What have single-member
districts changed?
An evidence from 2014 Polish
local elections
Adam Gendźwiłł, University of Warsaw
Tomasz Żółtak, University of Warsaw, Institute of Educational Research
Paper prepared for the ECPR General Conference, Prague 8-10 September 2015
Work in progress. Please do not cite without permission.
Abstract
The paper presents the basic consequences of the introduction of single-member districts (FPTP
system) in elections of municipal councils in Poland, bringing new evidence on the functioning of
electoral rules in subnational elections, characterized by much more differentiated and open
electoral markets. The authors compare the results of 2010 and 2014 local elections (before and
after the electoral reform) in municipalities where previously used PR open-list system was
replaced by FPTP and municipalities where no change was introduced. Basing on the differencein-differences research scheme, the paper attempts to assess the impact of electoral reform on
disproportionality and councils’ fragmentation. The analyses demonstrate that the introduction of
FPTP system did not decrease the electoral fragmentation. However, the disproportionality and
share of wasted votes increased significantly, while the fragmentation of local councils decreased.
The paper is a result of the research project no. 2013/09/N/HS5/00276 conducted at the
University of Warsaw and financed by the Polish National Science Center.
1
1. Introduction
Tracing the political consequences of various electoral rules is probably the most
important research topic in electoral studies. In this paper, basing on the example of the
recent electoral reform which has changed local elections in Poland, we analyze some of
the consequences of replacing open-list proportional representation system (OLPR) by
first-past-the-post system (FPTP). We focus our attention on how the introduction of
plurality rule in single-member districts influenced electoral supply, fragmentation and
disproportionality.
There are many empirical studies demonstrating how FPTP system operates in national
elections. However, the literature on electoral reforms focuses mainly on the replacement
of FPTP by other systems. As Blais notes: “there has been a strong push for replacement
of FPTP almost everywhere it prevails, and the system was actually replaced in number
of countries” (Blais, 2008: 1). In this paper we assess the outcomes of a ‘reverse’ reform
which introduced FPTP in place of PR system. By comparing the elections in Polish
municipalities held in 2010 and 2014, we could compare the results observed in
municipalities which changed both electoral formula and district magnitude with the
results observed in municipalities unaffected by the reform, treated as a reference group.
It is frequently assumed that electoral rules function in the same way both at the
national and local level. However, this claim is not very well grounded empirically, as
the studies of local elections are less frequent. Such reasoning does not take into account
any peculiarities of local democracy which may affect the openness of electoral races, the
character of the electoral competition, as well as voters’ and candidates’ behavior.
Local electoral systems, due to their differentiation, are a perfect object of comparative
research focused on the impact of institutions (electoral rules) on the composition of
representative bodies, their accountability and efficiency. As van der Kolk (2007) points
out, such a research could be oriented towards the differences within countries where the
local electoral systems are differentiated (e.g. between Lands in Germany) or,
alternatively, towards the change in time related to the introduction of new rules in local
elections (in that respect he uses the examples from Western Europe: France in 1982 and
Germany in 1990). This paper represents the latter type of study, using the singlecountry cross-temporal study, which allows for more rigorous causal inference in a quasiexperimental setting.
In the following paragraphs, we present the conventional expectations concerning the
impact of electoral reform on fragmentation and disproportionality and briefly discuss
2
whether the specific context of local elections and novelty of electoral rules in the first
cycle after the reform can modify these expectations. Subsequently, we describe the
electoral system used in the Polish local elections and the essence of the reform which
was adopted by the parliament in 2011. In the following section, we describe the
research design, data and method. After that, we present the empirical evidence
referring to the outcomes of the reform. Finally, we summarize the results and present
the conclusions.
2. Fragmentation and disproportionality in local elections
Most of the democratic theorists stress the crucial role of electoral competition for the
quality of democracy. Each electoral system generates its own structure of incentives for
candidates to run in the elections and join parties, for the parties to assure the electoral
coordination by selecting candidates and placing them in districts, and, finally, for the
voters, who can vote strategically, modifying their initial preferences. These incentives
differ significantly between OLPR and FPTP systems, which are studied in this paper.
