Skip to main content
Intended for healthcare professionals
Restricted access
Other
First published online July 9, 2010

Dimensionality and the number of parties in legislative elections

Heather StollView all authors and affiliations
Volume 17, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068809346263

Abstract

This article explores how the party-defined dimensionality of political competition relates to the number of parties competing in legislative elections. It demonstrates that a mathematical relationship between the number of electoral parties and the literature’s concept of dimensionality follows from the variables’ definitions; conversely, it argues that exploring the relationship between the number of electoral parties and a different concept of dimensionality conveys new information. Hence, it first argues that how we conceptualize dimensionality matters. Redirecting attention to the latter relationship, it then hypothesizes that party system fragmentation will go hand-in-hand with the appearance of new conflicts on the political agenda when the electoral system is permissive. Using a time-series cross-sectional dataset that includes at its core a new measure of dimensionality, it finds reasonable support for the hypotheses; however, at the elite level, new parties are found to play less of a role in politicizing new conflicts than expected.

Get full access to this article

View all access and purchase options for this article.

Get Access
1.
Early versions of this article were presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, 31 August to 3 September and the 2006 National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 20—23 April. An even earlier version can be found as parts of Chapters 4 and 5 of my dissertation. Thanks to Jim Adams; Michael McDonald; Benjamin Nyblade; Lorelei Moosbrugger; Jack Nagel; Tony McGann; Garrett Glasgow (in no particular order); and several anonymous referees for helpful comments on and/or discussions related to the article. All remaining errors of course remain my responsibility.
2.
1. To elaborate, parties may place conflicts that are salient within society on the political agenda (e.g. Cantillon, 2001); parties may seek to suppress conflicts that are salient within society by keeping them off of the political agenda (Cantillon, 2001); and parties may also seek to shape the set of societally relevant conflicts by putting conflicts not salient within society on the political agenda (Przeworski and Sprague, 1986). We note that conflicts salient within society are in turn likely to have roots in society’s exogenous or latent features such as its ethnic heterogeneity (Clark and Golder, 2006). However, relating these various spaces to one another is a topic beyond the scope of this article; see Stoll (2004) for some preliminary steps in this direction.
3.
2. This becomes even clearer when we take into account the conventional understanding of ‘political’ or ‘politicized’ in the electoral and party systems literature: that a political party breathes organizational life into the conflict (e.g. Bartolini and Mair, 1990).
4.
3. In fact, regarding its nomenclature, Lijphart’s earliest work (1981) used the term ‘ideological dimensions’. We can only speculate as to why he later (in 1984) switched to the less appropriate label of ‘issue dimensions’, which subsequent scholars then adopted.
5.
4. Laver and Hunt (1992: 23—4) term this version of the concept the ‘real’ dimensionality. We employ the label ‘raw’ instead of ‘real’ because the latter seems to imply that this definition of the concept is superior to others, an implication that we do not intend. Instead, we side with Collier and Alcock (1999: 539) in believing that ‘how scholars understand and operationalize a concept can and should depend on what they are going to do with it’.
6.
5. Alternatively, if his intent was to measure the raw dimensionality, the high association between the number of dimensions and the number of parties that he finds, in part a function of the prior coding decision, suggests that these measurements may have fallen victim to coding bias, that is, to the value of the dependent variable, the number of parties, influencing the coding of the independent variable, the dimensionality (Stoll, 2004).
7.
6. The CMP matches the quasi-sentences of each party’s manifesto for a particular election with a coding category of policy, such as ‘Free Enterprise’ and ‘Foreign Special Relationships: Positive’. The number of quasi-sentences in each category is then an indicator of the salience of that policy issue to the party. See Budge et al. (2001), and particularly the Appendix to the latter volume, for a detailed description of the project.
8.
7. Although this is ostensibly a measure of issue dimensionality, it is better viewed as a measure of ideological dimensionality, because the procedure just described simultaneously collapses issue into ideological dimensions, as we argued above in general terms.
9.
8. Let vi be the vote-share of the ith political party competing in an election. Then the effective number of electoral parties for that election is calculated as follows:■
10.
9. These scholars have not tested the direct linkage between the party-defined political agenda and new parties; rather, they have tested the indirect linkage between the voter-defined political agenda and new parties. Moreover, the measures of new societal issues have been indirect proxies such as the size of the population and ethnic heterogeneity.
11.
10. See, for example, Kitschelt’s (1997) work on the emergence of the authoritarian—libertarian dimension and the rise of radical right political parties in Western Europe. See also Meguid’s (2005) work on how the success of niche (green and radical right) parties depends upon mainstream parties’ responses to their entry, although we note that she black-boxes the question of entry (i.e. new party formation) itself.
12.
11. For example, Lipset and Marks (2000) argue that one of the reasons why third parties have failed in the United States is the electoral system, which impedes successful third-party entry. They argue that the other major reason is the institutional porousness of the Democratic and Republican parties, which leaves them vulnerable to internal takeovers. But see Chhibber and Kollman (2004) for an alternative institutional explanation.
