scholarly journals A Two-Party System Under the Proportional Rule is Possible: Strategic Voting in the Lab

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco De Sinopoli ◽  
Giovanna Iannantuoni ◽  
Valeria Maggian ◽  
Stefania Ottone
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Proportional Rule

EAST TIMOR'S FOUNDING ELECTIONS AND EMERGING PARTY SYSTEM

Asian Survey ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 745-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwight Y. King
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
District Level ◽  
Mountain Region ◽  
Western Region ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Voting Choice

Abstract East Timor's statehood was launched with two U.N.-supervised elections, one in August 2001 to elect the Constituent Assembly (which became the parliament) and the second in April 2002 to elect the head of state. Analysis of district-level returns from the Assembly election reveals two types of strategic voting, three lines of political cleavage in the electorate, and two legacies of Indonesian rule. This article analyzes East Timor's first two elections, with particular focus on the bases of voting choice and on the nascent party system. There are three main findings: (1) a higher level of political savvy among the citizenry than expected, given their poverty and lack of formal education; (2) three political cleavages, one generational and two regional-one that divides the eastern from the western region and one that distinguishes the central mountain region from the rest of the country; and (3) areas that under Indonesian rule had voted heavily for the ““opposition”” party have now switched to FRETILIN, the new predominant party.

Literacy, Information, and Party System Fragmentation in India

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 555-586
Author(s):  
Arturas Rozenas ◽  
Anoop Sadanandan
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Common Information ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
Individual Information

A rich theoretical literature argues that, in contradiction to Duverger’s law, the plurality voting rule can fail to produce two-party system when voters do not share their common information about the electoral situation. We present an empirical operationalization and a series of tests of this informational hypothesis in the case of India using constituency- and individual-level data. In highly illiterate constituencies where access to information and information sharing among voters is low, voters often fail to coordinate on the two most viable parties. In highly literate constituencies, voters are far more successful at avoiding vote-wasting—in line with the informational hypothesis. At a microlevel, these aggregate-level patterns are driven by the interaction of individual information and the informational context: In dense informational environments, even low-information voters can successfully identify viable parties and vote for them, but in sparse informational environments, individual access to information is essential for successful strategic voting.

scholarly journals Poisson voting games under proportional rule

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco De Sinopoli ◽  
Claudia Meroni
Keyword(s):  
Nash Equilibrium ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Proportional Rule ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Expected Number ◽  
Voting Games ◽  
Unique Nash Equilibrium

AbstractWe analyze strategic voting under proportional rule and two parties, embedding the basic spatial model into the Poisson framework of population uncertainty. We prove that there exists a unique Nash equilibrium. We show that it is characterized by a cutpoint in the policy space that is always located between the average of the two parties’ positions and the median of the distribution of voters’ types. We also show that, as the expected number of voters goes to infinity, the equilibrium converges to that of the case with deterministic population size.

Political Learning in Post-Communist Elections

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-728 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Dawisha ◽  
Stephen Deets
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Political Learning ◽  
East European ◽  
Critical Information ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Previous Election

This article draws several conclusions. First, that elections provide critical information for shaping behavior, since in the second and third rounds, party elites and voters behaved in ways that were rational considering the outcome of the previous election. Second, on the whole, states have adopted a variety of systems and rarely changed them in major ways after the second round of elections, indicating that electoral systems quickly become constraining institutions. Where they have been changed, movement has been away from the extremes of either high disproportionality or proportionality. Third, results from the first three rounds of elections indicate declines in party system fragmentation, disproportionality, volatility, and wasted votes, indicating a growth in strategic voting. Finally, except in the very important case of party volatility, and Russia, the view that there is a generalized gap between the post-Soviet cases and the East European cases is not supported by the evidence.

Strategic Voting Under Conditions of Uncertainty: A Re-Evaluation of Duverger's Law

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILY CLOUGH
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
The Way

Political scientists have long recognized that the number of parties in a country influences the way that interests are represented in that country. One explanation for the number of parties in a system relies on the idea of strategic voting, i.e. voters may not want to ‘waste a vote’ by voting for a third party. However, work in this area does not address the role of an important factor that may affect party systems through strategic voting: information. Without polls, how could voters know which parties were likely to win, and hence how to vote strategically? Using an agent-based model, this article assesses the role that information plays in shaping the party system through strategic voting. The results of this model demonstrate that, contrary to Duverger's Law, more than two parties may emerge in single-member plurality systems, even when all voters are strategic.

The resilience of ethnic minority parties in the face of strategic voting incentives

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 560-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Allen
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Party System ◽  
System Size ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
District Level ◽  
Ethnic Parties ◽  
German Länder ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Heterogeneity ◽  
Restrictive Settings

Recent research has indicated that social heterogeneity impacts party system size, even in restrictive settings. This research as yet has not established whether it is minority or majority voters who are behaving outside Duvergerian expectations. This study argues that it is ethnic voters that seem to defect from their parties at lower rates, which explains why small parties proliferate and persist in heterogeneous states. This hypothesis is tested on party-in-district level election returns in the German lander Schleswig-Holstein. The results show that small ethnic parties suffer notably less defection than small non-ethnic parties. The study proposes a number of potential causal mechanisms that could be driving ethnic voters, as a group, to defect at lower rates than non-ethnic voters.

Strategic Voting in Plurality Elections: A Simulation of Duverger's Law

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (02) ◽  
pp. 393-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Endersby ◽  
Kelly B. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Ideological Dimension ◽  
Tactical Decisions ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Experiments designed as an election simulation involve participants in an investigation of strategic voting. Participants assigned political preferences and informed of candidate/party positions on an ideological dimension respond to and learn the results of two public opinion polls before voting. When given two alternatives, the participants vote sincerely. Confronted with three or more alternatives, participants make tactical decisions to narrow the field. Strategic behavior quickly reduces the number of alternatives to two. Consistent with Duverger's law, candidate/party viability encourages strategic voting and the development of a two-party system. The election simulation serves as a useful tool to teach about electoral behavior and to explore topics such as strategic voting.

scholarly journals Which Matters Most: Party Strategic Exit or Voter Strategic Voting? A Laboratory Experiment

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Bol ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Simon Labbé St-Vincent
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Party System ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Respective Role

There is abundant empirical evidence that the plurality rule constrains party competition and favors two-party systems. This reduction of party system fragmentation may be due to parties deciding not to enter elections for which they are not viable and/or voters voting strategically. Yet, no prior research has attempted to estimate the respective role of parties and voters in this process. To fill this gap, we conducted a unique laboratory experiment where some subjects played the role of parties and others played the role of voters, and where the two were able to respond to each other just as in real-life elections. We find that the reduction due to party strategic exit is higher than that due to strategic voting. We conclude that parties play a key role in the effect of the plurality rule on party system fragmentation.

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