How single-member districts are reinforcing local independents and strengthening mayors: on the electoral reform in Polish local government

Adam Gendźwiłł and Tomasz Żółtak

Local Government Studies, 2017, vol. 43, issue 1, 110-131

Abstract: In this article, we investigate whether the design of the electoral system used in the elections of local councils affects the position of national parties and their main competitors, local independent lists. We study the case of the electoral reform enacted recently in Poland which modified the rules of council elections by introducing the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, quite rarely used in local elections. Using empirical evidence from the municipalities where FPTP replaced the open-list proportional representation (OLPR) system, we demonstrate that the introduction of single-member districts, and majoritarian rule in council elections, increased the number of single independents, unaffiliated to any party or committee, and limited the (already poor) presence of party candidates and councillors. The reform also strengthened the position of directly elected mayors, in Poland – usually independent, by assuring many of them safe majorities in councils. We found that the share of seats for the winning mayor’s list increased by 10 pp on average after the reform.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2016.1254624 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:43:y:2017:i:1:p:110-131

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/flgs20

DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2016.1254624

Access Statistics for this article

Local Government Studies is currently edited by Helen Hancock

More articles in Local Government Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().