Single-member Plurality System Research Articles

Always a Bridesmaid: A Machine Learning Approach to Minor Party Identity in Multi-Party Systems

AbstractIn multiparty systems, maintaining a distinct and positive partisan identity may be more difficult for those who identify with minor parties, because such parties lack the rich history of success that could reinforce a positive social standing in the political realm. Yet, we know little about the unique nature of minor partisan identities because partisanship tends to be most prominent in single-member plurality systems that tend toward two dominant parties, such as the United States. Canada provides a fascinating case of a single-member plurality electoral system that has consistently led to a multiparty system, ideal for studying minor party identity. We use large datasets of public opinion data, collected in 2019 and 2021 in Canada, to test a Lasso regression, a machine learning technique, to identify the factors that are the most important to predict whether partisans of minor political parties will seekin-group distinctiveness, meaning that they seek a different and positive political identity from the major political parties they are in competition with, or take part inout-group favouritism, meaning that they seek to become closer major political parties. We find that party rating is the most important predictor. The more partisans of the minor party rate their own party favourably, the more they take part in distinctiveness. We also find that the more minor party partisans perceive the major party as favourable, the more favouritism they will show towards the major party.

Assembly Size and Electoral Distortion in an SMP System

ABSTRACT There is a vast literature in political science concerning the strengths and weaknesses of single member plurality (SMP) electoral systems. Some argue that PR systems are superior because they ensure better representativeness by reducing the distortion between votes received by a party and its seat share. Others say that the benefits of SMP in terms of accountability make the price of electoral distortion bearable. But what if there would be incremental institutional changes that could maintain the benefits derived from SMP elections and still reduce the distortion it causes? In this paper, we make use of an innovative research design to measure the impact of assembly size on seat disproportionality as measured by the Gallagher Index. We make use of Canada as an ideal case. In this country, federal and provincial elections occur at regular intervals, and the numbers of seats at play vary substantially between levels of government within a province. We find that increasing assembly size is associated with reduced disproportionality in a negative logarithmic fashion, making it an especially useful institutional tool to reduce distortion in smaller assemblies. We argue this research brings a new light on an ongoing debate about SMP systems.

Alberta’s forgotten experiment with electoral reform: the hybrid single transferable vote/alternative vote and the quasi-party system

A persistent yet understudied aspect of Alberta’s “quasi-party system” is the role of the electoral system. While many authors have rightly pointed out that a majoritarian single-member plurality system has helped Alberta’s ruling parties produce disproportionate majorities, the province has not always operated under this electoral arrangement. From 1926 until 1955, Alberta had a “hybrid” system, consisting of the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies in Edmonton and Calgary and the Alternative Vote in single-member constituencies in the rest of Alberta. This unusual attempt at electoral reform played an important role in the dominance of the United Farmers of Alberta and the early Social Credit Party (until 1955). AV acted as an essentially majoritarian system in rural Alberta, producing statistically indistinguishable results from FPTP. This contrasts the Albertan case with other attempts at implementing the Alternative Vote. On the other hand, STV benefited the UFA and Social Credit in two distinct ways. STV increasing proportionality in Edmonton and Calgary, as it has in many other jurisdictions. However, due the hybrid system, the urban opposition in Edmonton and Calgary to the UFA was fragmented by a proportional system like STV. Social Credit, with its larger urban base, used STV to maximize its urban vote through a process of voter transfers. Finally, rural malapportionment is a key feature in both the hybrid system and the subsequent return to single-member plurality. Rural seats, operating under both AV and FPTP, have been the electoral bedrock for Alberta’s long lived political dynasties. The unique case of Alberta’s hybrid electoral system serves as an important potential case study in debates surrounding electoral reform in Canada and around the world. Please be aware that a revision to this article was submitted on April 30, 2021. Therefore, there may be some differences between the online version of this submission and the print version.

The workings of the single member plurality electoral system in India and the need for reform

India uses the single member plurality system (SMPS) to elect members of the lower house of its national (federal) parliament and the state assemblies. The electoral system has remained stable despite its inherent disproportionality, India’s highly heterogeneous population and, more recently, a fragmented party system. Using a comprehensive data set covering all national and some state assembly elections during the period 1952–2017, this article evaluates how SMPS has performed in India in comparison to its expected benefits, and whether there is a case for reform of the electoral system. The article finds that SMPS neither provides effective representation nor is likely to lead to stable single party governments in India – a situation that could be termed ‘the worst of both worlds’. It also highlights that a combination of rational-choice behaviour on the part of key actors as well as historical and institutional reasons has ensured the continuation of SMPS in India. The article concludes that it is time for India to seriously consider reforming its electoral system.

