Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T12:12:46.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constituency Diversity, District Magnitude and Voter Co-ordination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Joshua D. Potter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why are voters in some electoral constituencies able to successfully co-ordinate their balloting decisions on viable party offerings, while those in other constituencies are not? Prior work on voter co-ordination failures has focused on institutional and elite-level explanations. This article demonstrates that characteristics of the voting constituencies themselves – specifically their socio-demographic diversity – can play an important role in shaping voters’ collective ability to co-ordinate around viable party offerings. It synthesizes theories of collective decision making from the field of organizational psychology with theories of institutions as incentive structures to argue that diversity inhibits collective co-ordination in some contexts, but not others. In so doing, the article offers a new causal mechanism that links diversity and district magnitude to party system size. The argument is tested using a cross-national analysis of tens of thousands of voters across lower house elections in twelve countries.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 91 - 113
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University (email: [email protected]). I would like to thank Brian Crisp, Santiago Olivella, Margit Tavits, Cristian Pérez Muñoz, Dalston Ward, Nick Davis, Tonya Kenny, Casey Knott, Rachel K. Davis, Rob Johns, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. An earlier draft of this manuscript was presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association in New Orleans, and much of the research was undertaken as an outgrowth of work funded by the National Science Foundation, Grant SES-1124460. Data replication sets are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS, and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123415000484.

References

Abrajano, Marisa A. 2005. Who Evaluates a Presidential Candidate by Using Non-Policy Campaign Messages? Political Research Quarterly 58 (1):55–67.Google Scholar
Abrams, Samuel, Iversen, Torben, and Soskice, David. 2011. Informal Social Networks and Rational Voting. British Journal of Political Science 41 (2):229–257.Google Scholar
Aldrich, John H. 1993. Rational Choice and Turnout. American Journal of Political Science 37 (1):246–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, Boehmke, Frederick J., and Nagler, Jonathan. 2006. Strategic Voting in British Elections. Electoral Studies 25:1–19.Google Scholar
Amorim Neto, Octavio, and Cox, Gary W.. 1997. Electoral Institutions, Cleavage Structures, and the Number of Parties. American Journal of Political Science 41 (1):149–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Iyengar, Shanto. 1995. Of Horseshoes and Horse Races: Experimental Studies of the Impact of Poll Results on Electoral Behavior. Political Communication 5:413–429.Google Scholar
Arceneaux, Kevin. 2006. Do Campaigns Help Voters Learn? A Cross-National Analysis. British Journal of Political Science 36 (1):159–173.Google Scholar
Baldwin, Kate, and Huber, John D.. 2010. Economic Versus Cultural Differences: Forms of Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Formation. American Political Science Review 104 (4):644–662.Google Scholar
Bell, Suzanne T., Villado, Anton J., Lukasik, Marc A., Belau, Larisa, and Briggs, Andrea L.. 2011. Getting Specific About Demographic Diversity Variable and Team Performance Relationships: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Management 37 (3):709–743.Google Scholar
Benoit, Kenneth. 2000. Which Electoral Formula is the Most Proportional? A New Look With New Evidence. Political Analysis 8 (4):381–388.Google Scholar
Bhappu, Anita D., Griffith, Terri L., and Northcraft, Gregory B.. 1997. Media Effects and Communication Bias in Diverse Groups. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 70 (3):199–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birnir, Johanna Kristin. 2007. Divergence in Diversity? The Dissimilar Effects of Cleavages on Electoral Politics in New Democracies. American Journal of Political Science 51 (3):602–619.Google Scholar
Birnir, Johanna Kristin, and Van Cott, Donna Lee. 2007. Disunity in Diversity: Party System Fragmentation and the Dynamic Effect of Ethnic Heterogeneity on Latin American Legislatures. Latin American Research Review 42 (1):99–125.Google Scholar
