Search Results

The quantity to watch is the ‘seat product’ — the product of the assembly size and district magnitude. The number of parties represented in the assembly is approximately the fourth root of the seat product. The fractional seat share of the largest party is approximately the inverse of the eighth root of the seat product. This quantitatively predictive logical model agrees with the world averages. The results are approximate, because other factors are present.

As with Chapter 8, the ‘seat product’ is the important quantity to watch. The effective number of parties represented in the assembly is approximately the sixth root of the seat product. The average seat shares of second-largest and third-largest parties also can be calculated from the seat product. This quantitatively predictive logical model agrees with the world averages. The results are approximate, because other factors enter.

The Russian mixed‐member majoritarian (MMM) system introduced by executive decree in 1993 and passed into law in 1995 did not produce the outcomes expected by its designers, nor have electoral system effects in Russia followed expectations in the electoral systems literature. Russia has been rather exceptional in the degree of fractionalization allowed under its MMM system, and there has been a great disparity in electoral support for parties in the list and nominal tiers of the system, and a proliferation of independent candidates with no partisan affiliation in the single‐seat districts (SSD). These unexpected outcomes might lead one to consider the MMM system to be a failure, but this chapter argues that the intraparty effects of the system, namely, the incentives promoting the formation of national parties with strong grassroots organization, make the current MMM system ideal for Russia. The purpose of the chapter is to lay out the effects of Russia's MMM system and offer some explanations for its unexpected outcomes. There are five sections: the first provides a brief description of the system; the second looks at the interparty dimension; the third expands on the interparty dimension by describing the emerging party system in Russia, examining the effects of the MMM system on the number of electoral parties, and looking at the impact the MMM system has had on the success of particular parties; the fourth section examines the intraparty dimension, and shows how the proportional representation party‐list tier has promoted the formation of parties as the central mechanism for nomination and election to public office while SSD elections in the nominal tier have encouraged party‐building at the local level; the final section offers some conclusions and implications of the Russian case for the study of electoral systems.

The micro-mega rule says that for representation of small parties, it helps to have large assembly sizes, large district magnitudes, and large quotas or large gaps between divisors in seat allocation formulas. Conversely, large parties would prefer small assemblies, magnitudes and quotas — but only if they are absolutely certain to stay large. Worldwide tendency has been to play it safe and move toward more inclusive representation. The number of parties increases with increasing ‘seat product’ — the number of seats in the assembly times the number of seats in the average district — unless the seats are allocated by plurality in multi-seat districts.

Using nothing but the product of assembly size and district magnitude, a quantitatively predictive logical model allows us to estimate the average effective number of parties based on votes. Average deviation from proportional representation can also be estimated from this seat product, within plus or minus four percentage points. When estimating the likely effect of changes in electoral laws on the party system and deviation from PR, the past tendencies in the given country also must be taken into account.

Again the quantity to watch is the ‘seat product’. The inverse square law of cabinet durations says that the mean cabinet duration in a country is approximately forty-two years divided by the square of the effective number of parties. In institutional terms, mean cabinet duration is approximately the inverse of the cube root of the seat product. This quantitatively predictive logical model agrees with the world averages. The results are approximate, because other factors enter.

Resistance to simplifying a complex electoral system is at its least when the existing number and size of parties are not altered. The existing effective number of parties is most likely to be maintained, when the district magnitude used in the new simple electoral system is taken as the sixth power of the effective number of parties, divided by assembly size. The task remains risky, especially when one party is very large and the others very small.

This chapter reports an association between the electoral rules that have been adopted in a political system and niche party electoral competitiveness. The competitiveness of niche parties is defined by the number of viable niche competitors in a particular country and/or their combined vote share. In a manner similar to Lijphart (1999), scattergrams are presented that depict a relationship between electoral rules, the effective number of parties, and levels of niche party competition in twenty‐seven Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The chapter reports an association between proportional electoral systems and niche party competitiveness.

An electoral system helps determine the number and size distribution of parties in a country, as well as cabinet duration. Electoral systems are expressed in electoral laws. Their impact depends on the way politicians and voters make use of these laws. Flawed electoral laws can lead to breakdown of democracy or to staleness.

