Nationalization in New and Old Party Systems: Electoral

Incentives and Cross-District Coordination

Carolina de Miguel, University of Toronto∗

August 2013

∗Earlier versions of this paper were presented at MPSA (April 2013) and the Council for European Studies (CES)Conference (June 2013). Comments are welcome. Please write to carol.demiguel@utoronto.ca.

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Abstract

Recent literature suggests that parties in new democracies are different from parties inold democracies in terms of party identification, electoral volatility and clientelism Sur-prisingly, little work has been done exploring differences in the territorial structure ofparties between old and new democracies. This paper uses an original dataset measuringthe degree of party system nationalization for 67 democracies between 1970 and 2008to explore the relationship between the age of parties in a democracy and the degree ofparty system nationalization. I show that countries with old and consolidated partiestend to be nationalized, whereas countries with young parties show significant varia-tion in the territorial nature of their party systems. I argue that the variation amongcountries with young parties is explained by differences in electoral institutions. I showthat majoritarian electoral institutions increase the costs of cross-district coordinationmaking parties less likely to become nationalized. On the other hand, majoritarian sys-tems tend to encourage candidate autonomy within parties, and I find that allowing forgreater candidate autonomy allows parties to spread nationally. The paper tests thesetwo countervailing effects of electoral institutions on party system nationalization.

Keywords: democratization; nationalization; parties and party systems; electoral sys-tems; candidate autonomy; mediation analysis

Introduction

There is a large body of literature arguing that parties and party systems in young democracies aresubstantially different than parties and party systems in older and more consolidated democracies(Brader and Tucker 2001; Mainwaring 1999; Roberts and Wibbels 1999; Webb and White 2007;Ziegfeld 2009). Parties and party systems in new democracies are associated with greater volatility,weaker voter attachments, more clientelistic practices, and less party system institutionalization.One issue that this literature does not explore, however, is party nationalization. Less is knownabout whether party systems in younger democracies are also more localized (i.e. less nationalized)than in older democracies.

The lack of work on the development of nationalized party systems among newly formed democ-racies is surprising given the implications that the territorial nature of party systems can have onpolitical phenomena ranging from the nature of policies produced in a country (Jones and Main-waring 2003; Hicken, Kollman and Simmons 2008; Rodden 2009) to levels of violent conflict anddemands for secession (Bakke and Wibbels 2006; Brancati 2006). By way of example, Hicken,Kollman and Simmons (2008) argue that when political competition at the national level occursbetween parties that represent specific sub-national [i.e. regional or local] constituencies, then theoutcomes of policy debates and conflicts can lead to an oversupply of pork-barrel policies and anundersupply of nationally-focused public goods (Hicken 2009, 3). In contrast, in nationalized partysystems, political cleavages are more likely to fall along functional, ideological, or class lines, ratherthan along lines that correlate with geography (Hicken 2009, 3), which leads to nationalized, com-prehensive policy programs1. These implications for the effective provision of public goods are justone way in which the level of nationalization of a countrys party system can be especially importantfor new democracies.

This paper presents an exploration of the development of nationalized party systems amongnewly formed democracies by focusing on the role of electoral incentives in hindering or promotingnationalization. I make two claims in this paper. First, I argue that electoral incentives matterfor the development of nationalized party systems, yet their effect is not as straightforward asone might imagine. On the one hand, majoritarian electoral systems tend to increase the costsof coordination and thus decrease the incentives to form nation-wide party platforms across manydiverse electoral districts. This makes countries with majoritarian electoral systems more likely tohave territorialized party systems. On the other hand, parties under majoritarian electoral systemstend to have greater candidate autonomy (or less party control over their candidates) which can inturn help overcome some of the costs of coordination and facilitate nationalization. In other words,the territorializing effect of majoritarian electoral systems is often mitigated by the presence of moreflexible party organizations in these types of systems. Second, I argue that the effect of electoralinstitutions on cross-district coordination only matters among relatively young democracies. Asparty systems become older and more mature candidates and parties develop effective strategiesfor building cross-district alliances to form national parties, and are thus less influenced by theelectoral system.

The paper proceeds as follows. The next section presents a brief literature review on therelationship between democracy and the territorial nature of party systems. This section alsointroduces the empirical puzzle that motivates this paper: what explains variation in party systemnationalization among young democracies? The following section develops a theory on how electoral

1In a similar vein, Rodden (2009) argues that countries with parties that have national programmatic appeals aremore likely to enact progressive redistributive policies, whereas countries dominated by parties that de-emphasizenational appeals tend to develop a system of pork-barrel politics that usually results in regressive inter-regionaltransfers.

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institutions affect cross-district coordination and derives some testable hypotheses. Section fourintroduces the data and empirical strategy of the paper, and section five presents and interpretsthe results of the multivariate analysis. Finally, section six summarizes the main findings and theirimplications.

Democratization, Young Party Systems and Party System Nation-alization

Caramani’s work on the nationalization of politics in Western Europe links party system nationaliza-tion (or its converse, party system territorialization) to macro-historical processes of modernizationand democratization. In his book The Nationalization of Politics (2004) Caramani argues that avariety of macro-forces (such as the consolidation of the nation-state, industrialization, and the ad-vent of mass politics) at the end of the First World War led to a rapid and inexorable developmenttowards national electorates and national party systems in Western Europe. The extension of thefranchise and the rise of political and party competition led to a push from parties to capture newelectorates and thus to expand geographically.

Although Caramani’s book focuses on Western Europe his argument suggests that democraciesin other regions of the world might follow a similar path towards nationalization. If this is the casethen we should expect young and less consolidated democracies to have relatively territorialized orlocalized party systems (as in Western Europe prior to World War I) whereas older democracieswould be more nationalized as their parties progressively acquire the resources and experience tobuild cross-district alliances. This logic would be in line with existing work that suggests that timematters for the development of stable and well-institutionalized party systems. Several scholars,grounded on a behavioralist tradition, have suggested that voters’ attachments to parties are builtover time as a consequences of repeated interactions. For example, Brader and Tucker (2001) showthat “so long as parties endure over time, mass partisanship will emerge as citizens acquire anattachment to, or identification with, specific parties” (Brader and Tucker 2001, 70). Similarly,Lupu and Stokes (2010) argue that “[t]he repeated experience of voting builds partisanship” (Lupuand Stokes 2010, 92), and in turn partisanship contributes to stabilize voting behaviour and decreaseelectoral volatility2. Similar to these accounts, we might expect time to matter in the developmentof nation-wide party alliances and nation-wide voter attachments.

