IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v80y1986i02p489-504_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reformulating the Cube Law for Proportional Representation Elections

Author

Listed:
  • Taagepera, Rein

Abstract

The cube law was proposed around 1910 to express the conversion of a party's vote shares into its seat share in two-party plurality elections with single-seat districts. This article develops predictive seat-vote equations for a much wider range of elections, including those involving many parties, single- and multi-seat districts, and diverse seat allocation rules such as plurality and list proportional representation (PR). Without any statistical curve fitting based on the seat and vote shares themselves, the basic features of the conversion are predicted using exogenous parameters: magnitude and number of districts, number of parties, and total size of the electorate and of the assembly. The link between the proposed equations and the original cube law is explicated. Using an existing data base, the fit of the predictive model is examined. On balance, this model accounts well for the conversion of votes to seats, and for the deviation from proportionality in PR systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Taagepera, Rein, 1986. "Reformulating the Cube Law for Proportional Representation Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(2), pages 489-504, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:80:y:1986:i:02:p:489-504_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400183200/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dario Debowicz & Alejandro Saporiti & Yizhi Wang, 2021. "Redistribution, power sharing and inequality concern," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(2), pages 197-228, August.
    2. Rein Taagepera, 2001. "Party Size Baselines Imposed by Institutional Constraints," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 13(4), pages 331-354, October.
    3. Pinheiro, Flavio, 2014. "A Protectionist Bias in Proportional Politics: Assessing How Electoral Institutions Affect Tariff Levels," SocArXiv xp5zm, Center for Open Science.
    4. Konstantinos Matakos & Orestis Troumpounis & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2015. "Turnout and Polarization Under Alternative Electoral Systems," Studies in Political Economy, in: Norman Schofield & Gonzalo Caballero (ed.), The Political Economy of Governance, edition 127, pages 335-362, Springer.
    5. Jarosław Flis & Wojciech Słomczyński & Dariusz Stolicki, 2020. "Pot and ladle: a formula for estimating the distribution of seats under the Jefferson–D’Hondt method," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 201-227, January.
    6. De Santo, Alessia & Le Maux, Benoît, 2023. "On the optimal size of legislatures: An illustrated literature review," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    7. Geoffrey Pritchard & Mark C. Wilson, 2023. "Multi-district preference modelling," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 587-613, February.
    8. Andersen, Jørgen Juel & Heggedal, Tom-Reiel, 2019. "Political rents and voter information in search equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 146-168.
    9. Kaare Strom, 1989. "Inter-party Competition in Advanced Democracies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 1(3), pages 277-300, July.
    10. Kåre Vernby, 2007. "Strikes are more common in countries with majoritarian electoral systems," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 65-84, July.
    11. Bol, Damien & Matakos, Konstantinos & Troumpounis, Orestis & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2019. "Electoral rules, strategic entry and polarization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:80:y:1986:i:02:p:489-504_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.