Blog 7: Costa Rica and Duverger’s Law
The beautiful coastlines of Costa Rica are also home to
one of the oldest Democracies in the Latin American world and a democracy that
uses proportional representation in allotting seats to a unicameral
legislature. According to Duverger’s law, this proportional representation
should allow for many effective parties in the state opposed to the two-party
system which single member district plurality systems produces. Does this law
hold true for Costa Rica? Just how many effective parties are there really?
In Costa Rica, citizens over the age of 18 can vote for the unicameral legislature who serve four year terms. According to information on IPU Parline, the 57 member body is elected by a proportional closed party list system. This means that voters can only vote for a political party and have no control over the list of party candidates that the party puts together, thus they can not vote for specific candidates. In this system, the parties in Costa Rica have already constructed a list of candidates who will be put in a seat if the party obtains enough votes in a certain province. The candidates highest on the list tend to always get a seat, whereas the candidates lowest on the list do not always get a seat.
Costa Rica has been split into 7 provinces which have
been allotted anywhere from 4 to 21 seats, according to the population size of
the province, as the Political Database on the Americas reports. Therefore, the
district magnitude varies from province to province. The average district
magnitude is 8.14, which is the total number of seats given (57) divided by the
number of provinces (7). Voters in a certain province vote for their political
party of choice and that party is allotted seats based on the quotient system. The
French Diplomatie describes how the quotient system works: By dividing the
total number of valid votes cast in a particular province by the number of
seats to be filled in the same province, the quotient is obtained and
represents the number of votes a party needs to secure a seat. The seats that
remain are distributed among parties in order of their residual votes, or how
many votes they were over the quotient. There is even hope for those parties
that couldn’t reach the quotient. If they reached the sub-quotient, or at least
50% of the quotient, their votes are treated as residual votes.
According to the Political Database of the Americas, the system
is strictly proportional representation and is not a hybrid. There is also no
threshold for the seats. But just how many effective parties are there? Using
the data provided by Wikipedia ElectionWorld for the 2010 Legislative Elections
in Costa Rica and the formula 1/Σ(p2) we
can calculate just that.
|
Parties
|
Seats
|
Prop
|
Prop2
|
|
23
|
.40
|
.1600
|
|
|
11
|
.19
|
.0361
|
|
|
9
|
.16
|
.0256
|
|
|
4
|
.07
|
.0049
|
|
|
6
|
.11
|
.0121
|
|
|
1
|
.02
|
.0004
|
|
|
1
|
.02
|
.0004
|
|
|
National Restoration
|
1
|
.02
|
.0004
|
When we add the proprotions2 up
it is .2399. When we divide 1/.2399 we receive 4.2, which is the number of
effective parties in Costa Rica.
Duverger’s
law holds true for Costa Rica; proportional representation has allowed for more
than two effective political parties to emerge on the political battlefield.
Works Cited
"COSTA RICA (Asamblea Legislativa), Electoral System." IPU
PARLINE. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2073_B.htm>.
"Costa Rican General Election, 2010." Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rican_general_election,_2010>.
"Country Profile: Costa Rica." Election Guide.
CEPPS, 19 June 2012. Web. <http://electionguide.org/country.php?ID=53>.
"Elections in France." France-Diplomatie.
N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/france/institutions-and-politics/elections-in-france/>.
"Republic of Costa Rica." Political Database of
the Americas. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2012. <http://pdba.georgetown.edu/ElecSys/CR/cr.html>.
In doing your research, did you find that there were any regulations on if a party could run for office and what requirements they had to meet? 8 parties seems like a lot. Thanks for your blog!
ReplyDeleteWere you able to find anything about if Costat Rica had any threshold? Great job
ReplyDeleteI agree with the first two comments- was there anything as a threshold? But I think this blog is great and I like how you split up your information.
ReplyDelete