11/11/2003 10:15 AM
PRESIDENTIALISM AND THE EFFECT OF ELECTORAL LAW IN POST-
COMMUNIST SYSTEMS: REGIME TYPE MATTERS
Terry D. Clark
Department of Political Science
Creighton University
Omaha, NE 68178
(402) 280-4712
FAX: (402) 280-4731
and
Jill N. Wittrock
Department of Political Science
University of Iowa
341 Schaeffer Hall
Iowa City, Iowa 52242
(319) 335-2358
FAX: (319) 335-3400
[email protected] Keywords: party systems, electoral systems, post-communist states, presidentialism, committee systems
2 Abstract
Efforts to test Duverger’s Law in the new democracies of post-communist Europe have had mixed results. Recent research argues that mixed systems have an effect on the number of effective parties that is distinct from that of single mandate district and proportional representation systems. Less attention has been given to the effect of other institutions on the party system, particularly strong presidents. Analyzing election results in post-Communist Europe since 1991, we find support for Duverger’s Law in post- communist Europe once we control for the strength of the executive. We argue that strong presidents substantially reduce the incentive for parties to seize control of the legislative agenda. Hence, the restraint that electoral systems exercise on the proliferation of parties and independent candidates is weakened. We find that a further consequence of strong presidents is that the incentive for majority control of committees and the legislative agenda is weakened.
3 Biographical Sketches
Terry D. Clark is professor of political science and director of the graduate program in international relations in international relations. He is the author of the book Beyond Post-Communist Studies: Political Science and the New
Democracies of Europe (M.E. Sharpe, 2002). His research focuses on the development of democratic institutions in post-communist states.
Jill N. Wittrock is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include Eastern European government and politics with a focus on democratic institutions, including political parties and electoral systems.
4 Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the support provided to this project by an American Political
Science Association Small Research Grant and a Creighton University Graduate School
Research Fellowship. We also express our sincere appreciation for the reviews provided by two anonymous readers.
5 PRESIDENTIALISM AND THE EFFECT OF ELECTORAL LAW IN POST-
COMMUNIST SYSTEMS: REGIME TYPE MATTERS
The Puzzle
Duverger’s Law states that proportional representation (PR) electoral systems create incentives for the emergence of multi-party systems, whereas single mandate district (SMD) systems tend to favor the emergence of a smaller number of parties. (See
Duverger, 1954; Lijphart, 1994; Rae, 1971; Taagepera & Shugart, 1989.) In his review of scholarship on these propositions, Riker (1986) claimed that they were among the most widely accepted in political science. However, efforts to test Duverger's Law in post- communist systems have led to mixed results. In a cross-national analysis, Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994) found that the choice between PR and SMD electoral systems not only effects the number of parties, the latter had the further effect of attenuating the trend to a greater number of parties normally associated with ethnic and social heterogeneity.
Moser (1997; 1999; 2001), however, has found that the standard relationship between electoral system and the number of political parties holds in Hungary and Poland, but not in Russia and Ukraine. In Russia, in particular, PR has benefited a small number of parties while SMD has led to their proliferation (Golosov, 2003). Moser (2001) attributes this to the lesser degree of party institutionalization in the two post-Soviet states.
These ambiguous results have led some scholars to turn to Lipset and Rokkan’s
(1967) notion that social cleavages provide a stronger explanation for party systems
(Evans & Whitefield,1993; Kitschelt, 1992; Kitschelt, 1995). Those continuing to look for institutional explanations have called attention to the fact that a number of post- communist states have adopted a mixed electoral system. The failure to recognize the
6 existence of an interaction effect in such systems, by treating each tier as independent
(see for example Moser 1997; 1999; 2001), may well be partially to blame for the failure to find support for Duverger’s propositions. Herron and Nishikawa (2001) and Clark and
Prekevičius (2001) find evidence of such an effect in case studies of select post- communist countries. However, substantially less attention has been given to the effect of other institutions, to include the design of executive-legislative relations. While some scholars have noted a correlation between strong presidencies and poorly institutionalized party systems (Ishiyama & Kennedy, 2001; Fish, 2000; Colton, 1995), these studies have included only a few cases, they have not focused on party fragmentation, and they have not controlled for other factors, in particular mixed electoral systems. Further, efforts to test the propositions of Duverger’s Law in post-communist states have focused on a small set of countries.
