Going It Alone? Strategic Entry under Mixed Electoral Rules

Recent studies on strategic voting and entry in elections that combine plurality or majority and proportional representation (PR) have found candidate placement in single-member district (SMD) races to improve a party's PR performance. The primary implication of the existence of "contamina...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of political science 2005-01, Vol.49 (1), p.16-31
Main Authors: Ferrara, Federico, Herron, Erik S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ballots
Candidates
District magnitude
Election law
Elections
Electoral rules
Electoral Systems
Majorities
Mixed electoral systems
Plurality voting
Political candidates
Political Parties
Political systems
Single member districts
Voting
Voting Behavior
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Summary:Recent studies on strategic voting and entry in elections that combine plurality or majority and proportional representation (PR) have found candidate placement in single-member district (SMD) races to improve a party's PR performance. The primary implication of the existence of "contamination effects" is that parties have an incentive to nominate candidates in as many single-member districts as possible. Pre-electoral coordination in the majoritarian component of mixed electoral systems, however, is far from uncommon. In this article, we identify a number of institutional incentives that induce political parties to form pre-electoral alliances in spite of contamination effects. By identifying institutions that favor and hamper coordination, we seek to advance the understanding of PR-SMD interactions and to assess their implications for the design, classification, and empirical analysis of mixed electoral rules. Our statistical tests evaluate strategic entry in a diverse sample of countries.
ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.1111/j.0092-5853.2005.00107.x