impact of social cleavages, the independent effect of two macro-regions on the differences in voting decisions is …
The Czech Greens revived
After the June 2006 elections, the Czech Greens (SZ) were the surprise kingmaker, finally opting for a centre-right coalition with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Christian Democratic Unio
Evaluating the Effects of the EU Common Agriculture Policy in a New Member State: The Case of the Czech Republic
This article examines the impact of the CAP on the Czech Republic. Specifically, it focuses on implementation of the CAP and its economic, social and political effects, as well as the domestic debate about CAP reform. It argues that CAP implementation has gone fairly smoothly and the economic and social effects of the CAP have been generally positive or at least neutral. It also argues that while the CAP has had only a minimal impact on domestic …
Los efectos de las reglas electorales sobre el éxito de las mujeres en las elecciones presidenciales en América Latina
En la última década, varias mujeres han sido candidatas exitosas en las elecciones presidenciales latinoamericanas. Pero este logro histórico ha estado limitado a pocos países de la región. ¿Cuáles son las causas principales de que en unos países las mujeres sean candidatas exitosas y en otros países no? Este artículo desarrolla argumentos basados en la teoría institucionalista y propone que es necesario buscar las explicaciones en las caracterís…
Why Does the Number of Voters and Invalid Ballots Decrease in the Second Rounds of Czech Senate Elections
The second rounds of elections to the Czech Senate consistently suffer from the lowest voter turnout among all types of elections in the Czech Republic. Moreover, voter turnout and the share of invalid votes decrease substantially between the first and the second rounds of the Senate elections. This article enquires into the causes of the decrease. It builds on theories that emphasise the salience of elections and the decisiveness of voting and u…
Institutional determinants of invalid voting in post-communist Europe and Latin America
Party Institutionalization and the Removal of Presidential Term Limits in Latin America
Institucionalización de partidos
Fragmentation of presidential elections and governability crises in Latin America: A Curvilinear Relationship
Part of the literature views high numbers of presidential candidates as a threat to political stability in presidential democracies. A contradictory model proposes that an overconcentration of the presidential party system is problematic. Both models are hard to reconcile. We approach this puzzle by arguing that the relationship between the level of presidential election fragmentation and governability crises is curvilinear: both very low and ver…
What Affects Invalid Voting? A Review and Meta-Analysis
Research on invalid voting has expanded rapidly over the past few years. This review article for the first time examines its principal findings and provides a new theoretical perspective on the origins of invalid votes based on a two-dimensional framework. The main results of 54 studies using both individual-level and aggregate-level data as well as the results of experimental and qualitative studies are analysed. The meta-analysis of all existin…
Turning out but not voting: Invalid ballots in post-communist parliamentary elections
Should and Does Compulsory Voting Reduce Inequality
The principal defense of compulsory voting suggests that it bridges socioeconomic inequalities by fostering a higher, and hence less socioeconomically biased, turnout. However, this article argues that this does not automatically translate into a less biased political voice because compulsory voting also generates socioeconomically biased invalid votes, which is demonstrated on the case of Ecuador. Normatively, we deny the existence of a general …
The Causes of Disease Impact Denialism in Nicaragua's Response to Covid ‐19
The response of the Nicaraguan government to the COVID‐19 emergency is an extreme case of disease denialism. Such denialism is a major threat to public health, so understanding the sources of this attitude is paramount. Three explanations are offered: (a) the autonomous logic of a polarised political conflict; (b) an explanation based on an economic rationale; and (c) the regime's mystical and religiously‐inspired discourse. The denialist respons…
Nicaragua in 2019: The Surprising Resilience of Authoritarianism in the Aftermath of Regime Crisis
The April 2018 protests in Nicaragua inaugurated the Latin American protest wave that subsequently spread across the region in 2019. The protests and their governmental suppression ushered Nicaraguan politics into a regime crisis. Yet, despite international pressure, the harsh reality of a serious economic downturn, low and diminishing public support and the continued opposition resistance throughout 2019, the orteguista regime has proven to be r…
Commentaries
The 2020 Czech regional elections: A story of a winner that lost
