It’s Parties That Choose Electoral Systems (or, Duverger’s Laws Upside Down)

This article presents, discusses and tests the hypothesis that it is the number of parties that can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way around. Already-existing politi-cal parties tend to choose electoral systems that, rather than generate new party systems by them-selves, will crystallize, consolidate or reinforce previously existing party configurations. A general model develops the argument and presents the concept of ‘behavioral-institutional equilibrium’ to account for the relation between electoral systems and party systems. The most comprehensive dataset and test of these notions to date, encompassing 219 elections in 87 countries since the 19th century, are presented. The analysis gives strong support to the hypotheses that political party configurations dominated by a few parties tend to establish majority rule electoral systems, while multi-party systems already existed before the introduction of proportional representation. It also offers the new theoretical proposition that strategic party choice of electoral systems leads to a general trend toward proportional representation over time. This article suggests that we may look as Duverger’s ‘laws ’ (or hypotheses) upside down: it is the number of parties that can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way round. The emphasis on this line of causality doe