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Paper

The Number of Parties: New Evidence from Local Elections Benoit, Kenneth Uploaded 08-11-1998 Keywords electoral systems regression analysis Duverger political parties Hungary Abstract Theory: Duverger's ``Law'' concerning the structural and psychological consequences of electoral rules has been much studied in both single cases and in multinational samples, but these suffer from several common theoretical and empirical shortcomings that make their estimates suspect. Besides resort to experimental data, another solution is to select a carefully controlled election dataset where the precise nature of the processes generating the data is understood. Local elections provide a means to control social cleavages as well as to provide a potentially large number of observations. Hypotheses: The size of electoral districts, as well as the type of electoral formula, will influence the number of parties that compete, the concentration of support for these parties, and the number of parties that win seats, even when the elections are confined to one country at the subnational level. In addition, the greater number of observations should provide very precise estimates of these effects. Methods: Regression analysis of district magnitude with an interactive term characterizing rules as proportional or plurality. The data come from 8,377 Hungarian local elected bodies consisting of municipal councils, county councils, town councils, and mayors. Results: The results extend previous research on Duverger's effects, providing more precise estimates that may be compared directly to previous results. In addition, the analysis of rare multi-member plurality elections reveals a counter-intuitive result about candidate and party entry in response to these rules, suggesting several directions for future investigation of MMP rules.