Was Duverger Correct? Single-Member District Election Outcomes in Fifty-three Countries

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew M. Singer
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
District Level ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Third Place ◽  
Institutional Rules ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Duverger's Law

In districts where only one seat is contested, the electoral formula (plurality or majority) should be a major determinant of the number of parties that receive votes. Specifically, plurality rule should generate two-party competition while other institutional arrangements should generate electoral fragmentation. Yet tests of these propositions using district-level data have focused on a limited number of cases; they rarely contrast different electoral systems and have reached mixed conclusions. This study analyses district-level data from 6,745 single-member district election contests from 53 democratic countries to test the evidence for Duverger's Law and Hypothesis. Double-ballot majoritarian systems have large numbers of candidates, as predicted, but while the average outcome under plurality rule is generally consistent with two-party competition, it is not perfectly so. The two largest parties typically dominate the districts (generally receiving more than 90 per cent of the vote), and there is very little support for parties finishing fourth or worse. Yet third-place parties do not completely disappear, and ethnic divisions shape party fragmentation levels, even under plurality rule. Finally, institutional rules that generate multiparty systems elsewhere in the country increase electoral fragmentation in single-member plurality districts.

Duverger's Law and the Meaning of Canadian Exceptionalism

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (7) ◽  
pp. 835-861 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIAN J. GAINES
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
District Level ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Canadian Provinces ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
Electoral Law

Duverger's law is an unusually simple and specific elaboration on exactly how political institutions “matter”: It proposes that plurality rule elections result in two-party competition. Canada is commonly thought to violate the law at the national level, but to match its predictions at the district level, and thus not to constitute a genuine counterexample. In fact, analysis of a vast data set of Canadian election returns reveals that these elections are multicandidate events, district by district, year after year. An explanation for this multipartyism may lie in the complicating factor of federalism, because Canadian provinces often feature strikingly different national and provincial party systems. Generally, the Canadian case illustrates that theories relating party systems to electoral law but not to other institutions are unrealistically parsimonious.

scholarly journals Introducing new multilevel datasets: Party systems at the district and national levels

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205316801881350
Author(s):  
Cory L. Struthers ◽  
Yuhui Li ◽  
Matthew S. Shugart
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
District Level ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
List Type ◽  
National Party ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties

For decades, datasets on national-level elections have contributed to knowledge on what shapes national party systems. More recently, datasets on elections at the district level have advanced research on subnational party competition. Yet, to our knowledge, no publicly accessible dataset with observations of the party system at both national and district levels exists, limiting the ease with which cross-level comparisons can be made. To fill this gap, we release two corresponding datasets, the National Level Party Systems dataset and the District Level Party Systems dataset, where the unit of analysis is the party system within either the national or district jurisdiction. More than 50 elections in the two datasets are overlapping, meaning they include observations for a single election at both the district and national levels. In addition to conventional measures such as the effective number of parties, we also include underutilized variables, such as the size of the largest party, list type, and the vote shares for presidential candidates in corresponding elections.

Elections with Multiple Parties

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bendor ◽  
Daniel Diermeier ◽  
David A. Siegel ◽  
Michael M. Ting
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Bandwagon Effect ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Simulation Results ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter extends the model used for two-party elections to multiparty democracies. It first considers the module models for party competition and voter turnout to see what modifications are required in order to extend the framework to multiple candidates and to identify what analytical results carry over to this context. It then discusses game-theoretic models of the bandwagon effect before presenting a computational model for one of the most well-known problems in the study of multiparty elections: voter coordination in plurality-rule elections and Duverger’s Law. The model leads to the selection of Condorcet winners yet allows significant vote shares for all candidates. It also does a good job of accounting for the partial coordination seen in election data from the United Kingdom. In addition, the simulation results show that the majority factions successfully coordinate as long as the incentives for coordination are sufficiently high.

Infrastructure and FDI: Evidence from District-Level Data in India

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krishnamurthy Subramanian ◽  
Rajesh Chakrabarti ◽  
Sesha Sairam ◽  
Sudershan Kuntluru
Keyword(s):  
District Level ◽  
Level Data

The 2016 Electoral Reform in Mongolia: From Mixed System and Multiparty Competition to FPTP and One-Party Dominance

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Maškarinec
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
District Level ◽  
Mixed System ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Party Dominance ◽  
Duverger's Law

This article tests the effects of a new electoral system that was introduced in Mongolia for the June 2016 elections. The decision to implement a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system instead of a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system, which was first and last used in the previous elections of 2012, was due to the April 2016 ruling of the Mongolian Constitutional Court on unconstitutionality of the list tier as one of the mechanisms for distributing seats within MMM. Through an analysis of national- and district-level results, this article addresses the question whether electoral competition at the district level was consistent with Duverger’s law and resulted in the restoration of bipartism, which had been disrupted in 2012 due to the use of MMM.