Interlocking networks of equations, based on logical models, are possible in social sciences. Partial evidence is offered by a sequence of models that ties mean duration of governmental cabinets first to the number of parties and then to the number of seats in the electoral district and the entire representative assembly.

Models are tested with data, but also data are tested by agreement with conceptual models. When competing indices exist to measure the same phenomena, one should use the ones that agree with logically supported prediction. These indices need not be philosophically “truer” measures of the underlying concepts, but they are more useful for prediction. The choice between two accepted ways to measure cabinet duration and three ways to measure the number of parties illustrates this advice. Clearest results emerge when symmetric regression is used for testing.

This chapter assesses the extent to which political institutions may mediate the impact of leaders' traits. There is variation in political context across the elections included in this study, providing a basis for examining the role of political institutions. The chapter looks at the impact of the degree of proportionality in elections, the effective number of parties competing in a campaign, as well as the role of electoral systems and legislative organization, including federalism and bicameralism. The analysis of data points to the need for more research, but suggests that proportionality and the number of parties competing may have the largest influence on the impact of leaders' traits in elections.

This chapter describes plurality advocates’ arguments against runoff and reports the cross-national evidence for and against them. Plurality advocates’ concerns about outsiders and voter fatigue were not borne out. However, runoff advocates’ concerns about legitimacy deficits and ideological extremes under plurality were warranted. The chapter also confirms that runoff lowered barriers to entry—especially important in the Latin American context of inaccurate pre-election opinion polls. Although the entry of new parties was a factor in the larger number of parties and paucity of legislative majorities under runoff, it was also helpful due to the authoritarian proclivities of many long-standing Latin American parties and the need, after the Cold War, to incorporate the left into the political arena.

This book deals with the different aspects of electoral politics in Indian states during the period 2008-2012 and the nature of the relationship between between electoral politics in the states and at the all-India level. It reviews the changes in the system of party competition after the rise of a more stable bi-polar contest in Indian elections. While the first phase of the post-Congress polity during the 1990s saw the defeat of the incumbent parties in election after election, the next phase which this chapter examines is marked by a fair chance for the incumbent party to retain political power. The chapter shows that the dramatic features of the post-Congress polity, namely the participatory upsurge, political uncertainly and the emergence of new parties primarily on the basis of social identities, have been either subdued or have acquired a routine existence. Such a condition is described in this chapter as normalization of electoral competition.

In terms of an analogy to economic markets, the political market for parties has nearly always been an oligopoly. In recent decades, that oligopoly has transformed into a cartel, in which the parties share rather than compete over resources, and effectively conspire to protect their collective interests. The capacity of their leaders to maintain this cartel of parties depends, however, on their ability to control their own parties, giving rise to a new form of party organization, the cartel party. As with all ideal types, there are never any fully fledged cartel parties, just as there were never any fully fledged mass parties or catch-all parties, but the realities of modern politics are better understood as approaches to the cartel party ideal type than as perversions of the catch-all party.

Chapter 5 uses the theory laid in chapter 2 to test the Colombian case. It begins by documenting the particular nature of Colombian migration, specifically how it differs from both Mexican and Ecuadorian migration. The chapter find that communities with higher levels of migrants are more likely to have increased electoral competitiveness, more political participation at the local level, and vote for a more varied number of parties at the national level. It also shows that these localities played a key role in the election of Juan Manuel Santos and the success of the 2016 peace referendum.

The eighth chapter looks into inter-temporal and cross-sectional differences in the effective number of parliamentary parties, and analyses the covariation between closure and fragmentation. The chapter allows us to revisit classical debates in comparative politics about the merits and vices of two- and multi-party systems. After showing how the inter-war and post-Cold War years were more fragmented than other periods, we find that concentrated systems tend to breed stability, and if they do not, then they often do not survive. And yet, there is only a moderate, far from deterministic, relationship between closure and fragmentation. In particular, we found that the recent proliferation of parties in the West poses a challenge to party system institutionalization.