Guatemalan government is formed on a basis of proportional representation.  Their legislative branch is a unicameral organization, called the Congress of the Republic.  It consists of 158 members in total.  127 representatives are elected from the 22 districts, called departments, in Guatemala₁.  A department is equivalent to a state in the USA.  District magnitude is calculated by dividing the number of districts into the number of representatives.  According to that formula, the district magnitude is about 5.8 representatives per district₂.  The other 31 are national representatives elected from one nationwide district.  Both groups are chosen from separate, closed party lists, and are selected using the D’hondt method₃.  In Guatemala, there is no minimum threshold to gain seats in congress, so as long as a party secures enough votes, they can win some seats.  So there you have it, those are the basic electoral rules for Guatemala.

According to Duverger’s Law, systems of proportional representation tend to favor multiparty systems, while SMDP rules tend to favor 2 major parties.  In the 2011 elections of Guatemala, there were 11 political parties that competed and gain 1% or more of the vote in the general elections.  In the following table is the data necessary to investigate Duvergers law.

Political Party	Percentage of Vote (p)	P2
Patriotic Party (PP)	.2662	.0708
National Unity for Hope Party (UNE) - Great National Alliance (GANA)	.2257	.0509
Nationalist Change Union (UCN)	.095	.009
Democratic Renewed Liberty (LIDER)	.0887	.0079
Commitment, Renewal and Order (CREO)	.0867	.0075
Vision with Values (VIVA) - Encounter for Guatemala (EG)	.0787	.006
WINAQ-URNG-MAIZ-ANN	.0323	.001
National Advancement Party (PAN)	.0312	<.001
Unionist Party (UNIONISTA)	.027	<.001
Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG)	.0274	<.001
Victory (Victoria)	.0162	<.001

According to Duvergers Law, the number of effective parties can be expressed
 

Using the numbers from the table, the number of effective parties in Guatemala is 6.37.  In this case, Guatemala has proved Duverger’s Law to be correct.  Proportional representation encourages a multiparty system, and in Guatemala, there is a thriving multiparty political system.  I think part of that has to do with the fact that there are no thresholds.  When thresholds are employed, the proportional representation gets skewed to represent fewer parties, thus making the effective number of parties drop.  Without thresholds, people can be truly represented, no matter how small their group is, and an accurate number of effective parties can be calculated.  This can be used to more accurately show the political preferences of a country and how diverse on a general level they are.