Generalized Duverger`s Law and Local Elections in Korea

Abstract

This paper tries to explain what the Duverger’s law which says that the single-member plurality system tends to produce the two party system is and the mechanism through which it works and generalize the law to deal with the multi-member plurality system as well as the single-member plurality system. Then the paper empirically tests whether this generalized Duverger’s law works in Korean local elections or not by using the electoral data from the 4th and 5th Korean Simultaneous Local Elections. The paper in conclusion finds that the M+1 rule which can be considered as the generalized Duverger’s law at the individual constituency level works well in single-member districts where M=1 and works rather poorly when M is more than 1 and designates regionalism in Korea as the main reason why the generalized Duverger’s law is not much applicable at the regional and the national level.