Party System Fragmentation Research Articles

Electoral rules and the two-party system: A methodological inquiry with reference to Duverger’s law

The law of Duverger posits that the single-member plurality electoral system favours the two-party system. The empirical tests of Duvergerian effects often rely on the effective number of parties as the most common measure of party system fragmentation. This study, proceeding from the notion that more focused measures of two-partyness could be of greater utility for this purpose, examines the build-up of two already existing, albeit underused, indices that are intended to operationalize the concept of the two-party system and introduces a new family of party-system indices for the purpose of cross-validation. The quantitative analysis performed on simulated and real-life datasets shows that the measures of two-partyness can improve the methods of inquiry in research on Duvergerian effects, and that some of the indices introduced in this study can serve as useful supplements to the toolkit of political science.

Individual Electoral Competitiveness: Undecided voters, complex choice environments and lower turnout

The number of citizens that are undecided in their vote choice has risen in Western democracies. Polling in Britain shows that a significant proportion of the population do not know who they will vote for. Against a backdrop of partisan dealignment and party system fragmentation, there are more parties on the ballot and more citizens ‘free to choose’. Partisanship continues to be important for voting and lacking an identity is a predictor of aggregate voter volatility. A growing literature conceptualises this availability of voters as individual-level electoral competitiveness, stating that undecided citizens are subject to high levels of competition for their vote. I use this framework and apply theory from the decisionmaking literature to offer why these conditions may depress turnout. I construct a measure of undecided voters who are ‘in competition’ and show that this accounts for 40% of the British Election Study Internet Panel respondents. I demonstrate that those who are in competition are less likely to vote. They are more often those without a partisan identity and those who pay less attention to politics, but being in competition is not related to constituency marginality. The results help explain a key determinant of abstention in British elections and suggest low levels of participation may be due to complex choice environments and citizen indecision. However, they provide a positive outlook for pluralistic democracy as voters do deliberate between the party perspectives on offer.

Even in the best of both worlds, you can't have it all: How German voters navigate the trilemma of mixed-member proportionality

The growing fragmentation of party systems confronts mixed-member proportional electoral systems with a trilemma. Combining the goals of proportionality and of a guaranteed representation of district winners makes it ever more difficult to also achieve a third goal: the fixed size of parliament. Against the background of electoral reform in Germany, this paper studies how citizens position themselves in this trilemma. Using original survey data, we find that all goals are popular and no combination of goals commands majority support. In a context where institutional reform becomes politicized, the trilemma is thus not only a logical, but also an empirical constraint. Moreover, abstract preferences in the trilemma systematically predict how voters evaluate the status quo and specific reform proposals. At the same time, voters are receptive to the logical constraints of the system: Informing respondents about the trilemma trade-offs in an experimental setting makes them more accepting of reform proposals.

How warm are political interactions? A new measure of affective fractionalization.

Affective polarization measures account for partisans' feelings towards their own party versus its opponent(s), but not for how likely partisans are to encounter co-partisans versus out-partisans. However, the intensity of out-party dislike and the probability with which this comes into play both determine the social impact of cross-party hostility. We develop an affective fractionalization measure that accounts for both factors, and apply it to longitudinal survey data from 20 Western publics. From this perspective, countries with fewer dominant parties may be more harmonious because partisans have lower probabilities of interacting with political opponents. At the party level, partisans of smaller, more radical parties are particularly troubled because they strongly dislike out-partisans and have few co-partisans. Affective fractionalization has increased in most Western publics over time, primarily because of growing party-system fragmentation.

Patterns of democracy and democratic satisfaction: Results from a comparative conjoint experiment

AbstractThis study presents the results from a series of conjoint experiments evaluating how the various components of political systems affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD). Compared to earlier studies, our approach is unique in that we were able to disentangle the effects of otherwise highly collinear variables corresponding to three defining features of any political system, namely (1) access to power, (2) the policy‐making process and (3) performance. We fielded identical conjoint experiments in countries with significant variations across the key independent variables: France, Hungary and Italy. Overall, our study supports the view that citizens are more satisfied with democracy in consensus systems than in majoritarian democracies, while it also contributes to identifying the respective weight of the specific components of political systems. Respondents across all countries recognize that proportionality and party system fragmentation magnify their voices by creating a more representative political climate. With regard to output legitimacy, we find that respondents identify good economic performance and public probity as important features of a well‐performing democracy. The positive effect of the legislators’ constituency orientation on SWD is a particularly noteworthy result that is currently understudied in the literature. Moreover, the state of the economy has by far the biggest impact on SWD, which indicates a highly materialistic view of democracy in all three countries.

