The Evolution of New Party Systems: Voter Learning and Electoral Systems

Abstract

How do new party systems evolve over time? This article argues that party system evolution requires the solution of coordination problems that voters face in early elections; this happens through a learning mechanism. Elections reveal information to voters, who update their beliefs about party viability and the distribution of voters’ preferences and adjust their behaviour. The institutional setting, however, strongly conditions the pace of learning. Restrictive electoral systems (single-member district) accelerate learning through the harsh penalties they impose on miscoordination, while permissive ones (proportional representation) prolong it. Testing the argument on a district-level dataset in new democracies provides ample support; voters learn to cast fewer wasted votes over time and this happens faster in single-member district systems. The findings point to a trade-off between consolidation and representation; while party system evolution is facilitated by restrictive electoral systems, the presence of distinct social groups in the political arena is better served by permissive ones.

The party system effects of unstable electoral rules in Latin America

“…Nevertheless, new democracies also evolve and mature over time so that at some point they might become more established, at least in electoral terms. Several works have found evidence that over time party leaders learn how to target voters and voters how to avoid wasting their votes, thus leading to more predictability and improved electoral coordination (Crisp et al, 2012;Riera, 2013;Roussias, 2022;Tavits and Annus, 2006). This experience, in turn, should lead to electoral results more in line with conventional theoretical expectations (see Raymond et al, 2016).…”

“…To analyze the impact of electoral experience, we start by segmenting the data between early and late elections. This selection of observations builds on previous work (Raymond et al, 2016;Roussias, 2022), which has shown that it takes about five elections for voters and party leaders to learn how to behave strategically in electoral competition. We thus consider the first five elections after the transition to democracy in every country as early elections, and the rest as late ones.…”