While both systems encompass incentives to cultivate personal reputation (Carey,
Shugart, 1995), the OLPR is less personalized, even if the preferential vote is obligatory,
as it is in Poland. OLPR prefers team-players: it does not allow single candidates to run;
it also mobilizes more candidates, grouped in lists (as each list should have at least M
candidates, where M is district magnitude). The conventional wisdom states that FPTP
leads to the consolidation of party system and stable majorities, as it gives considerable
“seat bonus” for the largest parties, while OLPR usually leads to the larger
fragmentation with coalition governments, even if d’Hont rule or legal threshold are
applied (Reynolds et al. 2005).
Following the well-known Duverger’s (1954) hypothesis, the influence of the electoral
rules on the electoral outcomes was usually described by the combination of
psychological effects (voters avoiding to waste their votes and candidates avoiding to
entry hopeless electoral races) and mechanical effects (arithmetical consequences of the
adopted seat allocation method). The most obvious expectation concerning the switch
from OLPR to FPTP would be that such a reform lead to a considerable decrease of
electoral fragmentation and increase of disproportionality.
3
However, the subsequent literature supplements the “pure institutional” explanations of
electoral fragmentation by the socio-economic and historical context (e.g. Ordershook,
Shvetsova, 1994; Amorim-Neto, Cox, 1997). We argue that certain features of local
elections in Poland – relative openness of electoral markets and low level of local party
system nationalization – should modify the expectations concerning the impact of FPTP
rule on fragmentation.
For our analyses, the studies on the impact of party institutionalization seem to be most
relevant. Moser (1999), who analyzed the elections in post-communist democracies,
argued that the effects of the electoral rules are modified by the level of party
institutionalization. If parties are weak, the majority and plurality systems, contrary to
the expectations based on the well-established democracies, can generate very
fragmented party systems. While party system in Poland becomes more stable at the
national level, local parties are very vulnerable and the electoral markets are relatively
open; in many municipalities the only form of a party is a temporary electoral alliance of
independent candidates representing various districts (Fallend et al., 2006; Gendźwiłł,
Żółtak, 2014). In other words, the level of nationalization of local party systems (Kjaer,
Elklit, 2010) remains very low.
We hypothesize that in a specific context the FPTP rule produces strong incentives to
abandon party labels, establish local independent committees or run as single
independent candidates. Such a context is built by the character of local elections in
Poland, where party labels are less relevant, local branches of national parties are
absent or relatively weak in comparison to local committees, in particular – local lists
established by mayors elected in direct races. This hypothesis is consistent with the
findings of Brancati (2008) based on the cross-national analyses of parliamentary
elections. He argues that party-voter linkages are more tenuous in plurality and
majority systems, as “they base electoral competition more on the qualities of individual
candidates than on those of their parties; consequently, voters in these systems are more
informed about candidates’ particular attributes than voters in PR systems, and less
likely to rely on party cues to make decisions about which candidates to support”
(Brancati, 2008: 652).
Simultaneously, it is possible that the “psychological effect”, observable both in voters’
and candidates’ behavior requires learning, as it is based on the stimuli-response
mechanism. Hence, it could be very weak or non-existent in the first elections after the
change. Strategic coordination requires inter-party agreements based on the prognoses
4
of electoral results. However, the estimations of voters’ support before the local election
day are less precise than in parliamentary elections – as there are much less public
opinion polls, and in many municipalities with localized local party systems single votes
weigh more than at the national level. Therefore, it is possible that local elites simply did
not calculate precisely how the new electoral rules would impact the structure of
preferences of local electorates.
To sum up, there are reasons to hypothesize that the relative openness of electoral
markets, localized character of elections and newness of electoral system weaken – or
even erase – the “psychological effect” of FPTP.