Squeezing Blood from a Turnip? The Resilience of Social Democratic Governmental Power in Western Europe (1871–2022)

ABSTRACT In recent years, a growing body of literature has revived its interest in social democratic parties, emphasising their allegedly irreversible crisis in Western Europe. However, all such accounts focus solely on electoral results, thus neglecting governmental power, the decisive factor to realise social democratic parties’ policy goals. To address this gap, the article tests whether the decline of social democracy is confirmed in terms of governmental power, for which an index that remedies the limitations of existing measures is employed. Through comparative longitudinal analysis on 20 Western European countries and more than 600 legislatures between 1871 and 2022, the article finds that the governmental power of social democracy has remained fundamentally the same as in the golden age of class politics. In particular, in contexts of high party system fragmentation and strong radical left competition, social democratic parties have still managed to secure relevant government positions despite their declining electoral performance.

How proportional are electoral systems? A universal measure of electoral rules

The proportionality principle of electoral systems plays an important role in multiple literatures, including comparative politics, political economy, and conflict studies. The single most important electoral system feature used to determine whether an electoral system might provide for proportional outcomes is district magnitude, i.e., the number of representatives that are elected from a given district. However, once we move beyond “simple” systems, measuring the institutional side of the equation becomes more complex. The legislative electoral systems of three out of five (61%) contemporary democracies rely on multiple institutional rules that affect the proportionality of their seat allocation, for example by combining different district magnitudes in multiple tiers, or delimiting the number of parties that can win seats through legal thresholds. There is no widely accepted measure of district magnitude for such cases. Relying on four simple axioms, this article extends the concept of district magnitude to all these complex electoral systems. We introduce the effective district magnitude, a new index that measures the proportionality of electoral systems based solely on institutional rules. It is applicable for all rules used in national parliamentary elections in democracies worldwide. This new, theory-based index improves the explanatory power of two crucial variables usually associated with district magnitude: vote-seat disproportionality and party system fragmentation.

Feminism as a polarizing axis of the political conversation on Twitter: the case of #IreneMonteroDimision

The fragmentation of the Spanish party system has led to a growing political polarization, particularly evident on the Internet. The discursive strategies of political actors online, combined with the particularities of communication on social media platforms such as the disinhibition effect, echo chambers, and filter bubbles, are likely to promote a state of tension among digital citizens. This tension is particularly pronounced in gender issues, which have become key positions of political parties, with convergence of sexism in the community and a highly reactive misogynistic online culture that turns female politicians into easy targets. Starting from the hashtag #IreneMonteroDimision, which conveys a paradigmatic criticism movement against the Spanish Minister of Equality, an analysis of the social conversation on Twitter is developed to determine its intentionality, tone, and orientation, as well as the themes and users that generated the most tension. In this way, multimodal content and discourse analysis is applied to the 418 tweets with the greatest interaction and explicitly directed at the minister. The hypothesis is that the criticism of Irene Montero goes beyond the management of her Ministry to place her at the center of a power struggle in which political ideology, hate speech, and antifeminism converge. The study has shown that attacks on Montero extend to the Executive and the feminist movement; they are promoted by a mass of politicized and polarized profiles, with constant activism and a tendency towards contagious replication of messages. These practices, as well as the participation of artificial profiles, allow us to appreciate signs of astroturfing; behind this seemingly natural critical reaction, there are orchestrated movements of antifeminist and far-right profiles (gender trolling), but also of trans-exclusionary feminists opposed to legislation promoted by Montero.

What Would the British Party System Look Like under Proportional Representation?

AbstractBritish debates over electoral reform are invariably debates about what party system would emerge. While there is agreement that proportional representation (PR) would boost the size of existing smaller parties, there is no consensus over the emergence and prospering of new parties. The main weakness in the British debate concerns the types of governments that would form under PR. Some believe the Liberal Democrats would be perennial kingmakers. Others suggest that a ‘progressive alliance’ on the centre‐left would sweep all before it. This article considers the experience of west European multiparty systems since the 1980s and argues that party system fragmentation and the growth of non‐centrist parties would characterise Britain under PR. Moreover, the pattern of overlapping centrist coalitions seen in Germany and Benelux would be unlikely to emerge in Britain. Instead, a two‐bloc system, common in Scandinavia and southern Europe, would most likely develop.

Does Party-System Fragmentation Affect the Quality of Democracy?

AbstractIs the quality of democracy undermined or enhanced by party-system fragmentation? Addressing this question would help us better assess normative claims about electoral reforms. Yet, doing so is difficult because of endogeneity issues: party systems are endogenous to many other dynamics in a polity. We overcome this problem by putting forward an instrument for the number of parties in a system, based on the level of fragmentation added by parties that narrowly make it to parliament. We then test the effect of party-system fragmentation on the quality of democracy, drawing upon an extensive battery of outcomes. Against previous literature, we find that a higher number of parties leads to more fractionalized governments, but has no impact on other democratic outcomes. Subsample analyses suggest that fragmentation may have some effect in contexts of very high polarization, but we find no effect in other theoretically meaningful subsamples. Our results indicate that party-system fragmentation may have fewer normative implications than previously assumed.