A first look at the data suggests that there is some relationship between party system national-ization (or its converse, party system territorialization) and the age of a democratic party system.Figure 1 presents a scatterplot of the relationship between the “age of party system ” (on the x-axis)and “party system nationalization” (on the y-axis). Party system nationalization (on the y-axis)captures the extent to which parties in a country obtain votes across all electoral districts. Highvalues indicate that the party system is nationalized meaning that most parties obtain the sameproportion of votes in all electoral districts. Lower values indicate that the party system is localizedor territorialized meaning that parties obtain a very uneven distribution of votes across electoraldistricts3. “Age of of parties” (on the x-axis) measures the average age of the two main political

2Some authors have argued that party systems do not become more stable over time, and that electorates do notbecome more partisan over time. According to Mainwaring and Zoco (2007) it is not the length of democracy butrather the timing of democracy that explains differences in electoral volatility.

3The extreme case of territorialization would be one in which each electoral district has its own different set ofparties. The extreme case of nationalization is one in which all districts have the same set of parties and partiesobtain the same proportion of votes in each district. I will go into more detail on the measurement of this variablelater on in the paper. The data comes from an original dataset that includes about 346 election years in 67 countriesspanning the period from 1970 to 2009 and includes a healthy sample of both old and new democracies. See Table 5

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parties in a country4. The scatterplot suggests that countries with relatively older political partieshave (on average) more nationalized party systems than countries with a younger party system; butthe relationship is not perfect and among countries with young parties there is actually substantialvariation: some young party systems are territorialized and some are nationalized. The rest of thepaper focuses on institutions –and more specifically electoral institutions – to help explain some ofthis variation among younger party systems.

Figure 1: Party System Nationalization and Age of Party System

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Electoral Incentives and Party System Nationalization

The development of national parties and nationalized party systems is a matter of coordinationof candidates and voters across electoral districts (Cox 1999; Hicken 2009; Chhibber and Kollman2004). National parties form when candidates and voters from different districts coordinate underthe same party labels. When the same set of parties competes in every electoral district andvoters vote for these parties evenly across all districts then the outcome is a party system withnationally-oriented political parties, or what the literature describes as a nationalized party system.In contrast, when candidates from different electoral districts fail to adopt common party labelsthe result is a party system with locally oriented parties, or what the literature describes as aterritorialized party system.

Coordinating across electoral districts is a costly activity (Hicken 2009); it requires parties tohave the necessary resources and organizational skills to reach out to a vast (and often diverse) set ofconstituencies. Given these costs the literature has explored several conditions under which we can

for the countries and years included in the dataset.4I provide a more detailed explanation of the measurement of this variable in the empirical section of the paper.

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expect candidates and parties to overcome these costs and form nation wide party platforms. Forexample, there has been a substantial amount of excellent research exploring how institutions suchas presidentialism, decentralization and bicameralism affect the incentives of voters and candidatesto coordinate successfully across the territory of a country (Chhibber and Kollman 2004; Hicken2009; Cox 1997)5. Less attention has been given to electoral institutions and the role they mightplay in promoting or inhibiting cross-district coordination.

Majoritarian Electoral Rules and Cross-District Coordination

A common starting point in the literature on electoral systems is that majoritarian systemstend to localize (or personalize) politics more than proportional systems. This general assumptionhowever points us in two very different directions regarding the development of national parties.On the one hand, the localization of politics is linked to parties that focus on narrow constituenciesand that are unable (or unwilling) to form broad-based national coalitions; the presence of suchparties should be correlated with territorialized party systems. On the other hand, the localizationof politics can imply greater party flexibility and adaptability which might in turn allow parties tobetter compete across a large number of diverse districts. In this case, the localization of politicsshould be correlated with more nationalized parties and party systems. I posit that these two(opposing) logics operate simultaneously.

Majoritarian electoral systems make coordination across districts difficult for two reasons. First,in majoritarian electoral systems plurality is required to win the seat in a particular district thereforeit is likely that “parties may avoid spending the resources (good candidates, costs, and effort) tocompete where they have little chance of winning” (Morgenstern, Swindle and Castagnola 2009,1327). Second, majoritarian electoral systems are associated with a greater (and more diverse)number of small electoral districts. A large number of districts means greater differentiation amongdistricts and more electoral boundaries. These factors make the coordination of campaigns moredifficult (Morgenstern, Swindle and Castagnola 2009, 1327) and increase informational costs, sinceparties need to determine which candidates to field in a large number of diverse districts.

In contrast, under proportional representation, parties should have a greater incentive to fieldcandidates in all districts because the more proportional distribution of seats to votes provides themwith an easy electoral benefit. In other words, despite the costs inherent in coordination, partiesstill have an incentive to field candidates in districts that are not their strongholds because theyknow they will at least obtain some seats. In addition, proportional systems tend to have fewer andless differentiated districts, making it easier for parties to pick strong candidates for each district

5For example, Chhibber and Kollman (2004) have argued that decentralization is one such important factor. Ifpolicy in a country is overwhelmingly made at the national level candidates and voters have more incentives toform national coalitions that will enable them to capture the national government. Therefore as countries centralizeresources and power at the national level we should expect to see a corresponding nationalization of their partysystem. In contrast when power and resources lie predominantly at the sub-national level (i.e. in highly decentralizedcountries) the control of the national government becomes less important as a means to influence policy and thuscandidates and voters have fewer incentives to unite under national party labels. Building on this work, Hicken(2009) argues that the horizontal distribution of power also matters to explain the incentives for coordination. Moreconcentrated power at the national level should increase the incentives to coordinate across districts and form nation-wide parties. Finally, regime type also seems to matter in explaining cross-district coordination. The commonargument is that presidential systems lead to more nationalized party systems because presidents are often electedby plurality and parties that nominate presidential candidates for presidential office need to gain votes from a“large portion of the national electorate” (Samuels 2002). In contrast, in parliamentary systems parties can obtainrepresentation at the national level without being the largest party in the country and without having to appeal toa broad sector of the electorate. This general argument is echoed by Cox (1997) in his book Making Votes Count:Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems.

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and to coordinate campaigns across these districts. In sum, I posit that proportional representationsystems create incentives for parties to spread nationally whereas majoritarian electoral systemsincrease the costs of coordination across districts in turn increasing the difficulty of developingnational party organizations. This logic leads to the first hypothesis about the effect of electoralrules on nationalization:

Hypothesis 1: Majoritarian electoral systems have a negative effect on party systemnationalization whereas non-majoritarian electoral systems (i.e. PR and mixed systems)have a positive effect on party system nationalization.

The Role of Candidate Autonomy: A Countervailing Effect

The effect of majoritarian electoral systems on the coordination of candidates across districts hasan additional layer of complexity. As explained above, parties in majoritarian electoral systemswill have less motivation to coordinate across districts given the incentives generated by pluralityrule and the number (and nature) of districts in these types of electoral systems. However, in orderto pursue power and effectively implement their policy programs, parties in majoritarian systemsneed to win a considerable number of districts because they can only win one seat per district.In other words, parties in a majoritarian system have an incentive to spread nationally even ifnationalization is costly.

