IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v47y2017i02p373-389_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Electoral Systems, Ethnic Heterogeneity and Party System Fragmentation

Author

Listed:
  • Lublin, David

Abstract

Taking into proper account the geographic distribution of ethnic groups and the operation of electoral systems within individual countries reveals that the impact of ethnic diversity and electoral systems on the number of parties has been underestimated. Contrary to earlier findings, this study reveals that ethnic diversity spurs party proliferation in countries with both majoritarian and proportional electoral systems, though the effect is stronger in the latter. The insights gained here provide a theoretically derived measure of ethnic diversity that is useful for estimating its effect on specifically political phenomena and generating an improved holistic measure of the impact of electoral systems. More crucially, the results indicate that electoral system designers have a greater capacity to structure electoral outcomes. The results rely on multivariate models created using a new database with election results from 1990 through 2011 in sixty-five free democracies.

Suggested Citation

  • Lublin, David, 2017. "Electoral Systems, Ethnic Heterogeneity and Party System Fragmentation," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 373-389, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:47:y:2017:i:02:p:373-389_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123415000137/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. Ignacio Lago & André Blais, 2017. "Decentralization and electoral swings," Working Papers. Collection B: Regional and sectoral economics 1702, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    2. Bluhm, Richard & Thomsson, Kaj, 2020. "Holding on? Ethnic divisions, political institutions and the duration of economic declines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(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:bjposi:v:47:y:2017:i:02:p:373-389_00. 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/jps .

    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.