Electoral systems, ethnic cleavages and experience with democracy

Abstract

Recent studies show that the effects of electoral systems and ethnic cleavages on the number of parties in emerging democracies differ from those effects observed in more established democracies. Building on recent arguments maintaining that the quality of democracy improves with experience, we argue the reason for the differences in the findings between established and emerging democracies is that the effects of these variables on the number of parties differ according to a country’s experience with elections. To test this argument, we analyse party system fragmentation in 89 established and emerging democracies and the conditioning effects experience with elections have on the effects of district magnitude, ethnic cleavages and variables relating to the presidential party system. The results show that the effects of institutional and social cleavage variables differ substantially between emerging and established democracies, but these effects begin to approximate those seen in more established democracies with additional experience with elections.

The party system effects of unstable electoral rules in Latin America

“…Several works have found evidence that over time party leaders learn how to target voters and voters how to avoid wasting their votes, thus leading to more predictability and improved electoral coordination (Crisp et al, 2012;Riera, 2013;Roussias, 2022;Tavits and Annus, 2006). This experience, in turn, should lead to electoral results more in line with conventional theoretical expectations (see Raymond et al, 2016). This hypothesis makes sense.…”

“…To analyze the impact of electoral experience, we start by segmenting the data between early and late elections. This selection of observations builds on previous work (Raymond et al, 2016;Roussias, 2022), which has shown that it takes about five elections for voters and party leaders to learn how to behave strategically in electoral competition. We thus consider the first five elections after the transition to democracy in every country as early elections, and the rest as late ones.…”

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

“…Tavits and Annus, 2006: 80-87;Maškarinec, 2016). Similarly, Raymond et al (2016) confirmed that the effects of electoral systems and social cleavages significantly differ between emerging and established democracies, but the variability in these effects tends to narrow with more experience with consecutive elections in new democracies (cf. Raymond et al, 2016: 556-562).…”

The Evolution of New Party Systems: Voter Learning and Electoral Systems

“…Given these information scarcities, voter behaviour is severely hindered in early elections; among other things, new party systems are characterized by extreme volatility (Bielasiak, 2002;Birch, 2003;Kuenzi and Lambright, 2001;Roberts and Wibbels, 1999), high numbers of parties (Filippov et al, 1999;Golder and Wantchekon, 2004) and frequent electoral law changes. However, while scholars have paid attention to this issue (Bernhard and Karakoç, 2011;Crisp et al, 2012;Lago and Martínez i Coma, 2012;Mishler and Rose, 2007;Raymond et al, 2016;Reich, 2004;Riera, 2013;Selb, 2012;Tavits, 2005;Tavits and Annus, 2006), we do not have a clear understanding of the duration and the causes of these characteristics.…”