One way to spread nationally under majoritarian rule is to build decentralized party organi-zations that have weak party control over their candidates. Decentralized party organizations iskey to cross-district coordination. Parties that allow for significant candidate autonomy within theparty allow for greater ideological heterogeneity, and this heterogeneity facilitates reaching out toa (potentially) diverse set of districts in the country. As a party can effectively run in a largernumber of districts that party will be better positioned to expand nationally. Furthermore, allow-ing greater candidate autonomy solves the informational problems associated with choosing strongcandidates for a diverse group of districts by permitting a more efficient (bottom up) selection ofviable candidates. In contrast, parties that do not allow for significant candidate autonomy withinthe party should have a harder time catering to a large and heterogeneous set of districts.

Parties in countries with majoritarian electoral systems tend to develop party organizationswith greater candidate autonomy precisely as a strategy to reduce the costs of spreading nation-ally. Therefore I argue that majoritarian electoral systems, despite their tendency to produce highercosts of coordination, are also associated with localized party organizations that can actually helpovercome these costs of coordination. In sum, there is an indirect positive effect of majoritariansystem on party system nationalization: majoritarian systems tend to produce parties with strongcandidate autonomy, which in turn helps parties spread nationally. In contrast, proportional elec-toral systems tend to encourage parties with weak candidate autonomy, which can actually inhibittheir ability to spread nationally.

Hypothesis 2: Majoritarian systems have an indirect positive effect on party systemnationalization. In other words, majoritarian systems should be more likely to pro-duce parties allowing strong candidate autonomy, and parties with strong candidateautonomy should facilitate the development of nationalized party systems.

In sum, I claim that electoral institutions have two opposing effects on parties’ incentives to co-ordinate across electoral districts. On the one hand, plurality rule associated with majoritarianelectoral systems tend to decrease parties’ incentives to form party platforms across many diverse

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electoral districts. On the other hand, majoritarian electoral systems tend to be associated withweak party control over individual candidates, which can reduce the costs for co-ordination acrosselectoral districts and facilitate nationalization. These two effects are summarized in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Effects of Majoritarian Systems on Party System Nationalization

Party System Nationalization-

Majoritarian Electoral System

(a) Direct Effect

Candidate Autonomy

Majoritarian Electoral System

Party System Nationalization

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-

(b) Mediated Effect

Electoral Incentives and the Age of the Party System

My last claim has to do with how electoral incentives operate differently in different democracies.Coordinating across districts is a costly activity (Hicken 2004), but I argue that it is especiallycostly for recently created parties. In new democracies parties have not had the time to developedthe necessary resources, experience and voter attachments to successfully build nation-wide partyplatforms, and thus the task of initial coordination is daunting. It is precisely in this contextthat institutional incentives – and in this case electoral incentives – that either reduce or increasetheir costs of coordination should be particularly important. In contrast, old political parties areorganizations that have already developed the necessary experience and attachments to build cross-district alliances and have been receiving the benefits of being nation-wide party organization forsome time. These parties should be less susceptible to incentives that lower the costs of coordinationeven further or that increase them. I thus argue that the effects of electoral rules that I havedescribed in this section should be particularly present in countries with young party systems.This leads to the following conditional hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3: The direct negative effect of majoritarian electoral systems on partysystem nationalization should be larger in young (rather than old) party systems.

Hypothesis 4: The indirect positive effect of majoritarian systems on the developmentof nationalized party systems should be larger in young (rather than old) party systems.

Data and Empirical Strategy

In order to test the propositions presented in the previous section I use an original data set of partysystem nationalization that uses a large and representative sample of democracies. The universe ofcases for my data set is all countries that have been democratic for at least two legislative election

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periods starting in 1970 (or anytime after that if their transition to democracy happens at a lateryear) and for which there is available district-level electoral data. Model 1 tests the first hypothesis(H1) on the direct effect of majoritarian electoral systems on party system nationalization andModel 2 tests the third hypothesis (H3) regarding the interaction of this direct effect with the ageof the party system (H3).

In both models the dependent variable is “party system nationalization”, which varies acrosscountries (i) and across election years within each country (t). β0 is a constant term. The mainindependent and control variables vary across countries and time (and in some cases only acrosscountries). When there is sufficiently over-time variation in the covariates I lag them 5 years withrespect to election year t in order to deal with issues of endogeneity. Given the nature of thedata (time-series cross-sectional data) I cannot assume that observations within each country areindependent. I thus use OLS regression with robust standard errors that are clustered by countryin all regression analyses (based on Harbers (2010) and Hicken (2009), which is based on Beck andKatz (1995), Franzese (2006) and Golder (2006)).

Party System Nationalizationi, t = β0 + β1 Age of Party Systemi, t + β2 Majoritariani, t +

β3 Xi, t-5 + β4 Zi, t + β5 Pi + εi,t (1)

Party System Nationalizationi, t = β0 + β1 Age of Party Systemi, t + β2 Majoritariani, t +

β3 Majoritarian x Age of Party Systemi, t + β4 Xi, t-5 + β5 Zi, t + β6 Pi + εi,t (2)

The following two models (Model 3 and Model 4) test the indirect effect of majoritarian electoralsystems on party system nationalization as it is mediated by levels of candidate autonomy withinparties (hypothesis 3). Following Baron and Kenny (1986) and Judd and Kenny (1981) I test thisindirect effect with the following two regression models:

Candidate Autonomyi, t = α0 + α1 Majoritariani, t + α2 Xi, t-5 + α3 Zi, t + α4 Pi + εi,t

(3)

Party System Nationalizationi, t = ω0 + ω1 Age of Party Systemi, t + ω2 Majoritariani, t +

ω3 Strong Candidate Autonomyi, t + ω4 Xi, t-5 + ω5 Zi, t + ω6 Pi + εi,t (4)

Model 3 tests the path α1 in Figure 3 (page 10) where “candidate autonomy” is the dependentvariable. Model 4 tests path ω2 and path ω3 in Figure 3. To assert that there is an indirect effect of“majoritarian” on “party system nationalization” through “candidate autonomy” we should observethe following three things. First, in Model 3 the coefficient on “majoritarian” (α1) should showa positive and significant correlation with the mediating factor “candidate autonomy.” Second, inModel 4 “candidate autonomy” (coefficient ω3) should be positively and significantly correlated with“party system nationalization.” And third, the negative effect of “majoritarian” (coefficient ω2) inModel 4 should disappear or should be smaller than the original negative effect of “majoritarian”

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Figure 3: Indirect Effects of Majoritarian Systems on Nationalization

Candidate Autonomy

Majoritarian Electoral System

Party System Nationalization

+ +

-

α1 ω3

ω2

(coefficient β2) in Model 1, where the mediator “candidate autonomy” is not controlled for6. FinallyI test for hypothesis 4 (H4) by dividing the sample between old and new party systems (instead ofsuing an interactive model).