We undertake a cross-national analysis of the post-communist states of Europe using data from 1990 to 2002 that incorporates a test of the effect of regime type on the relationship between electoral systems and party systems in post-communist states. Our results argue that the assumptions about the strategic behavior of voters and parties contained in Duverger’s Law do not operate with the same effect in different executive- legislative constitutional designs. Strong presidents greatly reduce the incentives for parties to vie for control of a legislature that lacks control over either policy-making or the process of making and breaking governments. This is reflected in legislative committee systems and agenda setting institutions that are less likely to be dominated by members of the governing parties.
7 Electoral Law and the Effective Number of Parties
Duverger (1954) argued that electoral laws carry with them both mechanical and psychological effects. The two work in tandem to reduce the number of political parties.
However, the tendency is stronger in single mandate electoral systems than in PR systems. The mechanical effect posits that all electoral systems have the effect of reducing the number of parties in a legislature. SMD systems have a particularly strong tendency to do so by under-representing small parties. Parties that win less than a plurality in single-member districts do not receive a seat. This occurs even if the party obtains a notable share of the vote nationally (Duverger, 1954). The tendency of SMD systems to reduce the number of effective parties is further enhanced by the psychological effect. The psychological effect rests on an assumption of rational voting behavior. All things being equal, voters will cast their ballots for those party candidates closest to their own policy preferences. However, single mandate, plurality districts produce only one winner per contest. Hence, voters not wishing to “waste” their vote will not vote for the candidate closest to them if they perceive (s)he has little chance of winning. Such strategic voting reduces the number of candidates elected from smaller parties. In contrast to SMD, parties in PR systems receiving less than a plurality of votes receive seats. Hence, voters are less likely to calculate that they are wasting their vote by casting it for small parties. The psychological effect is weaker and the number of effective assembly parties is greater (Duverger, 1954).
Sartori (1968) further extended the logic behind strategic voting to the strategic behavior of parties. Adopting Downs’ maxim that parties are vote-maximizers seeking
8 control of the legislative agenda in order to pursue policy ends,1 he contended that the rational response of parties in SMD systems is to coalesce in the largest possible blocs to increase their chances of electoral victory. Failing to do so, they run the risk of being defeated in every district race. This creates a further pressure in such systems to constrain the number of effective political parties.
Until recently, most electoral systems were either a pure SMD or PR, the notable exception being Germany, which has a mixed SMD-PR compensatory system in which
PR seats are allocated so as to correct for imbalances that might otherwise occur from the
SMD results by bringing the total deputy count into line with the national party-list vote.
Given the dependence of the SMD tier on the PR outcome, researchers have generally argued that compensatory mixed systems have a similar effect to PR on the party system, driving up the number of parties (Bawn, 1993; Jesse, 1988; Jesse, 1990). Over the course of the last decade, mixed systems have become a good deal more common, particularly in post-communist Europe. In contrast to the German electoral system, however, most of these systems are non-compensatory. The results of the two tiers are determined independently of each other. Massicotte and Blais (1999) identify the dominant variant of non-compensatory mixed systems in operation in post-communist Europe as a superposition mixed system. In this system two electoral rules (PR and SMD) operate simultaneously across the country.
Since the results of elections in the two tiers of superposition mixed systems are independent of each other, Moser treats the outcomes as separate elections (2001). More recently, however, scholars have identified the presence of contamination effects across the two-tiers of non-compensatory systems, which result in an increase in the number of
9 parties in both the PR and SMD tiers (Herron & Nishikawa, 2001; Clark & Prekevičius,
2001; Cox & Schoppa, 2002). While considering each tier in isolation from the other appears to be an attractive analytical approach, there are good theoretical reasons for arguing for an interactive effect between the two elements of a mixed electoral system.