13.
12. We calculate this statistic using Taagepera’s (1997) method of bounds. This procedure is designed to deal with small parties, which are commonly lumped together in one ‘other’ category by most election statistics.
14.
13. New parties are those that either result from a split in an existing party or are genuinely new; they do not include mergers and electoral alliances (see, for example, Tavits, 2006: 106). An alternative operationalization is simply the raw number of electoral parties, unweighted by vote-shares. However, we are unaware of existing time-series cross-sectional data on this variable (e.g. Tavits, 2006: 116).
15.
14. In earlier work, we developed several measures of what we have called the raw ideological dimensionality (Stoll, 2004). The measure introduced in this article makes only one minor change (which we believe is an improvement) to the most preferred of those measures, which we note leads to similar conclusions to those reported here. See the supplemental paper available from the author’s website for details regarding this and other models discussed but not presented in this article. We are unaware of other existing measures of the raw ideological dimensionality.
16.
15. See Stoll (2004) for a review of existing expert surveys as well as other data-generation procedures such as elite surveys. Unfortunately, large-N surveys have always focused on empirically identifying party positions along a common left—right dimension — not on quantitatively eliciting differences in dimensionality across either space or time. Leaving aside practicality, theoretical reasons for preferring the CMP to expert judgements are offered by Budge (2000). The most heated criticism of the CMP has focused on its use of issue salience to construct measures of parties’ positions (e.g. Laver and Garry, 2000), which is not how either we or Nyblade (2004) use it. Rather, we take the salience of issues in parties’ manifestos as an indicator of the salience of the issues to parties: salience is salience is salience, in other words. Other criticism of the CMP has focused upon its reliability (e.g. Mikhaylov et al., 2008). While we recognize this to be a concern, there is no available alternative source of data for us to use; moreover, to the extent that the CMP data are plagued by non-systematic measurement error, our findings will be biased downwards. Hence, we are stacking the deck against our hypotheses.
17.
16. Majoritarian electoral systems are those that use either plurality rule; absolute and qualified majority requirements; the alternative vote; or the single non-transferable vote (Golder, 2005). Of the countries in our analysis, Australia, Canada, France (except 1986), pre-1996 Japan, pre-1996 New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States employ majoritarian electoral systems using this definition. A well-known alternative operationalization is the logged average district magnitude (see, for example, Clark and Golder, 2006). The drawback to this operationalization is that it equates countries like Germany that have mixed-member proportional (i.e. permissive) electoral systems with countries like the United Kingdom that have plurality, single-member district (i.e. restrictive) electoral systems: both have average lower-tier district magnitudes of one. This strikes us as a significant disadvantage. Nevertheless, we note that using this measure instead of the simple dummy variable for majoritarianism yields similar conclusions about the hypotheses when the raw ideological dimensionality is employed, but less support when using the raw issue dimensionality.
18.
17. We do not include country fixed effects for consistency with the literature. However, including them yields generally similar results, with only H2 receiving less support. A random effects model is not used because our dataset is not clearly panel in structure, as per Beck and Katz (1996).
19.
18. In spite of their inclusion in the CMP, we — like Golder (2005) — exclude the Italian 1946 and Portuguese 1975 constituent assembly elections, as well as the sub-national Luxembourgian 1945—51 elections. We take data for the five CMP elections that do not appear in Golder (Canada 1945; Denmark 1945; Finland 1945; Norway 1945; and the United Kingdom 1945) from Stoll (2004). Note that we confine ourselves to the CMP’s advanced industrial democracies, that is, we exclude Turkey, out of a fear of comparing apples to oranges.
20.
19. Dropping either Belgium, Italy or Japan does not substantively alter the conclusions reported below. We drop the latter two countries because of the fragmenting of their party systems and the former because the CMP is based on an analysis of newspaper coverage of Japanese parties’ positions, not on their actual election manifestos. We thank Benjamin Nyblade for bringing the latter point to our attention.
21.
20. Allowing the number of new parties to serve as the dependent variable for consistency with the other models and using negative binomial regression yields substantively similar conclusions regarding H2 when using our measure of the raw ideological dimensionality, but less support when using Nyblade’s (2004) measure of raw issue dimensionality.
22.
21. Beck and Katz (1995) drew attention to the potential problem of cross-country contemporaneous correlations with political economy data. However, there are few electoral equivalents of global economic shocks, which suggests that this problem is not likely to surface in our dataset. Furthermore, even if we did worry about cross-country contemporaneous correlations, it would be difficult to obtain good estimates with few common time periods across countries and T << N.
23.
22. An alternative robust estimator, the country-clustered, yields less support for the hypotheses, particularly when using the measure of raw issue dimensionality from Nyblade (2004); however, the conclusions reported here remain substantively supported when using our measure of raw ideological dimensionality.
24.
23. Using the notation of these equations, the calculation is as follows: for permissive (non-majoritarian) electoral systems, the marginal effect is simply equal to β1; for restrictive (majoritarian) electoral systems, it is β1 + β3.