Why the salience of social divisions matters in party systems: Testing the interactive hypothesis in South Africa

Scholars have long argued social diversity, and electoral institutions interactively shape party systems: diversity has little effect on the effective number of parties (ENP) in single member plurality (SMP) systems but increases ENP in proportional ones. We argue instead that where diversity is salient enough to generate demand for parties, it also hinders strategic coordination, preventing SMP rules from reducing the number of parties and producing a correlation between diversity and ENP. In contrast, non-salient forms of diversity have little impact regardless of institutional rules. We test this intuition using data from South Africa’s municipal mixed-member system and explore its highly salient racial cleavage and less salient ethnic one. We find racial diversity correlates with ENP in SMP systems while ethnic diversity correlates with ENP in neither SMP nor proportional representation systems. Our study contributes to mounting evidence questioning the interactive hypothesis and points to the importance of the salience of social divisions in shaping party systems.

Party nationalization and the translation of votes into seats under single-member plurality electoral rules

This study uses empirical evidence from a nearly comprehensive set of electoral democracies that use single-member plurality systems or mixed electoral systems with single-member plurality components in order to establish empirically the impact of territorial patterns of electoral support upon vote-to-seat conversion. The analysis, employing individual parties as units of analysis and multiple linear regression with cluster-robust standard errors as its main methodological tool, confirms the hypothesis that single-member plurality rules give a representational bonus to parties with low levels of nationalization. This effect is contingent upon absolute and relative party size, so that very large parties, and particularly frontrunners in party competition, receive an advantage irrespective of their nationalization. Mixed electoral rules further facilitate their advantage, while the gains of very small parties tend to be enhanced by large assembly size. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of party system development under Duvergerian conditions.

Legislative accountability in a mixed-member system

Accountability of representatives to electors is a key indicator of democratic health. In mixed-member systems, the coexistence of two kinds of representation provides the opportunity to test competing claims with minimal confounding factors. There is debate about the relative accountability of constituency and list MPs, and in particular, concerning dual candidacy, where individuals can stand for both constituency and list seats. Analysing New Zealand elections since 1999, with comparisons back to the previous single-member plurality system, this article examines the effects of dual candidacy, legislative turnover and the cases where constituency or electorate MPs have lost their seats, but remained in Parliament as list members.代表对选民负责乃民主是否健康的一个关键指标。在混合成员制下，两类代表的共存为比较单纯地检验其竞争的主张提供了机会。不过，选区及名单议员的相对责任，尤其在一个个体可以既代表选区又代表名单席位的情况下的责任，对此是有争议的。本文分析了新西兰1999年以来的选举，并与之前的单一成员多数选举制做了对比，还考察了双重候选人制的效果、议员的流动、以及选区或议员落选但依然是国会名单成员的情况。

Electoral Systems and Political Corruption

This paper argues that the relationship between legislative electoral systems and political corruption is different from what previous studies have contended. It argues that open-list proportional systems promote political corruption more than closed-list proportional and single-member plurality systems because they make campaign finance shortages more pronounced, legislative corruption opportunities more numerous, and the provision of anti-corruption institutions more challenging. Moreover, each of these effects is mediated by institutions that structure policymaking processes, such that legislatures elected by identical systems can differ in the degree to which they enable or frustrate political corruption. This account contrasts with previous research in several respects, especially by emphasizing that electoral system influence depends significantly on what occurs in the legislative arena. The paper provides two empirical studies to support the theory: a regression analysis of corruption across fifty-one democracies and case studies of legislator-involved corruption scandals in three open-list countries (Brazil, Chile, and Finland).

Radicalism, Protest Votes and Regionalism: Reform and the Rise of the New Conservative Party

For descriptive and analytical reasons there is an understandable tendency to view political parties as homogenous. Yet it is widely known that most parties, particularly those that compete in single-member plurality systems, are effectively coalitions. This paper explores support for the Reform Party of Canada in part to better understand the character of the current governing Conservative party of which it was a founding component. We find a party that attracted two distinct kinds of supporters: radicals, for whom support reflected the appeal of Reform party policies, its leader and ideology, and protest voters for whom it was mainly an alternative to the then-governing Liberals. These supporters were geographically concentrated; the former in Western Canada, the latter in Eastern Canada. Such diversity describes one of the central challenges confronting all parties operating in Canada’s single member plurality system: sustaining a coalition of supporters in which reasons for attachment to the party vary by region. As with previous governments, it helps to explain the peculiar political demands that confront the current Conservative government as it seeks to maintain this coalition.

