Articles

Kiesdrempels, districtgrootte en het aantal partijen in systemen van Evenredige Vertegenwoordiging

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Abstract

At least fo ur criterions/methods to measure mechanical effects of electoral systems can be distinguished: measuring disproportionality, the reduction in number of parties, the party advantages and the threshold percentages. In this manuscript we focus on the thresholds.  We first concentrate on a description of legal, theoretical, and empirical thresholds as measures of mechanical effects. Further, we analyse the relationsh ip between (the natural logarithm) of district magnitude and the empirical threshold and between the empirical threshold and the effective number of parties. As starting point we take districts in Spain, Portugal and Hungary as the level of analysis. We clearly show that there is a negative causal connection between district magnitude and the threshold percentage and between threshold percentage and the number of parties.

How to Cite:

Vander Weyden, P., (2006) “Kiesdrempels, districtgrootte en het aantal partijen in systemen van Evenredige Vertegenwoordiging”, Res Publica 48(1), 66-82.