Washington Post/Monkey Cage Blog about the War in Donbas

The Washington Post/Monkey Cage Blog has featured an ongoing collaboration about state capacity in post-Soviet states. Cynthia Buckley, Ralph Clem, and I (along with cartography work by UIUC student Jarod Fox) assessed damage to civilian infrastructure in Donbas, focusing on hospitals. By combining reports from many sources, we found under-reporting of attacks on healthcare facilities. These findings are part of a larger effort to understand the implications of hybrid warfare, threats to East European and Eurasian sovereignty, and possible vulnerabilities in other areas.

Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems Update

All of the chapters for the Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems are submitted and the book is in the final stages of editing. Chapters continue to be posted online at the Oxford University Press website, with the hard-copy version slated for release in early 2018 (see the Table of Contents below).

Part I. Introduction
1. Terminology and Basic Rules of Electoral Systems
Erik S. Herron, Robert J. Pekkanen, and Matthew S. Shugart

Part II. Foundations of Electoral Systems
2. Dimensions of Variation in Electoral Systems
Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell
3. Electoral System Effects on Party Systems
Matthew S. Shugart and Rein Taagepera
4. Party System Effects on Electoral Systems
Josep M. Colomer
5. Electoral System Design in New Democracies
John M. Carey
6. Electoral System Change
Alan Renwick

Part III. Issues and Representation 
7. Social Diversity, Electoral Systems, and the Party System
Robert Moser, Ethan Scheiner, and Heather Stoll
8. Electoral Systems and Ethnic Minority Representation
David Lublin and Shaun Bowler
9. Electoral Systems and Women's Representation
Mona Lena Krook
10. Electoral Systems and Voter Turnout
Daniel M. Smith
11. Electoral Systems and Citizen-Elite Ideological Congruence
Matthew Golder and Benjamin Ferland
12. Electoral Systems and Issue Polarization
James Adams and Nathan Rexford

Part IV. Electoral Systems and the Wider Political System
13. Portfolio-maximizing Strategic Voting in Parliamentary Elections
Gary W. Cox
14. Presidential and Legislative Elections
Mark P. Jones
15. Electoral Systems and Legislative Organization
Shane Martin
16. Electoral Systems and Roles in the Legislative Arena
Audrey André and Sam Depauw
17. Electoral Systems and Constituency Service
Brian F. Crisp and William M. Simoneau
18. Direct Democracy and Referendums
Matt Qvortrup
19. Electoral Systems in Authoritarian States
Jennifer Gandhi and Abigail L. Heller

Part V. Electoral Systems and Research Design 
20. Election Data and Levels of Analysis
Ken Kollman
21. Experimental Research Design in the Study of Electoral Systems
Joshua Tucker and Dominik Duell
22. Reconciling Approaches in the Study of Mixed-Member Electoral Systems
Erik S. Herron, Kuniaki Nemoto, and Misa Nishikawa

Part VI. Holding Elections
23. Election Administration
Thad E. Hall
24. Electoral Systems and Electoral Integrity
Pippa Norris
25. Electoral Systems and Redistricting
Lisa Handley
26. Electoral Systems and Campaign Finance
Joel W. Johnson

Part VII. Electoral Systems in Context
27. Electoral Systems in Context: The Netherlands
Kristof Jacobs
28. Electoral Systems in Context: Israel
Reuven Y. Hazan, Reut Itzkovitch-Malka, and Gideon Rahat
29. Electoral Systems in Context: Finland
Åsa von Schoultz
30. Electoral Systems in Context: UK
Thomas Carl Lundberg
31. Electoral Systems in Context: Ireland
Michael Marsh
32. Electoral Systems in Context: France
Verónica Hoyo
33. Electoral Systems in Context: India
Adam Ziegfeld
34. Electoral Systems in Context: the United States
Steven L. Taylor
35. Electoral Systems in Context: Canada
Louis Massicotte
36. Electoral Systems in Context: Australia
Ian McAllister and Toni Makkai
37. Electoral Systems in Context: Germany
Thomas Zittel