Generalized Duverger`s Law and Local Elections in Korea

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.

The Role of Minor Parties in Political Competition: Lessons from Ghana’s 2012 Elections

The study of minor parties has largely focused on well-established democracies, even though these political organizations play significant roles in new and emerging democracies. With Ghana as a case study, this investigation provides a theoretical path to understanding the normative role of minor parties in political competition, especially in developing nations with single-member plurality systems. By placing emphasis on the experiences of such parties in Ghana’s 2012 elections in the Fourth Republican dispensation, this article examines the value and importance of minor parties in helping to create and maintain stable democracies. In spite of the recognizable obstacles minor parties face, we argue that they nevertheless contribute to the health of a burgeoning democratic culture.

Does Tactical Voting Matter? The Political Impact of Tactical Voting in Canadian Elections

Tactical voting primarily takes place under single-member district plurality electoral institutions and takes the form of third-party supporters voting for one of the major parties. Although much has been written about tactical voting, few studies have attempted to show its impact on seat distribution within the parliament or on the makeup of the subsequent government, in countries with single-member plurality systems. In this article, we assess the magnitude and impact of tactical voting in0 the Canadian general elections between 1988 and 2000. We build a model of tactical voting by identifying factors that are known to affect the level of tactical voting that we can measure using available data. Based on this model, we generate predicted levels of tactical voting for all parties within each district, and then use these predicted values to adjust the actual election data to produce a new set of data containing a would-be election outcome in the absence of tactical voting. By comparing actual election data, adjusted election data, and the seat share of political parties in the parliament after these elections, we discuss the political impact of tactical voting in Canada. The results of our study affirm that, in some cases, tactical voting does lead to election outcomes different from those in its absence and that arguments based on voter rationality are to some degree valid in the real world. At the same time, our results demonstrate that the impact of tactical voting on election outcomes, and thus on the actual distribution of seats within the parliament, has been minimal in Canada. It had no impact on the partisan composition of the government in any of the four elections studied.

Constituency Influence in Parliament

Abstract.“Dyadic representation” has received considerable attention in the US, but much less attention in parliamentary systems where party discipline strongly limits representatives' capacity for individual action. A link between the legislative behaviour of representatives and the preferences of their geographic constituencies may nevertheless exist outside the US, however, particularly in single member plurality systems where the “electoral connection” is strong. This paper tests for evidence of this dyadic relationship in Question Period in the Canadian Parliament, across three policy domains: defense, debt and taxes, and welfare. As anticipated, there is evidence of dyadic representation in Canada. Results are discussed as they pertain to the comparative study of legislative institutions and political representation.Résumé.La «représentation dyadique» a reçu une attention considérable aux États-Unis, mais elle est beaucoup moins étudiée au sein des démocraties parlementaires où la discipline de parti limite fortement la marge de manœuvre des élus. Malgré tout, le lien entre le comportement politique des élus et les préférences de leurs commettants demeure important ailleurs qu'aux États-Unis, mais particulièrement dans les systèmes électoraux pluralitaires où la «connexion électorale» est forte. Cet article s'intéresse à cette représentation dyadique dans le cadre de la période des questions au Parlement canadien et plus particulièrement pour les trois enjeux suivants : la défense nationale, la politique fiscale et les services sociaux. Tel qu'attendu, la représentation dyadique semble se confirmer au Canada. Les résultats des analyses statistiques sont discutés et apportent un éclairage original sur l'étude comparée des institutions législatives et de la représentation politique.