Blais, André. 2002. Why is There So Little Strategic Voting in Canadian Plurality Rule Elections? Political Studies 50 (3):445–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blais, André, Héroux-Legault, Maxime, Stephenson, Laura B., Cross, William, and Gidengil, Elisabeth. 2012. Assessing the Psychological and Mechanical Impact of Electoral Rules: A Quasi-Experiment. Electoral Studies 31 (4):829–837.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowler, Shaun, Farrell, David M., and Pettitt, Robin T.. 2005. Expert Opinion on Electoral Systems: So Which Electoral System is ‘Best’? Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties 15 (1):3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brancati, Dawn. 2014. Global Elections Database, Constituency-Level Elections Dataset, New York. Available from http://www.globalelectionsdatabase.com, accessed 15 May 2014.Google Scholar
Brewer, Marilynn B., and Brown, Rupert J.. 1998. Intergroup Relations. In Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by D. T. Gilbert and S. T. Fiske, 554–594. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M., and Yoon, Yong J.. 2006. All Voting is Strategic. Public Choice 129 (1/2):159–167.Google Scholar
Budge, Ian. 1994. A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology, and Policy Equilibria Viewed Comparatively and Temporally. British Journal of Political Science 24 (4):443–467.Google Scholar
Calvert, Randall. 1985. The Value of Biased Information: A Rational Choice Model of Political Advice. The Journal of Politics 47 (2):530–555.Google Scholar
Caramani, Daniele. 2004. The Nationalization of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carey, John M., and Hix, Simon. 2011. The Electoral Sweet Spot: Low-Magnitude Proportional Electoral Systems. American Journal of Political Science 55 (2):383–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrubba, Clifford J., and Timpone, Richard J.. 2005. Explaining Vote Switching Across First- and Second-Order Elections: Evidence from Europe. Comparative Political Studies 38 (3):260–281.Google Scholar
Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Girardin, Luc. 2007. Beyond Fractionalization: Mapping Ethnicity onto Nationalist Insurgencies. American Political Science Review 101 (1):173–185.Google Scholar
Chatman, Jennifer A., and Flynn, Francis J.. 2001. The Influence of Demographic Heterogeneity on the Emergence and Consequences of Cooperative Norms in Work Teams. Academy of Management Journal 44 (5):956–974.Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep, and Kollman, Ken. 2004. The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chong, Dennis, and Druckman, James M.. 2007. Framing Theory. Annual Review of Political Science 10:103–126.Google Scholar
Clark, William Roberts, and Golder, Matt. 2006. Rehabilitating Duverger’s Theory: Testing the Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effects of Electoral Laws. Comparative Political Studies 39 (6):679–708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clough, Emily. 2007. Strategic Voting Under Conditions of Uncertainty: A Re-Evaluation of Duverger’s Law. British Journal of Political Science 37:313–332.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. 1997. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and Shugart, Matthew Soberg. 1996. Strategic Voting Under Proportional Representation. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 12 (2):299–324.Google Scholar
Crisp, Brian F., Olivella, Santiago, and Potter, Joshua D.. 2012. Electoral Contexts that Impede Voter Coordination. Electoral Studies 31 (1):143–158.Google Scholar
Crisp, Brian F., Olivella, Santiago, and Potter, Joshua D.. 2013. Party-System Nationalization and the Scope of Public Policy: The Importance of Cross-District Constituency Similarity. Comparative Political Studies 46 (4):431–456.Google Scholar
CSES. 2014. The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, Online data repository. Available at http://www.cses.org, accessed 15 May 2014.Google Scholar
Desposato, Scott W. 2007. The Impact of Campaign Messages in New Democracies: Results from an Experiment in Brazil. Unpublished manuscript, University of California in San Diego.Google Scholar
Dickson, Eric S., and Scheve, Kenneth. 2006. Social Identity, Political Speech, and Electoral Competition. Journal of Theoretical Politics 18 (1):5–39.Google Scholar
