There are increasing studies on electoral reform which view electoral systems as dependent variable. These studies shift attention from the political consequences of electoral change toward the determinants of electoral reform. The paper analyses the electoral reform under the Blair government and the AV referendum of May 2011. The partisan bias worked in favor of the Labour Party since 1990s. Therefore, the rational choice approach fits uneasily with the action of the Blair government which weakened the traditional single-member district plurality system. The electoral reform since 1994 under the New Labor was the product of intra-party as well as inter-party politics. The AV referendum was also the product of inter-party bargaining in the context of the hung parliament. While different electoral systems such as MMP, SV and STV are adopted at sub-national level, there is still deep rooted support to the current plurality system at the Westminster parliament.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine arguments over the issue in France. As for French electoral systems, two-round system (scrutin à deux tours) or runoff voting must be generally reminded. It is the key concept to understand in the domain. It is used, sometimes combined with the list, at multi-levels of the government, including the presidential elections. The second key concept, gender parity (parité) is added in the context. All the electoral system reforms after 2000 are more or less discussed from the point of view. Gender party concept (un binôme hommefemme) has been finally attached to the single-member district at the departmental elections. As the result of considerations, however, these French exceptions would not be transferred to other countries.

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West Germany had been occupied by the three countries. But opinions on electoral law did not match among the political parties in Germany as well as between the three countries. 1957 since the 3rd election, mixed method in adopted. But that changed the method of allocation of seats to each party is 4 times. In this article people will a comparison of the results of each allocation method. Also people can find how to get same results in easier ways than is written in the official report.

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The Electoral System of German Lower House, Bundestag, is often seen as one of the idealist systems whose structural problem however became since unification 1990 revealed. Taking a by-election 2005 the special defect of the electoral system is clear. After two unconstitutional judgments by Federal Constitutional Court the new Electoral System came in to effect. In this article this new Electoral System is considered in relation to the 2013 Election which the new system was used at first in. To be concrete some special features and whose problems of German Electoral System, namely negative voting effect, excess seats, five-percent-clause and regulated seats, are dealt with.

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The author gives an overview of the changes in election system of the House of Representatives of the Russian Federation from the time of inception and until now, focusing on the revision of the election law. The election system of the House of Representatives of the Russian Federation changed from the electoral system based on a combination of single-seat constituencies and proportional representation to the pure proportional representation system and is due to return the combination system again.

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This article examines a hypothesis that risk-averse voters are more likely to engage in split-ticket voting, using Japan as a case. A change in government leadership often brings about drastic policy changes, which may amplify social and economic uncertainty. Riskaverse voters who dislike such uncertainty will split their votes between different political parties/candidates to prevent a single party from holding a dominant status. The 2013 Japanese Upper House election is the best case to test this risk-management hypothesis. In this election, voters were faced with a decision of whether to give a majority status in the Upper House to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that had already gained a majority status in the Lower House election just seven months before. Japanese Election Study V (JESV) data showed that LDP supporting, risk-averse voters were less likely to engage in straight-ticket voting for the LDP that had proposed to implement controversial policies such as unlimited quantitative easing for targeted inflation and enhancement of Japan's military capability.

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Does income inequality do any harm to equal voice? Some research has revealed that the level of political participation is low among those with low income, which indicates that economic inequality may endanger democracy, by threatening the opportunity of equal voice. In Japan, on the other hand, the apparent effect of socio-economic status on political participation has not been observed. The possible reason is that most research in that vein has examined only the effect of income, but not assets. Using the 4th wave of CSES data, this study examines if wealth such as stock and house ownership, not just income, would have impact on participation in voting. The result shows that stock ownership is positively correlated with participation in voting. Also, housing ownership has a positive effect on the support to Abe cabinet. These findings suggest that asset ownership may facilitate political engagement.

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With the enforcement of amendments to Public Offices Election Act, online campaigns were made available for parties and candidates. From various perspectives, this paper examines its impacts by looking at the relations between voters’ information behavior and political cognition as well as voting participation. Since the newly permitted campaign tactics are still very minor, however, this study included not only online campaigns items but also much broader arrays of online information for the analysis utilizing our web surveys. The results show that mobilization endeavors by parties or candidates via internet is so small; impacts of online information on political recognition or voting behavior among electorates are limited; the impacts vary among generations and the largest influence is found among young generation. As a result, generally saying, the impacts of the Internet Election Campaign revision are very limited.

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