Size and Party System Fragmentation

Anckar, Carsten

doi:10.1177/1354068800006003003

Cited by 76 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…2 At the electoral level, the inverse relationship is confirmed by Anckar (2000), worldwide and in Finnish and British local elections. With a higher number of parties running, the vote share of the largest party tends to be lower, and this relationship holds separately for plurality and proportional systems.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Conservation of Balance in the Size of Parties

Taagepera

2005

Party Politics

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A B S T R A C TFor parties of unequal seat shares (s i ), the widely used effective number of parties (N = 1/⌺s i 2 ) offers an equivalent in equal-sized parties, but it needs a supplement to express the imbalance in actual shares. This is akin to supplementing the mean with the standard deviation. A suitable 'index of balance' is b = -log s 1 /log p, where s 1 is the largest share and p is the number of seat-winning parties. It can range from 0 (utter imbalance) to 1 (perfect equality of all parties). In most individual countries, the median balance is between 0.4 and 0.6, and the worldwide median balance is close to 0.50 for any number of seatwinning parties except 2, in line with a simple logical model. Independent of electoral systems used, a rule of conservation emerges: the median product of the largest party's fractional share and the square root of the number of seat-winning parties is conserved: s 1 p 0.5 = 1. The worldwide median for 603 elections is within 2 percent of 1.00.KEY WORDS Ⅲ largest seat share Ⅲ laws of conservation Ⅲ logical quantitative models Ⅲ number of parties When changes in electoral rules or other conditions enable more parties to win seats in a representative assembly, the seat share of the largest party tends to go down. Is there some characteristic of the party system that tends to stay constant in the process? Is something conserved?The concept of a conserved quantity is important in many areas of science. Quantities such as energy, momentum, electric charge and (under certain conditions) mass are conserved when a closed system undergoes changes. It is worthwhile asking whether any quantities tend to be conserved in the course of political processes. Absolute in macroscopic physics, the conservation principles become probabilistic at quantum level. In social relations, a stochastic element can be expected, so that conservation could be expected to apply only to the median outcomes.This study tests a conservation relation for party systems that connects PA R T Y P O L I T I C S V O L 1 1 . N o . 3 pp. 283-298

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Conservation of Balance in the Size of Parties

Taagepera

2005

Party Politics

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“…The population size has been considered as one of the key variables affecting the form of local politics for a very long time (Dahl and Tufte, 1973;Newton, 1982;Anckar, 2000). Similarly, most studies in the Czech Republic confirmed that municipality size has a significant influence, for instance, on voter turnout as one of the indicators of citizen participation in local politics (Kostelecký, 2005;Ryšavý and Bernard, 2013).…”

Section: Determinants Of Women's Representation At the Local Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mgr. Pavel Maškarinec, Ph.D., Determinants of Women’s Descriptive Representation on the City Boards of the Czech Statutory Cities after the Local Elections of 2014

Maškarinec¹

2016

Slovak Journal of Political Sciences

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This paper focuses on question why is descriptive (or numerical) representation of women as local political leaders higher in some cities than in others? The paper focuses on the analysis of the determinants of women's political representation on city boards of the Czech statutory cities after the last local elections of 2014. We test some hypothesis, concerning two groups of factors that can potentially affect the success of women (socioeconomic and demographic, and political contextual), thus aiming to expand theoretical and empirical research which is in the case of determinants of women's representation at the local level underdeveloped. Overall, the analysis reveals that regression models explaining presence of women on the city boards were not generally too successful, with slightly better performance of the model using socioeconomic and demographic factors. Specifically, Moravia and municipality size proved as very strong predictors of presence of women on the city boards in negative, or positive direction, respectively (although in full model municipality size variable lost its significance), supplementing by the proportion of female councillors in same elections, which increased successfulness of women as well. In contrast, the share of women in local councils and on city boards in the previous electoral term was not proven as statistical significant, similarly as party affiliations' of city boards.

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“…Both demographic and socio-economic variables are at the heart of volatility (Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2015) and party fragmentation (Anckar 2000;Gabriel, Hoffmann-Martinot, and Savitch 2000;Dahlberg 2007;Bischoff 2013) at the municipal level. In municipal elections, population size is a key determinant of the political trust of residents (Denters 2002(Denters , 1843 and on voter turnout.…”

Section: Effects Of Municipal Conditions On Volatility and Fragmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increased levels of volatility and fragmentation have been identified as two major characteristics of western democracies in recent decades (WeBels et al 2014). Several studies found electoral volatility (Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2015) and party fragmentation (Anckar 2000;Gabriel, Hoffmann-Martinot, and Savitch 2000;Dahlberg 2007;Bischoff 2013) to be associated with demographic and socio-economic variables.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

VAAs as sources of volatility and fragmentation: self-selection effects and genuine effects

Kleinnijenhuis

Pol

Hoof

et al. 2016

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

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Recent studies show that using Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) affects party preferences of voters, and hence leads to party switching. Party switching is a necessary but insufficient condition for volatility (a net switch of voters to other parties) and fragmentation (more parties gaining seats) at the aggregate level of electoral constituencies. The research question addressed here is whether the availability of VAAs in electoral constituencies weakens or strengthens trends towards greater volatility and fragmentation as observed in western democracies in the last decades. The data come from 380 Dutch municipalities during the 2014 Dutch municipal council elections. In 133 of them a VAA was available. Using a moderated mediation model that controls for the municipal self-selection of a VAA, we find that a VAA by itself leads to higher levels of volatility and fragmentation. However, VAA availability has a dampening effect in municipal constituencies with characteristics (e.g. population size, ethnic diversity, young average age) that would otherwise make them more susceptible and prone to volatility and fragmentation.

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Size and Party System Fragmentation

Cited by 76 publications

References 7 publications

Conservation of Balance in the Size of Parties

Conservation of Balance in the Size of Parties

Mgr. Pavel Maškarinec, Ph.D., Determinants of Women’s Descriptive Representation on the City Boards of the Czech Statutory Cities after the Local Elections of 2014

VAAs as sources of volatility and fragmentation: self-selection effects and genuine effects

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