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Attempts to predict the number of political parties emerging in democracies have usually relied on one of two apparently incompatible approaches: the institutional approach, exemplified by M. Duverger's law & hypothesis ("The Influence of Electoral Systems on Political Life," International Social Science Bulletin, 1951, 3, 314-352), which focuses on the nature of the electoral system & the number of seats per district; & the ideological approach, which focuses on the nature & extent of social cleavages. A synthesis of these two approaches is attempted. It is argued that electoral system & cleavage type interact to affect number of parties, with the electoral system determined in part by cleavage type. Empirical testing of this approach for 22 postwar democratic polities over the years 1945-1980 supports this formulation & also a more specific model in which the number of parties minus the number of issues equals one. Within this framework, Duverger's law emerges as a special case for polities with a single issue dimension. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 32 References. Modified HA

In an exploration of the ways that electoral institutions influence party systems, & the extent to which electoral laws mediate the influence of ethnic heterogeneity, data from earlier studies by Douglas Rae (1967) & Arend Lijphart (1990) are reanalyzed to reconsider the role of one institutional parameter -- district magnitude. It is concluded that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in ethnically heterogeneous societies. 5 Tables, 25 References. Adapted from the source document.

Draws on the work of Peter Ordeshook & Olga Shvetsova (1994 [see abstract 9407492]) to examine the influence of electoral laws & preexisting social cleavages in determining the number of parties in a given political system. Statistics from every polity with a free election in the 1980s (54 countries) are examined by multiple regression analysis. Results indicate that the number of parties in a polity is best understood as a multiplicative function of the interaction between electoral laws & social cleavages. It is concluded that bipartisan systems tend to form when there is a strong electoral system or few cleavages, while multipartisanism often results from many cleavages & a permissive electoral system. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 59 References. Adapted from the source document.

Duverger's propositions concerning the psychological and mechanical consequences of electoral rules have previously been examined mainly through the lens of district magnitude, comparing the properties of single-member district plurality elections with those of multimember proportional representation elections. The empirical consequences of multimember plurality (MMP) rules, on the other hand, have received scant attention. Theory suggests that the effect of district magnitude on the number and concentration of parties will differ with regard to whether the allocation rules are plurality-based or proportional. I test this theory by drawing on a uniquely large-sample dataset where district magnitude and electoral formula vary but the basic universe of political parties is held constant, applying regression analysis to data from several thousand Hungarian local bodies elected in 1994 consisting of municipal councils, county councils, and mayors. The results indicate that omitting the variable of electoral formula has the potential to cause significant bias in estimates of Duvergerian consequences of district magnitude. In addition, the analysis of multimember plurality elections from the local election dataset reveals counter-intuitively that candidate and party entry may increase with district magnitude under MMP, suggesting important directions for future investigation of MMP rules. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

This study employs data from 33 countries over a 50-year period to analyze the institutional determinants of the effective number of presidential candidates. I find the presidential electoral formula -- plurality vs majority runoff -- to have a strong & significant impact on the effective number of candidates, thereby providing the most substantial support thus far for Duverger's propositions at the presidential level. Unlike previous cross-national studies, I also test for the effect of the presence or absence of an incumbent presidential candidate. The presence of an incumbent has a significant reductive effect on the effective number of candidates. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.