A large body of electoral studies and political party research argues that the institutional context defines incentives that shape citizen participation and voting choice. With the unique resources of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this book provides the first systematic evaluation of this topic. A distinguished international team of electoral scholars finds that the institutional context has only a modest impact on citizen political choices compared to individual level factors. Furthermore, the formal institutional characteristics of electoral systems that have been most emphasized by electoral studies researchers have less impact than characteristics of the party system that are separate from formal institutions. Advanced multi-level analyses demonstrate that contextual effects are more often indirect and interactive, and thus their effects are typically not apparent in single nation election studies. The results have the potential to reshape our understanding of how the institutional framework and context of election matters, and the limits of institutional design in shaping citizen electoral behavior.
How do institutions and electoral systems matter for citizens' electoral choices? This is the first systematic study that attempts to answer this question for contemporary democracies. The book assembles leading electoral researchers to examine citizen choice in over 30 democracies surveyed by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems.
Citizens, Context, and Choice breaks important new ground in the study of voting behavior, with an exceptionally talented set of contributors providing a variety of studies of how macropolitical contexts affect individuals' electoral choices. The papers are uniformly very good, but this volume is also much more than the sum of its parts. It develops more fully than has ever been done before the concept of "political supply" - the number, distinctiveness, and predictability of choices offered to the voter. And through a number of empirical studies it demonstrates that political supply is a central factor in understanding citizens' choices to participate and the meaning of their vote. This is work that will have to be taken account of in all further studies of electoral choice.
