Csaba Nikolenyi

TL;DR: A Unified Theory of Party Competition as mentioned in this paper is a cross-national analysis integrating spatial and behavioral factors that leads to empirically testable predictions with more realistic results than earlier models, which is at the cutting edge of developing the scientific study of politics.

Abstract: This article examines the failure of three attempts to replace proportional representation with a majoritarian alternative in post-communist Eastern Europe: Slovenia in 1996; the Czech Republic in 2000; and Romania in 2008. The central argument of the article is that majoritarian electoral reform is both incompatible with and prevented by the institutions of consensus democracy. The constitutional design of consensus democracy creates multiple veto points and veto players that limit major policy and legislative change, such as electoral reform. As such, they also provide for self-enforcing stability in the electoral system by making it very difficult for political actors to build a winning coalition to reform it.

TL;DR: The comparative record of cabinet stability shows interesting variation across the three most consolidated post-communist democracies: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland as discussed by the authors, and it is argued that cabinet stability both within and across the states can be consistently explained by the theory of dominant and central players.

TL;DR: The authors examined the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971 and found that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the nature of the new Indian party system with reference to Sartori's theoretical framework and found that it seems that the Indian political system hinges on the borderline between polarized and moderate pluralism.