Treating the two tiers of non-compensatory mixed systems independently of one another carries with it the assumption that parties pursue a dual strategy, choosing to run alone in the party-list contest and as part of larger coalitions in the district contests. This assumption seems highly questionable on a number of grounds. First, by their nature, all coalitions are fragile. The introduction of direct competition in the party-list vote between the members of a district race coalition would introduce further pressure toward fragmentation. Second, in many instances, parties are likely to estimate that they have a better chance in the SMD races than they otherwise might, given the calculation of their chances in the PR race. If this is the case, then parties will consider both tiers together, instead of in isolation, in formulating an electoral strategy. (Shvestsova (2002) argues the Communist Party of Russia did so in the 1995 elections.) As a consequence, more parties are likely to enter the SMD races. Third, in most mixed systems, parties may place candidates in the district races on their party lists. This substantially increases the contamination between the two tiers and further increases the likelihood that they will eschew coalitions in the SMD contests, as to do so decreases their flexibility in determining candidates. Finally, it is not altogether certain that voters are able to engage in the complex calculations necessary to vote strategically in elections decided on the basis of two separate rule sets. Hence, they are more likely to vote sincerely and thereby
10 increase the chances of small parties in SMD races. (At a minimum, sincere voting is likely to effect the outcomes of plurality races.)
Regime Type and the Effect of Electoral Law
The possibility of an interactive effect between two different components of an electoral system raises the possibility that electoral laws may produce different outcomes in interaction with other institutions as well. This seems to be particularly likely when the interaction reduces the incentive for parties to organize to seek control of the legislative agenda. Two institutional designs have the potential for doing this: bicameralism and regime type. In the former, if both houses are salient in the passage of legislation, a second legislative body may significantly reduce the incentive for parties to seek legislative control and thereby significantly decrease the likelihood that a party can obtain enough seats in both houses to ensure control over policy. Hence, a greater number of parties are likely to contest and be elected. The same is true when presidents are able to significantly reduce the control of legislatures over policy.
Only recently has research focused on the effect of bicameralism on both policy outcomes (Thies, 2002; Coakley & Manning, 1999) and cabinet duration (Druckman &
Thies, 2002). Findings indicate that control of the upper house, when that body plays more than an advisory role in the legislative process, is as important to both policy control and government survivability as is control of the lower house. Hence, parties wishing to control the policy agenda must be attentive to both houses. While this suggests that parties have a greater incentive for seeking control of both houses of a
11 legislature, it also suggests that the greater complexity this presents to political parties may serve as an impediment to their attempting to do so. We test this possibility.
A limited degree of scholarly attention has been given to the effect of presidentialism on party systems (Lijphart, 1994; Samuels, 2002; Shugart & Carey,
1992). Research considering presidentialism in post-communist Europe has largely focused on its effect on party institutionalization. Fish (2000) and Colton (1995), for example, argue in separate articles that Russian ‘superpresidentialism’ has been associated with weakly institutionalized parties. A subsequent analysis by Ishiyama and
Kennedy (2001) found no support for the proposition in their analysis of Russia, Ukraine,
Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan.
In the most direct consideration of the effect of strong presidents on party fragmentation, Mainwaring (1997) contends that strong executives can significantly reduce incentives for those seeking legislative office to coalesce in large parties. As a consequence, the number of parties in such systems is likely to be greater regardless of the choice of electoral system. Shugart and Carey (1992) identify president- parliamentarism as a particularly problematic regime type owing to the extraordinary powers of the president, which includes the right to appoint and remove cabinet ministers, the right to dissolve the parliament, and the ability to govern with minimal legislative oversight. These powers are so substantial as to threaten the marginalization of the legislature and reduce elite incentives for gaining control of that body.
We argue that as a consequence, there is decidedly less incentive for the formation of cohesive political parties. If we assume that the primary goal of a political party is to gain the largest number of seats possible in order to gain control of the
12 legislative agenda, then there is less rationale for a political party to attempt to do so when the parliamentary control of the legislative agenda is undermined by the existence of a president with the powers to legislate by decree. It is further undermined when the legislature’s control of the process of making and breaking governments is compromised.
