Alone or together? How institutions affect party entry in presidential elections in Europe and South America

Abstract

Prior research has shown that institutions affect parties’ incentives to coordinate within elections or compete on their own. However, no study to date has examined with institutional effects when parties coordinate in the most important of electoral contests: the presidential race. In this article, we explain which institutions encourage parties to run as part of pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) or shun them and run on their own in the race for the presidency. Using an original dataset of over 1400 parties that sponsored a candidate on their own or ran as part of an alliance in presidential elections across 23 democracies in Europe and South America from 1975 to 2009, we find that the powers of the presidential office, electoral rules and multi-level governance determine when parties decide to enter the race on their own or form an alliance. Our findings have important implications for understanding party competition in semi-presidential and presidential systems.

Entries and Withdrawals: Electoral Coordination across Different Offices and the Brazilian Party Systems

“…In other words, just like "presidentiable" parties are rare exceptions in Brazil (in the sense that SAMUELS and SHUGART, 2010 seem to consider the rule), there are few parties that are "governorable". This scenario contradicts what, for Spoon and West (2015), should be expected in two-round executive elections. For them, just like for Duverger (1954) in his original propositions, there is an incentive for parties to try their luck in the irst round, leaving electoral coordination for the second round and thus increasing the number of candidates.…”

Key electoral institutions and rules influencing proportionality and partisan bias in Spanish politics

“…This is a valid statement concerning the conversion formula as well as regarding the ballot structure (Bosch and Orriols, 2014). This also concerns the impact different electoral rules may exercise upon the formation or not of pre-electoral coalitions (Golder, 2006, Spoon et al 2015, or the influence different rules may exercise on the number of political parties that enter a legislature, to mention but a few areas of research of this literature. Singer and Stephenson (2009) and Jeffrey et al (2018) are also examples of these contributions as they focus on how the district magnitude may influence the number of parties that pass the threshold and enter the legislature as well as the behaviour of political actors.…”

The Formation of Electoral Alliances in the Republic of Armenia: A Case Study of the 2017 Parliamentary Elections

“…Along with ideology, party platforms are also considered to be a factor that influences the formation of alliances. Distinguishing between policy-seeking and office-seeking parties, some authors (Ibenskas, 2015;Kellam, 2015;Spoon and West, 2015;Wahman, 2011) argue that parties that are policy-seeking, i.e. strive to win legislative seats in order to implement their programs, form alliances more often.…”