Fall 2017 JPI

More documents

Recommendations

Info

institutional factors impacting the effective number of parties by including the measurement to test the impact of legislative electoral institutions (log(District Magnitude)) and two facets of the presidential elections—Proximity of Presidential and Legislative Elections and the interaction term of Proximity and the Effective Number of Presidential Candidates. Model 2 focuses strictly on the effects of ethnopolitical cleavages by incorporating the two specifications of Ethnopolitical Group Fragmentation and Ethnopolitical Group Concentration, in addition to their interactive effects given by Ethnopolitical Group Fragmentation X Ethnopolitical Group Concentration. Model 3 is an additive socio-institutional model in which I incorporate all six of the variables and interaction terms just specified. Model 4 is an interactive socio-institutional model which MSG refer to as "fully specified" as cognizant of all the possible factors and interactions that we are studying. 30 However, as mentioned above, GBC take issue with this notion. Model 4 has five of the six variables included in Model 3 but instead of using the interaction term between Ethnopolitical Group Fragmentation and Ethnopolitical Group Concentration, it uses an interaction term representing a combination of both the institutional and sociological factors by taking the product of log(District Magnitude), Ethnopolitical Group Fragmentation, and Ethnopolitical Group Concentration. RESULTS My results with the newer data are detailed in Tables 1 and 2, where Table 1 shows the results for determinants of the effective number of electoral parties using our four models, whereas Table 2 shows the results for those models with respect to the effective number of legislative parties. The strictly institutional model (Model 1) accounts for 34% of the variation in our Electoral Parties variable and 42% of the variation in the number of legislative parties. The strictly sociological model (Model 2) accounts for 27% of the variance in the number of electoral parties (a decrease of 7% from the institutional model), and 17% of the variation in the number of legislative parties (a decrease of 25% from the institutional model). The additive effects of electoral institutions and ethnopolitical cleavages in Model 3 account for 46% of the variation in number of electoral parties and 52% of the variation in number of legislative parties. This is an increase compared to the institutional model of 12% in the electoral party system and 10% in the legislative system. Finally, the interactive socio-institutional model (Model 4) has the most explanatory power out of all the models and accounts for 65% of the variation in the number of electoral parties and 65% in the number of legislative parties. My results are consistent with MSG’s in proving the significant effect of the Proximity of Presidential and Legislative Elections on the number of parties. For both electoral and legislative parties, my results are significantly negative across all four models. This verifies that when the presidential and legislative elections are maximally proximate (concurrent), this significantly reduces the number of parties in the system as preferences are aggregated similarly when both branches are voted in at the same time. However, these results contain some key differences from MSG’s results with respect to the ethnopolitical cleavages. Firstly, while the additive and interactive models are more explanatory of both party systems like MSG’s results, contrary to their results in this case the sociological model (Model 2) had much less explanatory power than the strictly institutional model (Model 1). Moreover, in both tables, the Ethnopolitical Fragmentation variable is not a significant indicator in contrast to MSG’s results. Unlike the ELF, PREG, and Alesina et al. measurement, MSG’s calculations include ethnopolitical concentration as part of the formula for their fragmentation variable, while Alesina’s methods focus solely on social cleavages such as language and religion. However, as MSG point out, 30 Mozaffar, Scarritt, and Galaich, Electoral Institutions, 385. JPI Fall 2017, pg. 57
not every one of these types of social cleavages are politically relevant. This explains the lack of significance in my coefficients, and the lesser explanatory power of Model 2 in comparison to Model 1. 31 I would argue that this is a more accurate representation of the correlation between ethnopolitical fragmentation and the number of parties separated from the effects of geographic concentration. Since the geographical concentration of ethnic groups often have impact on the way political parties are formed, it is necessary to separate these effects from those of ethnopolitical fragmentation alone. Still, ethnopolitical concentration of the different ethnic groups is an important aspect of the unique ethnopolitical cleavages that exist within Africa. These results confirm the significant impact of such cleavages on the strategies and party structure of not just Africa’s emerging democracies, but also its democratic elections in general. For both legislative and electoral parties in MSG’s paper, Ethnopolitical Group Concentration has a positive but insignificant coefficient. In my results, Ethnopolitical Group Concentration is positive and significant in both cases for Model 2, likely because it bears more weight in representing the ethnopolitical cleavages compared to MSG’s measure. Notice that in both Model 2 and Model 3, the effect of Ethnopolitical Group Concentration and the interactive term Fragmentation X Concentration is much less significant for legislative parties than for electoral parties. This implies that perhaps ethnopolitical cleavages have different effects on the party systems for legislative elections as opposed to presidential elections—a factor not yet being fully researched. From these results, it would seem that I achieved the opposite results from MSG’s conclusions. In both legislative and electoral parties, I found that both Ethnopolitical Fragmentation and the interaction term Ethnopolitical Fragmentation X Concentration were positive. However, when the sociological factors are interacted with my institutional factor of district magnitude, I do get positive and statistically significant results. Again, this is a conflicting result from what I would expect based on the previous two models. 31 Ibid, 382. JPI Fall 2017, pg. 58
Page 1 and 2:
Fall 2017 Journal of Political Inqu
Page 3 and 4:
EDITORIAL BOARD ALINA ZHENG Editor
Page 5 and 6:
President to continue to build rela
Page 7 and 8: economic cooperation between the se
Page 9 and 10: Secretary Jacob Lew stated that Ira
Page 11 and 12: ultimate authority and the ability
Page 13 and 14: statements approved at home. Under
Page 15 and 16: ights. Nevertheless, I would argue
Page 17 and 18: configurations have formed conflict
Page 19 and 20: eadiness to deploy armed force in t
Page 21 and 22: The Worthiness of Citizenship The S
Page 23 and 24: like its predecessors. It also prom
Page 25 and 26: eginning of the JDP rule in 2002, 1
Page 27 and 28: In all of the aforementioned accoun
Page 29 and 30: Amid the Litani River and the Blue
Page 31 and 32: and invaded Lebanon again in 1982 u
Page 33 and 34: who are subject to an imminent thre
Page 35 and 36: unanimously adopted the renewal of
Page 37 and 38: The Times of European Identity Alli
Page 39 and 40: to build the European Economic Comm
Page 41 and 42: “forgotten” history, not only c
Page 43 and 44: state, as a strong state containing
Page 45 and 46: The essay will be divided into five
Page 47 and 48: order, Chinese “exports and impor
Page 49 and 50: However, China does not own a globa
Page 51 and 52: to challenge this powerful hegemon.
Page 53 and 54: The Puzzle of Ethnopolitical Fragme
Page 55 and 56: alternative analysis where two meth
Page 57: single population count. 24 This le
Page 61 and 62: Table 2: Determinants of Effective
Page 63 and 64: data, which don’t occur here. Fir
Page 65: CONCLUSION Overall, the findings of
show all

Fall 2017 JPI

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?