Proportional Representation and Effective Number of Parties in Finland

1981 ◽  
pp. 107-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Laakso ◽  
R. Taagepera
Keyword(s):  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties

scholarly journals Predicting the Number of Parties: A Quantitative Model of Duverger's Mechanical Effect

1993 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 455-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rein Taagepera ◽  
Matthew Soberg Shugart
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Quantitative Model ◽  
Mechanical Effect ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Great Portion

The mechanical effect of electoral systems, identified by Maurice Duverger, can be estimated by means of a quantitative model. The model predicts the range within which the effective number of parties in a district should fall for a given magnitude (number of seats) of the district. At the national level, a related model predicts the effective number of parties based on the effective magnitude and the number of seats in the national assembly. The institutional variables considered—magnitude and assembly size—define a great portion of the structural constraints within which a given country's politics must take place. The model developed provides a good fit to data in spite of its having been developed from outrageously simple starting assumptions.

Crowded Space, Fertile Ground: Party Entry and the Effective Number of Parties

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Kselman ◽  
Eleanor Neff Powell ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties

This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status quo parties in the party system. This relationship weakens, and eventually disappears, as politicians’ emphasis on “office-seeking” motivations increases relative to their interest in public policy. We test these predictions with both aggregate electoral data in contemporary Europe and a data set on legislative volatility in Turkey, uncovering support for the argument that party system fragmentation should positively affect the likelihood of entry when policy-seeking motivations are relevant, but not otherwise.

scholarly journals The impact of using proportional representation system on the fragmentation of the party system in Algeria. Applied to the elections of the National People’s Assembly (1997–2017)

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Mahmoud Mahgoub
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Representation System ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of using proportional representation system on the fragmentation of the party system in the Algerian political system within the period from 1997 to 2017, in which Algeria has experienced five legislative elections regularly every five years by testing a hypothesis about adopting the proportional representation system on the basis of the closed list during the foregoing legislative elections has obviously influenced the exacerbation of the Algerian party system’s fragmentation, compared to other factors. Design/methodology/approach The essence of the theoretical framework of this study is to address the effect of the electoral system as an independent variable on the party system as a dependent variable. The starting point for that framework is to reassess the “Duverger’s law,” which appeared since the early 1950s and has influenced the foregoing relationship, and then to review the literature on a new phase that tried to provide a more accurate mechanism for determining the number of parties and their relative weight, whether in terms of electoral votes or parliamentary seats. This means that researchers began to use a measure called the effective number of parties (ENP) for Laakso and Taagepera since 1979. The study elaborates the general concepts of the electoral system and the party system. It used Laakso, Taagepera index of the “ENP” to measure the phenomenon of fragmentation party during the five legislative elections from 1997 to 2017 in Algeria. Findings The results of the study reveal that the proportional representation electoral system – beside other factors – had clear impacts on the fragmentation of the Algerian party system by all standards, whether on the level of the apparent rise in the number of the parties represented in the Algerian parliament from 10 parties in 1997 election to 36 parties in 2017 election or according to the index of Laakso and Taagepera (ENP). The average number of effective number of electoral parties in the five elections was around 7.66, and the average number of effective number of parliamentary parties in the five elections was around 4.39, which puts Algeria in an advanced degree of the fragmentation of the party system. Originality/value This study about the phenomenon of the fragmentation of the party system, which is one of the new subjects in the field of comparative politics – globally and in the Arab world. Hence, the value of this study aims to shed light on this mysterious area of science, the fragmentation of the party system in the Algerian political system during the period from 1997 to 2017.

The Number of Parties and Party System Nationalization in an Integrated Analytical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 662-681
Author(s):  
Grigorii V. Golosov
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Direct And Indirect Effects ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Regional Parties ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Number Of Parties

This study develops a methodological tool for integration of research on party system fragmentation and party system nationalization. The method is built by decomposing a standard indicator of fragmentation, the effective number of parties, into individual-party components (effective size scores), and weighting them by nationalization scores, which allows for disaggregating the number of parties into two distinct components, the effective numbers of national and regional parties. As a result, it becomes possible to assess the influences of substantively important factors upon the components of the number of parties and the overall level of fragmentation in a methodologically consistent, quantifiable way. In addition, the proposed framework of analysis differentiates between direct and indirect effects upon party system fragmentation. A preliminary empirical test on a sample from 90 countries demonstrates that the proposed framework for analysis allows for achieving a rich and nuanced understanding of the factors of party system fragmentation.

The Effect of District Magnitude on Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from Two Natural Experiments in Argentina

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 557-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Lucardi
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Effect ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
District Magnitude ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties

How does district magnitude affect electoral outcomes? This article addresses this question by exploiting a combination of two natural experiments in Argentina between 1985 and 2015. Argentine provinces elect half of their congressional delegation every two years, and thus districts with an odd number of representatives have varying magnitudes in different election years. Furthermore, whether a province elects more representatives in midterm or concurrent years was decided by lottery in 1983. I find that district magnitude (a) increases electoral support for small parties, (b) increases the (effective) number of parties that gain seats and (c) reduces electoral disproportionality. The last two results are driven by the mechanical rather than the psychological effect of electoral rules.

The Effective Number of Parties

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grigorii V. Golosov
Keyword(s):  
Effective Number ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties
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