Moreover, weak legislative powers also serve to obscure the locus of responsibility in the eyes of the electorate, which in turn decreases the incentive for voters to cast their ballots for parties or candidates likely to win an election. In essence, the psychological effects of the electoral system for both parties and voters are substantially reduced. Hence, we should expect that strong executive systems substantially attenuate the restraining effect of electoral systems on the number of political parties. In effect, the party system will be released from the constraints that the electoral system might otherwise have.
We further argue that if presidential systems seriously reduce the incentive for parties to seek to control the legislature, this should be evident in choices made within legislative bodies, particularly concerning committee systems and legislative agenda control institutions. Both serve the purpose of assisting the governing party or coalition in organizing the parliament so as to control the policy agenda. To the degree that strong presidents, such as those in president-parliamentary systems (or Russia’s
‘superpresidentialism’), undermine the legislative role in policy, they reduce the incentive for parties to ensure majority control over the committee system and institutions charged with setting the legislative agenda.
Explaining the Effective Number of Parties
13 The foregoing discussion contends that different institutional designs have a significant effect on both the party system and the organization of the legislature. We begin by testing the applicability of Duverger’s Law to the post-communist states from
1990 to 2002. We hypothesize that the number of effective parties is greater for PR than
SMD electoral systems. Each tier in mixed electoral systems is treated as a separate election. Second, we reconsider the initial analysis by recoding mixed electoral systems as unique systems that create incentives for a larger number of effective parties. We hypothesize that mixed electoral systems are associated with larger numbers of parties than pure SMD systems. Third, we consider the effect of bicameralism on the party system. We hypothesize that bicameralism is associated with larger numbers of effective parties. Fourth, we consider the effect of regime type on party systems. Our hypothesis is that president-parliamentary systems are more prone to high effective party indexes.
We conclude by considering the effect of strong presidents on legislative institutions. If as we theorize presidents undermine the rational for seizing control of the legislative agenda, then we should expect that governing coalitions have less incentive to control committees and agenda setting bodies. This will be evident in the percentage of the seats in these institutions held by the governing parties.
Our analysis employs the election results for the countries of post-communist
Europe compiled by the Project on Political Transformation and the Electoral Process in
Post-Communist Europe undertaken by the Department of Government at the University of Essex between May 1999 and May 2002 as part of an Economic and Social Research
Council project, One Europe or Several? A description of the project2 and the data base3 are available on line. We include the 58 elections conducted from 1990 to 2002 in post-
14 communist Europe.4 As a measure of our dependent variable, number of parties, we calculated the effective number of electoral parties using constituency-level data (based on vote share), Nv, and the effective number of parliamentary parties (based on seat share), Ns, for each election. Nv is an index of the number of relevant parties in the political system that weights each party by the percentage of the popular vote that it receives in legislative elections. Ns measures the number of relevant parties by weighting the percent of seats each holds in the legislature.5 Together, they indicate the “number of hypothetical equal-sized parties that would have the same effect on fractionalization of the party system as have the actual parties of varying size” (Taagepera & Shugart, 1989, p. 79).
Duverger’s Law: Hypotheses One and Two
The electoral design for each of the countries in our study is at Figure 1. The most popular choice among post-communist states is a pure PR system. While a relatively small number employ a pure form of SMD, a significant proportion have a two-tiered mixed system, in which seats are allocated on the basis of both PR and SMD races. Only one of these, Hungary, operates similarly to the compensatory system employed by
Germany in which seats are set aside to assure that the final seat allocation reflects the overall PR outcome. We consider each tier in mixed systems as a separate election, except in the case of Hungary, which we treat as a pure PR system.
[Place Figure 1 here.]
The average number of effective electoral and assembly party indexes for SMD and PR systems is at Table 1. While the number of electoral parties in SMD systems is
15 slightly smaller than in PR systems (the difference is not statistically significant), contrary to the expectations of Duverger’s Law, SMD systems appear to be associated with a decidedly larger number of parliamentary parties than PR systems in post- communist Europe. (The difference in the mean number of parliamentary parties between the two populations is statistically significant at less than the .000 level.)