Dependent Variable: Party System Nationalization

If we think of a country as divided up into electoral districts, a party system is “nationalized” ifall electoral districts have the same set of parties. When this is the case the district-level partysystems are the same in each district and the same at the national level. In contrast, when theparty system is completely “localized”, each electoral district will have its own set of parties. Thismeans that each district-level party system will be different from each other and different from thenational level party system. In sum, the differences between the local and national party systemsgive us an intuition of the extent of nationalization. Based on this logic Chhibber, Shastri andSisson (2004) and Chhibber and Kollman (2004) use a measure of the extent of coordination acrosselectoral districts in a country which is the difference between the effective number of parties atthe national level (ENPn) and the effective number of parties at the district level averaged acrossdistricts (ENPd):7

ENP Difference = ENPn − ENPd (7)

According to this measure, if the effective number of parties at the district-level is similar to

6For a more detailed explanation of the conditions for testing indirect effects see Baron and Kenny (1986).7The measure of the effective number of parties is based on Laakso and Taagepera (1979) and calculated as follows:

ENPn =∑i=1

(viV

)2

(5)

ENPd =

∑d=1 ( 1∑

i=1 v2

ij)

D(6)

In equation 5, v is the number of votes obtained by party i; V is the total number of votes cast at the nationallevel; so the effective number of parties at the national level is the sum of squared vote shares. In equation 6, D isthe number of districts and vij is the vote share of each party in each district. Note that this measure weights partiesaccording to their size.

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the effective number of parties at the national level (i.e. if the ENP difference is small or closeto 0) we can assume that the same set of parties is present in all electoral districts. And thisimplies that the party system is “nationalized”. However, if the difference is large it means thatcoordination between districts is not good and creates an inflated party system at the nationallevel. In this case the party system is “localized.” This simple difference is then transformed into a“percentage measure of how much larger the national party system is than the average district-levelparty system” (Hicken 2009, 22), which several scholars refer to as “inflation.”8 The measure ofinflation is presented in equation 8 on page 11. I invert the inflation measure to obtain my measureof party system nationalization which ranges from 0 (a perfectly territorialized party system) to 1(a perfectly nationalized party system)9.

Party System Nationalization = 1 − [Inflation] = 1 − [ENPn − ENPd

ENPn] (8)

The data collected to construct the measure of “party system nationalization” consist of elec-toral results for each party in each electoral district at each national legislative election for everydemocratic country. Until recently this type of data was practically inexistent. Today, two datacollection projects are underway to collect district-level electoral results for a comprehensive set ofcountries: CLEA (Kollman, Hicken, Caramani and Backer January 19, 2012) and CLE (Brancati2007). In addition I have used country sources and other databases on electoral results (see Table6 for all sources on electoral data by country).

Key Independent Variables

There are three key independent variables of interest: “majoritarian electoral system”, “candidateautonomy” and “age of party system”.

Majoritarian Electoral System I classify electoral systems into majoritarian (SMDP systems) andnot majoritarian, which include both proportional representation and mixed systems. The variableI create is thus dichotomous and takes the value of 1 for majoritarian electoral systems and 0otherwise. I use Golder (2005)’s Democratic Electoral Systems Around the World database to codeelectoral systems in addition to IPU (2012) and Political Database of the Americas.

Candidate Autonomy I rely on Johnson and Wallack (2006)’s dataset “Electoral Systems and thePersonal Vote” to measure levels of candidate autonomy within parties. This dataset builds onCarey and Shugart (1995)’s work on the incentives that electoral systems provide to cultivate apersonal vote and provides measures to distinguish between systems where “politicians’ careers

8According to Hicken (2009), if inflation is 0.1 it “suggests that only 10 percent of the size of the nationalparty system can be attributed to different parties garnering votes in different parts [districts] of the country (pooraggregation), with the other 90 percent due to the average number of parties at the district level. In short, ameasurement of 0.1 indicates that aggregation is very good – the same parties are generally the frontrunners in mostdistricts nationwide. On the other hand, [if the measure is 0.6 for example] we know that poor aggregation deservesmost of the credit for producing a large number of parties nationally while intra-district coordination can only accountfor 40 percent of the national party system’s size” (Hicken 2009, 62).

9This is a widely used measure of the degree of party system nationalization, but not the only one. For example,some scholars measure the extent to which each party in a country is nationalized and then take an average to havea party system level measure. Jones and Mainwaring (2003) first measure the dispersion of each party’s votes acrossdifferent regions (their measure of dispersion is the Gini index) to create what they call the “Party NationalizationScore (PNS)”. And then they aggregate these individual party scores to create a party system measure. [CiteMorgenstern measures as well]. See Hicken (2009) or Leiras (2006) for a good review on the different ways scholarshave calculated this inflation measure and the logic behind these different measures.

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depend most on party fortunes to particularistic systems, where candidates must focus on narrowgeographic constituencies” (Wallack, Gaviria, Panizza and Stein 2003, 136)10. I focus on one of thevariables in this dataset called “ballot”, which refers to the party leaders’ control over candidate’saccess to and rank on ballots11. The measure takes the following values: 0 means that partiescontrol both access and position on the ballot; 1 means that parties control access to the ballotbut not order; and 2 means that individuals can obtain access to the ballot without the party’sblessing. This measure provides a good approximation of the the extent to which parties in acountry are more likely to have weak or strong control over their candidates ranging from 0 (lowlevels of candidate autonomy) to 2 (very high levels of candidate autonomy).

It is important to note that this measure is coded based on characteristics of the electoralsystem, which means that my measure of the electoral system is necessarily correlated with themeasure of candidate autonomy. This could be problematic since I am introducing both variablesin my regression analysis. I address this potential problem in two ways. First I show that althoughmy measure of “candidate autonomy” is correlated with my measure of the electoral system, thecorrelation is not sufficiently high to skew the results (i.e. multicollinearity is not a problem).Second, I show in the results section that the variables “majoritarian electoral system” and “can-didate autonomy” are indeed positively correlated, but they actually have an opposite effect on thedependent variable “party system nationalization”, which indicates that they are capturing verydifferent concepts.

