The organizational ecology of ethnic cleavages: The nonlinear effects of ethnic diversity on party system fragmentation

Abstract

This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Electoral Studies. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Electoral Studies, [VOL 37, March 2015] doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2014 General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. AbstractThe conventional wisdom regarding party system fragmentation assumes that the effects of electoral systems and social cleavages are linear. However, recent work applying organizational ecology theories to the study of party systems has challenged the degree to which electoral system effects are linear. This paper applies such concepts to the study of social cleavages. Drawing from theories of organizational ecology and the experience of many ethnically diverse African party systems, I argue that the effects of ethnic diversity are nonlinear, with party system fragmentation increasing until reaching moderate levels of diversity before declining as diversity reaches extreme values. Examining this argument cross-nationally, the results show that accounting for nonlinearity in ethnic diversity effects significantly improves model fit.1

Not all social cleavages are the same: On the relationship between religious diversity and party system fragmentation

“…I use this measure of ethnic diversity in order to follow the practice of Clark and Golder (2006), who calculate the effective number of ethnic groups using data from Fearon (2003). 5 Because some research has documented nonlinearity in the relationship between ethnic diversity and party system fragmentation (Raymond 2015), I use the logged effective number of ethnic groups.…”

“…I use this measure of ethnic diversity in order to follow the practice of Clark and Golder (2006), who calculate the effective number of ethnic groups using data from Fearon (2003). 5 Because some research has documented nonlinearity in the relationship between ethnic diversity and party system fragmentation (Raymond 2015 One concern with estimating the effects of electoral systems on party system fragmentation is the possibility the choice of electoral systems is endogenous (e.g. Boix 1999;Colomer 2005;Leeman and Mares 2014).…”

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

“…Christian religions (which are broken down into Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and other), for possible curvilinear relationships between ethnic diversity and religious diversity on the one hand and party system fragmentation on the other (Raymond, 2015), I take the natural logarithm of both ethnic diversity (LogEthnic) and religious diversity (LogReligious).…”

Electoral Institutions, Social Diversity and Fragmentation of Party Systems: A Reassessment

“… Several studies (Clark and Golder : 288f; Raymond : 113; Riera : 137) indicate that ENPV can be distorted when the results of small parties are combined into an “other” category in official election results. In our dataset, we were able to gather the actual share of the vote in almost all cases, even for very small parties.…”

“…There are a few exceptions for the districts with majority rule in the Canton of Uri and for the single‐member districts in the Canton of Schwyz in which a few percent of votes were allocated to diverse candidates in each. Only in three cases the 15 percent value for the “other” category was exceeded (considered critical by Clark and Golder : 289 and Raymond : 113).…”