Duverger Upside Down? How Big Parties are using Electoral Systems to Prevent the Emergence of Smaller Parties

Electoral systems are powerful tools in shaping the party systems. The question is therefore whether they are used by political parties to serve their interest. In particular, are bigger parties trying to manipulate the electoral to their advantage, to prevent the emergence of new challengers? In this presentation, I propose to discuss insights from the literature the study of electoral reforms to see whether Duverger's laws could be turned upside down as Josep Colomer did argue a few years ago.