Pristine Purity: New Political Parties in Canada

Introduction (1) Success sells better than failure; hence new parties receive very little attention from scientists as long as they remain marginal and fail to win seats in Parliament. Yet in the margins of the party system, they may maintain the pristine purity of principles and ideas better than parties in Parliament, let alone parties in power. This is one reason why one might want to study new parties. However, there are other, perhaps more compelling reasons. As traditional parties fragment in the era of postmodern politics, new parties have the potential to play a more significant role, in opposition or even in government. If established parties fail to integrate discontented groups--alternative or immigrant subcultures, for example--new parties may mobilize and socialize these groups. In trying to articulate latent interests and ideologies, new parties will show us the range of available options in a system and throw fresh light on its culture. Even if the new parties do not win power, their ideas may be borrowed by parties in government once those ideas have been tested in public debate and have gained some popular support. Finally, studying new parties can help us to understand the formation process and subsequent evolution of parties in general, and their relation to society. Too often, scientists have neglected marginal parties. Recently, Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein pointed out that seemingly marginal politicians and groups can quickly catalyze powerful institutional changes once the global environment changes, the most extreme examples being Lenin's Bolsheviks and Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party. (2) This article will concentrate on the period after 1972, when registration of parties became standard practice in Canada, required for reimbursement under the Election Expenses Act. Between 1972 and 2006, 48 new parties were registered by Elections Canada. (3) Quite a few never tried their luck in federal elections--the Nude Garden Party being a striking example. Out of the 20 new parties that did, only two succeeded in winning any seats. Why did the others fail? And why did they try, anyway? Before providing an answer to these questions, I will put forward a tentative framework for the analysis of new parties--inspired by the work of pioneers in this area such as the American scientists Stephen Fisher and Thomas Rochon and the Canadian Maurice Pinard. (4) A Framework for Analysis New parties do not emerge in a vacuum. Their founders may see themselves as autonomous actors with original ideas, but they are, of course, the product of a system with its particular traditions and values, socioeconomic interests, and cleavages. As soon as a new party appears on the scene, it will be assigned a position in the system. Intellectuals, interest groups, and politicians from other parties will venture an opinion about it: (rarely) approving, (often) criticizing, or ridiculing the newcomer. In extreme cases, the new party may even be banned or repressed by the authorities. At any rate, the established parties and the media will contribute to the political opportunity structure that conditions, to a large extent, the development of the new party. The notion of the political opportunity structure, invented to explain social movements but later applied to (new) parties, contains at least four different aspects: (5) 1. It refers to the electoral system and the wider institutional context: a federal or unitary state, a presidential or parliamentary regime, but also rules of party registration, party financing, and other formal requirements. As the American scientists Arend Lijphart and Matthew Shugart have demonstrated, a single-member plurality system or first-past-the-post electoral system (as exists in Canada) offers few opportunities to new parties, unless those parties cater to particular regional interests. …

Talking Locally and Voting Globally

The heterogeneity of discussion networks has been shown to have an effect on citizens' ideas and behavior. In this article, the author undertakes to show that the relative heterogeneity of political discussion networks affects voter coordination on two parties in a single-member plurality system. Specifically, if voters do not have access to polling information about the relative standing of candidates, voters whose discussion networks are ideologically heterogeneous are more likely to coordinate on two parties than voters whose discussion networks are ideologically homogeneous. The author examines this hypothesis using an agent-based model.

Strategic Voting Under Conditions of Uncertainty: A Re-Evaluation of Duverger's Law

Political scientists have long recognized that the number of parties in a country influences the way that interests are represented in that country. One explanation for the number of parties in a system relies on the idea of strategic voting, i.e. voters may not want to ‘waste a vote’ by voting for a third party. However, work in this area does not address the role of an important factor that may affect party systems through strategic voting: information. Without polls, how could voters know which parties were likely to win, and hence how to vote strategically? Using an agent-based model, this article assesses the role that information plays in shaping the party system through strategic voting. The results of this model demonstrate that, contrary to Duverger's Law, more than two parties may emerge in single-member plurality systems, even when all voters are strategic.

The Rush to electoral reform in the Canadian provinces: Why now?

Introduction In his seminal 1968 essay on the Canadian electoral system, Alan Cairns wrote that 'proportional representation has not been seriously considered as a possible alternative to the existing system,' and that 'the habituation of Canadians to the existing system renders policy oriented research on the comparative merits of different electoral systems a fruitless exercise' (1968: 263). Cairns' essay generated considerable academic interest in the workings of Canada's electoral system, much of it critical of the single member plurality system (SMP). None of this, however, leads to any serious consideration of reform. The best example of the reticence of the political class to deal with proposals for electoral system reform was the decision by the 1991 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing that it would consider virtually every conceivable issue related to elections and political parties except for the electoral system. The Commission produced 23 research volumes, not a single one of which deals with the electoral system. As recently as 1997, Henry Milner, who has emerged as a leading student and advocate of Canadian electoral reform, observed that '...unlike in Britain, in Canada we have not even brought the issue to public discussion' (1997: 8).

