Search

While political polarization may lead to gridlock and other negative policy outcomes, representation is likely to be enhanced when parties differentiate themselves from each other and make it easier for voters to see the connection between their personal ideologies and the electoral offerings. These differences between parties may be especially important in developing democracies, where voters are still learning parties' priorities and where parties do not always emphasize issues when campaigning. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of elite polarization in Latin America since the early 1990s based on legislative surveys. Individual-level voting patterns from mass survey data confirm that the connection between voters' self-placement on the left-right scale and their electoral choice is stronger in polarized party systems, even when controlling for other party system factors like the age of the party system or electoral fragmentation. This effect on voting behavior is not immediate, however, as voters take time to recognize the new cues being provided by the changing party system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A central tenet of electoral systems'' research is that more parties should get votes in districts with large magnitudes than in districts with smaller magnitudes. This proposition is largely untested at the district level, even though that is the level at which relevant pressures are expected to work. At the aggregate level, research has found that there are systematic deviations from Duverger''s law related to incentives from ethnolinguistic fragmentation, institutions, and strategic voting. This analysis confirms that many of these results hold at the district level, which is the most appropriate level for testing Duverger''s law. District level party-system fragmentation patterns in 44 countries support Duverger''s basic hypotheses. The effect of electoral institutions is contingent, however, upon the presence of social cleavages that generate pressures for additional parties, the establishment of patterns of party-system competition that help voters evaluate contenders'' viability, and the absence of competing incentives generated by districts of varying magnitudes. These effects are robust to different specifications of social heterogeneity. However, we find no evidence that institutional features like federalism or presidentialism reduce the strategic effects of district level factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]