IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v41y2011i02p341-361_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Party-System Extremism in Majoritarian and Proportional Electoral Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Dow, Jay K.

Abstract

This study evaluates the extent of party-system extremism in thirty-one electoral democracies as a function of electoral-system proportionality. It uses data from the Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems project to estimate the extent of party-system compactness or dispersion across polities and to determine whether more proportional systems foster greater ideological divergence among parties. Electoral system characteristics most associated with party-system compactness in the ideological space are investigated. The empirics show that more proportional systems support greater ideological dispersion, while less proportional systems encourage parties to cluster nearer the centre of the electoral space. This finding is maintained in several sub-samples of national elections and does not depend on the inclusion of highly majoritarian systems (such as the United Kingdom).

Suggested Citation

  • Dow, Jay K., 2011. "Party-System Extremism in Majoritarian and Proportional Electoral Systems," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(2), pages 341-361, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:41:y:2011:i:02:p:341-361_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123410000360/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. 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.
    2. Köppl-Turyna, Monika, 2014. "Campaign finance regulations and policy convergence: The role of interest groups and valence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 1-19.
    3. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2016. "The Influence of Party Affiliations on Representation of Voter Preferences in Majoritarian vs. Proportional Systems," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145705, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Stadelmann, David & Torrens, Gustavo & Portmann, Marco, 2020. "Mapping the theory of political representation to the empirics: An investigation for proportional and majoritarian rules," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 548-560.
    5. Royce Carroll & Hiroki Kubo, 2018. "Polarization and ideological congruence between parties and supporters in Europe," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 247-265, July.
    6. Nikitas Konstantinidis & Konstantinos Matakos & Hande Mutlu-Eren, 2019. "“Take back control”? The effects of supranational integration on party-system polarization," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 297-333, June.
    7. Castater Eric Graig, 2015. "Unionization and the partisan effect on income inequality," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-40, April.

    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:41:y:2011:i:02:p:341-361_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.