Electoral Institutions, Cleavage Structures, and the Number of Parties

A classic question in political science concerns what determines the number of parties that compete in a given polity. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to answering this question, one that emphasizes the role of electoral laws in structuring coalitional incentives, and another that emphasi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of political science Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 149 - 174
Main Authors: Neto, Octavio Amorim, Cox, Gary W.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Austin, Tex University of Wisconsin Press 01.01.1997
University of Texas Press for Midwest Political Science Association, etc
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects:
Cleavage
Data analysis
Democracy
District magnitude
ELECTION
Election laws
Election results
Electoral law
Electoral Systems
Ethnic groups
Hypotheses
Institutions
Law
Partisanship
Party systems
Political cleavages
Political Parties
POLITICAL PARTY
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Political Systems
Political Theory
Polities
Presidential elections
Presidentialism
Social differentiation
Social interaction
Social structure
Social structures
Society
Sociology
UNITED STATES, 1945 TO PRESENT
Voters
Voting
ISSN:0092-5853, 1540-5907
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:A classic question in political science concerns what determines the number of parties that compete in a given polity. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to answering this question, one that emphasizes the role of electoral laws in structuring coalitional incentives, and another that emphasizes the importance of preexisting social cleavages. In this paper, we view the number of parties as a product of the interaction between these two forces, following Powell (1982) and Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994). The effective number of parties in a polity should be a multiplicative rather than an additive function of the permissiveness of the electoral system and the heterogeneity of the society. Multiple regression on cross-sectional aggregate electoral statistics. Unlike previous studies, we (1) do not confine attention to developed democracies; (2) explicitly control for the influence of presidential elections, taking account of whether they are concurrent or nonconcurrent, and of the effective number of presidential candidates; and (3) also control for the presence and operation of upper tiers in legislative elections. The hypothesis is confirmed, both as regards the number of legislative parties and the number of presidential parties.
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ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.2307/2111712