Socialist Threat? Radical Party Entry, Electoral Alliances, and the Introduction of Proportional Representation

Abstract

A substantial body of research shows that the entry of socialist parties to the electoral arena is linked to major political and economic reforms at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, how socialist parties have affected electoral competition and coordination has never been investigated in detail. Drawing on the debate of the adoption of proportional representation, I employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the casual effect of socialist entry to the electoral arena on the formation of electoral alliances and the support of established parties. To do so, I use newly collected data for Imperial Germany 1890–1912. I show that established parties facing strong socialist competitors received more endorsement by other non-socialist parties and, as a result, a higher voter share. The findings suggest that established parties were able to mitigate coordination problems within the institutional setting of majoritarian electoral systems.

An ecological inference approach to the origins of proportional representation

“…Nevertheless, such uncertainty is likely not all-encompassing, otherwise we would observe only risk-averse decisions such as opting for very large districts -the safest option -and selecting the D'Hondt rule, a maximin approach for average parties (Fernández-de-Córdoba and Penadés, 2009). The tinkering with formulas and constituencies in districted electoral systems to systematically produce anticipated seat-to-vote distortions suggests that prospects often are well-informed (Walter andEmmenegger, 2019, 2023).…”

“…The first paper accentuates the role of voter coordination failure as the mechanism prompting PR reform (Boix, 1999), while the second underscores the structure of the electoral market -competitive versus segmented -coupled with the relative strength of right-wing parties (Boix, 2010). While Boix's (1999) rational coordination mechanism has been subject to critical scrutiny on historical grounds (Kreuzer, 2010) and in detailed case studies (Schröder and Manow, 2020;Walter, 2021), we place our contribution as a continuation of his line of research on the structure of the electoral market (see also Penadés, 2008Penadés, , 2011. As for the nature of the threat that triggers a reaction, it has been variously construed, ranging from the straightforward electoral vulnerability of individual candidates (Leemann and Mares, 2014) to an existential threat, rooted in the potentially revolutionary implications of a socialist triumph (Ahmed, 2012;Gjerløw and Rasmussen, 2022).…”