Duvergers Theory

1
Duvergers Theory

• Duvergers explanation
• Mechanical effect Disproportionality punishes
  minor parties severely.
  
• Psychological effect Voters are reluctant to
  vote for third parties.
  
• The mechanical effect is not disputed.

2
The Psychological Effect

• Under SMPR, Duverger argues, voters take account
  of both their preferences and the likelihood of
  influencing the outcome.
  
• Wasted vote argument
• What is required for strategic voting
• Understanding of electoral system
• Expectations about outcomes
• Altruism ?

3
Strategic Voting

• The UK SMPR
• Compare survey and preference
• Compare closeness of front runners (close vote
  is more likely to be pivotal) with vote for third
  party
  
• Germany Mixed member
• Compare Erststimme and Zweitstimme

4
Strategic Voting

• Canada SMPR
• Compare strategic voting between voters who will
  benefit with those it might benefit
  
• Strength of preference between front runners
• The U.S.
• Third candidate strength within state.

5
Does Duvergers Theory hold?

• Considerable support for both mechanical and
  psychological effects
  
• However
• Strategic behavior is not universal
• Any given voter will hardly ever influence
  outcome of election

6
Other considerations

• What does winning mean ?
• Different political systems offer minority
  different opportunities to participate in
  government and policy making
  
• Presidential vs. Parliamentary Systems
• Different party systems create different
  incentives for party formation
  
• Cohesive vs. weak parties

7
Electoral Systems of the Post-Communist States

• Different social and political context
• Plurality elections in Russia, Ukraine and
  Poland have shown that fragmented systems can be
  produced
  
• Focus on the party institutionalization
• Institutionalization as predictability
• Implications for strategic voting

8
Limits of Duvergers Law

• Familiar modifications
• District magnitude
• Interactions with cleavage structure
• District level rather than national level
• Conditions for observing for observing strategic
  voting
  
• Not short-term rational voters
• Information
• No sure winner
• Voters have strict enough preferences

9
District vs. Nation

• Formation of a national two-party system
  requires coordination among district parties.
  
• Institutions
• Direct election of national executive (Cox)
• Parties (Moser)
• Parties channel and aggregate public opinion
• Parties as labels for candidates

10
New Democracies

• Parties as cues for candidates
• Absence of established parties creates
  uncertainty for voters
  
• Parties die, new appear
• Lack of continuity between elections
• Voters lack information to vote strategically.
• Theories relying on strategic voting fail

11
The German Model

• The Post-Communist states adopted electoral
  systems that resemble the German system
  
• Influence of mixed-systems on party systems ?
• Compensatory seats vs. non-compensatory.

12
Some Findings

• Established mixed systems exhibit moderate
  multi-partyism (?)
  
• Not the case for east central Europe and
  Eurasia
  
• Moser explains the difference by fractionalized
  social cleavage structure and weak electoral
  systems

13
Research Design

• Moser treats the two tiers as separate and
  compares them.
  
• Controlled comparison Holds various variables
  fixed and allows comparison of the effects of the
  electoral institution
  
• Problems ?
• Cross-contamination

14
Sample

• Russia Mixed, weak parties
• Hungary Mixed, strong parties
• Lithuania Mixed, medium parties
• Poland PR, strong parties
• Ukraine Majoritarian, weak parties

15
Table 2
Effective of Legislative Parties
Effective of Electoral Parties
Disproportionality
Threshold

• Russia 1993 5 7.58 6.40 4.94
• Russia 1995 5 10.68 3.32 20.56
• Poland 1991 n.a. 12.50 10.87 6.11
• Poland 1993 5 9.80 3.86 17.81
• Poland 1997 5 4.59 2.95 10.63
• Lithuania 1992 4 4.10 2.86 7.55
• Lithuania 1996 5 7.94 3.16 16.34
• Hungary 1990 4 6.71 4.31 9.34
• Hungary 1994 5 5.49 3.73 8.53

16
Some things to note

• High number of electoral parties
• Disproportionality higher than in consolidated
  democracies using PR - Why ?
  
• In Poland Hungary the number of parties
  decreases over time
  
• In Russia Lithuania parties, and voters, have
  not responded in the same manner
  
• Differences in Party Fragmentation ?

17
Party Institutionalization

• Poland Hungary have fairly well developed
  party systems.
  
• Russia
• Politics dominated by extremist parties.
• Voters ignore incentives
• Viable parties ? A lot of undecided voters in the
  opinion polls

18
Effects of Majoritarian Systems

• (Moser) In Russia Ukraine the mechanical
  effect fails to reduce the number of parties
  (electoral-parliam.)
  
• What is the mechanical effect ?
• The effective number of candidates
• Measurement ?
• Independent candidates Lack of
  institutionalization

19
Single-member district and the number of parties

• M1 rule
• None of the countries approaches M1
  candidates/parties (Moser)
  
• Misunderstanding
• M1 rule applies to district level
• M1 is an upper bound in PR systems