Effective Number Of Parties Research Articles

Election Timing and Party System Fragmentation: A Constituency Level Analysis of the 1967-2012 French Legislative Elections

Due to changes in laws affecting the duration of presidential terms and the timing of legislative and presidential elections, the timing of the French legislative elections relative to presidential elections in that country offers something akin to a natural experiment that allows us to examine election timing effects on the legislative vote fragmentation. To address this issue, we turn to district specific within - French aggregate data since 1965. Our country-specific findings show that there is lower legislative party fragmentation at the constituency level (effective number of parties according to the Laakso-Taagepera index) in the first round of sequential than in non-sequential elections. French political landscape is mainly structured around two political blocks, the left and the right blocks due to the two-round system used both for presidential and legislative elections. We argue that this reduced constituency party fragmentation in sequential elections occurs because of two voters’ surges from presidential to legislative elections: the first playing in favor of the locally best placed party that belongs to the new President’s political block (left or right according the period) to give him/her a clear majority, the second surge playing in favor of the locally best placed party that is member of the block opposed to the new President (left or right), to help create a stronger opposition. After first presenting simple bivariate comparisons showing lower fragmentation in sequential elections, we offer a logistic regression model of legislative party concentration that control for other factors, e.g., changes in party finance laws that affect incentives for party formation. In our model we continue find sequential elections to have a defractionalizing effect as compared to non-sequential elections. Thus, we would argue that election timing should be considered an important feature of electoral laws.

Is There Duration Dependence in Portuguese Local Governments’ Tenure?

This paper analyses the presence of duration dependence in Portuguese local governments’ tenure employing continuous and discrete-time duration analyses over a set of spells of time in office for the period 1979-2005. Our results show that the more time a party remains in office, the higher is the likelihood of leaving it. However, more flexible polynomial-in-time, cubic splines and time-dummies specifications show that the behaviour of that likelihood is not monotonic: it increases but only until the third term, then it decreases until the sixth term before starting to increase again. This study also shows that the likelihood of an incumbent party leaving office, given his tenure, is affected by the local economic environment, political support, the effective number of parties, the dimension of the municipality and the age of its leader. Additionally, it shows that that likelihood is consistently lower when the party leader/mayor decides to run for another term.

Explaining Electoral Reforms in Lithuania

This paper examines the numerous changes made to Lithuanian electoral laws between 1992 and 2010. It argues that the two dominant political blocs sought to avoid competition from smaller ‘challenger’ parties by reducing the proportionality of the mixed electoral system between 1992 and 2000. Despite such efforts, the number of effective parties increased and the parliamentary elections in 2000 resulted in a shift from a two-party system to a multiparty system. This created incentives for parties to ensure against future electoral exclusion by maintaining the vote aggregation rules, which had proven to allow for multipartism. This resulted in the relative stability of electoral rules between 2000 and 2010.

From Two-Partism to Alternating Predominance: The Changing UK Party System, 1950–2010

This article uses Sartori's classification of party systems to map changes in the post-war UK party system. Using measures of the effective number of parties and of parties' policy positions, the article shows that ‘classic’ two-partism from 1950 to 1970 broke down amid ideological polarisation. This development created a ‘vacated centre’, which the Liberals filled, leading to fragmentation of the electoral-party system. This period gave way in 1997 to one in which ideological convergence returned, alongside further electoral fragmentation. The uneven decline in the vote shares of the parties finishing first and second led to supermajorities and two long periods of single-party rule from 1979 to 2010. The article argues that the UK had an alternating-predominant party system in this period. This system was a hybrid of single-party predominance and classic two-partism, in which competition between the two main parties was usually very weak but where there was some scope for governmental alternation.

Do budgetary institutions mitigate the common pool problem? New empirical evidence for the EU

We analyze how budgetary institutions affect government budget deficits in member states of the European Union during 1984–2003 employing new indicators provided by Hallerberg et al. (2009). Using panel fixed effects models, we examine whether the impact of budgetary institutions on budget deficits is conditioned by political fragmentation (i.e., ideological differences among parties in government) and size fragmentation (i.e., the effective number of parties in government or the number of spending ministers). Our results suggest that strong budgetary institutions, no matter whether they are based on delegation to a strong minister of finance or on fiscal contracts, reduce the deficit bias in case of strong ideological fragmentation. In contrast, the impact of budgetary institutions is not conditioned by size fragmentation.

