英文摘要 |
According to studies on the effects of electoral cycles, the fundamental perspective argues that honeymoon elections benefit the parliamentary election to the party of the newly elected president, while lowering the effective number of parties. The key is the presidential election has a coattail effect on parliamentary elections. However, in the literature, this coattail effect has lacked analysis and empirical validation. This paper aims to probe into the political effect of electoral cycles of honeymoon election in the semi-presidential system, and analyze the ballot structure of the coattail effect, in order to validate the relationship between a presidential election and a parliamentary election. This paper uses France as a case study. The case study reveals that the coattail effect of a honeymoon election in France is mainly from the combination of several ballot structures: (1) Voters of two major parties: These voters are more loyal. After a presidential election, due to party identification, voters tend to continue supporting the parliamentary election of the original party with a high voting rate, thus positively influencing the electoral outcomes of two parties. (2) Median and swing voters: A parliamentary election held after a presidential election will significantly lower the parliamentary voting rate. Median and swing voters will participate in the presidential election, however, they abstain from parliamentary voting in parliamentary election. Individuals' identification factors increase and voting in the parliamentary election is centralized to the candidates of two major parties. (3) Regime voters: Currently, in France, there are two regime voters, voters who prefer a unified government or a divided government. They continue voting according to their preference for the regime type and undertake strategic voting according to presidential outcomes. The result indicates that French regime voters tend to support unified government. (4) Electoral cycles of a honeymoon election do not benefit minor parties: The coattail effect of the president of a minor party is extremely low. The gap between voting rates of the first round of a presidential election and a parliamentary election is significant. Parliamentary seats decrease significantly. The impacts of honeymoon elections on the French political system are mainly presented in the bipartisation and the centralization of political parties. There is a large gap between the percentage of vote obtained and elected seats rate, especially the elected seats rate of the two major political parties are often higher than the other parties. In contrast, the third largest party shows a low degree of representatives of elected seats. The honeymoon election is relatively unfavorable to the third largest party. This conclusion is also different from the argument of Shugart and Carey who think honeymoon elections are favorable to the third largest party. |