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Yen Pin-Su, "Party registration rules and party systems in Latin America" Party Politics, 21 (March 2015), 295-309. [Available at http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue2/]
Studies have shown that the design of electoral institutions involves a trade-off between representation of voters and accountability of governments (Powell, 2000). This insight might best be reflected in the difference between proportional representation (PR) systems and plurality systems (Carey and Hix, 2011; Lijphart, 1999; Powell, 2000): while a PR system facilitates better representation by including more parties that represent diverse interests, plurality rule reduces the number of parties but produces a stronger and more accountable government.
Figure1: Average NSPR in Latin American countries Figure 2: Correlation between the average NSPR and the average number of parties in Latin America Table 1: Effects of party registration rules on the number of electoral parties Figure 3: Predicted number of electoral parties at different levels of NSPR This
study creates new opportunities for a broader research agenda for
electoral systems. One extension of my analyses is to explore the
interactive effects of party registration rules with other
institutional factors on party systems. Are restrictive petition
signature requirements more effective in reducing the number of parties
in different institutional contexts? How do such requirements interact
with other institutions to help soften the
representation-accountability trade-off and achieve both objectives?
These questions remain to be explored for a more nuanced understanding
of how party formation costs condition party politics |