The article starts from a critique of the widespread assumption that intergovernmentalism is not only the more practical but also the more democratic way of handling the current European crises – and particularly the euro crisis – to argue for the need to rethink the working and the definition of democracy in the current heightened interconnectedness of political organization. It suggests that perceiving European citizens as being separated into distinct state communities stands in the way of a full appreciation of the externalities, hence of the reciprocal responsibilities, that they owe each other and turns apparently democratic decisions into potential acts of domination, as theorized by both Pettit (1997) and Bohman (2006). It suggests that we should embrace a more encompassing and dialogical notion of democracy which translates Pallasmaa’s (2012) notion of hapticity from the field of physical architecture to that of institutional architecture. It concludes by suggesting that there are already institutional architectures in the EU which lend themselves to a haptic declension, for example the European Semester.

The conditions under which losers are willing to challenge the results of elections remain an open question. Using data from the Electoral Integrity Project for 66 democratic and non-democratic countries in 2012 and 2013, we measure how parties or candidates react once votes have been cast and one of them is declared the winner. Do they accept or challenge the results? This measure allows us to examine the causal mechanisms that account for the self-enforcing nature of democracies. Our findings show that losers’ consent increases with free and fair elections and in more economically developed countries, while income inequality is not relevant. Additionally, the impact of free and fair elections is particularly important in more economically developed countries.

This article explores legislative voting behaviour in the regional party system where electoral competition is based primarily on geographic divisions instead of national public policies. An analysis of roll-call votes in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea from 2000 to 2008 reveals that in the regionalized context, legislative voting unity is high because legislators are disciplined to receive endorsement from their regional champion party. Those legislators are far more disciplined when voting on pork legislation. Nonetheless, as the socioeconomic status of constituents rises and the constituents thus care more about policy than pork, then opposition legislators tend to vote against their parties more often. Conversely, governing-party members are more disciplined to pass bills where voters often desire policy over pork. This study suggests a powerful interaction between party affiliations and voter demands as a dominant electoral strategic tool in the regional party system.

Consociational theory posits that political elites in divided societies will show a stronger ‘spirit of accommodation’ than the groups they represent, and that this prudent leadership on behalf of the elites explains why divided societies hold together. Belgium has long been considered to be one of the best examples of such a consociational democracy. Yet in this country the spirit of accommodation of prudent leaders was questioned and discussed publicly during the 2010–11 political gridlock. The question is therefore whether Belgian political elites are indeed less radical and hold less extreme views than voters, as suggested by consociational theory. To explore this question, this article relies on survey data gathered during the historically long government negotiations of 2010–11 between members of all six Belgian assemblies. This original data set on MPs is compared with data on voters gathered in 2009 and 2014 in order to contrast their views on the reform of Belgium’s federalism. The results show that voters are less radical than MPs on this question, but the data also reveal that MPs are strongly divided within communities and also within party. Neither communities nor parties are monolithic blocks.

This article explores the nature of the main opposition parties to the incumbent hegemonic regimes in Malaysia and Singapore. I argue that the differing characters of these opposition parties should be considered. In Singapore, where there is no ideological challenge to the ruling party, I contend that even if the opposition takes over it will be the end of a hegemonic party but not hegemony. In Malaysia, the opposite is true. This article contributes to the literature on transition theory in two ways: (1) it recognizes the diversity of authoritarian regimes and enhances analyses of various authoritarian regimes by focusing on one type – hegemonic parties; and (2) it brings ideology into the reckoning by focusing on the nature of the opposition parties most likely to take over.

Declining voter turnout has been highlighted as problematic for a number of western democracies. However, in this article we argue that whether an election is seen as ‘legitimate’ or not depends crucially upon interpretations of the levels of turnout by elite actors. Through comparing two recent democratic ballots in the UK we demonstrate how elections with lower turnouts can come to be seen as holding more legitimacy than those with higher turnouts. The cases demonstrate, we argue, a distinction between actual legitimacy, defined as a binary concept, and the process of legitimization – a process through which the authority of an institution is discursively constructed and conferred. This suggests a new research agenda which extends beyond the current literature to focus upon how the legitimacy of a ballot is socially constructed in a broader context of unequal socioeconomic power relations.

The study of party system institutionalization in Latin America is complicated by the fact that political development in the region has been indelibly marked by period-specific stages and challenges of capitalist development. These periods are associated with distinct patterns of social mobilization, class conflict and political incorporation or exclusion of labour and popular constituencies. These patterns heavily condition the programmatic structuring of partisan competition and its impact on party system institutionalization. Important theoretical insights can be derived from the study of intra-regional variation in period-specific challenges and effects, but this requires careful attention to the factors that differentiate cases.

This rejoinder responds to Kenneth Roberts’s criticisms of my review published in these pages in August 2016. Roberts’s book, Changing Course, is a major contribution to scholarship on Latin American party systems, but Roberts and I disagree about three key issues. Firstly, because Roberts measured the economic effects of different kinds of party systems beginning in 1980, his coding of party systems must be immediately prior to that. Secondly, Roberts and I agree that many Latin American party systems exhibited deep change during the long era of important substitution industrialization (roughly 1940–80). In my judgement, the coding of party systems should reflect these changes more than Changing Course does. Thirdly, following principles for understanding causation, I argue that Changing Course does not conclusively show that labour-mobilizing party systems caused deeper economic crises and greater party system instability than elitist party systems.