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The Laakso-Taagepera index of the effective number of parties, while satisfying most of the requirements of this aggregate quantity, tends to produce unrealistically high scores for party constellations in which the shares of the largest parties exceed 50 percent, and can produce misleading results in several other situations. After reviewing the structural properties of the Laakso-Taagepera index and supplements or alternatives to it proposed in the literature, this article proposes a new index that eliminates several problems inherent in the mathematical form of indices using the Herfindahl-Hirschman measure of concentration as computational core. The proposed index is tested on a set of party constellations from recent elections in new democracies and non-democratic electoral regimes. The results confirm that the new index works better than earlier proposed alternatives in measuring the effective number of components in highly fragmented and highly concentrated party systems. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

The Laakso—Taagepera index of the effective number of parties, while satisfying most of the requirements of this aggregate quantity, tends to produce unrealistically high scores for party constellations in which the shares of the largest parties exceed 50 percent, and can produce misleading results in several other situations. After reviewing the structural properties of the Laakso—Taagepera index and supplements or alternatives to it proposed in the literature, this article proposes a new index that eliminates several problems inherent in the mathematical form of indices using the Herfindahl—Hirschman measure of concentration as computational core. The proposed index is tested on a set of party constellations from recent elections in new democracies and non-democratic electoral regimes. The results confirm that the new index works better than earlier proposed alternatives in measuring the effective number of components in highly fragmented and highly concentrated party systems.

This note helps to explain how cabinet-level concentration of power is constrained by party level concentration of seats. Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy (1999) measures concentration of executive power by the frequency of `minimal winning and one-party cabinets' (MW/OP), and party concentration by the effective number (N) of legislative parties. In his factor analysis, these highly correlated indices are the central features that distinguish consensual from majoritarian systems. The present study establishes a quantitative logical relationship leading from N to the major component of MW/OP, so as to explain the reasons behind Lijphart's empirical observation. The note analyses separately the frequency of various types of cabinet coalitions that Lijphart's book has lumped together. It also offers a new way to visualize the effective number of legislative parties, as twice the minimal number of parties needed to form a minimal winning coalition.

This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status quo parties in the party system. This relationship weakens, and eventually disappears, as politicians' emphasis on "office-seeking" motivations increases relative to their interest in public policy. We test these predictions with both aggregate electoral data in contemporary Europe and a data set on legislative volatility in Turkey, uncovering support for the argument that party system fragmentation should positively affect the likelihood of entry when policy-seeking motivations are relevant, but not otherwise.

Different scholars count `the number of parties' in different ways, partly because they examine different parts of the political process and for different reasons. Sartori's qualitative approach focused mainly on competition for government, but is now largely supplanted by the quantitative `effective number of parties' index, which deals with votes and seats. But some quantitative research requires us to look beyond votes and seats. For example, testing proportional and pluralitarian models of democracy requires us to count parties not just in terms of votes and seats but also in terms of legislative and cabinet power. I estimate party shares of legislative and cabinet power to test democratic norms at British and German elections and parliaments. So, the effective number of parties index needs to be, and can be, extended beyond votes and seats alone.