On the other hand, Duvergerian “mechanical effect” of FPTP does not depend on context
or learning cycle. Therefore, there are reasons to expect that the “mechanical effect” of
the reform, which replaced OLPR by FPTP, is immediately visible in the electoral
outcomes, regardless the type of elections and time which elapsed from the reform.
The existing literature demonstrates that both electoral formula and district magnitude
influence the disproportionality of electoral system and significantly impacts chances of
small parties (Rae, 1967; Blais, Carty, 1991; Taagepera, Shugart 1993). Plurality and
majority rules are considered as more disproportional than PR systems, however their
effect on disproportionality interacts with district magnitude (Lijphart, 1999; Blais and
Carty, 1987; Eggers and Fouirnaies, 2014). One may expect that the change from OLPR
to FPTP leads to larger disproportionality. This expectation is particularly justified if we
assume that, contrary to the conventional wisdom and according to the argumentation
presented above, electoral fragmentation remains the same or even increases after the
introduction of FPTP.
The replacement of OLPR by FPTP is a good chance to explore a particular aspect of
electoral system (dis)proportionality, related to the distribution of personal votes.
Conventionally, disproportionality is defined as the dissimilarity between votes’ and
seats’ distributions. However, as both OLPR and FPTP combine the elements of party
and personal vote (in fact, each vote casted in Polish version of OLPR and in FPTP is
both party and personal), it is worth asking which electoral system is better in
transferring personal preferences of the electorate. There are reasons to assume that
FPTP produce more wasted party votes than OLPR; share of wasted votes is treated as
one of the measures of disproportionality (Anckar, 1997). But what do we know about
wasted personal (preferential) votes, inherently related to the OLPR system? One of the
main lines of criticism towards OLPR with obligatory preferential vote is that the lists of
5
candidates include a lot of “excessive candidates”. While the ballot position effects are
relatively strong, many candidates have only marginal chance to be elected. There are
many candidates who attract voters, but only few beneficiaries, usually ranked high at
the ballot, who receive seats assigned to the list (Marcinkiewicz, 2013).
In the FPTP system each party is motivated to cast maximum one candidate in each
district, thus the problems of “excessive candidates” and intra-party competition
disappear. However, the large amount of wasted party votes is directly related to the
large amount of wasted personal votes. While the former mechanism reduces to 0
number of wasted personal votes for the winning list, the latter mechanism increases
number of wasted personal votes for defeated lists. It is interesting, which mechanism
prevails.
To sum up, in the following sections, using the example of electoral reform in Poland, we
search the effects of the replacement of OLPR by FPTP system. We look at the five
outcome variables, which are related to fragmentation and disproportionality. (1)
electoral fragmentation, (2) council fragmentation, (3) index of disproportionality, (4)
share of wasted party votes, (5) share of wasted personal votes.
The fragmentation of local party systems was measured by the effective number of
parties in the electorate1 and the effective number of parties in the council. Effective
number of parties takes into consideration not only number of parties but also shares of
votes (or seats, respectively) won by each party; we use the well-known indicator
proposed by Laakso and Taagepera (1979):
= 1 / where n is number of parties and pi is votes or seats share of the i-th party.
In order to measure disproportionality, we use Gallagher’s least-squares index of
disproportionality, which portrays dissimilarities between seats’ and votes’ distributions
(Gallagher, 1991):
1
ℎ = −
∑ ∑ 2
where x are vote shares and y – seat shares given to the the i party.
It includes also local independent lists. “Party” refers here to each electoral committee which
casts its candidates in the election.
1
6
The share of wasted votes we compute using two alternative approaches, either as the
share of valid votes casted for the parties which did not receive any seat in the council
(wasted party votes) or as the share of valid votes casted for the candidates who did not
receive any seat (wasted personal votes).
3. Local electoral systems in Poland: what has been changed?
Currently, there are 2478 municipalities in Poland; there are relatively large as
compared to those in many other European countries. The average population size is
close to 16,000 inhabitants and none of the municipalities has the population lower than
1000 (Swianiewicz, 2014). The elections of municipal councils (rady gmin) in Poland have
been organized every four years since 1990. While mayors (directly elected since 2002)
dominate in local political systems, the local assemblies, composed of 15 to 60 councilors,
still remain an important institution assuring the political representation of the local
communities.