References

Bartolini, Stefano and Peter Mair ( 1990) Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability: The Stabilization of European Electorates, 1885-1985. New York : Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Beck, Nathaniel and Jonathan N. Katz ( 1995) ‘What To Do (and Not To Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data’, American Political Science Review 89: 634-47.
Google Scholar
Beck, Nathaniel and Jonathan N. Katz ( 1996) ‘Nuisance vs. Substance: Specifying and Estimating Time-Series Cross-Section Models’, Political Analysis 6: 1-36.
Google Scholar
Benoit, Kenneth ( 2002) ‘The Endogeneity Problem in Electoral Studies: A Critical Re-Examination of Duverger’s Mechanical Effect’, Electoral Studies 21: 35-46.
Google Scholar
Brambor, Thomas, William Clark and Matt Golder ( 2005) ‘Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses’, Political Analysis 14: 63-82.
Google Scholar
Budge, Ian ( 2000) ‘Expert Judgments of Party Policy Positions: Uses and Limitations in Political Research’, European Journal of Political Research 37: 103-13.
Google Scholar
Budge, Ian, David Robertson and Derek Hearl (eds) ( 1981) Ideology, Strategy and Party Change: Spatial Analyses of Post-War Election Programmes in 19 Democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Budge, Ian, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara and Eric Tanenbaum (eds) (2001) Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments 1945-1998. New York : Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Cantillon, Estelle ( 2001) ‘Electoral Rules and the Emergence of New Issue Dimensions’. Discussion Paper 1291, Cowles Foundation.
Google Scholar
Carmines, Edward G. and James A. Stimson ( 1989) Issue Evolution: Race and the Trans-formation of American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep and Ken Kollman ( 2004) The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Britain, Canada, India, and the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Clark, William Roberts and Matt Golder ( 2006) ‘Rehabilitating Duverger’s Theory: Testing the Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effect of Electoral Laws’, Comparative Political Studies 39: 679-708.
Google Scholar
Collier, David and Robert Alcock ( 1999) ‘Democracy and Dichotomies: A Pragmatic Approach to Choices about Concepts’, Annual Review of Political Science 2: 537-65.
Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony ( 1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.
Google Scholar
Duverger, Maurice ( 1963) Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. New York: Wiley .
Google Scholar
Golder, Matt ( 2005) ‘Democratic Electoral Systems Around the World, 1946-2000’, Electoral Studies 24: 103-21.
Google Scholar
Harmel, Robert and John D. Robertson ( 1985) ‘Formation and Success of New Parties: A Cross-National Analysis’, International Political Science Review 6: 501-23.
Google Scholar
Hinich, Melvin J. and Michael C. Munger ( 1997) Analytical Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Hug, Simon ( 2001) Altering Party Systems: Strategic Behavior and the Emergence of New Political Parties in Western Democracies. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert, with Anthony J. McGann (1997) The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Google Scholar
Laakso, Markku and Rein Taagepera ( 1979) ‘Effective Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to Western Europe’, Comparative Political Studies 12: 3-27.
Google Scholar
Laver, Michael and John Garry ( 2000) ‘Estimating Policy Positions from Political Texts’, American Journal of Political Science 44: 619-34.
Google Scholar
Laver, Michael and Ben Hunt ( 1992) Policy and Party Competition. New York : Routledge.
Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend ( 1981) ‘Political Parties: Ideologies and Programs’, in David Butler, Howard R. Penniman and Austin Ranney (eds) Democracy at the Polls: A Comparative Study of Competitive National Elections . Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend ( 1984) Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend ( 1999) Patterns of Democracy. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin ( 1960) Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. London: Doubleday.
Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin and Gary Marks ( 2000) It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States. New York: W. W. Norton .
Google Scholar
Meguid, Bonnie ( 2005) ‘Competition Between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party Success’, American Political Science Review 99: 347-59.
Google Scholar
Mikhaylov, Slava, Michael Laver and Kenneth Benoit ( 2008) ‘Coder Reliability and Misclassification in Comparative Manifesto Project Codings’. Paper presented at the National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 3-6 April.
Google Scholar
Molinar, Juan ( 1991) ‘Counting the Number of Parties: An Alternative Index’, American Political Science Review 85: 1383-91.
Google Scholar
Monroe, Burt L. and Ko Maeda ( 2004) ‘Rhetorical Idea Point Estimation: Mapping Legislative Speech’. Paper presented at the Society for Political Methodology Summer Meeting, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, 29-31 July.
Google Scholar
Nagel, Jack ( 1994) ‘How Many Parties Will New Zealand Have under MMP ?’ Political Science 46: 139-60.
Google Scholar
Newey, Whitney K. and Kenneth D. West ( 1987) ‘A Simple, Positive-Definite, Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Consistent Covariance Matrix’, Econometrica 55: 703-8.
Google Scholar
Nyblade, Benjamin ( 2004) ‘The ‘‘Effective’’ Number of Issue Dimensions: A Measure with Application to West Europe’. Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association National Conference, Chicago, IL.
Google Scholar
Powell, G. Bingham ( 2000) Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam and John Sprague ( 1986) Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Riker, William ( 1986) The Art of Political Manipulation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
Stoll, Heather ( 2004) ‘Social Cleavages, Political Institutions and Party Systems: Putting Preferences Back into the Fundamental Equation of Politics’ (PhD Diss.), Stanford University.
Google Scholar
Taagepera, Rein ( 1997) ‘Effective Number of Parties for Incomplete Data’, Electoral Studies 16: 145-51.
Google Scholar
Taagepera, Rein ( 1999) ‘The Number of Parties as a Function of Heterogeneity and Electoral System’, Comparative Political Studies 32: 531-48.
Google Scholar
Taagepera, Rein and Bernard Grofman ( 1985) ‘Rethinking Duverger’s Law: Predicting the Effective Number of Parties in Plurality and PR Systems: Parties Minus Issues Equals One’, European Journal of Political Research 13: 341-53.
Google Scholar
Taagepera, Rein and Matthew Shugart ( 1989) Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Google Scholar
Tavits, Margit ( 2006) ‘Party System Change: Testing a Model of New Party Entry’, Party Politics 12: 99-119.
Google Scholar

Cite article

Cite article

Cite article

OR

Download to reference manager

If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice

Share options

Share

Share this article

Share with email
EMAIL ARTICLE LINK
Share on social media

Share access to this article

Sharing links are not relevant where the article is open access and not available if you do not have a subscription.

