Addressing Systemic Failure or Following Waves of Change? A Count-Duration Analysis of the Timing of Electoral Reforms in Established and New Democracy

One of the main aims of the existing literature on electoral reform is addressing the question of why electoral reforms happen. The various explanations put forward such as the evolution of party competition, the raise of public disaffection, or the occurrence of a focusing event, share a common pattern: they all suppose that each national electoral reform process takes place in isolation of any other process abroad. Yet this supposition should not be taken for granted as the diffusion of policy innovation is far from being uncommon for various types of policies (Braun & Gilardi 2006; Brooks 2007). The proposed paper formulates two opposing hypotheses based on two alternative explanations of the causes of electoral reforms. On the one hand, in his study of the reform of FPTP systems, Shugart (2008) argues that this is the systematic failure in the functioning of the national electoral rules that makes political elites considering the possibility of reforming them. On the other hand, Blais et al. (2005), examining the replacement of plurality/majority systems by PR at the beginning of the 20th century, suggest the existence of a diffusion effect of electoral reform among young democracies. To confront these two hypotheses, the timing of electoral reforms in democracies in Western and Eastern Europe, and in North and South America since 1945 is examined, and an original count-duration model is rigorously tested.