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Should a Two-and-a-Half Law Replace the Cube Law in British Elections?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Markku Laakso
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Extract

For decades political scientists have been fascinated with the problem of establishing a formal mathematical relationship between the popular votes cast for a political party and the number of parliamentary seats it holds. The most famous attempt at solving this problem, known as the ‘cube law’, was formulated more than sixty years ago by James Parker Smith. Since then a large number of papers in support of the cube law have been published. Perhaps the most cited paper is by Kendall and Stuart. The cube law also has been stated to apply to parliamentary elections in New Zealand, the United States and Canada. But doubts about the cube law have also been expressed by Brookes, Eldersveld and just a few years ago by Tufte.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 1979 , pp. 355 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Kendall, M. G. and Stuart, A., ‘The Law of Cubic Proportions in Electoral Results’, British Journal of Sociology, 1 (1950), 183–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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10 See e.g. Taagepera, Rein, ‘Seats and Votes: A Generalization of the Cube Law of Elections’, Social Science Research, II (1973), 257–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15 Calculations are based on Rokkan, S. and Meyriat, J., International Guide to Electoral Statistics, Vol. I: West Europe (The Hague: Mouton, 1969).Google Scholar