Age of Party System In order to measure the length of a party system’s life I follow Hicken (2009),Simmons (2008) and Roberts and Wibbels (1999, 581) and use data from the World Bank’s Databaseof Political Institutions (Beck, Clarke, Groff, Keefer and Walsh 2001). “The database covers theperiod 1975-2004 for well over 150 countries of all levels of political and economic development.A party’s age is coded according to the number of years since the party was founded under itscurrent name. The investigators are aware of purely “cosmetic” name changes in which the party’sname changes, but the party leaders, platform, and constituency remain the same and they do notcode an obviously cosmetic change as the date of a new party’s formation” (Simmons 2008, 94).Based on this data I construct a measure that averages the age of the governing party and the ageof the main opposition party in each country at each election year.12 The measure ranges fromX to X. Because the measure has a fairly right- skewed distribution I log this measure. Figure 5shows the distribution of “age of party system” unlogged (top) and the distribution of “age of partysystem” logged (bottom). Logging creates a more normal distribution, which is better suited forthe assumptions of OLS regression.13

10This dataset is an update of Wallack et al. (2003)’s “Database of Particularism,” and “has evolved to cover moreaspects of electoral systems as well, providing additional information on more complex systems with multiple tiersand runoffs. It also covers more countries over more time periods (180 countries between 1978 and 2005). Bothdata sets as well as supplementary material may be found at http://dss.ucsd.edu/jwjohnso/espv.html”(Johnson andWallack 2006, 1).

11In order to account for the complexities of mixed-member systems (which combine two tiers of membership),Johnson and Wallack code “ballot” separately for single-member district tiers and for multi-member district tiers,and then they calculate a weighted average measure of these two tiers (Johnson and Wallack 2006, 10).

12I do not use the “age of democracy” because what is important in my argument is not so much whether ademocracy is old or new, but rather the extent to which its party system is old or new.

13In logging “age of party system” I follow what other scholars have done. See Simmons (2008, 94) and Hicken(2009).

12

Controls

In addition to these key independent variables, I include several control variables to account forcompeting hypotheses. I include controls for fiscal and political decentralization, regime type,territorial concentration of religion, language and income, and timing of democratization. Thesources for the key independent variables and for these control variables are presented in Table 8on page 28. Descriptive statistics for all variables in the models are presented in Table 7 on page26. In what follows I review the reasoning behind their inclusion and their coding.

Political Decentralization. As explained earlier both political and fiscal decentralization have beenassociated with party territorialization (Chhibber and Kollman 2004; Hicken 2009; Harbers 2010).Hooghe, Marks and Schakel (2010) have developed a coding scheme to measure the extent towhich a region is endowed with an independent legislature and executive: 0=no regional assembly;1=an indirectly elected regional assembly; 2=a directly elected assembly; 0=the regional executiveis appointed by central government ; 1=dual executives appointed by central government andthe regional assembly; 2= the regional executive is appointed by a regional assembly or directlyelected. They then add up the scores for the assembly and for the executive for each countryand create a categorical variable that ranges from 0 (no independent legislature or executive) to4 (completely independent legislature and executive). Countries that score a 4 have subnationallegislative and executive bodies that are independently elected and that are independent from thecentral government. These are purely federal countries. Countries scoring 0 have no subnationallevel of government or have a subnational level where officials are not independently elected. Theseare unitary countries. Hooghe, Marks and Schakel (2010) have coded this variable annually for 42OECD democracies between 1950 and 2006. I use their data for OECD countries and code theremaining cases (and time periods) myself using the same coding scheme. I create a variable whichI call political decentralization that takes a value of 1 if country is politically decentralized and 0 ifthe country is politically centralized. This variable is lagged 5 years.

Fiscal Decentralization. I use a measure that is commonly employed in the literature: subnationalrevenues as a % of total revenues in a country. I also perform robustness tests with a relatedmeasure that is also commonly used in the literature: subnational revenues as a % of GDP. Thedata for both measures of fiscal decentralization comes from the World Bank Fiscal Indicators.14

The measures are reported in percentages but I convert them to proportions. This variable is lagged5 years.

Regime Type. As explained earlier, presidential systems tend to be associated with more partysystem nationalization. The data for this variable is taken from Samuels and Shugart (2010)’srecently published book Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers: How the Separation of powersAffects Party Organization and Behavior. I create a variable called presidential system where1=presidential systems and 0=parliamentary (and semi-presidential) systems.

Geographic Concentration of Heterogeneity. Scholars have often assumed that ethnic, religiousand/or linguistic diversity tends to be geographically concentrated, and thus have used fraction-alization measures as proxies for geographically concentrated social diversity, but recent work bySelway (2011) suggests that this assumption is inaccurate. Some countries might have many dif-ferent linguistic groups (in which case they might have a high linguistic fractionalization index)but these groups might not be geographically concentrated, whereas other countries might have

14http : //www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/decentralization/fiscalindicators.htm

13

just two linguistic groups (low linguistic fractionalization index) but these linguistic groups mighteach be concentrated in a different region of the country. In a recent article “The Measurementof Cross-cutting Cleavages and Other Multidimensional Cleavage Structures” Selway (2011) in-troduces a new data set (CIMMSS) that includes several measures of geographically concentratedsocial diversity. These measures build on the concept of “cross-cuttingness” which Selway definesas the extent to which “groups on a first cleavage are identically distributed amongst groups on asecond cleavage”.15 For example, one such measure is religion-geography cross-cuttingness whichgets at the degree to which religion and territory overlap in a country. Low values of religion andgeography cross-cuttingness mean that individuals of religion A mostly live in region C whereasindividuals of religion B mostly live in region D. In other words, religion and geography reinforceeach other. In contrast, high values of religion-geography cross-cuttingness mean that individualsof religion A are equally divided in terms of the region where they live, and so are individuals ofreligion B. This means that religion and geography cross-cut. Based on Selway’s data I construct anindex of geographic concentration of religion, language and income that I call “GC Heterogeneity”(i.e. Geographic Concentration of Heterogeneity). This variable ranges from 0.08 (low geographicconcentration of heterogeneity) to 0.6 (high geographic concentration of heterogeneity). I log thevariable because its distribution is highly skewed.

Timing of Democratization. Several scholars of party systems (Mainwaring 1999; Mainwaring andTorcal 2005; Hicken and Kuhonta 2011) have argued that strongly institutionalized party systems,and party systems with low levels of electoral volatility are more likely in democracies that were in-augurated earlier (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007). This is called the “timing” or “period effect”(Hickenand Kuhonta 2011). The argument is that parties in post-1978 democracies (i.e. third wave democ-racies) are less likely to be institutionalized than parties in pre-1978 democracies regardless of theduration of democracy. “In early democracies, political parties played a lead role as mobilizinginstitution by, for example, incorporating new citizens into the political system and pushing for anexpansion of suffrage and other rights for those citizens (Colomer, 2001; Mainwaring Zoco, 2007).This forged strong links between parties and the citizens they helped to mobilize. By contrast,in later democracies, the switch to competitive elections and new party formation was precededby, or occurred in conjunction with, the adoption of universal suffrage. As a result, the kinds oflinks and networks that characterized early democratizers never developed. What is more, withthe advent of mass communication, specifically television, parties and candidates had a means ofmobilizing large numbers of voters without the costly investment in party organization or grass-roots networks” (Hicken and Kuhonta 2011, 6). In order to control for this alternative explanationI include a dichotomous variable coded 1 if the country is part of the third wave of democratizationand 0 otherwise.

