Stephen H. Lamb
Blog 7: Russia and
Devurger’s Law
Devurger’s law states that the type
of electoral institution determines the number of “effective” political parties.
Devurger uses “effective” in the sense of the strength of prominence of the political party. He believed that a single member democratic plurality institution tends
to create two effective parties while a proportional representation institution
will create more than two parties (Samuels 2013) . At first
sight this law seems plausible, but can it be proven by comparing the electoral
institution and the number of effective parties in a country like Russia?
In order to find whether Devurger’s
law is true in the case of Russia we will consider Russia’s lower legislative
body the, “State Duma.” We will look at the electoral institution and the
effective number of parties through the number of effective parties formula.
Electoral Institution
The State Duma utilizes an
electoral institution of proportional representation with 450 representatives. The
district magnitude is two seats per district. The candidates are selected in
their respective parties on the basis of a party list (Russia Electoral System 2012) . This party list
is closed/non-preferential meaning that it is determined by an interior ranking system (Rule and Shvedova 2012) .
The threshold to enter
parliamentary representation is seven percent of the votes. In January this threshold
will change to five percent. Currently, parties that receive between five and
six percent of the votes may have one seat and those that receive between six
and seven percent may have two seats but neither of these groups are allowed to
join parliamentary factions. This system of proportional representation,
according to Devurger’s law, should tend to create more than two effective
parties (Russia Electoral System 2012) .
Number of Effective Parties
In order to find out if this is true, the number of effective parties formula will be used. This formula takes
one and divides it by the sum of the proportion of seats won squared to
determine how may parties are truly effective (Samuels 2013) .
Russia’s State Duma is composed of
four main parties: United Russia, Communist Party, A Just Russia, and Liberal
Democratic Party of Russia. The results of the last election in 2011 are shown in the
chart below (Russia Last Elections 2012) .
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Below is the formula for the number of effective parties and the
result for the State Duma.
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According to the result of 2.8035
effective parties, Devurger’s law is proven correct in this case. Although the
score is not extremely significant, it does fit within the general law.
Russia’s State Duma has proportional representation and has more than two
effective political parties.
Works Cited
Rule, Wilma,
and Nadezhda Shvedova. "Russia: An Evolving Parallel System." Idea.
2012. http://www.idea.int/esd/upload/russia.pdf (accessed October 31, 2012).
Russia Electoral System. 2012.
http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2263_B.htm (accessed October 31, 2012).
Russia Last Elections. 2012. http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2263_E.htm
(accessed October 31, 2012).
Samuels,
David J. Comparative Politics. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2013.
Very interesting. It comes really close to disproving Duverger's Law, but I imagine that's because Russia tends to squash opposition parties. I would be interested to find out what happens in January when the threshold changes. I imagine the effective number of parties will go up.
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