Dickson, Eric S., and Scheve, Kenneth. 2010. Social Identity, Electoral Institutions, and the Number of Candidates. British Journal of Political Science 40:349–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N. 2011. What’s It All About? Framing in Political Science. In Perspectives on Framing, edited by Gideon Keren, 279–301. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Duch, Raymond M., and Palmer, Harvey D.. 2002. Strategic Voting in Post-Communist Democracy? British Journal of Political Science 32:63–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feddersen, Timothy J. 2004. Rational Choice Theory and the Paradox of Not Voting. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 18 (1):99–112.Google Scholar
Ferrara, Federico. 2004. Electoral Coordination and the Strategic Desertion of Strong Parties in Compensatory Mixed Systems with Negative Vote Transfers. Electoral Studies 23 (3):391–413.Google Scholar
Fiol, C. Marlene. 1994. Consensus, Diversity, and Learning in Organizations. Organization Science 5 (3):403–420.Google Scholar
Gaines, Brian J. 1999. Duverger’s Law and the Meaning of Canadian Exceptionalism. Comparative Political Studies 32 (7):835–861.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Michael. 1991. Proportionality, Disproportionality, and Electoral Systems. Electoral Studies 10:33–51.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Stern, Hal. 2006. The Difference Between ‘Significance’ and ‘Not Significant’ is Not Itself Statistically Significant. American Statistician 60 (4):328–331.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Hill, Jennifer. 2007. Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gill, Jeff. 1999. The Insignificance of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing. Political Research Quarterly 52 (3):647–674.Google Scholar
Golder, Matt. 2005. Democratic Electoral Systems Around the World, 1946–2000. Electoral Studies 24:103–121.Google Scholar
Gruenfeld, Deborah H., Mannix, Elizabeth A., Williams, Katherine Y., and Neale, Margaret A.. 1996. Group Composition and Decision Making: How Member Familiarity and Information Distribution Affect Process and Performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 67 (1):1–15.Google Scholar
Gschwend, Thomas. 2007. Ticket-Splitting and Strategic Voting Under Mixed Electoral Rules: Evidence from Germany. European Journal of Political Economy 46:1–23.Google Scholar
Habyarimana, James, Humphreys, Macartan, Posner, Daniel, and Weinstein, Jeremy. 2007. Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision? American Political Science Review 101 (4):709–725.Google Scholar
Hayes, Andrew F., and Krippendorff, Klaus. 2007. Answering the Call for a Standard Reliability Measure for Coding Data. Communication Methods and Measures 1 (1):77–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Anthony, McLean, Iain, Taylor, Bridget, and Curtice, John. 1999. Between First and Second Order: A Comparison of Voting Behavior in European and Local Elections in Britain. European Journal of Political Research 35:389–414.Google Scholar
Hellman, Joel S. 1998. Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Post-Communist Transitions. World Politics 50 (2):203–234.Google Scholar
Indridason, Indridi H. 2007. When to Run and When to Hide: Electoral Coordination and Exit. Economics & Politics 20 (1):80–105.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, and Simon, Adam F.. 2000. New Perspectives and Evidence on Political Communication and Campaign Effects. Annual Review of Psychology 51:149–169.Google Scholar
Jehn, Karen A., Chadwick, Clint, and Thatcher, Sherry M. B.. 1997. To Agree or Not to Agree: The Effects of Value Congruence, Individual Demographic Dissimilarity, and Conflict on Workgroup Outcomes. International Journal of Conflict Management 8 (4):287–305.Google Scholar
Jones, Mark P. 2004. Electoral Institutions, Social Cleavages, and Candidate Competition in Presidential Systems. Electoral Studies 23 (1):73–106.Google Scholar
Kahn, Kim Fridkin, and Kenney, Patrick J.. 1999. Do Negative Campaigns Mobilize or Suppress Turnout? Clarifying the Relationship Between Negativity and Participation. American Political Science Review 93:877–889.Google Scholar
Kollman, Ken, Hicken, Allen, Caramani, Daniele, and Backer, David. 2011. Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Political Studies.Google Scholar