Results

Table 1 on page 15 presents the base model from Model 1 on page 9 testing the first hypothesis.The results show that “age of party system” is positively correlated with party system nation-alization: countries with older political parties are more likely to have more nationalized partysystems whereas countries with younger political parties are more likely to have territorializedparty systems. This is not surprising given our initial expectation that “time” should matter in thedevelopment of nation-wide party alliances. More importantly the effect of “majoritarian electoralsystem” is negatively related to party system nationalization (as expected) yet not statistically sig-

15https://sites.google.com/site/joelsawatselway/CROSS-CUTTING-CLEAVAGES-DATA

14

Table 1: Base Model of Party System Nationalization

DV: Party System Nationalization Base Model

Age of Party System (log) .061***(.02)

Majoritarian Electoral System –.073(.05)

Presidential –.127**(.06)

GC of Heterogeneity (log) –.124(.08)

Political Decentralization (lag) –.124**(.06)

Fiscal Decentralization (lag) .000(.00)

Third Wave Democracy .036(.07)

Constant .479***(.17)

Adj. R2 .282No. of cases 176No. of country clusters 46

Sig:* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01

Robust Standard Errors Clustered by Country

nificant. The lack of statistical significance is not surprising since the direct effect of majoritarianrule should be conditional on the age of the party system (hypothesis 3).

Table 2 on page 16 tests this conditional effect. The first two regression models take the basemodel (in Table 1) and run it against a divided sample: countries with relatively young politicalparties (0 to 40 years) and countries with relatively old parties (more than 40 years). This divisionis somewhat arbitrary but gives us a good first cut at testing the conditional effect of the electoralsystem between party systems that have been alive for just one generation and party systems thathave been around for more than one generation. The key thing to observe is that the coefficienton “majoritarian electoral system” is statistically significant among the subsample of countrieswith young party systems, whereas it is not significant among the subsample of countries withold party systems. Furthermore, the effect of “majoritarian electoral system” among young partysystems is quite large and in the expected negative direction. This is consistent with the storythat majoritarian electoral systems increase the costs of cross-district coordination and make itless likely for parties to form nation-wide party alliances. This lends credibility to the interactiverelationship presented in hypothesis 3. The correct way of testing this hypothesis, however, is tocreate an interaction term between “age of party system” and “majoritarian electoral system.” Inaddition, this solves the problem of splitting the sample arbitrarily. The results of this interactivemodel are presented in the third regression model in Table 2.

Unfortunately, interactive terms (and their significance) are difficult to interpret solely throughan analysis of the coefficients in this table. What is important in interaction terms is to gaugethe significance of the marginal effect of one of the interacted variables over the range of the other

15

Table 2: Splitting Sample and Interactive Model

Young Old InteractiveDV: Party System Nationalization Party Systems Party Systems Model

Majoritarian Electoral System –.300** –.036 –.394**(.11) (.03) (.17)

Age of Party System (log) .032(.02)

Age of Party System (log) x Majoritarian .083**(.04)

Presidential –.201*** –.040 –.138**(.07) (.03) (.05)

GC of Heterogeneity (log) –.049 –.181** –.105(.10) (.07) (.08)

Political Decentralization (lag) –.146** –.064 –.114*(.06) (.06) (.06)

Fiscal Decentralization (lag) –.010 .002 –.002(.01) (.01) (.00)

Third Wave Democracy –.057 .041 .018(.07) (.07) (.07)

Constant .968*** .540*** .636***(.23) (.17) (.20)

Adj. R2 .498 .216 .321No. of cases 64 114 176No. of country clusters 25 35 49

Sig:* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01

Robust Standard Errors Clustered by Country

16

variables and vice-versa. Following Kam and Franzese (2007) and Brambor, Clark and Golder(2006) I calculate and draw the relevant marginal effects. This allows me to better interpret themagnitude, direction and significance of the coefficient of the interaction term. Based on theinteractive model in Table 2, Figure 4 shows the marginal effect of “majoritarian electoral system”on “party system nationalization” as the age of the party system changes. The marginal effect isrepresented by the thick black line. If the marginal effect line is above 0 then the marginal effect ispositive; if it is below 0 then the marginal effect is negative. The dotted bands represent the 95%confidence intervals. The marginal effect is statistically significant if neither of the bands crossesthe 0 line. This graph tells us that having a majoritarian electoral system always has a negativeand significant effect on party system nationalization, but that the magnitude of this effect is largeand significant among young party systems and then decreases as party systems age. Among oldparty systems the effect is small and non-significant. This provides support for hypothesis 3 andsuggests that electoral systems matter early on in the development of party systems16.

Figure 4: Marginal Effect of Majoritarian Systems on Party System Nationalization

-.8-.6

-.4-.2

0.2

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct o

f Maj

orita

rian

Elec

tora

l Sys

tem

0 1 2 3 4 5 6Age of Parties (log)

I turn now to test the indirect effect of majoritarian electoral systems on party system national-ization (hypotheses 2 and 4). Table 3 test the indirect effect in young party systems whereas Table4 tests the indirect effect among old party system. Because we expect results to be significant onlyamong countries with younger party systems we proceed to analyze Table 3. As a reminder to thereader, if the hypothesized indirect effect is correct I expect to observe the following: a) majoritar-ian electoral systems should encourage candidate autonomy; b) candidate autonomy should have a

16It is also worth noting (although this has not been theorized in this paper) that other institutional variables (i.e.fiscal decentralization and political decentralization) also matter more among young party systems than old partysystems. This suggests that institutional incentives are particularly important in the early stages of development ofparty systems, more than later on. This is an avenue worth exploring further.

17

positive effect on party system nationalization; and c) majoritarian electoral systems should havea smaller effect on party system nationalization when controlling for candidate autonomy.

The first regression in Table 3 shows the effect of “majoritarian electoral systems” on “candidateautonomy.” The coefficient on “majoritarian electoral system” is positive and statistically significantshowing that majoritarian electoral systems tend to promote greater levels of candidate autonomywithin parties. The second regression model in Table 3 shows the impact of “candidate autonomy”on “party system nationalization” while controlling for “majoritarian electoral system”. What isimportant to note is that “candidate autonomy” has a positive and significant effect on party systemnationalization, which means that countries with parties that allow for moderate levels of candidateautonomy are more likely to develop nationalized party systems than countries with parties thatexercise strong control over their candidates. In addition, the coefficient on “majoritarian electoralsystem” is still negative and significant but its effect is smaller than in the regression model thatdid not include “candidate autonomy” (see first regression model in Table 2). This means thatthe inclusion of “candidate autonomy” has suppressed the negative effect of “majoritarian electoralsystem” on “party system nationalization”.

