The effects of district magnitude and social diversity on party system fragmentation in majoritarian systems

Abstract

Cross-national models of party system fragmentation hold that social diversity and district magnitude interact: higher levels of district magnitude allow for greater expression of social diversity that leads to higher levels of party system fragmentation. Most models, however, ignore differences between majoritarian and proportional electoral rules, which may significantly alter the impact of district magnitude, as well as the way in which district magnitude impacts the translation of social cleavages into party system fragmentation. Examining the case of Singapore suggests majoritarian multimember districts limit party system fragmentation, particularly by reducing the degree to which ethnic and religious diversity are translated into political parties. Applying these insights to a standard cross-national model of party system fragmentation, the results suggest that majoritarian multimember districts produce lower levels of party system fragmentation than proportional multimember districts.Key Words: district magnitude; party systems; ethnic diversity; religious diversity 2 Cross-national models of party system fragmentation hold that social diversity and district magnitude interact: higher levels of district magnitude allow for greater expression of social diversity that leads to higher levels of party system fragmentation. Most models, however, ignore differences between majoritarian and proportional electoral rules, which may significantly alter the impact of district magnitude, as well as the way in which district magnitude impacts the translation of social cleavages into party system fragmentation. Examining the case of Singapore suggests majoritarian multimember districts limit party system fragmentation, particularly by reducing the degree to which ethnic and religious diversity are translated into political parties. Applying these insights to a standard cross-national model of party system fragmentation, the results suggest that majoritarian multimember districts produce lower levels of party system fragmentation than proportional multimember districts. 1Previous research shows that the fragmentation of the party system -both in terms of the number of parties and the degree to which votes are distributed across these parties -is determined in large part by the diversity of countries' social cleavage structures and the electoral system(s) in which elections are conducted. This literature argues that higher levels of social diversity lead to more fragmented party systems, particularly in proportional representation (PR) electoral systems with high levels of district magnitude (the number of seats awarded per district). Using measures of ethnic diversity as proxies for social diversity more generally, these expectations have been borne out in previous studies showing that party systems become more fragmented as district magnitude increases (e.g. Taagepera and Shugart, 1989;Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1994;Amorim Neto and Cox, 1997;Clark and Golder, 2006; Singer and Stephenson, 2009).That being said,...

The struggle for Singapore’s Chinese heartland: The People’s Action Party versus the Workers’ Party versus the Singapore Democratic Party, 1998–2013

“…7 By contrast, the ‘hegemonic’ (N Tan, 2015: 200) PAP machine held 21 seats (14 out of 14 GRCs and seven out of nine SMCs) and had 82 MPs during this time period. Significantly, and much to its dismay, the opposition had failed to win a single GRC since the government had introduced the GRC system ostensibly to ensure minority ethnic-group representation in Parliament (Raymond, 2017: 315) back in 1988.…”

“…2 Similarly, Nathan F Batto (2019: 88) explains that, in Taiwanese politics, ‘[w]hen the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] stressed identity in the early 1990s, its support was driven down to the small group of Taiwan nationalists; [but] when it pivoted towards democratization, it was able to expand its support base’. Christopher D Raymond (2017: 315) provides some theoretical explanation as follows:[E]thnically exclusive parties [pure Chinese-educated, working-class parties, for example] are not viable in majoritarian multimember districts: owing to their size, ethnic groups constituting a small share of the population are unable to propel ethnically exclusive parties to victory, and thus must co-operate with other ethnic groups.A crucial point in regards to Singapore is that ‘[d]espite moderate levels of ethnic diversity, each of the major ethnic groups…votes overwhelmingly for the PAP’ (Raymond, 2017: 315). 3 However, the statistics cited by Raymond (2017: 316, Table 1) do not divide the ethnic Chinese into Chinese-educated and English-educated.…”

“… 3. Empirically, using a multi-country database, Raymond (2017: 322) shows, in his Figure 4, that ‘the use of majoritarian multimember districts is associated with lower levels of party system fragmentation than both multimember districts in PR [proportional representation] systems and majoritarian single-member district systems’. In other words, the PAP was smart, from a self-interested perspective, in introducing the GRC system. …”