Olga Shvetsova

Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties

Recent events leading to the importation of democratic ideas and ideals by previously totalitarian states increase our interest in the ways in which electoral institutions influence party systems. However, even if we restrict our attention to Eastern Europe or the successor states of the Soviet empire, we encounter a range of social diversity – ethnic heterogeneity - that is as great as those in the set of countries examined in earlier studies that seek to identify the influence of electoral laws (c.f., Rae, Lijphart, and Taagepera and Shugart). Curiously, though, these earlier studies fail to ascertain whether and to what extent electoral laws mediate the influence of this heterogeneity. Hence, to develop a more pragmatic understanding of electoral institutions, we adopt the view of electoral laws as intervening structures and, using the data of these earlier analyses, we reconsider the role of one institutional parameter - district magnitude - that some researchers regard as the most important characteristic of an electoral system. Aside from the usual caveats about the limitations of our data, our primary conclusion is that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but that it can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in heterogeneous societies.

A survey of post-communist electoral institutions: 1990-1998

This essay surveys the rules of parliamentary elections in Central and East European and post-Soviet states. As the post-communist countries emerge from sweeping institutional change, new electoral institutions vary considerably. Whether the sources of this variation are historical or lie in socio-economic and geographic characteristics of these countries or in the paths of elite-led negotiations, institutional specifics will account for much of the differences within a region’s democratic development. Between 1990 and 1998, more than 60 parliamentary elections were held in two dozen post-communist countries. Since electoral laws include numerous provisions and regulations dealing with many aspects of candidate nomination, campaigning, vote counting and vote observing, some selection of what to report as relevant variables for comparing electoral mechanisms is necessary. It is my goal to focus the discussion in this essay on characteristics of electoral systems that will affect forming party systems in the post-communist countries. The selection of relevant institutional variables has to rely on some preliminary knowledge about their potential effect on parties. While institutional literature generally addresses the impact of electoral rules on proportionality in seat allocation and on party system fragmentation (Taagapera and Shugart, 1989; Lijphart, 1994; Cox, 1997), even when limiting ourselves to reporting institutional features that could influence the disproportionality or multipar

If Hamilton and Madison were merely lucky, what hope is there for Russian federalism?

Just as the two-headed eagle of imperial and contemporary Russia looks in two different directions, this essay has two objectives: to evaluate, on the basis of the American experience, the prospects for stable democratic federalism in Russia and to reconsider the insights into federalism offered by Madison and Hamilton inThe Federalist. The swirl of events in Russia make it difficult if not impossible to confidently render conclusions about the future direction of events and the prospects for meaningful federal domestic relations. However, some theoretical perspective can be gained by looking at the theory of federalism offered inThe Federalist Papers, with special attention to Madison and Hamiltons failure to appreciate fully the role political parties would play in the eventual integration of American political institutions so as to establish, in Madisons words, a “properly structured” federation. Looking as well at the early history of parties in the United States we see, in addition to the usual constitutional provisions associated with federalism, the importance of those things that structure political competition within states. Properly designed, these things encourage the development of political parties that mirror federal relations and integrate regional and national political elites so as to avert center-periphery conflict. Unfortunately, a review of the provision currently in place for Russia reveals that electoral practices and regional and republic constitutions and proposals are unlikely to encourage parties of the sort that facilitate a stable federal system. This fact, in conjunction with several other trends (notably, corruption and the political instincts of political elites in Moscow), leads to the conclusion that a “federation” of the type currently observed in, say, Mexico is a better scenario of the future for Russia than is a federation that imitates the United States, Australia, Germany, or Switzerland.

Heresthetical Maneuvering on the US Supreme Court

Can an apparent loser snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat? This question occupied the attention of the late William H. Riker during the last ten years of his career, and it is one that he answered in the affirmative: By constructing choice situations in order to manipulate outcomes, losers can become winners, and vice versa. Riker even coined a term, ‘heresthetics’, to describe this ‘art of political manipulation’. But is Riker’s rather large body of work the ‘idiosyncratic’ product of a ‘singular genius’ or can it serve as the ‘foundation of a new theory of politics’? Scholars have recently raised this question, and not unreasonably so, for Riker’s theory of heresthetics has yet to gain a serious foothold into the political science literature. We develop a game-theoretic model, which enables leaders — in our case, Chief Justices — to engage in heresthetical manipulations. From this model, we deduce propositions about the circumstances that would lead them to invoke heresthetical devices, as well as the particular strategies we would expect them to employ. Finally, we explore the propositions against data amassed from the private papers of two former justices. Our results indicate that Riker’s work was not the ‘idiosyncratic’ product of a ‘singular genius’ but rather can serve as the ‘foundation of a new theory of politics’.