Electoral and Party Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-78
Author(s):  
André Blais ◽  
Shaun Bowler ◽  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The U.S

Electoral laws are often regarded as the key factors structuring party competition. Yet, despite having very similar electoral systems, reflecting a shared colonial legacy, the United States (U.S.) and Canada have had very different party systems. For the past 100 years, the U.S. is perhaps the most consistently two-party system among the world’s major democracies, but during this same period Canada has experienced considerable variation in the number of parties represented in Parliament at the national level. This chapter addresses both the causes and consequences of this puzzling divergence in party systems in the two countries. We also compare a number of other features of the two nation’s electoral institutions, including campaign finance rules, rules for constituency boundary drawing, bicameralism, and the mechanism for the selection of the executive, with particular attention to the U.S. Electoral College and its alleged link with two-partyism. We also examine the policy consequences of the divergence in party systems and look at the way in which party competition in the two countries may affect voter turnout.

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.

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.

The Measurement of Party Competition

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 682-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Elkins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Loyalty ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Over Time

Most measures of party competition were designed for the United States or other two-party systems. The measure proposed here is intended for multiparty as well as two-party systems. It is a formalization of the notion of uncertainty: election outcomes are competitive to the degree we are uncertain who will win. By ascertaining through survey research the degree of party loyalty over time, one can calculate the chances of alternative outcomes in hypothetical replications of any given election. Since the chance that a losing party might have won is one measure of the importance of that party, this approach to party competition also provides a precise indicator of the number of parties in the system (i.e., whether it is two-party, three party, etc.). The method is applied here to data on Canadian federal elections in 1965 and 1968.

The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 1076-1077
Author(s):  
Radhika Desai
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
National Party ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Governmental Institutions

The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States, Pradeep K. Chhibber and Ken Kollman, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. xvi, 276.Mining electoral data to arrive at theories about the relationship between political party performance and party system determination and electoral and governmental institutions forms the main stream of political science. And one of its most enduring puzzles is the explanation of the patterns and diversities of party systems. With the famous “Duverger's Law” about single-member plurality systems and two-party political systems forming its point of departure, political scientists have attempted to substantiate their discipline's status as a “science” by producing theories about relationships between measurable political variables.

Federal and Subnational Elections in Russia: Coherence and Divergence in Electoral Outcomes

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-353
Author(s):  
Rostislav Turovsky ◽  
Marina Sukhova
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Regional Parties ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Electoral Authoritarianism ◽  
Subnational Elections ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Regional Elections

Abstract This article examines the differences between Russian voting at federal elections and regional legislature elections, both combined and conducted independently. The authors analyse these differences, their character and their dynamics as an important characteristic of the nationalisation of the party system. They also test hypotheses about a higher level of oppositional voting and competitiveness in subnational elections, in accordance with the theory of second-order elections, as well as the strategic nature of voting at federal elections, by contrast with expressive voting during subnational campaigns. The empirical study is based on calculating the differences in votes for leading Russian parties at subnational elections and at federal elections (simultaneous, preceding and following) from 2003, when mandatory voting on party lists was widespread among the regions, to 2019. The level of competitiveness is measured in a similar way, by calculating the effective number of parties. The study indicates a low level of autonomy of regional party systems, in many ways caused by the fact that the law made it impossible to create regional parties, and then also by the 2005 ban on creation of regional blocs. The strong connection between federal and regional elections in Russia clearly underlines the fluid and asynchronic nature of its electoral dynamics, where subnational elections typically predetermine the results of the following federal campaigns. At the same time, the formal success of the nationalisation of the party system, achieved by increasing the homogeneity of voting at the 2016 and 2018 federal elections, is not reflected by the opposing process of desynchronisation between federal and regional elections after Putin’s third-term election. There is also a clear rise in the scale of the differences between the two. At the same time, the study demonstrates the potential presence in Russia of features common to subnational elections in many countries: their greater support for the opposition and presence of affective voting. However, there is a clear exception to this trend during the period of maximum mobilisation of the loyal electorate at the subnational elections immediately following the accession of Crimea in 2014–2015, and such tendencies are generally restrained by the conditions of electoral authoritarianism.

scholarly journals Food-Based Dietary Guidelines for Seafood Do Not Translate into Increased Long-Chain Omega-3 Levels in the Diet for U.S. Consumers

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1816
Author(s):  
Michael F. Tlusty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Fatty Acids ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dietary Guidelines ◽  
Omega 3 Fatty Acids ◽  
Omega 3 ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Long Chain

