選舉研究

期刊瀏覽

首頁期刊瀏覽歷期出版第三十一卷第一期 Electoral System, Voter Preferences, and the Fragmentation of Party System: The East Asian Cases

Electoral System, Voter Preferences, and the Fragmentation of Party System: The East Asian Cases

Jih-Wen Lin
2002年05月
9卷 1期

頁:137-171
10.6612/tjes.2002.09.01.137-171
本文

摘要

It has been demonstrated that, as an indicator of the fragmentation of political system, the effective number of candidates running under the single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system converges to M+1, where M is district magnitude. How these candidates are to be grouped into parties, however, remains unanswered. I propose that the effective number of parties under SNTV is determined by electoral system as well as the voters' preference profiles. When the voters are idealistic and select the candidates according to their issue positions, the centrifugal tendency of SNTV fosters M+1 effective parties. When the voters care only about absolute gains, the need to maintain a stable distributive coalition encourages one-party dominance, unless regionalism hinders the formation of a grand national party. Using the percentage of agricultural population to approximate the proportion of realist voters, I show that this formula explains well the evolution of party systems in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

關鍵詞

electoral system

SNTV

Duverger's laws

social cleavage

party system