Krippendorff, Klaus. 2004. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Laakso, Markku, and Taagepera, Rein.. 1979. Effective Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to West Europe. Comparative Political Studies 12 (1):3–27.Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Linz, Juan J., and Stepan, Alfred. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Rokkan, Stein. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Mohammed, Susan, and Ringseis, Erika. 2001. Cognitive Diversity and Consensus in Group Decision Making: The Role of Inputs, Processes, and Outcomes. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 85 (2):210–335.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Montalvo, Jose G., and Reynal-Querol, Marta. 2005. Ethnic Diversity and Economic Development. Journal of Development Economics 76 (2):293–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgenstern, Scott, Swindle, Stephen M., and Castagnola, Andrea. 2009. Party Nationalization and Institutions. Journal of Politics 71 (4):1322–1341.Google Scholar
Moser, Robert G., and Scheiner, Ethan. 2009. Strategic Voting in Established and New Democracies: Ticket Splitting in Mixed-Member Systems. Electoral Studies 28:51–61.Google Scholar
Moser, Robert G., and Scheiner, Ethan. 2012. Electoral Systems and Political Context: How the Effects of Rules Vary Across New and Established Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ordeshook, Peter C., and Shvetsova, Olga V.. 1994. Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties. American Journal of Political Science 38 (1):100–123.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Page, Scott E. 2007. The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Page, Scott E.. 2011. Diversity and Complexity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Potter, Joshua D. 2014. Demographic Diversity and District-Level Party Systems. Comparative Political Studies. 47 (13):1801–1829.Google Scholar
Powell, G. Bingham. 1982. Comparative Democracies: Participation, Stability, and Violence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rallings, Colin, and Thrasher, Michael. 2005. Not All ‘Second Order’ Contests are the Same: Turnout and Party Choice at the Concurrent 2004 Local and European Parliament Elections in England. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7:584–597.Google Scholar
Randel, Amy E. 2002. Identity Salience: A Moderator of the Relationship Between Group Gender Composition and Work Group Conflict. Journal of Organizational Behavior 23 (6):749–766.Google Scholar
Reed, Steven R. 1990. Structure and Behaviour: Extending Duverger’s Law to the Japanese Case. British Journal of Political Science 20 (3):335–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schuessler, Alexander A. 2000. A Logic of Expressive Choice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Selway, Joel Sawat. 2011. The Measurement of Cross-Cutting Cleavages and Other Multi-Dimensional Cleavage Structures. Political Analysis 19:48–65.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1995. Rationality and Social Choice. American Economic Review 85 (1):1–24.Google Scholar
Sides, John, and Karch, Andrew. 2008. Messages that Mobilize? Issue Publics and the Content of Political Advertising. Journal of Politics 70 (2):466–476.Google Scholar
Singer, Matthew M., and Stephenson, Laura B.. 2009. The Political Context and Duverger’s Theory: Evidence at the District Level. Electoral Studies 28:480–491.Google Scholar
Singer, Matthew W. 2013. Was Duverger Correct? Single-Member District Election Outcomes in Fifty-Three Countries. British Journal of Political Science 43 (1):201–220.Google Scholar
Stoll, Heather. 2008. Social Cleavages and the Number of Parties: How the Measures You Choose Affect the Answers You Get. Comparative Political Studies 41 (11):1439–1465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoll, Heather. 2013. Changing Societies, Changing Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tavits, Margit, and Annus, Taavi. 2006. Learning to Make Votes Count: The Role of Democratic Experience. Electoral Studies 25:72–90.Google Scholar
Treisman, Daniel. 2007. What Have We Learned About the Causes of Corruption from Ten Years of Cross-National Empirical Research? Annual Review of Political Science 10:211–244.Google Scholar
van Knippenberg, Daan, and Schippers, Michaela C.. 2007. Work Group Diversity. Annual Review of Psychology 58:515–541.Google Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zielinski, Jakub. 2002. Translating Social Cleavages in Party Systems: The Significance of New Democracies. World Politics 54:184–211.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Potter supplementary material S1

Appendix

Download Potter supplementary material S1(PDF)
PDF 678 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Potter Dataset

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WF2CMX
Link