Multiparty Competition Research Articles

The local context and the spatial diffusion of multiparty competition in Urban Mexico, 1994–2000

Some researchers believe that voting behavior is spatially clustered and varies across places because of the different local political and economic conditions where voters reside (local contextual effects). Others have also argued that the spread of support for political parties is affected by geographical proximity of one place to another (contagious diffusion). This study tests these two propositions. This study analyzes the results of the 1994 and 2000 federal representative elections in the 89 largest cities in Mexico. Aggregate data about voting behavior were analyzed, using Moran spatial autocorrelation coefficients and a spatial lag regression model with diagnostics for spatial effects. Dependent variables were the percentage of the vote for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Partido Accion Nacional (PAN), and Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD). To test for local contextual effects, regional dummy variables were used in combination with socioeconomic covariates of voting behavior. To test for contagious diffusion, this study used a temporal–spatial lag. Moran coefficients show a pattern of spatial clustering of votes for the PRI and dispersion for the PAN and the PRD. Results from the regression analysis show evidence of significant local contextual effects operating in several regions of the country. Results also show the temporal–spatial lag variable to be non-significant for all political parties. This finding suggests that the spread of the PAN and the PRD and the retrenchment of the PRI in the period of study were independent of physical proximity to areas of previous electoral support. In summary, the findings in this study suggest (1) the acceptance of the local contextual effects proposition for explaining spatial clustering in voting behavior and (2) the rejection of the contagious diffusion proposition.

Do Party Systems Count?

Delivery of public goods varies significantly across the Indian states. This article argues that differences in state government expenditures are largely the result of differences in their party systems. Using macroeconomic data from 1967 to 1997 as well as postelection voter surveys, we demonstrate that states with two-party competition provide more public goods than states with multiparty competition, which, we argue, reflects differing mobilization strategies. In two-party systems, political parties require support from many social groups and therefore provide public goods to win elections. In multiparty systems, needing only a plurality of votes to win, parties use club, rather than public, goods to mobilize smaller segments of the population. In stressing the impact of party systems on state government performance in India, this article differs from recent political economy research, which has stressed either the effect of particular political parties or ethnic divisions on government performance and public goods delivery.

Electing the First Parliament

Theory regarding turnout in elections suggests that voters are more likely to vote when their vote could be decisive. The article provides a generalized test of the relationship between the likelihood of turning out and the closeness of elections. Data are single-member district (firstpast-the-post) and regional (party list) constituency-level results from the Scottish Parliament election of 1999. Scotland provides an excellent case because the 1999 Scottish Parliament was elected using a combination of single-member districts, plus an additional member, regional list alternative vote system. In addition, the Scottish Parliament election was characterized by regional, multiparty competition. Controlling for other factors, the article finds that closeness counts and relates to higher levels of voter participation in the Scottish Parliament elections. This finding holds for single-member district (first-past-the-post) constituencies and additional member regional lists.

Multiparty Competition, Founding Elections and Political Business Cycles in Africa

Political business cycle (PBC) theory and empirics typically assume that elections are competitive. Yet, as empirical work on PBCs turns increasingly to developing countries for evidence, this assumption becomes untenable. We propose and test two empirical hypotheses regarding PBCsc first, we should only see cycles when elections involve multiparty competition; secondly, we should see larger cycles in 'founding' elections. Using a new indicator of multiparty competition and macroeconomic data from Africa, we find strong support for our first hypothesis and moderate support for the second. These findings have implications for democratic transitions and the compatibility of economic and political reform in nascent democracies. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Multi-party elections in the Arab world: Institutional engineering and oppositional strategies

Recent moves toward multi-party competition for elected legislatures in numerous Arab countries constitute a significant departure from earlier practices there and create the basis for democratic activists to gradually chip away at persistent authoritarian rule. This article explores the institutional mechanism by which incumbent authoritarian executives seek to engineer these elections. It documents examples for rulers changing electoral systems to ensure compliant legislatures and demonstrates the prevalent use of winner- takes-all electoral systems which generally work to the regimes advantage. The author then reviews various strategies of opposition forces--boycotts non- competition agreements election monitoring and struggles over election rules-- and the dilemmas that these entail. Surmounting differences in terms of ideologies as well as short-term political goals and prospects is a central challenge. The future should see greater electoral participation among opposition activists along with cleaner elections. As vote coercion and ballot box stuffing is restricted by opposition pressures electoral institutions will take on greater importance and struggles for proportional representation are likely to increase. (authors)

Closeness Counts in Canada: Voter Participation in the 1993 and 1997 Federal Elections

Theory suggests that eligible voters should be more likely to cast ballots when election margins are close. Empirical evidence, however, is mixed. Operational definitions of key concepts such as turn-out and election closeness are often inconsistent and limited in application to two-party systems. This paper provides a more generalized test of the turnout-competition link in electoral districts. Data are 1993 and 1997 constituency-level election results for the Canadian House of Commons. Canada provides an excellent case for comparison because it has single-member districts, plurality elections, both national and regional parties, and multiparty competition throughout the nation. Several alternative measures for "turnout" and "closeness" are evaluated in the context of multi-party elections. A new index of competitiveness is developed. Multicandidate measures of closeness are related to higher levels of voter participation in Canadian federal elections.