The Czech 2020 regional elections were won by ANO, a party led by prime minister Andrej Babiš. ANO received a plurality of votes in 10 of the 13 regions, but joined the regional government in only 3 of them. This election report explains this puzzling outcome as a result of three main causes: the national political polarization which facilitated coordination between the fragmented opposition parties against the winner, the electoral collapse of t…
The Unintended Costs and Unfulfilled Promises of Concurrent Elections: A Natural Experiment on Turnout and Invalid Voting
Holding two second-order elections simultaneously is expected to increase electoral participation. We exploit a natural experiment in which one group of Czech precincts was “as if” randomly assigned to holding subnational elections concurrently with senatorial ones. Using a unique data set containing variables on more than thirteen thousand precincts in five elections between 2000 and 2016, we detect a modest effect of concurrency only in the fir…
When do voters boycott elections with participation quorums
Where is the class bias attenuation? The consequences of adopting compulsory voting in Austria-Hungary in 1907
Adopting compulsory voting (CV) legislation is expected to produce near-universal turnout, which in turn is assumed to iron out class-based differences in political influence and representation. The article traces the historical process generating the sequential adoption of CV in 8 of the 17 Cisleithanian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1907 and 1911, and leverages a difference-in-differences (DiD) method to estimate its causal effec…
Explaining voter turnout in local elections: A Global Comparative Perspective
The determinants of voter turnout in local elections are examined using global cross-national time-series comparative evidence from 97 countries. Despite the vast research agenda on turnout, only a few comparative tests at the local level are available. Filling this lacuna, the article explores how seven institutional features are related to local turnout. It analyses both the effects of rules applicable exclusively to local politics (size of mun…
Municipal size and local democracy: Understanding the trade-off between participation and contestation in Latin America
Municipal size affects local democracy through two mechanisms – participation and contestation. By drawing on national-level theories of democracy, this article identifies a necessary tradeoff: decreasing municipal size maximises the participatory dimension of local democracy but reduces the level of contestation, which is similarly crucial for a healthy democracy. Employing multilevel models that simultaneously account for national-level and loc…
How Czech Democracy Defies the Illiberal Trend
Democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland has raised questions as to whether Czech politics would follow a similar path. Focusing on transformations in the country’s political system over the past decade, this article argues that Czech democracy has proved resilient and defied the Central European illiberal trend. The starkly divergent outcomes are attributable to differences that set the Czech political tradition apart from those of Poland an…
Democratizing urban governance through mayoral term limits: Quasi-experimental evidence from a reform in Chilean municipalities
Term limits on elected mayors are often advocated because they eliminate the incumbency advantage and promote higher representativeness and citizen participation through a more open and reinvigorated electoral competition in local governments. We examine whether key dimensions of local democracy (election competitiveness, turnout, invalid voting, descriptive representation of women) are affected by the imposition of term limits. This article uses…
The Democratic Cost of Consecutive Re-election and Presidential Term-Limit Evasion in Latin America
Despite theoretical arguments suggesting the strong effects of presidential term limits and re-election on democracy, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence to evaluate them. We test both the effect on democracy of the existence of a consecutive re-election rule and of reforms introducing it for incumbent presidents. Using evidence from Latin American countries between 1945 and 2018, we test their relationship to both vertical and horizo…
The return of silent elections: Democracy, uncontested elections and citizen participation in Czechia
Even when robust competition becomes institutionalized for national elections in democracies, this is no guarantee that elections to subnational governments will be equally competitive there. This article documents a recent disconcerting worldwide return of “silent elections'' - electoral races in which citizens are unable to choose among political alternatives and their vote makes no difference to the outcome. Holding such uncontested elections …
Political science (33 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (27 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (22 works) · Law (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Political economy (20 works) · Democracy (12 works) · Politics and Society in Latin America (12 works) · Sociology (11 works)