Humans under-consume fish, especially species high in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. Food-based dietary guidelines are one means for nations to encourage the consumption of healthy, nutritious food. Here, associations between dietary omega-3 consumption and food-based dietary guidelines, gross domestic product, the ranked price of fish, and the proportions of marine fish available at a national level were assessed. Minor associations were found between consumption and variables, except for food-based dietary guidelines, where calling out seafood in FBDGs did not associate with greater consumption. This relationship was explored for consumers in the United States, and it was observed that the predominant seafood they ate, shrimp, resulted in little benefit for dietary omega-3 consumption. Seafood is listed under the protein category in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, and aggregating seafood under this category may limit a more complete understanding of its nutrient benefits beyond protein.

scholarly journals The Centre Does Not Hold: Coalition Politics and Party System Change in the Netherlands, 2002–12

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huib Pellikaan ◽  
Sarah L. de Lange ◽  
Tom W.G. van der Meer
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Party System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Coalition Politics ◽  
Coalition Formation Process ◽  
The Impact

Like many party systems across Western Europe, the Dutch party system has been in flux since 2002 as a result of a series of related developments, including the decline of mainstream parties which coincided with the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties and the concurrent dimensional transformation of the political space. This article analyses how these challenges to mainstream parties fundamentally affected the structure of party competition. On the basis of content analysis of party programmes, we examine the changing configuration of the Dutch party space since 2002 and investigate the impact of these changes on coalition-formation patterns. We conclude that the Dutch party system has become increasingly unstable. It has gradually lost its core through electoral fragmentation and mainstream parties’ positional shifts. The disappearance of a core party that dominates the coalition-formation process initially transformed the direction of party competition from centripetal to centrifugal. However, since 2012 a theoretically novel configuration has emerged in which no party or coherent group of parties dominates competition.

The Party System: Structure, Policy, and Europeanization

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Niedermayer
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
System Properties ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Eu

The German party system has changed since the 1980s. The relatively stable ‘two-and-a-half party’ system of the 1960s and 1970s has become a fluid five-party system. This development can generally be attributed to changes on the demand and supply sides of party competition and to the changing institutional framework. The European integration process is part of this institutional framework and this chapter deals with the question of whether it has influenced the development of the party system at the national level. To systematically analyse the possible impact, eight party-system properties are distinguished: format, fragmentation, asymmetry, volatility, polarization, legitimacy, segmentation, and coalition stability. The analysis shows that one cannot speak of a Europeanization of the German party system in the sense of a considerable impact of the European integration process on its development. Up to now, the inclusion of Germany in the systemic context of the EU has not led to noticeable changes of party-system properties. On the demand side of party competition, this is due to the fact that the EU issue does not influence the citizens' electoral decisions. On the supply side, the lack of Europeanization can be explained mainly by the traditional, interest-based pro-European élite consensus, the low potential for political mobilization around European integration, and the marginal role of ethnocentrist–authoritarian parties.

Electoral reform and partisan dealignment in Indonesia

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Fossati
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Vast Literature ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
Electoral Cycles ◽  
The Relationship

There is a vast literature on the effects of electoral institutions on party systems. Research on the relationship between electoral systems and the strength of partisan identities, however, is inconclusive, as existing work mostly focuses on individual-level factors. In this paper, we analyze the case of Indonesia to illustrate the links between electoral laws and patterns of mass partisanship. By exploiting variation over time (four electoral cycles), we show that deep-seated partisan affiliations weakened substantially with the introduction of open-list PR, a system that provides strong incentives to cultivate a personal vote. By analyzing variation across space (189 districts), we further document that partisan alignment has been more pronounced where personal voting is more prevalent. These findings suggest that electoral institutions are a powerful driver of partisan identities, and that the effect of institutional change at the national level may be contingent on local politics.

scholarly journals Determining the Development Status of United States Counties Based on Comparative and Spatial Analyses of Multivariate Criteria Using Geographic Information Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Lauren B. Wheeler ◽  
Eric C. Pappas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Human Development ◽  
International Development ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Statistics Education ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Status ◽  
The U.S

The United States ranked 8th in 2015 according to the United Nations’ Human Development Index, but empirical evidence shows that there are regions within the U.S. that would not classify as having “very high human development.”  We know about domestic poverty and hardship, but there are regions in the United States that are starting to look developmentally more like Albania or Kenya.  Using multivariate quantitative data (health statistics, education levels, and income) to replicate international development indices like that of United Nations on the national level, U.S. counties were ranked according to their development status.  In this way, widely recognized scales of development were translationally applied to the United States to fully understand the state of development, or rather regression, in the U.S.  The results were displayed cartographically to show the geographic distribution of regression across the U.S., mainly the Mississippi River Delta and the Appalachian Region.  In total, there were 66 counties that fell into fourth class, or the “low development” category, for all three development criteria.  

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