Equilibria with Unrestricted Entry in Multi Member District Plurality (SNTV) Elections

Extending Duverger's Law to electoral districts of arbitrary district magnitude would imply just one "extra" candidate running in each race. In this paper we analyze equilibrium properties (possible equilibrium configuration and then existence) of a plurality electoral system returning more than one legislator per district. We look at sincere Downsian voters and strategically behaving candidates (who can change their policy platforms at no cost, while new candidates can enter the race). In Part II we find empirical evidence in favor of the implications of this analysis in the performance of actual SNTV electoral systems, such as the one in Japan and Taiwan

Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties

Recent events leading to the importation of democratic ideas and ideals by previously totalitarian states increase our interest in the ways in which electoral institutions influence party systems. However, even if we restrict our attention to Eastern Europe or the successor states of the Soviet empire, we encounter a range of social diversity – ethnic heterogeneity - that is as great as those in the set of countries examined in earlier studies that seek to identify the influence of electoral laws (c.f., Rae, Lijphart, and Taagepera and Shugart). Curiously, though, these earlier studies fail to ascertain whether and to what extent electoral laws mediate the influence of this heterogeneity. Hence, to develop a more pragmatic understanding of electoral institutions, we adopt the view of electoral laws as intervening structures and, using the data of these earlier analyses, we reconsider the role of one institutional parameter - district magnitude - that some researchers regard as the most important characteristic of an electoral system. Aside from the usual caveats about the limitations of our data, our primary conclusion is that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but that it can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in heterogeneous societies

If Hamilton and Madison Were Merely Lucky, What Hope Is There for Russian Federalism?

Just as the two-headed eagle of imperial and contemporary Russia looks in two different directions, this essay has two objectives: to evaluate, on the basis of the American experience, the prospects for stable democratic federalism in Russia, and to reconsider the insights into federalism offered by Madison and Hamilton in The Federalist. The swirl of events in Russia make it difficult if not impossible to confidently render conclusions about the future direction of events and the prospects for meaningful federal domestic relations. However, some theoretical perspective can be gained by looking at the theory of federalism offered in The Federalist Papers, with special attention to Madison and Hamilton's failure to appreciate fully the role political parties would play in the eventual integration of American political institutions so as to establish, in Madison's words, a "properly structured" federation. Looking as well at the early history of parties in the U.S. we see, in addition to the usual constitutional provisions associated with federalism, the importance of those things that structure political competition within states. Properly designed, these things encourage the development of political parties that mirror federal relations, and integrate regional and national political elites so as to avert center-periphery conflict. Unfortunately, a review of the provisions currently in place for Russia reveals that electoral practices and regional and republic constitutions and proposals are unlikely to encourage parties of the sort that facilitate a stable federal system. This fact, in conjunction with several other trends (notably, corruption and the political instincts of political elites in Moscow) lead to the conclusion that a "federation" of the type currently observed in, say, Mexico is a better scenario of the future for Russia than is a federation that imitates the U.S., Australia, Germany, or Switzerland

Party Fragmentation and Presidential Elections in Post-Communist Democracies

Theory: Despite its controversial status as a stable governmental form, many of today’s societies attempting to make the transition to democracy have or will, for a variety of reasons, choose presidentialism. Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that the combination of presidentialism and multipartism is especially dangerous for democratic stability (Mainwaring 1994). The question this essay addresses, though, is whether presidential elections themselves serve to encourage a fragmented party system, at least in the initial stages of democratization. Hypothesis: In transitional political systems presidential elections encourage party fragmentation, but in a way different from that of highly proportional purely parliamentary mechanisms. Specifically, parties proliferate to support the presidential aspirations of political elites. Methods: Multivariate regression analysis on cross-sectional aggregate electoral data, supported by extensive outliers diagnostics and assessments of the role of country-specific effects. A nested model is used to discriminate among the secondary hypotheses. Controls include: parliamentary election rules (district magnitude, threshold for representation, adjustment districts, ballot structure), relative timing of presidential and parliamentary elections, and basic societal cleavage structure. Results: Using as our data source the recent experiences of Central Europe and the European part of the former Soviet Union, we show that presidential elections consistently significantly increase party fragmentation. At the same time, the data are consistent with the hypothesis that presidentialism does encourage the overall consolidation in party systems through voters’ abandonment of some parties, akin to Duverger’s ‘psychological effect'

Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties

Recent events leading to the importation of democratic ideas and ideals by previously totalitarian states increase our interest in the ways in which electoral institutions influence party systems. However, even if we restrict our attention to Eastern Europe or the successor states of the Soviet empire, we encounter a range of social diversity – ethnic heterogeneity - that is as great as those in the set of countries examined in earlier studies that seek to identify the influence of electoral laws (c.f., Rae, Lijphart, and Taagepera and Shugart). Curiously, though, these earlier studies fail to ascertain whether and to what extent electoral laws mediate the influence of this heterogeneity. Hence, to develop a more pragmatic understanding of electoral institutions, we adopt the view of electoral laws as intervening structures and, using the data of these earlier analyses, we reconsider the role of one institutional parameter - district magnitude - that some researchers regard as the most important characteristic of an electoral system. Aside from the usual caveats about the limitations of our data, our primary conclusion is that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but that it can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in heterogeneous societies

Electoral institutional design

This dissertation addresses the role played by electoral institutions in the formation of systems of political parties. The introductory chapter contrasts two methodological approaches found in the studies of institutional influence: the approach of cross-country comparisons versus the detailed analysis of specific electoral systems. In Chapter 2 a set of 25 democratic countries, yielding a total of 53 distinct electoral regimes, is analyzed in order to determine the effect of electoral institutional variables on the number and strengths of political parties. To resolve the argument in the literature of whether institutional influence is systematic, we change the traditional analytical setting and bring into the analysis variables characterizing the internal cohesiveness of the societies under consideration. In particular, we take district magnitude as our institutional variable, and ethnic, religious, and linguistic fragmentation of electorates as characteristics of internal cohesiveness. Our conclusion is that the role of electoral institutions is in mediating the impact of social factors on the formation of political landscapes, and that, therefore, institutional features should enter the analysis interactively with the parameters describing societies, i.e., institutional influence should not be viewed as absolute and independent of social context. Chapter 3 contains theoretical analysis of a particular electoral system - the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV) system and establishes some equilibrium properties of SNTV where the entry of new competitors is allowed. Among other things, we show that, in cohesive electorates, the SNTV system would generate an equilibrium in which there will be either no competitors in excess of the number of seats being filled, or just one extra competitor. Assumptions that lead us to this and other results are: (1) unidimensional policy space, (2) sincere Downsian voters with single-peaked preferences over policies, and (3) strategic candidates who care primarily about getting in office. As our theoretical conclusions depend strongly on these assumptions, we offer in Chapter 4 empirical evidence in support of those conclusions. We analyze Japanese and Taiwanese district-level races (both countries used SNTV for their legislative elections, although Japan is now undergoing an electoral reform), and find that the equilibrium features that we predict theoretically under SNTV are, indeed, systematically present in elections there. While Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to candidate competition in multiseat elections, in Chapter 5 we look at the incentives and constraints that electoral rules create for political parties. Our analysis there applies to at-large electoral districts. We find that implicit or explicit thresholds for legislative representation seriously influence the number and strength of the parties that form. We also derive endogenous limits on the number of competing parties. Because the analysis in Chapter 5 proceeds mainly within the same framework as Chapter 3, our resulting conclusions about the candidate-based and party-based electoral competition in the single-member as well as multimember districts are compatible

Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties

Recent events leading to the importation of democratic ideas and ideals by previously totalitarian states increase our interest in the ways in which electoral institutions influence party systems. However, even if we restrict our attention to Eastern Europe or the successor states of the Soviet empire, we encounter a range of social diversity-ethnic heterogeneity-that is as great as those in the set of countries examined in earlier studies that seek to identify the influence of electoral laws (see Rae, Lijphart, and Taagepera and Shugart). Curiously, though, these earlier studies fail to ascertain whether and to what extent electoral laws mediate the influence of this heterogeneity. Hence, to develop a more pragmatic understanding of electoral institutions, we adopt the view of electoral laws as intervening structures, and using the data of these earlier analyses, we reconsider the role of one institutional parameter-district magnitude-that some researchers regard as the most important characteristic of an electoral system. Aside from the usual caveats about the limitations of our data, our primary conclusion is that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but that it can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in heterogeneous societies

Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties

Recent events leading to the importation of democratic ideas and ideals by previously totalitarian states increase our interest in the ways in which electoral institutions influence party systems. However, even if we restrict our attention to Eastern Europe or the successor states of the Soviet empire, we encounter a range of social diversity-ethnic heterogeneity-that is as great as those in the set of countries examined in earlier studies that seek to identify the influence of electoral laws (see Rae, Lijphart, and Taagepera and Shugart). Curiously, though, these earlier studies fail to ascertain whether and to what extent electoral laws mediate the influence of this heterogeneity. Hence, to develop a more pragmatic understanding of electoral institutions, we adopt the view of electoral laws as intervening structures, and using the data of these earlier analyses, we reconsider the role of one institutional parameter-district magnitude-that some researchers regard as the most important characteristic of an electoral system. Aside from the usual caveats about the limitations of our data, our primary conclusion is that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but that it can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in heterogeneous societies

Party Fragmentation and Presidential Elections in Post-Communist Democracies

Despite its controversial status as a stable governmental form, many of today's societies attempting to make the transition to democracy have or will, for a variety of reasons, choose presidentialism. Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that the combination of presidentialism and multipartism is especially dangerous for democratic stability (Mainwaring 1994). The question this essay addresses, though, is whether presidential elections themselves serve to encourage a fragmented party system, at least in the initial stages of democratization. In transitional political systems presidential elections encourage party fragmentation, but in a way different from that of highly proportional purely parliamentary mechanisms. Specifically, parties proliferate to support the presidential aspirations of political elites. Multivariate regression analysis on cross-sectional aggregate electoral data, supported by extensive outliers diagnostics and assessments of the role of country-specific effects is applied. A nested model is used to discriminate among the secondary hypotheses. Controls include: parliamentary election rules (district magnitude, threshold for representation, adjustment districts, ballot structure), relative timing of presidential and parliamentary elections, and basic societal cleavage structure. Using as our data source the recent elections in East and Central Europe and the European part of the former Soviet Union, we show that presidential elections consistently significantly increase party fragmentation. At the same time, the data are consistent with the hypothesis that presidentialism does encourage the overall consolidation in party systems through voters' abandonment of some parties, akin to Duverger's 'psychological effect'

Party Fragmentation and Presidential Elections in Post-Communist Democracies

Despite its controversial status as a stable governmental form, many of today's societies attempting to make the transition to democracy have or will, for a variety of reasons, choose presidentialism. Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that the combination of presidentialism and multipartism is especially dangerous for democratic stability (Mainwaring 1994). The question this essay addresses, though, is whether presidential elections themselves serve to encourage a fragmented party system, at least in the initial stages of democratization. In transitional political systems presidential elections encourage party fragmentation, but in a way different from that of highly proportional purely parliamentary mechanisms. Specifically, parties proliferate to support the presidential aspirations of political elites. Multivariate regression analysis on cross-sectional aggregate electoral data, supported by extensive outliers diagnostics and assessments of the role of country-specific effects is applied. A nested model is used to discriminate among the secondary hypotheses. Controls include: parliamentary election rules (district magnitude, threshold for representation, adjustment districts, ballot structure), relative timing of presidential and parliamentary elections, and basic societal cleavage structure. Using as our data source the recent elections in East and Central Europe and the European part of the former Soviet Union, we show that presidential elections consistently significantly increase party fragmentation. At the same time, the data are consistent with the hypothesis that presidentialism does encourage the overall consolidation in party systems through voters' abandonment of some parties, akin to Duverger's 'psychological effect'