Factors of party system fragmentation: A cross-national study

Abstract

This article uses a representative sample of elections held in 82 countries of the world (1993–2012) for a statistical analysis of factors that explain the number of parties in national legislative elections. The analysis confirms that the proliferation of candidates and/or parties at the district level contributes to the number of national parties, but the other crucial determinant is party system nationalisation. Several factors that are believed to have an impact on party system fragmentation, such as economic wealth, federalism, linguistic fractionalisation and population size, exert their influence on the number of national parties indirectly, by affecting either the number of district parties or party system nationalisation. At the same time, the significance of many other factors, especially those pertaining to electoral systems and the general political–institutional context, can be properly estimated only if the strongest determinants of system-level fragmentation are controlled for.

本文使用了世界82个国家选举（1993—2012）的代表性样本，对国家立法选举中决定政党数量的因素进行了统计分析。作者认为，地区层次的候选人以及/或政党层出不穷，对全国性政党的数量有所影响，而政党体系的全国化也是一个关键因素。有几个因素估计对政党体系的碎片化有影响，像经济财富、联邦主义、语言及人口规模等等便通过影响地区政党的数量或政党体系的全国化，而对全国性政党的数量产生了间接的影响。与此同时，其他许多因素，尤其是涉及选举制度以及一般政治—体制环境的因素，也可以进行恰当地评估，但要以决定了体制层面碎片化的最强因素作为对照。