Uganda's referendum 2000: The silent boycott: A comment

In the June 2000 referendum, Ugandans were asked to choose between the existing ‘movement’ system and a multiparty system. Bratton and Lambright (BL) did a survey of people's attitudes to democracy and argued that there was an ‘extensive “silent” boycott’ of the referendum ‘among persons who sympathized with the idea of multiparty competition’. Such people did not like the referendum choice ‘which they interpreted as being between a hegemonic movement and an unacceptable set of old political parties’. This main finding is questioned. Apart from methodological problems, it is argued that more context‐specific analyses of the referendum results are needed to understand public opinion in Uganda about democracy and the movement system. More importantly, BL ignore the fact that the movement system is a combination of no‐party political arrangements and devolution, implicitly assuming that the latter has no impact on present attitudes to government systems and democracy. There is a need to conceptualize and assess the significance of devolution in democratization processes in Africa and how it may influence public opinion on democracy.

Democracy by Consensus: Some Conceptual Considerations

Democracy as a political system entailing multi-party competition for power is only one form of democracy. Given that democracy is government by consent, the question is whether a less adversarial system than the party system, which is bound up with majoritarian decision-making, cannot be devised. This paper contends that a system based on consensus as a decision procedure would be a democracy of just such a description. It is important to note that the kind of consensus envisaged here is not agreement regarding questions of truth and morality; it is concerned only with the question of what is to be done. And it is an important fact that reasonable human beings can come to an agreement about what is to be done by virtue of compromise without agreeing on issues of truth or morality. A consensual system will naturally be a non-party arrangement. However, as I explain, such a polity need not be one without parties.

Values, Perceptions and European Integration

Which combinations of values and perceptions constitute the arguments in the debate on European integration? Using survey data from Norway's 1994 EU referendum, this article explores Norwegian voters' support for these arguments. Thus, the article highlights the perceptions and arguments of the EU debate, rather than support for European integration. Furthermore, the article explores how these arguments are structured in a multi-party context: Did voter arguments reflect the multi-party competition or the frontlines of the referendum? With the elite discourse as a starting point, I present hypotheses on polarization of arguments between pro- and anti-EU voters, standardization across party lines and the impact of cross-pressure. The hypotheses are generally supported by survey data, with the exception of arguments about national culture. Finally, I argue that research on conflicting perceptions of the EU will yield useful insights and bring political factors into the study of opinion regarding the EU. Divergent perceptions of the EU's policies and political order may be a fruitful subject for cross-national studies.

Multiparty spatial competition with probabilistic voting

I develop a general model of multiparty competition in which parties model voters' choices by means of probabilistic choice rules. The model is specified in terms of an issue salience coefficient which varies with the importance voters attach to issues, as opposed to unmeasured nonissue motivations. I show that when the policy salience coefficient is sufficiently low, then both vote-maximizing and rank-maximizing parties have a dominant strategy: to adopt the “most popular platform,” which maximizes voter utilities over the entire electorate. This most popular platform therefore represents a convergent equilibrium when all parties are vote- or rank-maximizing. Numerical estimates suggest that this equilibrium result holds for degrees of issue voting which exceed the parameters behavioral researchers have estimated for various historical elections.

The New Indian Party System

The national party system of India has undergone a major transformation since the 1989 elections. The predominant party system that had been in place since 1952 gave way to a pattern of genuine multi-party competition. While the party system has become extremely fragmented, the stable presence of three competing poles lends it an aura of orderliness. This paper analyzes the nature of the new Indian party system with reference to Sartori's theoretical framework. It seems that the Indian party system hinges somewhere on the borderline between polarized and moderate pluralism.

Negativity Effect in Multiparty Electoral Competition

We construct a dynamic voting model of multiparty competition in order to capture the following facts: voters base their decision on past economic performance of the parties, and parties and candidates have different objectives. This model may explain the emergence of parties' ideologies, and shows the compatibility of the different objectives of parties and candidates. Together, these results give rise to the formation of political parties, as infinetely-lived agents with a certain ideology, out of the competition of myopic candidates freely choosing policy positions. We also show that in multicandidate elections held under the plurality system, Hotelling's principle of minimum differentiation is no longer satisfied.