Why Two Parties? Ambition, Policy, and the Presidency

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Aldrich ◽  
Daniel J. Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
New Parties ◽  
The Us ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
National Electorate

Duverger’s Law suggests that two parties will dominate under first-past-the-post (FPTP) within an electoral district, but the law does not necessarily establish two-party competition at the national level. United States is unique among FPTP countries in having the only durable and nearly pure, two-party system. Following this observation, we answer two questions. First, what contributes to the same two parties competing in districts all across the country and at different levels of office? Second, why is the US two-party system so durable over time, dominated by the same two parties? That is, “Why two parties?” As an answer, we propose the APP: ambition, the presidency, and policy. The presidency with its national electorate and electoral rules that favor two-party competition establishes two national major parties, which frames the opportunity structure that influences party affiliation decisions of ambitious politicians running for lower offices. Control over the policy agenda helps reinforce the continuation of a particular two-party system in equilibrium by blocking third parties through divergence on the main issue dimension and the suppression of latent issue dimensions that could benefit new parties. The confluence of the three factors explains why the United States is so uniquely a durable two-party system.

scholarly journals Political Economy Analysis of Voter Participation and Choices in National Elections in Ghana’s Fourth Republican Era

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 174
Author(s):  
Kwabena Asomanin Anaman ◽  
Gbensuglo Alidu Bukari
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
District Level ◽  
Voter Participation ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Literacy Rate ◽  
National Population ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Republican Era

We analysed the determinants of voter participation (turnout), impairment of voter participation (spoiled or rejected ballots), and the outcomes (share of the total valid votes cast garnered by the victorious political party) in national presidential elections during the Fourth Republican era in Ghana. This analysis was undertaken based on meso-level statistical models, using district-level data of voters compiled from constituency-level data maintained by the Electoral Commission of Ghana, and district-level socio-economic characteristics derived from the 2010 and 2000 National Population Censuses conducted by the Ghana Statistical Service. In essence, we used data from two presidential elections in Ghana in 2000 and 2012 which could be directly aligned to data from the 2000 and 2010 national population censuses for district-level analysis using the concept of an average “district” voter. Our analysis indicated that the voter turnout was determined by a number of factors, the most important one being the population aged 15 over; the turnout decreases with increasing population. The impairment of voter participation, based on the proportion of the total votes cast attributed to spoiled ballots, was linked to the literacy rate with the spoiled ballots proportion declining with increasing literacy rate. The share of the total valid votes cast, obtained by the victorious party in a district, was influenced to a large degree by the proportion of the total number of citizens in a district belonging to the two biggest social/ethnic groups in Ghana, Asantes and Ewes, who predominantly voted in a countervailing manner for the parties that their political class elites dominate, the New Patriotic Party and National Democratic Congress, respectively.

Spatial analysis of child labour in India

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lokender Prashad ◽  
Mili Dutta ◽  
Bishnu Mohan Dash
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Hot Spot ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Child Labour ◽  
District Level ◽  
School Level ◽  
Population Census ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Level Data

Purpose This study on spatial analysis of child labour in India is a macro level analysis on child labour using the census data, 2011 of Government of India. The population census which is conducted once in 10 years only provides district level data on work-force distribution. The study has spatial analysis of child labour in the age group of 5–14 years in India. To assess the magnitude of the children in the labour force, district level data of Census 2011 has been used in the study. The study has made an attempt to identify the districts where there is high level of children in the labour force. This paper aims to estimate the magnitude and trends of children’s workforce participation using the census data as it is the only data base, which is available at the district level since 1961 onwards. The study has made an attempt to identify the clustering of child labour across districts in India and how child labour is clustered by different background characteristics. Design/methodology/approach The study has used ArcGIS software package, GeoDa software and local indicator of spatial association test. Findings The findings of study reveal that the proportion of rural, total fertility rate (TFR) and poverty headcount ratio is positively associated, whereas female literacy and the pupil-teacher ratio are negatively associated with child labour. It suggests that in the hot-spot areas and areas where there is a high prevalence of child labour, there is need to increase the teacher's number at the school level to improve the teacher-pupil ratio and also suggested to promote the female education, promote family planning practices to reduce TFR in those areas for reducing the incidences of child labour. Research limitations/implications The study also recommends that the incidences of child labour can be controlled by a comprehensive holistic action plan with the active participation of social workers. Practical implications The promulgation of effective legislation, active involvement of judiciary and police, political will, effective poverty alleviation and income generation programmes, sensitisation of parents, corporates and media can play effective role in mitigating the incidences of child labour in India. To achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders in 2015 to eradicate child labour in all its forms by 2025. Social implications The study aims to achieve the SDGs adopted by world leaders in 2015 to eradicate child labour in all its forms by 2025. Originality/value The study is purely original and there are no such studies in Indian context by using the latest software.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document