The electoral system at the local level was changing since 1990. However, it still remains
a combination of plurality voting system in small municipalities and proportional
representation system with open lists in larger cities. The latter resembles the
proportional system used since 1991 in the elections of lower chamber of Polish
parliament (Sejm).
Table 1 summarizes the main differences in electoral system design introduced by the
new Electoral Code in 2011, which provides main parameters of local electoral systems.
The law allows municipal councils to determine district boundaries and district
magnitudes (if applicable), following the general conditions. As rural municipalities
usually consist of several villages, which are considered as a natural territorial units, the
borders of villages were used in delimiting the boundaries of electoral districts. In small
towns the districts were rather artificial entities.
Before the reform, the threshold between the two electoral subsystems using either
plurality or proportional electoral rule was set at 20 thousand inhabitants, resulting in
327 municipalities using the proportional system. After the reform, only municipal
councils in 65 cities of county status have been elected with the use of the OLPR. Since
2014 elections, all other municipal councils are elected with the use of a plurality system
7
in single-member districts (“pure” FPTP). Previously, smaller municipalities also used
block voting.
Table 1. Differences between 2010 and 2014 electoral system in local elections
Formulas in electoral subsystems
Threshold between
subsystems
District magnitude
2010
smaller municipalities:
FPTP, BV or combination of
both
larger municipalities:
OLPR, 5% legal threshold,
d’Hondt allocation method
size: 20000 inhabitants
1 – 5 in plurality districts
5 – 8 in PR districts
2014
smaller municipalities:
FPTP
larger municipalities:
OLPR, 5% legal threshold,
d’Hondt allocation method
legal status: PR system in
65 cities of county-status
1 in plurality districts
5 – 10 in PR districts
Source: own compilation
While in 2010 only 18.5% of eligible voters lived in SMDs, in 2014 this share rose to
67.5%. Simultaneously, the reform significantly limited the use of OLPR. There were
also municipalities unaffected by the reform – small municipalities already divided into
SMDs in the 2010 elections and cities of county status where PR remained unchanged
(table 2). In this article, we focus on groups 4 and 5. The most interesting change – a
switch from OLPR to FPTP – took place in group 4, consisting of 261 medium-sized
municipalities. Group 5, consisting of larger municipalities where the OLPR system was
used in both the 2010 and 2014 elections will be used as a reference group.
Table 2. Groups of municipalities affected and unaffected by the electoral reform
Group
1
2
3
4
5
2010 elections
FPTP
FPTP and BV
BV
OLPR
OLPR
Number of
municipalities
133
1787
231
261
65
2014
elections
FPTP
FPTP
FPTP
FPTP
OLPR
Size of municipalities
(population in 2010)
Average
Min
Max
9216
2128
20181
7585
1641
21193
8535
1353
20209
32974 19301
76137
195031 38460 1714446
Notice: Two municipalities: county-status city of Zielona Góra and rural municipality
Zielona Góra were excluded from analysis because of their merger which took place in
2014.
Source: own compilation
8
4. Data and method
We investigate the effects of the electoral reform by searching systematic differences in
the outcome variables which occurred between 2010 and 2014 elections. Our empirical
analyses are based on the official election results published by the National Electoral
Commission. The unit of analysis is a municipality (or municipal council). As table 2
displays, 261 municipalities from group 4 were subjected to treatment, i.e. the electoral
reform replacing OLPR by FPTP (T=1), while 65 municipalities from group 5 remained
unaffected, using OLPR system both in 2010 and 2014 (T=0). Such a research scheme
could be interpreted as quasi-experimental. We use a Difference-in-Differences scheme,
in which the difference between two groups (treated and non-treated) is not itself a
subject of interest, but rather how this difference changes as the reform is implemented.