Direct or indirect? Assessing two approaches to the measurement of strategic voting

This paper fits into a growing literature about the conceptualisation and measurement of strategic voting. Here we compare the results obtained by applying a ‘direct’ method of measurement based on respondents' reported preferences and behavior with those produced by an ‘indirect’ method that relies on modeling the voting act in both the absence and presence of variables about the parties' chances of winning. Our data are derived from a three-party contest in an single-member plurality system, the 1999 election in the province of Ontario. We find that the two methods converge closely in predicting the aggregate amount of strategic voting, a surprisingly low 4–6%. The direct method, however, is more useful when it comes to identifying which particular individuals did and did not vote strategically.

Consequences of the Unreformed Canadian Electoral System

Introduction In a classic article on the system in Canada, (1968) argued that the single-member plurality system (SMP) for choosing federal Members of Parliament had harmful effects on the party system. The mechanics of this system increased the regional distinctiveness of party caucuses beyond what occurs through social cleavages and voting shares. Since only one candidate can win in a riding, a party with a substantial vote across the constituencies in a region might receive few seats. Thus the party caucuses are more extreme regionally than is justified by voting shares. The system has made a major contribution to the identification of particular sections/provinces with particular parties. It has under-valued the partisan diversity within each section/province. By so doing it has rendered the parliamentary composition of each party less representative of the sectional interests in the political system than is the party electorate from which that representation is derived (Cairns 1968: 62). This is what Weaver (1999) refers to as the Cairns effect. Nevertheless, aside from replying to a criticism of his article in the CJPS (Lovink 1970; 1970), wrote little on this topic subsequently (Cairns 1979; 1981). In April 2001, he submitted a written affidavit in support of the Green Party's suit against the Canadian over SMP under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (2) Although Cairns' analysis has been critiqued by other scholars (Lovink 1970; Courtney 1980; Wiseman 1991; 1997), over time it has become increasingly accepted. (3) This has not yet led to a successful reform movement politically, however. The continuing disproportional federal results over the past three elections have been abetted by some strikingly disproportional provincial election results. This has led to more concerted questioning of the system by academics and political activists. Changing the system has managed to secure a tenuous foothold on the formal political agenda in Canada. This paper examines the empirical claims of Cairns' original analysis, their validity during the third of a century since the original article, and why they are having greater impact recently. The Electoral Systems Debate There are several different forms of systems (technically, electoral formulae) in the world. Nevertheless, the most-discussed alternatives are SMP and different versions of proportional representation (PR). In PR systems, seats are distributed on a countrywide or regional basis, and parties rewarded according to their share of the vote in multi-member constituencies. In recent years, mixed systems combining these two systems have made considerable inroads (Shugart and Wattenberg 2001). The ongoing debate between proponents of the two systems traditionally has revolved around the relative priorities of the need for a single party and constituency service versus the accurate representation of voting shares. Strong government advocates see SMP as more likely to produce a with a legislative majority (but not necessarily an overall majority or even a plurality of voters) and one in which there is a direct link between the local constituency and its one representative. PR advocates prefer having a legislature reflecting the partisan distribution of votes more closely, even if that leads to a multiparty formed after the election through negotiations among political leaders. Recent research also has suggested that the form of system may also be an important factor in policy outcomes, irrespective of the partisan coloration of governments (Weaver and Rockman 1993; Lijphart 1994a). did not focus on this broader debate, nor did he advocate a particular alternative formula. Instead, he concentrated on particular disadvantages of SMP for Canada and the general failure to address the issue. …

The Impact of Electoral Rule Change on Party Campaign Strategy

In this study it is shown how party campaign strategies in three electoral campaigns in Hong Kong changed when the electoral system moved from a single-member plurality system to a proportional representation system. It is hypothesized that future party campaign strategies will change and follow a more capital-intensive and professionalized pattern, with less use of negative campaigns and less emphasis on personalities, local issues and constituency services. Empirical results show that although there was a general trend towards a more professionalized and capital-intensive campaign, the traditional labour-intensive means were more resilient than expected. Constituency services, personalized campaigns, local issues and negative campaigns still play an important part in campaigning under proportional representation. The limited nature of the elections and parameters that did not favour large parties led to single non-transferable-vote-like campaign behaviour. Unchanged voter expectations, stringent campaigning and financing laws, and the partial nature of the elections all prevented a complete switch to professionalization and capital-intensive campaigns.