These three findings are evidence that majoritarian rule has an indirect positive effect on partysystem nationalization through “candidate autonomy”, and that this indirect effect suppresses thetypical negative effect of majoritarian rule on party system nationalization. It is interesting to notethat this indirect effect works only with moderate levels of candidate autonomy. t very high levelsof candidate autonomy the effect is not statistically significant. This suggests that creating looseparty organizations allowing for some candidate autonomy is indeed a good strategy to overcomethe costs of coordination to spread nationally. however, allowing extreme candidate autonomywithin a party might not be all that good for nationalization. Finally, all these results hold onlyamong young party systems and not among older party systems (see Table 4), which confirms yetagain that electoral incentives matter exclusively among newly developing party systems.

Conclusion and Implications

There has been quite a bit of work on the effect of electoral institutions on coordination withindistricts. There has been much less about the effect of electoral institutions on candidates’ andparties’ incentives to coordinate across electoral districts in a country. This paper has attemptedto start theorizing about how electoral institutions affect the incentives of parties and candidatesto coordinate across districts to form nation-wide political parties.

I argue that electoral institutions have two opposing effects on parties’ incentives to coordinateacross electoral districts. On the one hand, majoritarian electoral systems tend to exacerbatethe localization of politics and can thus decrease the incentives to form party platforms acrossmany diverse electoral districts. On the other hand, majoritarian electoral systems tend to beassociated with more flexible party organizations that allow for greater candidate autonomy, whichcan significantly reduce the costs for co-ordination across electoral districts, and can thus facilitatenationalization. I find empirical support for both of these claims. This paper helps clarify themechanisms underlying the effect of electoral institutions on party system nationalization. Theresults suggest that institutions can (at times) have opposite effects on relevant political outcomesof interests. The task of scholars is to untangle these opposing effects.

This paper also claims that electoral incentives on cross-district coordination are much strongeramong young party systems than among old party systems. This finding puts into question the ideathat institutional effects are constant across all types of democracies. Electoral institutions mattermore when party systems are still new and in the process of developing. Once party systems have

18

Table 3: Indirect Effect of Majoritarian Systems (Young Party Systems)

Dependent variable Candidate Autonomy Party System Nationalization

Majoritarian Electoral System .677*** –.192**(.24) (.08)

Candidate Autonomy: Medium Level + .123*(.07)

Candidate Autonomy: High Level + .069(.12)

Presidential –.050 –.167***(.29) (.06)

GC of Heterogeneity (log) .317 –.056(.31) (.06)

Political Decentralization (lag) .344 –.160**(.27) (.07)

Fiscal Decentralization (lag) .042 –.018**(.04) (.01)

Third Wave Democracy –.389 –.002(.33) (.09)

Constant 1.229* .884***(.70) (.16)

Adj. R2 .483 .528No. of cases 75 68No. of country clusters 26 25

Sig:*p<0.10, **p<0.05, ***p<0.01

Robust Standard Errors Clustered by Country

+ Baseline Candidate Autonomy: Low Level

19

Table 4: Indirect Effect of Majoritarian Systems (Old Party Systems)

Dependent variable Candidate Autonomy Party System Nationalization

Majoritarian Electoral System 1.249*** –.006(.10) (.07)

Candidate Autonomy: Medium Level + .021(.06)

Presidential .035 –.054(.13) (.03)

GC of Heterogeneity (log) .143 –.217**(.19) (.08)

Political Decentralization (lag) –.035 –.068(.15) (.06)

Fiscal Decentralization (lag) .015 .002(.01) (.00)

Third Wave Democracy –.433* .108(.22) (.10)

Constant .865** .453**(.39) (.22)

Adj. R2 .792 .300No. of cases 114 104No. of country clusters 28 27

Sig:* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01

Robust Standard Errors Clustered by Country

+ Baseline Candidate Autonomy: Low Level

20

had the time to develop and establish stable party organizations – that is once parties are highlyinstitutionalized — institutional incentives for coordination might matter less. This differentialimpact of institutions between new and established party systems points to recent findings byother scholars (Birch 2005).

21

Appendix

Table 5: Countries and Election Years

Code Country National Legislative Election Years

AR Argentina 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007AU Australia 1980, 1984, 1990r, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007AT Austria 1971, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2006, 2008BE Bangladeshr 2001BE Belgium 1981, 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007BO Bolivia 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2002, 2005BH Bosnia Herz. 1996, 1998, 2006BW Botswana 1979, 1984, 1999, 2004BR Brazil 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006BU Bulgaria 1994, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009CA Canada 1972, 1974, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004r, 2006CH Chile 1997, 2001, 2005CO Colombia 1982, 1986, 1990, 1998, 2002, 2006CR Costa Rica 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006CRO Croatia 2000, 2003CZ Czech Republic 1996, 1998, 2002, 2006CY Cyprus 1996DK Denmark 1987, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2005DR Dominican Rep. 1982, 1986, 1994, 1998r, 2002EC Ecuador 1984, 2006r

EL El Salvador 2000, 2003ES Estonia 1992, 1995, 1999, 2003FI Finland 1970, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007FR France 1986r, 1988r, 1993, 1997, 2002GH Ghana 2004GU Guatemalar 2007HO Hondurasr 1997, 2001DEW West Germany 1972, 1976, 1980, 1983,1987DE Germany 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002r, 2005r, 2009r

GR Greece 1980, 1981, 1985, 1990, 1993, 1996, 2000HU Hungary 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006ICE Iceland 1979, 1983, 1987, 1991IN India 1980, 1984, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004IND Indonesia 1999, 2004IRE Ireland 1987, 1989, 1992, 1997, 2002IT Italy 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2008JA Jamaica 1997, 2002, 1993JP Japan 1972, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1990, 1996, 2000, 2003, 2005LA Latvia 1993, 1995, 1998, 2002, 2006LI Lithuania 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004

Continued Noter = only regional level electoral data

22

Code Country National Legislative Election Years

LU Luxembourg 1989, 1994, 1999MA Malta 1998MAU Mauritius 1995, 2000, 2005MX Mexico 1994, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2006NE Netherlands 1989, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006NZ New Zealand 1981, 1984, 1986, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005NO Norway 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005PA Pakistanr 2002PE Peru 2001PH Philippines 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004PO Poland 1997r, 2001, 2005r

PT Portugal 1991, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2009RO Romania 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004RU Russia 1993, 1995, 1999, 2003SR Slovak Republic 1998, 2002, 2006r