STATIC AND DYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF THE KAZAKHSTANI PARTY SYSTEM

The purpose of the present article is to analyze the electoral returns of the Kazakhstani elections held in the 1995-2021 period to estimate both the static (such as frag-mentation) and the dynamic properties (fluidity) of the Kazakhstani party system. In addition to estimating the fragmentation and the instability of the party system resulting from parlia-mentary elections, the paper explores the relationship between the static properties of a party system, such as the level of party system fragmentation, and its dynamic properties, such as the level of fluidity of the party system. By doing so, the article reveals that the decrease in the level of fragmentation, measured on the basis of Rae’s index of fractionalization and Laakso and Taagepera’s Effective Number of Parties, was responsible for the growing insta-bility (fluidity) of the Kazakhstani party system.

Patterns of Affective Polarization toward Parties and Leaders across the Democratic World

Research indicates that affective polarization pervades contemporary democracies worldwide. Although some studies identify party leaders as polarizing agents, affective polarization has been predominantly conceptualized as a product of in-/out-party feelings. This study compares levels of party affective polarization (PAP) and leader affective polarization (LAP) cross-nationally, using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Applying like–dislike scales and an identical index to both concepts, we reveal that while the two strongly correlate, LAP is systematically lower than PAP. The United States emerges as an exceptional case, being the only country where LAP significantly exceeds PAP. Drawing on regime input/output and institutions as theoretical building blocks, we explore cross-national variations and show that the relative strength of LAP vis-à-vis PAP is increased by presidential regime type, poor government performance, and low party system fragmentation. The findings of this study contribute to the thriving research on affective polarization and personalization of politics.

Form of government, electoral system, and party system fragmentation: A global comparison

This study aims to determine the characteristics of party systems within the context of electoral systems, forms of government, and continents. There is no study in the literature that quantitatively reveals the relationship between the party system and forms of government. Furthermore, this study differs from other studies in that it deals with the relationship between the electoral system and the party system on a global scale. In the study, the effective number of parties (ENEP and ENPP) was calculated for the last three legislative elections of the countries governed by presidential, president–parliamentary, premier–presidential and parliamentary forms of government, using the Laakso–Taagepera Index. The dataset was then analyzed with ANOVA and post-hoc tests. The study revealed that party systems do not differ significantly from forms of government, that is, forms of government do not determine party systems. Similarly, party systems do not significantly differ in terms of the continents, that is, there are no continental party system characteristics of the forms of government. Also, the study confirmed that it is the electoral system that determines the party systems.

Does Changing an Electoral System to a Mixed System (Really) Affect Voter Turnout and the Party System?

Abstract In this study the authors aim to add to the understanding of whether, and if so how, a change of electoral system affects factors such as voter turnout and the party system, and the authors’ focus has been on changes that result in mixed electoral systems. They used three country cases (Japan, Italy, and New Zealand) to explore patterns in a before-and-after design. The findings suggest that a country cannot expect a significant effect on voter turnout if it decides to change its electoral system to a mixed system. Regarding party system fragmentation, the results show that the change of the electoral system in New Zealand from a plurality system to a mixed member proportional system had a clear and immediately positive effect on the party system. However, the results do not indicate that the changes of electoral systems in Japan and Italy have had any significant effect on the party system.

Electoral engineering in autocracies: Effects of the 2021 electoral reform on Morocco’s parliamentary elections

ABSTRACT This article examines the effects of electoral engineering in the 2021 Moroccan parliamentary elections. It demonstrates that Morocco’s proportional system, introduced in 2002 and reformed in 2021, is designed to co-opt political parties, prevent a predominant party and promote party system fragmentation, in line with the monarchy’s interests. Nevertheless, the electoral system is not imposed on political parties. The analysis of the process of electoral reform yields evidence of the political parties’ involvement in electoral engineering, the changing political stances of the Moroccan parties, the role of administrative parties as intermediaries of the Minister of the Interior and, ultimately, the connivance between the political regime and the political parties, which acquiesce to the electoral rules in the expectation of being rewarded with seats and even office. In addition, the in-depth electoral analysis and the electoral simulation conducted in this paper reveal that the 2021 electoral reform led to an extreme multi-party system with balance between parties. The electoral amendments were particularly detrimental to the largest party, and to a lesser extent to the second and third parties. By contrast, the electoral reform benefitted small and medium-size parties in the new regional districts, where most of them are significantly overrepresented.