Party organization and party proliferation in India

Theories that explain variations in party systems typically emphasize the role of political institutions and social cleavages. Using a panel dataset of election returns from 15 Indian states from 1967 to 2004. this article establishes considerable variation in the effective number of parties across states and over time, despite the same political institutions and relatively stable social cleavages. We argue that a hitherto ignored dimension, the level of party organization, has a significant impact on the nature of the party system. The level of party organization incentivizes politicians differently in terms of their decision to stay, join another party or float a new party, when their ambitions are thwarted within a party. To test this theory, a unique indicator of party organization is developed on the basis of extensive qualitative research. We find that in Indian states where parties are more organized, both the effective number of parties and electoral volatility are lower.

Competencia partidista y rendimiento político electoral de los partidos políticos mexicanos en elecciones presidenciales entre los años de 1994 y 2006

La competencia partidista, en elecciones presidenciales a nivel federal en México, se ha intensificado a partir del año 2000, con la victoria de un partido distinto al Partido Revolucionario Institucional, por ende, han variado las preferencias electorales y la oferta electoral. La finalidad de este artículo es medir mediante una serie de indicadores como Número efectivo de partidos, Índice de concentración, índice de fragmentación de Rae y volatilidad las posibles variaciones en la tendencia de voto, el sistema de partidos políticos y el cambio de preferencias de un partido hacia otro. Con el fin de aproximar un posible escenario para las elecciones presidenciales de 2012.

Disproportionality and Party System Fragmentation: Does Assembly Size Matter?

The article examines the impact of assembly size on the degree of disproportionality and party system fragmentation. The hypothesis is as follows: assembly size has a negative effect on the degree of disproportionality and a positive effect on the effective number of parties in systems with single-member districts—in proportional electoral systems, by contrast, such a pattern does not exist. In PR systems, notably the average effective threshold supersedes assembly size in explaining the degree of disproportionality and the effective number of parties. Electoral thresholds, ordinal ballots and apparentement, which also have some impact on disproportionality and party system fragmentation in proportional elections, are absent in systems with single-member districts (with the exception of ordinal ballots in alternative vote systems). Moreover, the district magnitude does not vary between electoral districts and countries. Therefore, assembly size is a significant factor in majoritarian systems. The empirical analysis of 550 elections in democratic countries provides support for the hypothesis.

A Statistical Model for Party-Systems Analysis

Empirical researchers studying party systems often struggle with the question of how to count parties. Indexes of party system fragmentation used to address this problem (e.g., the effective number of parties) have a fundamental shortcoming: since the same index value may represent very different party systems, they are impossible to interpret and may lead to erroneous inference. We offer a novel approach to this problem: instead of focusing on index measures, we develop a model that predicts theentire distributionof party vote-shares and, thus, does not require any index measure. First, a model of party counts predicts the number of parties. Second, a set of multivariatetmodels predicts party vote-shares. Compared to the standard index-based approach, our approach helps to avoid inferential errors and, in addition, yields a much richer set of insights into the variation of party systems. For illustration, we apply the model on two data sets. Our analyses call into question the conclusions one would arrive at by the index-based approach. Software is provided to implement the proposed model.

Do Budgetary Institutions Mitigate the Common Pool Problem? New Empirical Evidence for the EU

We analyze how budgetary institutions affect government budget deficits in member states of the European Union during 1984-2003 employing new indicators provided by Hallerberg et al. (2009). Using panel fixed effects models, we examine whether the impact of budgetary institutions on budget deficits is conditioned by political fragmentation (i.e., ideological differences among parties in government) and size fragmentation (i.e., the effective number of parties in government or the number of spending ministers). Our results suggest that strong budgetary institutions, no matter whether they are based on delegation to a strong minister of finance or on fiscal contracts, reduce the deficit bias in case of strong ideological fragmentation. In contrast, the impact of budgetary institutions is not conditioned by size fragmentation.