However when the mixed, non compensatory systems (Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania) are removed from the analysis, the hypothesized relationships obtain (as reported at Table
1). Controlling for the contamination effects in mixed systems, the data indicate support for Duverger’s Law in post-communist Europe. PR is associated with larger numbers of effective parties than SMD.
[Place Table 1 here.]
We need to be cautious in interpreting these results at this point since neither the difference in the mean number of parliamentary nor electoral parties is statistically significant. Nonetheless, the change in the relationship suggests that we might look more carefully at our initial hypothesis. The fact that the three countries excluded from the analysis are the superposition mixed systems listed at Figure 1 argues strongly that we should consider such systems as unique electoral systems and not as two separate and independent systems effecting party systems.
The third section at Table 1 reports the results of the test of our second hypothesis comparing the number of effective parties in Mixed systems with that in SMD and PR systems. As we hypothesized, mixed systems are associated with larger numbers of effective parties than SMD. The difference between them and the other electoral systems
16 is significant at less than the .01 level for both Nv and Ns. In post-communist Europe, they are associated with larger numbers of both parliamentary and electoral parties.
There are, however, interesting contrasts among the mixed systems that are hidden by these results. Table 2 reports the vote and seat share indexes for elections held in Lithuania and Russia. Russia’s superposition, non-compensatory electoral system calls for electing half of the 450-member legislature on the basis of PR and the other half in single-member, plurality races. As the calculations in Table 2 indicate, the index of the number of effective parties for both vote share and seat share are quite high across all three Russian elections in the post-Soviet era. In contrast, Lithuania’s superposition non- compensatory electoral system, which elects 71 deputies in SMD races and 70 in a national party-list vote, has consistently lower indexes. This owes largely to the fact that very large numbers of independents are elected to the Russian State Duma from the single mandate districts. In comparison, relatively few independents are elected in
Lithuania’s single mandate districts. While it is tempting to argue that the electoral law in Russia does not work in accordance to the expectations of Duverger’s Law owing to weakly institutionalized parties (Moser, 1999), such an argument reverses the causal arrow and makes electoral law the dependent variable. We contend that it is possible, and theoretically more appealing, to continue to employ the electoral system as an independent variable. However, in order to do so, we must introduce the type of executive-legislative relations as an intervening variable.
[Place Table 2 here.]
Institutional Design: Hypotheses Three and Four
17 The substantial differences in the indexes between Russia and Lithuania suggests that other institutional designs may be interacting with the electoral system to effect the party system. We have hypothesized bicameralism (hypothesis three) and president- parliamentarism (hypothesis four) as possibilities. Since the logic behind our propositions focuses on the policy role of the legislature vis-à-vis the president, we will use the number of legislative houses that essentially exercise a veto over proposed legislation. (We count upper chambers whose vote can not be over-ridden by a mere plurality of the lower house, that is a simple majority of a required quorum .) As an indicator of regime type, we begin with Shugart and Carey’s (1992) three categories of parliamentarism, premier-presidentialism, and president-parliamentarism. Shugart and
Carey contend that the differences between the three concern the relationship between the head of state (usually a president) and the legislature on one hand and the government on the other. Presidential powers are extremely limited in parliamentarism, moderate in premier-presidentialism and substantial in president-parliamentarism. In a later article,
Shugart (1996) developed an indicator of presidential strength, which we adopt with modifications. Figure 2 indicates the criteria we used for measuring presidential strength.
The scores for bicameralism and presidential strength are reported at Table 3.
[Place Figure 2 here.]
[Place Table 3 here.]
Table 4 reports the results of three regression models testing the effect of the electoral system (SMD is coded as “0,” other electoral systems are coded “1”), regime type, and bicameralism on the number of effective parties. The results argue that strong presidents serve to mediate the psychological effects of electoral systems on voters. The
18 electoral system by itself does not have a statistically significant impact on the effective number of electoral parties (Nv). However, when presidential strength is added to the equation, the electoral system does have an effect, but not as strong as that of presidential strength itself. Our results also indicate that only presidential strength has a statistically significant effect on the number of effective assembly parties (Ns). Hence, electoral systems operate to restrain the number of electoral parties (but not parliamentary parties) in a fashion suggested by Duverger's Law in post-communist Europe. Further, bicameralism does not have a statistically significant effect on either the number of electoral parties or parliamentary parties. The challenge of seizing policy control over both houses in bicameral systems does not appear to deter either voters or political parties in post-communist countries.
