Stabilizing party systems and excluding segments of society?: The effects of formation costs on new party foundation in Latin America

Birnir, Jóhanna Kristín

doi:10.1007/bf02686280

Cited by 51 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…This is true for all the factors tested, irrespective of the control for ethnic heterogeneity. The suggestion that the nature of the electoral system has little impact on the level of ethnic representation contradicts expectations outlined by many previous studies (Welch 1990, Saggar 2000, Birnir 2004, Spirova 2004, Reynolds 2006, Bochsler 2006. However, the lack of association in the cross-national analysis may indicate that other factors dominate the picture for ethnic group representation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Ethnic Group Representation in a Cross-National Comparison

Ruedin

2009

The Journal of Legislative Studies

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This paper compares the levels of ethnic group representation in parliament in 95 democracies. The analyses are comparative in nature, breaking with the literature where single country studies are the norm. Considering both electoral and cultural variables, the results cast doubt on whether the role of the electoral system in shaping political representation is dominant. In contrast to what much of the literature suggests, once controlling for the ethnic make-up of society and cultural attitudes, electoral aspects seem of little significance. Levels of ethnic group representation are best explained with cultural variables, in particular liberal attitudes towards marginalised groups in society.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Ethnic Group Representation in a Cross-National Comparison

Ruedin

2009

The Journal of Legislative Studies

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“…In Peru, parties were required to obtain 100,000 signatures spread across one-half of the country's 25 provinces in order to gain registration. In 1993, Peru lifted the spatial requirement but quadrupled the number of required signatures to 400,000 and retained the five percent threshold to retain registration (Birnir 2004;Van Cott 2003). When this latter threshold was dropped in 2001, Peru shifted the distribution of legislative seats to make it more difficult for indigenous parties to win seats.…”

Section: Registration and Ballot-access Requirementsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…While nominally applied to all parties-an advantage that allows them to appear facially neutral and not targeted at particular groups-these rules tend to have a disproportionate impact on ethnic and regional parties. They often cannot overcome spatial ballot-access or party registration requirements, as the party's identity precludes support outside of its home region (Birnir 2004;Van Cott 2003). These requirements take different forms across countries.…”

Section: Registration and Ballot-access Requirementsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Don't Start the Party: Assessing the Electoral Effect of Legal Provisions Impeding Ethnoregional Parties

Lublin¹,

WrightMatthew²

2014

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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Around the world ''free'' democracies actively seek to undermine the political influence of ethnic and regional minorities by impeding the formation of parties aimed at furthering their interests. Here, we assess the impact of two kinds of legal provisions against ethnoregional parties-outright bans and ballot-access requirements that indirectly impede their ability to win votes and legislative seats. Despite being less direct, we theorize ballot-access requirements should be much more effective at undermining ethnoregional parties as they provide seemingly objective rules that are easy to enforce. In contrast, outright bans require difficult subjective decisions on parties with a non-ethnoregional façade. Combining in-depth case analysis with multivariate models based on a comprehensive dataset of election results spanning 73 countries between 1990 and 2012, we find that party bans do little to curb ethnoregional party influence. By contrast, registration and ballot-access requirements are much more effective.

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“…One key justification for public funding to political parties is the claim that funding from publicly monitored sources levels the electoral playing field (see, for example, Birnir 2005;Mainwaring et al 2010;Tavits 2008). Yet, the introduction of subsidies has also been seen as a factor in the emergence of cartel parties, which collude against new contenders (Katz and Mair 1995).…”

Section: Characteristics Of the Playing Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic Institutions Beyond the Nation State: Measuring Institutional Dissimilarity in Federal Countries

Harbers¹,

Ingram²

2013

Gov. & oppos.

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The persistence of subnational undemocratic regimes in new democracies has recently revived interest in intra-national patterns of democratization. This article offers new data and a methodological contribution to this literature, emphasizing the measurement of institutional variation across territorial units and levels of government. Developing new measures of the unevenness of democratic institutions within individual countries, and illustrating these measures with an original data set on electoral rules in Mexico at the federal level and across 32 subnational units, we provide tools to enhance the study of democracy, particularly at the subnational level and in federal or decentralized systems. More specifically, we develop measures of institutional characteristics across a country's spatial units and of federal-to-state institutional dissimilarity – what we call system-wide institutional incongruence.

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Stabilizing party systems and excluding segments of society?: The effects of formation costs on new party foundation in Latin America

Cited by 51 publications

References 25 publications

Ethnic Group Representation in a Cross-National Comparison

Ethnic Group Representation in a Cross-National Comparison

Don't Start the Party: Assessing the Electoral Effect of Legal Provisions Impeding Ethnoregional Parties

Democratic Institutions Beyond the Nation State: Measuring Institutional Dissimilarity in Federal Countries

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