Does Cheating Pay? The Effect of Electoral Misconduct on Party Systems

This article examines the effect of electoral misconduct on party systems in new electoral regimes. The authors distinguish between different forms of electoral misconduct and argue that preelection tools—which aim to deter opposition parties and their supporters and create a biased information environment—exert a “psychological” effect on parties and voters, whereas ballot fraud exerts a direct, “mechanical” effect on vote shares. Using original data on electoral misconduct in legislative elections in Latin America and postcommunist countries, the authors find that preelection misconduct has a strong reductive effect on the effective number of parties; however, ballot fraud does not. Further investigation suggests that intimidation of opposition parties and voters is the most important mechanism through which misconduct reduces party numbers. By identifying electoral misconduct as a key omitted variable, this article renders the conventional model of party systems more applicable to the political contexts in new electoral regimes.

Political Institutions and Public R&D Expenditures in Democratic Countries

While research and development (R&D) expenditure is crucial in a nation's competitive advantage, factors determining levels of public investment in R&D have yet to be examined. This article seeks to fill this void, focusing on different democratic institutions such as presidential versus parliamentary systems, majoritarian versus proportional electoral systems, federal versus unitary systems, bicameral versus unicameral legislatures, and the effective number of parties. Building upon theories of political institutions and government size and utilizing public R&D appropriations data from 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries between 1981 and 2007, this article reports that democratic institutions do matter in the levels of public R&D spending. However, the effect is more complicated across the different types and performers of research than expected. Additionally, the effect of one institutional dimension is found to be moderated by the existence of the other dimensions, which makes it clearly more challenging to sort out different degrees and directions of the relationships between R&D expenditures and political institutions.

Who Gets What, When, How – Through Which Electoral System?

When it comes to the impact of institutions such as electoral systems, parliamentary or presidential systems and executive–legislature relations, political science has predominately been preoccupied with their political effects, such as whether they lead to two-party or multi-party systems and whether stable governments result. What has been less discussed and researched are the policy implications of different electoral systems. Do they lead to more economic growth? Does Proportional Representation lead to higher budget deficits? Do majoritarian systems lead to more or less political violence? The shortage of research analysing these questions is surprising. This article critically outlines the research to date, summarises the main results and points to methodological problems in the literature before it outlines a framework for future research analysing how the choice of electoral system affects policy output. The main recommendation is that, before trying to connect policy outputs to broad labels such as ‘Proportional Representation’, which can cover significantly different systems, one should investigate the connection of policy outputs to intervening variables such as the effective number of parties and the mean duration of cabinets.

Compelled without direction: Compulsory voting and party system spreading

Much of the current literature on compulsory voting (CV) examines its effects by simulating complete turnout. We argue that these studies do not capture the full effects of CV, as there is something qualitatively different about compulsory voting rules as compared to only increasing turnout. Furthermore, CV and turnout have important, yet unexplored, interactive effects. To test this argument, we look at governments in 43 countries over the 1990–2006 period. Nine of these countries have some form of CV. We examine the effect of CV on the ideological position and range of governments, left party seat share, and the effective number of parties. We find that high turnout in the presence of CV laws spreads out the distribution of voters and leads to an increase in the effective number of parliamentary parties and a larger ideological range of governments. These results have important implications for how we study CV and its consequences for party strategy.

都道府県議会における政党システム

This chapter analyzes the determinants of party systems in Japanese prefectural legislatures. We can classify four types of prefectural legislatures. The first is one-party dominant type. The effective-number of parties in such prefectures has been constantly under two. The second type resembles the party system of national diet before 1994. Their ENP has been stable between two and three. Some prefectural legislatures have been highly fragmented so that their ENP goes up more than three. In the fourth type, we see that party systems are highly disunited after late 1990s. We explain these differences among prefectures and time-series changes by electoral institutions, relations between legislators and governors, and relations between national and local party members. Statistical analyses on time-series cross sectional data of postwar 47 prefectures reveal that large magnitude of electoral districts, independent governors, non-concurrent elections of legislators and governors, and fragmented national level party systems in the prefecture cause the fragmentation of party systems in the prefectural legislatures.

