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Duverger and the territory: Explaining deviations from the two-party-competition-law
Editors
Title / Series / Name
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties
Publication Volume
32
Publication Issue
3
Pages
Authors
Editors
Keywords
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/13816
Abstract
According to Duverger’s Law, plurality voting systems lead to two-party competition. However, many results of national parliamentary elections deviate from this rule. In contrast to previous research, which argues that in countries with territorial splits, regional two-party systems aggregate to national multi-party systems, this article shows that this explanation accounts for only a small proportion of the empirical exceptions to Duverger’s Law. Instead, this article distinguishes three explanations for Non-Duvergerian outcomes at the national level. The three mechanisms relate to the level of electoral constituencies, to the aggregation of constituency results, and to the interaction between constituency- and aggregation effects. This article assesses the explanatory power of each of the three explanations on an extensive sample of election results from plurality vote systems, linking national to constituency-level results.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2022
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1080/17457289.2019.1658195