Kiesdrempels, districtgrootte en het aantal partijen in systemen van evenredige vertegenwoordiging
In: Res publica: politiek-wetenschappelijk tijdschrift van de Lage Landen ; driemaandelijks tijdschrift, Volume 48, Issue 1, p. 66-82
ISSN: 0486-4700
At least four criterions/methods to measure mechanical effects of electoral systems can be distinguished: measuring disproportionality, the reduction in number of parties, the party advantages & the threshold percentages. In this manuscript we focus on the thresholds. We first concentrate on a description of legal, theoretical, & empirical thresholds as measures of mechanical effects. Further, we analyse the relationship between (the natural logarithm) of district magnitude & the empirical threshold & between the empirical threshold & the effective number of parties. As starting point we take districts in Spain, Portugal & Hungary as the level of analysis. We clearly show that there is a negative causal connection between district magnitude & the threshold percentage & between threshold percentage & the number of parties. Tables, Figures. Adapted from the source document.