Within this scheme, several additional factors, e.g. the size of a municipality, can be
controlled directly within the regression model, which makes it possible to address the
problem of selection bias occurring in quasi-experimental settings (Imbens and
Wooldridge, 2009). In our models we controlled for the selection bias (as the assignment
was not random) by including as the covariate the base-2 logarithm of the number of
eligible voters (logarithmic transformation was applied to remove a skewness of the
original variable).
We constructed separate models for each of five outcome variables. The effect of the
reform can be defined within the counterfactual framework as the average treatment
effect on the treated (ATT) using a standard fixed effects regression model:
= + + + +
where Yij is a value of the outcome variable for i-th municipality in j-th year election, ηi
is a municipality fixed effect to control for any time-invariant characteristics, δj is a
period fixed time effect that describes common trends, α is the treatment effect, Xij is a
vector of time-varying covariates, and εij is an error term with ! |, , , $~!0, '$. To
account for the nested structure of our data, we used cluster-corrected (on the
municipality level) robust standard errors (Binder 1983).
As the difference-in-differences method relies on the assumption of a parallel trend of
outcome variable before the treatment (Imbens and Wooldridge, 2009), we performed socalled “placebo analysis”, i.e. we estimated models with the same specification, but using
9
the data regarding 2006 and 2010 elections. As there was no reform in that period of
time, we expect that there will be no significant effect of the treatment in these models.
4. Results
The results of the empirical analyses are presented in table 3 and illustrated by the
figures 1-5 (left panel in each figure presents changes of group averages with 95%
confidence intervals between 2006 and 2014, right panel presents the estimations of
average treatment effects in placebo and proper difference-in-differences models).
According to the expectations, the electoral fragmentation, measured by the effective
number of electoral parties, did not decrease after the introduction of FPTP (fig. 1). On
the contrary, the increase of electoral fragmentation was observed in both groups of
municipalities. In the group of treated municipalities the increase was even higher. The
average treatment effect is even positive, however not statistically significant. It is worth
noticing that the outcome variable in 2014 just reached the average noted in 2006. This
finding supports the argument that the “psychological effect” of FPTP was not visible in
the first electoral cycle after this system replaced previously used OLPR.
Figure 1. Effects of the reform: electoral fragmentation
10
Figure 2 illustrates that after the replacement of OLPR by FPTP the council
fragmentation decreased in the group of treated municipalities and it is visible that this
decrease was larger than in the control group. In this case we observe a negative,
statistically significant average treatment effect (-0,56). This observation, according to
our expectations, documents the presence of “mechanical effect” of FPTP rule.
Figure 2. Effects of the reform: council fragmentation
The simultaneous increase of electoral fragmentation and decrease of council
fragmentation led to the considerable increase of disproportionality, measured by the
Gallagher’s index (fig. 3). The increase of disproportionality was observed in both groups
but in the treated group disproportionality increased much more. Within the differencein-difference scheme, the average treatment effect is also positive and statistically
significant. Another indicator of disproportionality, the share of wasted votes (casted for
parties/lists which did not receive seats in councils), demonstrates the similar pattern.
The share of wasted party votes increased in both groups between 2010 and 2014, but
this increase was much higher in the group of treated municipalities (fig. 4), a positive
statistically significant average treatment effect (+0,087) can be observed.
11
Figure 3. Effects of the reform: disproportionality
Figure 4. Effects of the reform: wasted party votes
Simultaneously, there is no evidence that the reform significantly affected the share of
wasted personal votes (casted for the candidates who did not receive seats) – the average
treatment effect observed between 2010 and 2014 is close to 0 (fig. 5). Such a result
answers the question on how OLPR with obligatory preferential vote and FPTP perform
in terms of mirroring preferences for individual candidates. It seems that there is no
visible difference in this respect. Both systems perform poorly, as the average shares of
12
wasted personal votes are close to 60% – it means that both in OLPR and FPTP the
majority of personal votes is casted for candidates who ultimately do not receive seats in
the councils.