SL Slovenia 1996, 2000, 2004SA South Africa 1999, 2004SK South Korea 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004r, 2008SP Spain 1979, 1982, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008SRI Sri Lanka 1994, 2000, 2001, 2004ST St. Kitts & Nevis 2000SW Sweden 1991, 1994, 1998, 2002SW Switzerland 1995, 1999, 2003TW Taiwan 2001, 2004TH Thailand 1983, 1986, 1988, 1992TR Trinidad&Tobago 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1995, 2000TU Turkey 1991, 1995, 1999, 2002UK United Kingdom 1974, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001r, 2005UKR Ukraine 1998US United States 1970 – every two years – 2006VZ Venezuela 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988

Noter = only regional level electoral data

Table 6: Sources of Electoral Data

Country Sources

Argentina Marcelo LeirasAtlats Electoral de Andy Tow : http://towsa.com/andy/totalpais/

Australia Psephos, CLEA and Australian Electoral CommissionCLEAAustralian Electoral Commission

Austria CLEABangladesh Electoral Geography 2.0

Continued

23

Country Sources

PsephosBelgium CLEA (Caramani)

Psephoshttp://www.ibzdgip.fgov.be/

Bolivia Marcelo LeirasCorte Nacional Electoral (CNE)CLEA (Psephos)

Bosnia-Herz. BrancatiBotswana CLEABrazil CLEA (Nicolau)Bulgaria EEDCanada Brancati, CLEA and Parliament of CanadaChile CLEA (Psephos)Colombia Marcelo Leiras

PDACosta Rica Atlas Electoral Digital de Costa Rica 1953-2006

CLEA (Psephos)Croatia EEDCzech Republic CLEA (Essex)

EEDCyprus BrancatiDenmark CLEADominican Rep. BrancatiEcuador PDAEl SalvadorEstonia Essex: www.essex.ac.uk/elections/Finland CLEAFrance CLEA (Caramani)

Ministere de l’Interieur (Interior Ministry of France)Ghana CLEAGermany CLEA (Caramani)Germany-West CLEA (Caramani)

http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/Greece BrancatiGuatemala Electoral Geography 2.0Honduras Electoral Geography 2.0Hungary BrancatiIceland BrancatiIndia CLEAIndonesia CLEAIreland EEDItaly CLEA (Caramani)

Italian Ministry of InteriorElectoral Resources on the Internet1953-1972: Instituto Cattaneo

Continued

24

Country Sources

Japan CLEA and Steven R. ReedPsephos

Jamaica CLEALatvia BrancatiLithuania Brancati

EEDLuxembourg BrancatiMalta BrancatiMauritius BrancatiMexico Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE)NetherlandsNew Zealand Government of New Zealand: http://www.electionresults.govt.nz/Norway EEDPakistan CLEAPeru Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (National Office of Electoral

Processes)Philippines CLEAPoland EEDPortugal CLEA and EEDRomania CLEARussia CLEASlovakia CLEASlovenia Brancati

EEDSouth Africa CLEASouth Korea CLEA

National Election Commission of KoreaSpain CLEA

Ministerio del Interior (http://www.elecciones.mir.es/)Sri-Lanka CLEASt. Kitts and NevisSweden Brancati

EEDSwitzerland EEDTaiwanThailand CLEATrinidadTobago BrancatiTurkey BrancatiUK Electoral Commission: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/elections/

UK Elections Forecasting and Politics Program, UK-Elect:http://www.ukelect.co.uk/

Ukraine Essex: www.essex.ac.uk/elections/US US Census BureauVenezuela Brancati

25

Brancati: Dawn Brancati. 2007. Constituency-Level Elections (CLE) Dataset. New York, New York.http://www.cle.wustl.eduCLEA: Ken Kollman, Allen Hicken, Daniele Caramani and David Backer. Constituency-Level Elections Archive(http://www.electiondataarchive.org/). CLEA is a repository of detail results at the constituency level. It drawsfrom a variety of sources, which in the table above are specified in parenthesis.EED: European Election DatabasePsephos: Adam Carr’s Election Archive (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/)PDA: Political Database of the Americas (http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Elecdata/Col/Elecamara90.html)Data from Marcelo Leiras: I want to thank Marcelo Leiras for providing electoral data disaggregated at theregional level for several Latin American countries.Electoral Geography 2.0: http://www.electoralgeography.com/new/en/Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (Peru): http://www.web.onpe.gob.pe/Instituto Cattaneo: http://www.cattaneo.org/

Table 7: Summary statisticsVariable Mean Std. Dev. Min. Max. N

Party System Territorialization 0.177 0.162 0 0.727 350Age of Party System 49.725 40.502 2 188 326Age of Party System (log) 3.49 1.027 0.693 5.236 326Majoritarian Electoral System 0.27 0.444 0 1 356GC of Heterogeneity (log) -1.868 0.36 -2.484 -0.704 316Strong Candidate Autonomy 0.839 0.705 0 2 124

Presidential System 0.266 0.442 0 1 365Political Decentralization (lag) 0.602 0.49 0 1 339Fiscal Decentralization (lag) 7.126 5.564 0.004 23.549 226Third Wave Democracy 0.412 0.493 0 1 374

26

Figure 5: Histograms

0.0

05.0

1.0

15.0

2D

ensi

ty

0 50 100 150 200Age of Main Parties

0.1

.2.3

.4.5

Den

sity

1 2 3 4 5Age of Main Parties (log)

27

Table 8: Sources for Other Variables

Independent Variables Source(s)

Age of Party System Database of Political Institutions (DPI)

Electoral System Golder et al. (2005)Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)Political Database of the Americas (PDA)

Candidate Autonomy Wallack et al. (2003)Own coding based on country sources

Fiscal Decentralization World Bank Fiscal Indicators

Political Decentralization Hooghe at al. (2010)Treisman (2007)Own coding based on country sources

Regime Type Golder et al. (2005)Political Database of the Americas (PDA)Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)

Geographic Concentration of Religion Selway (2011)Geographic Concentration of Language Selway (2011)Geographic Concentration of Income Selway (2011)

Timing of Democratization Own coding

28

Table 9: Splitting Sample

Countries w/ Countries w/DV: Party System Nationalization Young Parties Old Parties

PR Electoral System .226* .037(.11) (.04)

Mixed Electoral System .347*** .030(.10) (.04)

Presidential –.193*** –.040(.06) (.03)

GC of Heterogeneity (log) –.107 –.181**(.08) (.07)

Political Decentralization (lag) (dic) –.170** –.063(.06) (.06)

Fiscal Decentralization (lag) –.010 .002(.01) (.01)

Third Wave Democracy –.079 .041(.07) (.07)

Constant .614*** .503***(.15) (.16)

Adj. R2 .537 .208No. of cases 64 114

Sig:* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01

29

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