Deciphering Africa's Divergent Transitions

Commentaries on recent developments in the sub-Saharan region run the gamut from giddy Afrophilia to gloomy Afropessimism. Early assessments were hopeful, seeing the peaceful electoral displacement of authoritarian regimes in countries like Benin and Zambia as harbingers of political renewal and a second liberation.' A critical backlash soon followed in the wake of a series of disputed elections in places like Angola and Kenya. At best, analysts pondered thoughtfully about the sustainability of multiparty competition under conditions of ethnic fragmentation and elite corruption2 or, at worst, lapsed into apocalyptic warnings of impending civil disorder in the wake of the stalling . . .winds of change.3 In my view, analysts should not rush to judgment but instead adopt a detached and broadly comparative view of what is essentially a mixed situation of democratization in Africa. As David Peterson suggests, democratic development will not be a uniform, linear process:4 even in democratizing countries, transitions

Coalition Politics

Although there are well-developed theories of two-party competition in a one-dimensional policy space, it has proven extremely difficult to construct a model of multi-party competition (with three or more parties) in two or more dimensions. One difficulty with developing such a model is due to the phenomenon of political uncertainty over the expected nature of the governing coalition. A cooperative equilibrium notion, the `political heart', is used here to characterise post-election coalition formation. Empirical evidence from 12 European political systems in the post-war period is presented, to corroborate this equilibrium concept. Using this notion, a typology based on fragmentation and centrality is proposed. A model of multi-party competition over pre-election policy proposals is described. It is argued that this model is compatible with the predictions of the political heart concerning coalition formation.

Democracy and authoritarianism in Peru: political coalitions and social change

Acknowledgements - Introduction - Between Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru - The Social Bases of Shifting Coalitions - The Evolving Social Bases of Party Competition - The Center, Populism, and the Informal Sector - The Crisis in the Left and the Right - Alliance Bargaining in the Democratic Front - The Division of the United Left - The Instability of Democracy - A Spatial Analysis of Multiparty Competition - The Election of an Antisystem Candidate - The Breakdown of Democracy - Conclusion - Political Coalitions and Social Change - Appendix: Elementary Game-Theoretic Concepts - Bibliography - Index

The Politics of Electoral Reform in New Zealand

In a referendum held at the same time as the 1993 general election, a majority of New Zealanders voted to establish a new propor tional electoral system to replace their traditional simple plurality system, to take effect after April 1995. New Zealanders were responding to the destabilizing effects of party system dealignment, increasing dispropor tionality of election outcomes, and a succession of governments which many believed had ignored public opinion in their efforts to reform the economy. Competition between the two increasingly discredited major parties set a referendum process in motion, which few politicians thought would end in a vote for change. In part due to a political culture support ing populist democratic values, a majority of New Zealanders voted for proportional representation despite a well-funded all-out propaganda campaign against it. With four parties already represented in parliament at the end of 1993, New Zealand will move to multiparty competition. If successful, the experiment could set an example for similar reform in other plurality democracies.

Arrested development: Democratisation in Singapore

only member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEN) to be excluded. The exclusion is telling when even countries which the editors consider to be 'pseudodemocracies', like Indonesia, where 'the existence of formally democratic political institutions, such as multiparty electoral competition, masks the reality of authoritarian domination' (p xviii) are included. However, given its prominence among the Asian NIES, Singapore can hardly be ignored without comment. I will, therefore, suggest that Singapore is what Diamond et al. have in mind when they noted: 'A few authoritarian regimes that manifest commitment to collective goals and human rights might have redeeming qualities, particularly if they are stable and do not require excessive force to stay in power. But that does not make them democracies. Their supporters should be free to argue the positive aspects of their rule, without ignoring or denying the negative ones, but they should not attempt to claim that they are democracies' (p xxv). Of course, the PAP government claims no less. Conceptual and substantive difficulties in placing Singapore in the democratisation debate arise from (i) the tension between the presence of a popularly elected single-party dominant government and the tendency of this government to impose, through the due parliamentary processes, substantively highly antidemocratic laws and administrative regulations on society; and (ii) the ambivalence of an electorate which is increasingly willing to voice its dissatisfactions with unacceptable state interventions but without the desire to support the development of strong opposition parties, let alone a change of government. The result is a highly stable polity which many critics continue to characterise as an 'authoritarian regime'. This essay attempts to flesh-out the conceptual and

Probabilistic voting and platform selection in multi-party elections

The literature on stochastic voting to date has focused almost exclusively on models with only two candidates (or parties). This paper studies multiparty competition with stochastic voting. We look at two different models in which candidates aim to maximize their expected vote, as well as a model where the objective of candidates is rank minimization. The equilibria of these models are derived and characterized. We show that the properties of the equilibria are quite different from those derived in deterministic models. Furthermore, the analysis shows that deterministic voting models are not robust since the introduction of even a minute level of uncertainty leads to a drastic change in predictions. Consequently, we argue that the deterministic model provides a misleading benchmark. Stochastic models provide a much richer framework, and the nature of the uncertainty in voter choice is a key determinant of the qualtitative properties of the equilibria.

