Sources:

1)      “Pakistan National Assembly”, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assembly_(Pakistan)

2)      “Pakistan National Assembly”, Inter-Parliamentary Union

http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2241_A.htm

3)      “Plurality Voting System”, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system

4)      “Duverger’s Law”, Princeton

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Duverger_s_law.html

 

         
         Legislative bodies within countries around the world have very unique methods of operating and electing their legislators. The different methods of electing officials to legislative office are usually variants of one of two systems. One of these systems is Proportional Representation where voters in relatively few districts vote for a party and, depending on the percentage of votes won, seats are allocated to each party in each district. Another method used is the Single Member District Plurality (SMDP) in which a large number of districts vote for one candidate representative and the one with the majority of the votes is awarded the seat in the legislature. Maurice Duverger, a famous political scientist, developed a law which, according to Princeton.edu is “ a principle which asserts that a plurality rule (SMDP) election system tends to favor a two-party system. This is one of two hypotheses proposed by Duverger, the second stating that ‘the double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to multipartism.’” (4)

The country of Pakistan has a legislative branch made up of a National Assembly and a Senate (1). Using Pakistan’s National Assembly as a case study, I will show that Duverger’s law is not entirely accurate, that SMDP election systems tend to favor a two-party system.

Pakistan’s National Assembly is elected by direct vote, meaning that they are elected by the general public (1). The method of election that is used in the selection of members of the Assembly is SMDP (2). However, it isn’t done in the traditional way like the method for choosing representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives. The system they use is called an “exhaustive counting system” (3) where the voters vote for multiple candidates but solely based on preference and not by party list which would make it proportional representation. Another hybrid aspect of the system is that 60 seats out of the total 342 are reserved specifically for women and 10 out of the total are reserved for non-Muslim religious minorities.  These seats are allocated by proportional representation by the parties earning more than five percent of the vote (4).

Pakistan has six electoral districts and each district has a certain number of seats that are allocated to it. Punjab is the largest district with 148 seats, and is followed by Sindh with 61 seats, North Western Frontier of Pakistan with 35, Baluchistan with 14, Federally Administered Tribal Areas with 12 and the Federal Capitol with two seats (2). Since there isn’t a threshold for the number of parties that can participate in elections (1), a large number of parties participated in the 2008 elections (1). Of the major parties in Pakistan, seven were awarded multiple seats within the Assembly. Using the formula for calculating the effective number of parties, Neff = 1/Σ(p²), I calculated that there are 5.26 effective parties within the National Assembly of Pakistan thus showing that SMDP systems do not always favor a two-party system.

Although Duverger’s law may accurately explain the electoral systems and tendencies within most countries, it fails to account for unique hybrid electoral systems such as Pakistan’s. It fails to explain the National Assembly because of Pakistan’s unique electoral system. Although its system is considered a Single Member District Plurality system it includes the “exhaustive counting system” and the proportional representation of women and religious minorities. These unique aspects allow for more proportional representation and multi-party competition.