Turnout and the (effective) number of parties at the national and district levels: A puzzle-solving approach

Blais (2006) and Blais and Aarts (2006) in their review essays on voter turnout call attention to a striking puzzle about the link between electoral systems and turnout, namely that, ceteris paribus, proportional representation (PR) systems with many parties appear to have higher national-level turnout than single-member district (SMD) plurality systems with few parties, yet turnout does not increase with the (effective) number of parties (ENP) at the national level. To address this puzzle we turn to district-specific within-nation panel data from Switzerland and Spain. Our country-specific findings allow us to explain the national-level puzzle as essentially an ecological artefact, in that the multi-member districts found in proportional systems, on average, do exhibit higher turnout than SMDs, but turnout does not rise with district magnitude, m, once we move beyond the contrast between m = 1 and m > 1. Using a more sophisticated approach to measuring political competition that does not treat all PR systems as generating identical turnout incentives (Grofman and Selb, 2009), we seek to explain this puzzle by showing both empirically and theoretically that (1) proportionality does not necessarily increase with district magnitude, and (2) competition does not necessarily increase with district magnitude.

Party system fragmentation in Morocco

This paper examines the fragmentation in the party system of Morocco. First, we describe the party system, taking into account the origin and nature of the Moroccan multi-party scene, the transformations in the party system that have taken place since Independence, and its present divisions. Second, we examine the influence of the electoral system on fragmentation, considering such elements as seat allocation in constituencies, the electoral formula, and the electoral barrier. Third, we explore some characteristics of fragmentation, using as indicators Rae's fractionalisation index, the effective number of parties, and the parties in government coalitions. In this regard, we analyse the differences between electoral and legislative fragmentations, the evolution of fragmentation – by comparing elections in which different procedures were followed – and the party system that has emerged as a result of these processes. Lastly, we outline the main consequences that fragmentation has had on the Moroccan political arena.

How Rules Matter: Electoral Reform in Taiwan

Objectives. This article is a test of general electoral theory in the case of Taiwan's 2008, postreform legislative election. In light of Taiwan's electoral reform, I test several hypotheses related to choice in electoral design and winning conditions, effective number of parties, proportionality, and regionalism. Methods. I run a simulation of the new rules and districting using the previous (2004) election results and compare this to the actual results. By comparing simulated and actual outcomes, I can compare theoretically-driven, a priori expectations with election outcomes. Results. Primary findings are that a dominant seat share for the Nationalist Party, decline in third-party representation, and disproportionality were largely predicated on the transition to a majoritarian system. Conclusion. General electoral theory holds robust predictive power in the case of Taiwan.

Do Institutions Really Influence Political Participation?

This paper examines the influence of institutions and other contextual variables in a set of individual-level models of political participation, using a multi-level modelling strategy. It uses data from Citizenship Survey of the International Social Survey Programme conducted in 2004, to model relationships in many of the world's democracies. It examines the effects of variables that have been shown to be important in aggregate-level models of turnout, such as the effective number of parties, the distortions in representation associated with the electoral system, and the size of districts. It compares the institutional measures with other contextual variables that arise from rival models of individual-level political participation. The institutional variables have a modest impact on individual-level turnout, but their impact is much less important in relation to other types of participation. For the latter, non-institutional contextual variables arising from models of political participation appear to be more important.

Accounting for regional variance heterogeneity of growth

This article explores heterogeneous behaviour in the conditional variance of growth. We find that regional effects account for a good part of this behaviour when modelled alone; however, regional effects themselves have no particular meaning. To this end, we try to empirically account for the regional effects using a large set of economic, political and demographic variables. Our results indicate that countries with past high levels of both investment and inflation cause growth to be less volatile today. Countries that have a greater number of changes in heads of government tend to experience lower growth volatility except in parliamentary democracies where the relationship reverses. The greater the number of effective parties the lower the volatility for all regime types. More strikes have no effect on volatility except for presidential democracies where volatility actually increases, while more open economies that share presidential and legislative powers also have more volatile growth rates.