[Place Table 4 here.]
Implications for the Legislature
These findings suggest that strong presidents are a disincentive for office seekers to link their electoral fortunes with those of political parties. In systems with strong presidents, political parties have less incentive to coalesce in electoral blocs and voters have less incentive to vote strategically to help one party gain control of the legislature.
As a consequence, the number of both electoral and parliamentary parties is greater.
We argued in the theoretical section of this paper that this owes largely to the disincentive that strong presidents present to parties attempting to seize control of the policy agenda of the legislature. This should be reflected in the organization and staffing of legislative institutions. We test three indicators of the importance that parties might
19 attach to control of the legislative agenda. The first is a measure of committee strength.
Committees serve an important function in reviewing proposed laws. In none of the post- communist countries do they serve as a gatekeeper, with the right to veto legislation.
That responsibility lies with the agenda setting institution in each legislature, about which we will say more shortly. The relative strength of committees is evident on three dimensions: their role in agenda setting (are they excluded or included in the process), the right to interpellate government ministers, and the right to initiate legislation. Table 5 reports the scores assigned to the respective houses in each post-communist legislature immediately following the most recent election on these dimensions.
[Place Table 5 here.]
Our second indicator of the importance that parties attach to control of the legislative agenda is the percentage of committee chairs allotted to the majority. One would expect that the more salient the policy role of the legislature, the more likely it is that parties and coalitions in the government would seek to make sure that the committee system reflects their policy preferences. The same is true of the agenda setting institution, the most critical institution in the assembly given its role in determining if a legislative initiative will be heard and, if so, under what rules. In effect, the agenda setter exercises an absolute veto over all legislative matters. Hence, one would expect that as parties and coalitions become more intently interested in controlling votes on policy, they will assure majority control of the agenda setting institution. We measure this as a percentage of the membership allocated to the majority, our third indicator of the importance parties attach to controlling policy in the legislature.
20 We recoded the presidential strength scores (one to four is weak presidential strength, five to eight is moderate presidential strength, and nine to twelve is strong presidential strength) and report the average committee strength, proportion of committee chairs held by opposition parties, and proportion of the agenda setting institution allocated to members of the majority party or coalition across the three categories of presidential strength at Table 6. The results generally support our hypotheses. Although only the difference in means for the proportion of chairs allotted to the majority coalition is significant at less than the .05 level, the relationships are in the direction hypothesized.
As the powers of the presidency increase, legislative committee systems exercise less discretion and the number of committee chairs held by the majority decreases. The proportion of the agenda setting institution in the hands of the governing party or coalition is less in systems with strong and moderate executives than those with weak ones, although the proportion is greater in strong presidential systems than moderate ones.
[Place Table 6 here.]
Conclusions
Our results argue that mixed electoral systems act more like PR in their psychological effect as indicated in higher electoral party indexes. Once we take this into account and treat such systems as unique systems, we find some support for Duverger’s
Law in post-communist Europe. However, our results argue more strongly that highly fragmented party systems are the consequence of institutional designs that mitigate the effects of electoral laws that would otherwise create incentives for the emergence of
21 fewer parties. In particular, strong presidents undermine the rationale for the formation of parties seeking control over the policy and government control functions of the legislature. Consequently, parties and independents are willing to run for political office with less thought given to their prospects for becoming part of a governing coalition.
Further, the public is more likely to vote sincerely. The consequence is that the number of electoral and parliamentary parties is substantially higher independent of the type electoral system.