Part VIII. Electoral Systems in the Context of Reform
38. Electoral Systems in Context: New Zealand
Jack Vowles
39. Electoral Systems in Context: Japan
Kuniaki Nemoto
40. Electoral Systems in Context: Italy
Gianluca Passarelli
41. Electoral Systems in Context: Colombia
Steven L. Taylor and Matthew S. Shugart

Part IX. Electoral Systems in the Context of New Democracies
42. Electoral Systems in Context: Ukraine
Erik S. Herron
43. Electoral Systems in Context: Indonesia
Nathan Allen
44. Electoral Systems in Context: South Africa
Karen E. Ferree

Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems

I am co-editing the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems from Oxford University Press with Robert J. Pekkanen and Matthew S. Shugart. The book covers core debates about the design and consequences of electoral rules and provides examples of electoral systems in context all over the world. The first chapters have been published online by Oxford University Press and include:

John Carey on Electoral System Design in Divided Societies;
Josep Colomer on Party System Effects on Electoral Systems;
Gary Cox on Portfolio Maximizing Strategies in Parliamentary Elections;
Joel Johnson on Electoral Systems and Campaign Finance;
Ken Kollman on Election Data and Levels of Analysis;
Dan Smith on Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout;
Thomas Carl Lundberg on Electoral Systems in Context: United Kingdom;
Ian McAllister and Toni Makkai on Electoral Systems in Context: Australia;
Jack Vowles on Electoral Systems in Context: New Zealand;
Kuniaki Nemoto on Electoral Systems in Context: Japan; and
Reuven Y. Hazan, Reut Itzkovitch-Malka, and Gideon Rahat on Electoral Systems in Context: Israel.

More chapters are coming soon, including Lisa Handley on Redistricting, Pippa Norris on Electoral Integrity and Electoral Systems, and Matt Golder and Benjamin Ferland on Electoral Rules and Citizen-Elite Ideological Congruence. I will share additional news about the volume as it moves forward for electronic and hard-copy production.

[UPDATED: May 11, 2017; July 12, 2017]

Presidential Power Guest Post

My guest blog post about presidential involvement in the appointment of electoral administrators, focusing on Ukraine, was just published on the Presidential Power Blog.

New Research on Election Administration

Two forthcoming articles in the journals Governance and Election Law Journal evaluate election administration during Ukraine's 2014 snap parliamentary elections. Both of them draw from my National Science Foundation grant (SES - 1462110) and the election administrator surveys it supported.

The article in Governance, co-authored with Nazar Boyko and Michael Thunberg, investigates how the lures of professionalization and corruption interact in a bureaucracy featuring temporary civil servants. We demonstrate that aspects of professionalization are present in District Electoral Commissions (DECs) and Precinct Electoral Commissions (PECs) through recruitment and training, and are associated with variation in competency-based activities like completing protocols in a timely manner. These influences coexist with temptations to behave in a biased manner, especially due to side payments that parties provide to their affiliated commissioners. Many of these commissioners acknowledge an implicit quid pro quo in which payments are associated with expectations of better election outcomes for their affiliated parties. In the article, we show how these forces interact and discuss how Ukraine - and other transitional societies - can confront the challenge of professionalizing bureaucracies.

The article in Election Law Journal, co-authored with Nazar Boyko, addresses how administrators face the challenges of implementing elections during violent conflict. We evaluate how institutional, spatial, partisan, and professional factors affect variation in perceptions of readiness, security, and integrity. We find that spatial and capacity-building measures have the most influence on outcomes. Administrators expressed the greatest concerns about elections in the embattled East, but little evidence of "contagion" beyond the East was present. These findings support some of our earlier work using election returns in which we found limited effects beyond the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk, and speak to the success of Ukrainian officials in containing the conflict. We also found that participation in training was associated with better outcomes, suggesting that enhanced professionalization efforts by Ukrainian institutions and the international community can improve readiness, security, and integrity.

Supplementary Material:
1) Online appendix for the Election Law Journal article
2) Survey data for the Governance and Election Law Journal articles.