The political consequences of electoral laws in Latin America and the Caribbean

This article revisits Arend Lijphart's (1990) re-analysis of Douglas Rae's The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (1971) using data from Latin America and the Caribbean. The findings of this study concur with much of Lijphart's analysis. However, contrary to Lijphart, a positive relationship was found between disproportionality and multipartism for PR systems. Particularly well supported were Lijphart's finding of (1) an inverse relationship between district magnitude and disproportionality and (2) a strong relationship between electoral formula and disproportionality. The article demonstrates the applicability of a portion of Anglo-European theory to party systems in a region with democratic histories and economic profiles which are radically different from those of the systems upon which Rae and Lijphart based their findings.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30923/1/0000593.pd