Introduction: Paradoxes of Democratization in Africa

As demands for democracy have swept across the continent since 1989, dramatic change has affected states in sub-Saharan Africa. Frustrated by declining economies and the failures of incumbent governments, people from many different social strata have called for an end to authoritarian rule. Events in Eastern Europe have served as a catalyst, and donor pressures have sometimes acted to facilitate such movements; but the real impetus for change arises from internal struggles which have been incubating for several decades. In response, authoritarian states have moved to liberalize repressive structures, allow multiparty competition and move towards competitive elections. To many analysts such trends represent an important new departure that holds out promise for a more hopeful future. But others are less optimistic, noting the legacies of authoritarian systems and other structural obstacles to sustainable democratic rule. Whatever the outcome, the struggle for the future is now hotly contested.Meanwhile, these processes present a potent challenge for political and social analysis. Why are these demands for change occurring now? What is the role of institutional arrangements and groups in “civil society” in transitions from single-party authoritarian regimes towards multiparty systems? Who are the key actors and which groups are excluded? Do multiparty elections lead to greater tolerance, expanded participation, respect for the rule of law and more accountability? What is required to sustain democratic rule? These and other questions have spawned a lively debate among Africanists, a debate with important theoretical and practical implications.

Zambia Starts Over

Zambia Starts Over Michael Bratton (bio) After 17 years of single-party rule, Zambia returned to multiparty competition in late 1991. In presidential and parliamentary balloting on October 31, Zambian voters took advantage of the unfamiliar opportunity of choosing among candidates from two major and three minor political parties to hand a sweeping victory to an opposition grouping called the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). Its leader, trade unionist Frederick Chiluba, became president with a stunning 76 percent of the vote, while MMD candidates captured 125 out of 150 National Assembly seats. The 27-year reign of President Kenneth Kaunda, the country's founding father, and his United National Independence Party (UNIP) was at an end. As important as the election result itself was the transition from one type of political regime to another. The legal and political hegemony of a single ruling party was, at least for the moment, replaced by a plurality of competing political ideas and institutions. Zambia is the first English-speaking country in Africa to complete such a transition peacefully, in large part due to President Kaunda's genuine, albeit reluctant, acceptance of the demands made by a united opposition front. Other recent democratic experiments in Africa have had ripple effects in their immediate geographic neighborhoods, for example, in French-speaking West Africa (Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Benin) or among the Portuguese-speaking island nations of Cape Verde and São Tomé & Príncipe. Zambia is important because it provides a model of political reform that will resonate among ruling elites and popular movements in capitals as far-flung as Nairobi, Kinshasa, and Pretoria. [End Page 81] The Zambian case also raises general questions about the intriguing dynamics of transitions away from authoritarian rule. Precisely how are one-party regimes disassembled and replaced by more open, competitive ones? Which ideological and institutional innovations mark the route of political liberalization? What political tensions arise as plural affiliations and competitive elections are reintroduced? How stable are the new regimes? The process of political transition is best seen as a struggle between incumbent and opposition political interests over both the rules of the political game and the resources with which it is played. This struggle is starkly revealed during "transitional elections," which restore party competition after a long interval of official party-state monopoly.1 Under these circumstances, the ruling party employs all its strength to tilt the rules of political competition in its own favor. In Zambia, UNIP's best efforts to hang on to power were not enough to overcome its loss of legitimacy in the face of a concerted popular and legal challenge from the opposition. The transition unfolded rapidly, with only two years separating the first calls for multiparty politics in December 1989 and the inauguration in December 1991, under a liberalized constitution, of the Third Republic of Zambia. While the political transition was rapid, it remains fragile. In Zambia, newly independent political institutions and fledgling democratic values do not yet form a permanent buffer against abuse by executive authorities. And without tangible economic development, citizens may once again come to blame their deprivation on the government of the day. Thus few conditions for the consolidation of democracy are yet in place. The One-Party Regime Until 1973, Zambia had a history of plural politics. The African nationalist movement in what was then called Northern Rhodesia split in 1958, with the faction that became UNIP pursuing a more progressive and militant line than the moderate and traditionalist African National Congress (ANC). The country's first African government, formed in 1962, was a coalition of UNIP and the ANC. Zambia won full independence in 1964 and Kaunda acceded to the presidency under a republican constitution that affirmed freedom of political expression and association. Zambians became accustomed to the rough and tumble of electoral competition in the course of multiparty elections held in 1962, 1964, and 1968. Although all these elections took place after intense campaigns marred by wild charges and rumors, incidents of intimidation and overzealousness, and occasional factional violence, all parties respected the results. In the preindependence elections of 1964, UNIP secured [End Page 82] enough National Assembly seats to govern alone, without...