Figure 5. Effects of the reform: wasted personal votes
It should be noticed that all placebo models presented in the table 3 showed no
significant effect of the “false treatment” (reform) set between 2006 and 2010. Such a
result confirms the parallel trends assumption and strengthens causal interpretation of
the empirical evidence.
13
Table 3. Effects of the electoral reform – difference-in-differences models
Effective number of
parties (electoral)
(1)
2006-2010
(2)
2010-2014
Effective number of
parties (council)
(3)
2006-2010
(4)
2010-2014
Disproportionality
(LSI)
Share of wasted votes
(parties)
Share of wasted votes
(candidates)
(5)
2006-2010
(6)
2010-2014
(7)
2006-2010
(8)
2010-2014
(9)
2006-2010
(10)
2010-2014
-0.15
0.23
-0.184
-0.545
0.00085
(0.15)
(0.14)
(0.121)
(0.117) (0.00527)
Post-period
-0.44
0.27
-0.295
-0.027
-0.00198
(δ)
(0.12)
(0.10)
(0.100)
(0.086) (0.00431)
log2 eligible
1.76
1.71
1.380
2.416
-0.08440
voters
(1.58)
(1.64)
(1.219)
(1.324) (0.05657)
Intercept
-3.64
-3.78
-3.524
-9.374
0.55875
(7.97)
(8.23)
(6.148)
(6.631) (0.28552)
N
651
647
651
652
651
2
adj. R
0.618
0.577
0.658
0.562
0.090
(1), (3), (5), (7), (9) – placebo models; (2), (4), (6), (8), (10) – proper models
0.08677
(0.00720)
0.01835
(0.00545)
0.10331
(0.08821)
-0.34634
(0.44207)
652
0.538
0.97
(1.16)
-2.94
(0.95)
-3.37
(10.28)
34.21
(51.82)
651
0.212
5.09
(1.11)
4.07
(0.90)
-1.44
(13.69)
24.11
(68.64)
652
0.385
-0.74
(0.71)
-2.47
(0.59)
18.31
(7.45)
-26.17
(37.61)
651
0.715
-0.56
(0.73)
-0.52
(0.60)
-12.25
(9.61)
126.71
(48.20)
652
0.520
Reform (α)
*** p<0,001; ** p<0,01; * p<0,05
Source: National Electoral Commission, own calculations
14
5. Conclusions
The electoral reform in Poland gives a chance to trace the “immediate” consequences of
the introduction of FPTP in place of OLPR system. The fact that our study is based on
local elections held in the country with parties weakly institutionalized at the local level,
weakly nationalized local party systems and relatively open electoral markets, allows to
verify some of the predictions based on the existing studies of national legislative
elections held in more stable party systems.
The research demonstrate that the gap between electoral fragmentation and legislative
fragmentation grew at the expense of larger disproportionality. According to our
predictions, the introduction of single-member districts increased the disproportionality
measured by Gallagher’s index and a share of wasted votes, casted for parties that did
not receive seats in the councils. However, it turned out that the shares of votes casted
for candidates who did not receive the seat do not differ significantly between the
systems – in both cases ca. 60% of votes were wasted.
The case of Polish local elections provides the evidence that the introduction of FPTP in
place of OLPR system does not reduce electoral fragmentation. It means that the
Duvergerian “psychological effect” did not work – it is not clear, however, whether it is
caused by the peculiarities of subnational elections or by the short period of time which
passed from the introduction of the new rules. Simultaneously, it is evident that the
plurality rule diminish the fragmentations of the councils, i.e. that the “mechanical
effect” of FPTP system exist even in first electoral cycle. In municipalities affected by the
reform it was easier to win the majority in the council. As our research demonstrate, the
main beneficiaries of the reform were independent local committees, usually related to
the directly elected mayors (Gendźwiłł, Żółtak, 2016).
Further studies on the electoral reform are required, focusing on the indicators related to
the citizens’ political efficacy, stability of local governments, and long-term consequences
which are not clearly visible in the first elections held under new rules.
15
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