Our results argue that party system fragmentation in countries such as Russia is the consequence of a strong presidency. In similarly designed electoral systems with a weaker president, as in the case of Lithuania, electoral systems operate to restrain the number of electoral parties in a fashion suggested by Duverger's Laws. While the
Lithuanian President exercises the right to veto legislation and is constitutionally empowered to appoint the Prime Minister (subject to legislative approval), he can not rule without the legislature, and his ability to influence government policy is dependent on his relations with the ruling coalition in the assembly.
At the core of our argument is the contention that strong presidents marginalize legislatures in post-communist Europe. This in turn is reflected in legislative institutions that are more proportional and less majoritarian. Hence, parliamentary majorities are less able to challenge the executive. We suspect that legislators in such systems are far more concerned with the perks that come with their positions than with matters of policy. The latter is left to the president. The argument clearly flies in the face of the contention that legislatures faced with strong presidents would be more intently interested in organizing
22 to challenge executive usurpation of legislative prerogative. It appears that post- communist legislators in such systems are resigned to their status.
23 Figure 1 Electoral Systems Used in Post-Communist Europe
Electoral Design Country
Single Member District Poland (Senate)
Czech Republic (Senate)
Mixed Systems
Compensatory Hungary
Superposition, Non-compensatory Lithuania
Russia
Ukraine
Proportional Representation Bulgaria
Czech Republic (Chamber of
Deputies)
Estonia
Latvia
Moldova
Poland (Sejm)
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
24 Figure 2 Criteria for Scoring Presidential Strength6
Cabinet Formation
0 – President can not name ministers on own initiative
1 – President nominates prime minister, who requires parliamentary confidence
2 – President appoints prime minister with consent of parliament
3 – Presidential appointment of prime minister does not require parliamentary approval
Cabinet Dismissal
0 – Government may only be removed by parliament
1 – Government may be removed by the president under certain stipulated conditions
2 – Government may be removed by the president with the approval of parliament
3 – Government may be removed by the president without parliamentary approval
Assembly Survival
0 – President can not call for pre-term elections
1 – President can call for pre-term elections during a specified time frame
2 – President can call for pre-term elections upon a vote of no confidence in the government
3 – President can call for pre-term elections at any time
Presidential Survival
0 – Assembly can call for pre-term presidential elections at any time
1 – If the assembly calls for pre-term presidential elections, the assembly must also stand for re-election
2 – Assembly can call for pre-term presidential elections in special cases
3 – Assembly can not call for pre-term presidential elections
25 Table 1 Average Effective Number of Parties by Electoral System
Electoral System Effective Number of Parties (Number of Cases*)
Nv Ns
SMD 5.81 (14) 8.95 (18)
PR 6.00 (52) 4.10 (52)
Excluding Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine
SMD 4.75 (6) 3.87 (9)
PR 5.75 (44) 4.07 (44)
Comparing Mixed Electoral Systems with SMD and PR
SMD 4.75 (6) 3.87 (9)
PR 5.75 (44) 4.07 (44)
Mixed Systems 11.88 ( 7) 7.59 (8)
* The difference in the number of cases used to calculate Nv and Ns results from missing constituency level data for elections to the 1991 Polish Senate, 1998 Czech Republic
Senate, 2001 Polish Senate, and the SMD tier for the 2002 Ukrainian Rada. All four elections were decided on the basis of SMD.
26 Table 2 Party System Indicators in Parliamentary Elections, Lithuania and Russia
______
Lithuania Lithuania Lithuania Russia Russia Russia
1992 1996 2000 1993 1995 1999
______
Independents Elected
1 4 3 130 77 105
Effective Number of Parties
Vote Share (Nv) 5.31 7.55 10.09 15.64 16.35 12.24
Seat Share (Ns) 3.28 3.33 6.51 16.42 6.14 8.00
27 Table 3 Scores for Institutional Design Factors
Country Bicameralism Presidential Strength
Cabinet Cabinet Assembly Presidential Total
Formation Dismissal Survival Survival Score
______
Bulgaria 1 1 0 1 3 5
Czech Republic
2 2 1 1 3 7
Estonia 1 1 0 1 3
5
Hungary 1 1 0 2 3 6
Latvia 1 1 0 1 0 2
Lithuania 1 2 1 2 2 7
Moldova 1 1 1 1 0 3
Poland 2 1 0 0 3 4
Romania 2 1 0 2 2 5
Russia 2 2 3 3 3 11
Slovakia 1 2 2 1 1 6
Slovenia 1 0 0 1 2 3
Ukraine 1 2 3 1 3 9
28 Table 4 Results of Regression Analysis of the Models
______
_
Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Dependent Variable = Effective Electoral Parties (Nv)
Electoral System (SMD or other) .177 .236** .