Вплив Індійського Національного Конгресу на інституціоналізацію партійної системи Індії 1947–1989 рр.

Indian National Congress (INC) became the country’s leading political force after it gained independence in 1947. Its participation in the formation of the party system of India is also decisive. The INC has been virtually a separate party system since the first parliamentary elections (during the British colonial rule) and even in the first decades after independence. That is why the first two decades after the independence are called Congress System in the Indian political science literature. However, both on the eve of independence and after it some political parties began to separate from the INC. They formed the first opposition. Some of these parties were founded much earlier, but they agreed to join forces under the wing of Congress during the liberation struggle. Such separation of various domestic political groups and parties characterizes the process of transforming the INC from a national liberation movement into a political party. In addition, during this period, the organization’s internal structure is reformed, various types of membership are tested to encourage as many citizens as possible to become active members. The article aims to characterize the process of fragmentation of the Indian party system in the first four decades after India gained independence (1947–1989). The study considers the formation of the INC as a mass movement and later a party, examines the problem of membership in the organization, in particular the problem of fake membership, which disturbed the party leadership throughout the entire period of the study. A significant emphasis of the article is placed on those political players who separated from the parent party, the INC, although the experience of parties that did not have a direct connection with the INC is not overlooked. The article also argues that due to the openness of India’s first party system, formed around the INC, the country managed to build a democratic culture of change of power, and this influenced the institutionalization of India’s party system.

IMPACT OF NATIONWIDE ELECTORAL THRESHOLDS ON PARTY SYSTEM FRAGMENTATION AND DISPROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION IN GREECE AND TURKEY

Nationwide electoral thresholds (NETs) are known to secure a parliamentary majority for the largest party, reduce party system fragmentation, and prevent extreme, minor, or non-core group parties from entering parliament. By comparing Greece and Turkey, which have applied NETs since 1993 and 1983 respectively, this article investigates why some of these aims have not been achieved. Using time-series data since 1950, we show that neither country needed to introduce NETs to establish single-party governments. Rather, they were implemented primarily to prevent non-core groups from entering parliament as a party. This caused disproportional legislative representation, especially in Turkey. Although Turkey’s NET initially reduced the raw number of parties contesting elections, this effect weakened in the long run and, in contrast to the literature, increased party system fragmentation. Finally, extreme parties have benefitted from Greece’s fragmented party system since 2012 whereas electoral engineering in Turkey has failed to prevent non-core groups from passing the electoral threshold.

Jumping on the Bandwagon? Explaining fluctuations in party membership levels in Europe

ABSTRACT This paper explores how party-specific contextual factors explain variations in membership levels. Based on a subset of MAPP data that includes 2898 yearly membership data points for 262 parties in 24 countries over a period from 1990 to 2014, it examines three sets of explanations: the lifecycle model (party age), the bandwagon model (electoral performances and governemental participation), and the competition model (effective number of parties). Our results confirm that membership ratios present an overall decreasing trend across parties over time. At the same time, we show that this trend is flattening and that there are important variations across parties. Fluctuations of membership are part of a party’s lifecycle. Our results also point toward a bandwagon effect whereby party membership levels increase or decrease according to electoral performances, and to a patronage boost linked to governmental participation. Finally, we show that party system fragmentation decreases individual parties’ membership ratios. Overall, our findings complement the story on party membership decline and calls for further investigations of party-specific explanations.

Electoral Systems and Party Systems in Germany on the Local Level

ABSTRACT The question of how electoral systems should be designed has already been broadly discussed. One of the most promising electoral system types are mixed-member proportional (MMP) systems. However, the positive evaluation of MMP systems strongly depends on the most prominent case applying such a system, Germany. In order to better understand the performance of MMP systems, we focus on this case and research to what extend German party systems are affected by electoral system designs. For this purpose, an examination of the local level is most fruitful. This level provides important variation in electoral systems in terms of two important factors – the general system type (MMP or proportional representation) and the prevalence or absence of a legal threshold. Our results show that (effective) thresholds affect the proportionality of election results whereas the general system type does not. The fragmentation of German local party systems is largely independent of both variables.

Continuity and change in the Kazakhstani party system

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a brief overview of how the Kazakhstani party system has changed in the course of the past two decades and of how important these changes have been. The key claim of the article is that the reduction of the fragmentation of the parliamentary party system was instrumental in creating the conditions for the preservation of the Kazakhstani constitutional order. To support this claim, which echoes the findings of a substantive research tradition, I will show that improvements in the political stability of the Republic of Kazakhstan has gone hand in hand with a marked reduction in the level of party system fragmentation.