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Duverger’s Law from the Top Down

Elections
Political Competition
Political Economy
Political Parties
Representation
Gary Cox
Stanford University
Gary Cox
Stanford University

Abstract

The literature on Duverger’s law has long bifurcated, with some identifying the root cause of bipartism as specific intra-district rules and processes, while others focus on national rules and processes. Duverger himself considered his “mechanical” and “psychological” effects to be largely intra-district processes. Others have highlighted the importance of national processes, such as presidential elections, in structuring the party system. In a nutshell, some theories focus on the efficient translation of votes into district-level seats, while others focus on the efficient translation of votes into national-level offices. In this paper, I consider one of Duverger’s main cases—England—arguing that what caused her to have a two-party system had much to do with how fiscal power had been concentrated in the hands of responsible ministers after the Glorious Revolution, and relatively little to do with district-level electoral incentives.