APSA2003
McElwain
2
Abstract
Are electoral rules subject to strategic manipulation by political parties? The existing literature
paints a conflicting picture: although rational choice theory suggests that electoral rules should
be highly unstable, empirical cross-national evidence demonstrates that electoral rules tend to
have long life spans. In this paper, I argue that parties not only have generalizable incentives to
manipulate electoral rules affecting the vote-to-seat translation, but that we can predict the
likelihood / timing of rule changes by examining the constitutional constraints governing
changes to the electoral rules themselves. A logistic regression using data from 19 advanced
democracies since 1945 shows that electoral rule change is more likely when: 1) the electoral
system disproportionately benefits the largest party, creating incentives for other parties to
correct this distortion, and 2) there are large fluctuations in the concentration of seats in
parliament, which mitigate the traditional risk-averseness of parties. Rule change is less likely,
however, when: 1) one party has a majority of seats, and thus can resist opposition attempts to
change the status quo, and 2) when the constitution of that country strictly specifies the electoral
rules, making them more difficult to change than when rules are left to legislative statute.
Convention