出版社：The Institute for Comparative Political Research
摘要：The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the nature of the quantitative study of party competition related to the effects of electoral systems has been changing in the last few years. More differentiated, case oriented, approach has recently constituted what we call „a second generation of the research techniques“. We present some of them (notably party fragmentation indices and two graphical tools – segmented Nagayama triangles and simplex representation) describing their underlying logic and delimiting their possible use. Furthermore, we try to explain the way of how this differentiation came into existence as an unintended effect of the Duvergerian debate, even of its otherwise incised meanders (the case of „strategic voting“ and „effects“).
As a case study, we provide the reader with the comparison of aligned and dealigned electoral competition in British elections (constituency level) of 1951 and 2005 respectively, being conducted using ElectMach under the regime of the differentiated approach. While the fragmentation has increased significantly in 2005, the proportion between competitive and less than competitive constituencies has remained roughly the same. There were also very clear signs of a gradual departure of British electoral competition from the realm of Duverger´s Law in the 2005 data.
关键词：election, Duverger´s Law, electoral systems, research techniques, political methodology, constituency competition