222*** Presidential Strength - .476*
.484*
Bicameralism - - .048
r2 = .031 .254 .256
p = .188 .000 .001
Dependent Variable = Effective Assembly Parties (Ns)
Electoral System (SMD or other) .107 .127 .125
Presidential Strength - .322** .323**
Bicameralism - - .005
r2 = .011 .115 .114
p = .414 .029 .071
Standardized Betas are reported.
* significant at less than or equal to the .001 level,
** significant at less than the .05 level
*** significant at less than the .10 level
29 Table 5 Scores for Committee and Agenda Setting Strength*
Country Committee Strength** Government Control
Role in Parliamentary Legislative Coalition of Agenda
Agenda Control Initiative Control of Setter by
Committees
Government
Coalition
Bulgaria 1 1 1 .650 .600
Czech Republic (lower house)
1 1 0 .642 .540
Czech Republic (upper house)
0 1 0 .500 .500
Estonia 0 0 1 .400 .667
Hungary 1 1 1 .540 .550
Latvia 0 1 1 .569 1.000
Lithuania 0 1 1 .643 .800
Moldova 0 0 0 .700 .800
Poland (lower house)
0 1 0 .480 .500
Poland (upper house)
1 1 1 1.000 .750
Romania (lower house)
1 0 0 .500 .460
30 Romania (upper house)
1 0 0 .430 .450
Russia 1 0 0 .250 .400
Slovakia 0 1 0 .530 .800
Slovenia 1 1 0 .333 1.000
Ukraine 0 1 1 .292 1.000
*Upper houses not directly elected are excluded from the analysis. While votes of upper houses can be over-ridden by lower houses, more than a simple majority of a quorum is required in every case.
**Committee Strength
Role in Agenda
0 – committees do not participate in agenda setting
1 – committees play a role in agenda setting
Parliamentary Control
0 – government ministers are not obligated to appear before committees when summoned
1 – government ministers must appear before committees when summoned
Legislative Initiative
0 – committees do not have the right to initiate legislation
1 – committees have the right to initiate legislation
31 Table 6
Average Committee Power, Proportion of Committee Chairs Held by the Opposition, and Agenda Setter Composition Reported by Strength of the Presidency
Presidential Committee Proportion of Proportion of the
Strength Power Chairs Held by Agenda Setter
the Government Seats Held by the
Coalition Government Coalition
Weak 1.60 .616 .810
Moderate 1.56 .537 .602
Strong 1.50 .305 .700
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37 ENDNOTES
38 1Anthony Downs (1957) argued that parties are vote maximizers. While subsequent theorists have argued that parties seek control of policy (Axelrod, 1970; De Swaan, 1973; Dodd, 1976), Michael
Laver and Kenneth A. Shepsle (1996) argue persuasively that policy control is contingent upon vote maximizing behavior.
2 http://www2.essex.ac.uk/elect/database/aboutProject.asp
3 http://www.essex.ac.uk/elections/
4 Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania,
Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine are included in the analysis. We did not include Albania,
Belarus’, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia in the analysis given the uncertainty of democratic institutions stemming from chronic political instability.
5 The formulae (Taagepera & Shugart, 1989) for these indexes are
1 1 N v n N s n 2 and 2 pi pi i1 i1
where n is the actual number of parties receiving votes (Nv) or seats allotted in the legislature (Ns) and p is the number of votes received (Nv) or seats allotted the party (Ns) for each party “i.”
6 The source is Shugart, Matthew Soberg. “Executive-Legislative Relations in Post-Communist
Europe.” Transitions, 13 December 1996, p. 7, with modifications.