For more information view the Sage Journals article sharing page.

Information, rights and permissions

Information

Published In

Volume 17, Issue 3
Pages: 405 - 429
Article first published online: July 9, 2010
Issue published: May 2011

Keywords

  1. electoral systems
  2. industrialized democracies
  3. new parties
  4. party fragmentation
  5. party systems

Rights and permissions

© The Author(s) 2010.
Request permissions for this article.

Authors

Affiliations

Heather Stoll
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, [email protected]
View all articles by this author

Metrics and citations

Metrics

Journals metrics

This article was published in Party Politics.

VIEW ALL JOURNAL METRICS

Article usage*

Total views and downloads: 216

*Article usage tracking started in December 2016

Altmetric

See the impact this article is making through the number of times it’s been read, and the Altmetric Score.
Learn more about the Altmetric Scores


Articles citing this one

Receive email alerts when this article is cited

Web of Science: 32 view articles Opens in new tab

Crossref: 37

  1. Ideological ambiguity and political spectrum
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  2. Party fragmentation, political predispositions, and delayed voting dec...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  3. Electoral Coordination Under Simple and Complex Electoral Systems: A T...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  4. Past the saturation point: Why voters switch from mainstream to niche ...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  5. Distance, dissatisfaction or a Deficit in attention: why do citizens v...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  6. Wedge Issue Politics in Japan: Why Not Revising the Constitution is He...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  7. Making countries small: The nationalization of districts in the United...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  8. Does the number of candidates increase turnout? Causal evidence from t...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  9. Congruence in Proportional Representation Systems: Non‐E...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  10. Party competition and the structuring of party preferences by the left...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  11. Die Struktur des Parteienwettbewerbs im Vereinigten Königreich
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  12. The Dimensionality of Political Space—An Agent-Based Model
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  13. Government Policies, New Voter Coalitions, and the Emergence of Ethnic...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  14. Less is more: The paradox of choice in voting behavior
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  15. Survival of the fittest. Comparing entry and exit among niche and main...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  16. Appealing broadly while appearing unified: Resolving an electoral dile...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  17. Adapt or Perish? How Parties Respond to Party System Saturation in 21 ...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  18. Party system dimensionality and perceived quality of representation
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  19. Being Heard above the Noise: The Role of Incumbent Issue Diversity in ...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  20. Having Their Say: Authority, Voice, and Satisfaction with Democracy
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  21. Does the Number of Candidates Increase Turnout? Causal Evidence From T...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  22. Theoretical Expectations and Actual Outcomes of Electoral Systems: How...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  23. Socioeconomic Development and Party System Fragmentation Cross‐Nationa...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  24. Multidimensional incongruence and vote switching in Europe
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  25. Teoretické očakávania a skutočné výstupy volebných systémov: Ako merať...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  26. Working through the issues: how issue diversity and ideological disagr...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  27. Explaining the effective number of parties: Beyond the standard model
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  28. Competing on the issues...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  29. Multidimensional government-citizen congruence and satisfaction with d...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  30. Elections as Poorer Reflections of Preferences Under Compulsory Voting
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  31. Getting it (approximately) right (and center and left!): Reliability a...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  32. Building policy scales from manifesto data: A referential content vali...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  33. How population size affects party systems and cabinet duration
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  34. POLITICAL SPACES, DIMENSIONALITY DECLINE AND PARTY COMPETITION
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  35. Where Do Parties Live? Electoral Institutions, Party Incentives, and t...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  36. Complexity in the European party space: Exploring dimensionality with ...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  37. Voice and trust in parliamentary representation
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar

Figures and tables

Figures & Media

Tables

View Options

Get access

Access options

If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:

Alternatively, view purchase options below:

Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.

Subscribe to this journal

Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.

Start 2 week free trial
Need help?

View options

PDF/ePub

View PDF/ePub
Download PDF

Also from Sage