The Effects of Electoral Systems on Public Discourse: Newspapers in New Zealand.

This is the first phase of a multi-stage research process that aims to uncover how constitutional designs (electoral systems in particular) impact the political discourse of a polity. The hypothesis of this project is derived from Anthony Downs’ theory of democracy1 , which argues that electoral systems create diverging incentives for parties. Single member district plurality (SMDP) systems are said to favor the creation of two-party systems in which the parties will substantively gravitate toward the median voter. Systems that use proportional representation (PR) to dole out legislative seats, on the other hand, will lead to the creation of multi-party systems with parties that will tend to adhere more firmly to particularistic ideologies. This project specifically aims to observe whether or not this phenomenon is captured by the political discourse covered in the media. I hypothesize two things. First, the media in proportional democracies should give greater amounts of coverage to more parties than the media in SMDP systems. Second, because of this coverage we should also expect to observe a broader range, substantively (policy-wise and ideologically), of political discourse in the media of proportional democracies. To ease the burdens of definitions and scope, one country is chosen for examination. New Zealand is a country which has converted from a clear version of SMDP to a clear version of PR (a mixed system patterned on the German model, which Sartori2 assures us is nonetheless fully proportional because the ultimate distribution of seats is determined by the proportional component). In this sense it provides a case of natural experimentation. The independent variable has been applied and we can now observe some of the consequences. Consequently, this is a time series design that will involve a content of analysis of the media. It should prove easiest to examine the content of New Zealand’s major newspapers. This should allow for a straight forward quantification of the coverage afforded to minor parties should prove, perhaps via a straight count of the number of articles in which they receive even the briefest of mentions. Quantifying the impact of this coverage on political substance, on the other hand, will surely prove more complicated. Some kind of operationalization will have to be developed to permit an objective quantification of content related to policy or ideology. Currently, two possibilities comes to mind. One, I could focus on marginal concepts which only minor parties can and do promote (e.g. The Greens’ promotion of the precautionary principle), counting the number of articles in which the item is discussed. Second, I could simply count the number of articles in which marginal parties have the opportunity to express policy positions of any kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]