Blog 7: Duverger’s Law in South Africa

Alexander Lourenco

Professor Hawkins

POLI SCI 150

2 November 2012

Blog 7: Duverger’s Law in South Africa

The government of South Africa was not democratic until April of 1994.  Observers of the politics of South Africa during the seventies and eighties did not believe that a transition to democracy was plausible let along possible for the African country. This all however changed in April of 1994 when the first democratic election of the country occurred. In April of 1994, South Africa held its first democratic, parliamentary election. “Although South Africa's democracy is rated as flawed in the Democracy Index survey conducted by the Economist, its score for electoral process is the same as that of the United States and Japan” (Wikipedia). Unlike most former British dependencies, South Africa’s bicameral legislature is elected using proportional representation with only two effective parties.

Arend Lijpart wrote that, “No national parliamentary election has ever been held under an equally or more thoroughly proportional system, with the exception of the short-lived East German democratic parliament in March 1990” (Lijpart). South Africa decided to only have nation wide district, which allows them to have maximum proportionality. This being the case, the district magnitude is a little different in comparison to other countries. South Africa has an assembly of 400 seats and they all go to the one district (the district magnitude being 1). Because of this Lijpart noted that there is no threshold. The electoral system is not hybrid; it is a traditional and equal proportional system.

The voters of South Africa vote democratically using a closed party system. “In a closed list system, party fixes the order in which the candidates are listed and elected, and the voter simply casts a vote for the party as a whole. Voters are not able to indicate their preference for any candidates on the list, but accept the list’s order presented by the party” (Proportional). Each party that receives votes is allocated seats in proportion to the number of votes received. Because the voters in South Africa have so many different ideas and solutions for their country’s problems many political parties have emerged. In South Africa’s election in April of 2004 there were 21 political parties that ran for representation in the National Assembly.

Political cleavage has caused for the emergence of a large amount of political parties but only two are effective. Only three parties received over 25 seats, nine parties received less than ten seats, and the remaining lower nine parties did not receive any representation. Using the data provided by Wikipedia ElectionWorld for the 2004 Legislative Elections in South Africa and the formula 1/Σ(p²) the amount of effective parties in South Africa is found to be (1.969) two.  When the squared proportions are summated they equal 0.507858. When divided from one the answer is easily rounded to two. Duverger’s Law says that proportional representation for electoral rules allow for more, depending whether or not there are multiple social cleavages. It is easily seen that there are multiple social cleavages that make up the 21 political parties. Over half of the parties receive some portion of representation but only two are effective in gaining a large enough proportion through the percentage of votes they receive. So, in South Africa, Duverger’s Law is not true because there are only two effective parties.

Works Cited

Lijpart, Arend. "The South African Electoral System." The South African Electoral System. National Science Foundation, n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2012. <http://archive.fairvote.org/reports/1995/spot4/- lijphart.html>.

"Proportional Representation Systems." Proportional Representation Systems. Mount Holyoke College, 2010. Web. 02 Nov. 2012. <https://www.mtholyoke.edu/a-cad/polit/damy/Beginnning- Reading/PRsystems.htm>.

Wikipedia. "Elections in South Africa." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Jan. 2012. Web. 02 Nov. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_South_Africa