Seminar and lectures, three hours.
Prerequisite: graduate status or instructor's permission.
Midterm, seminar presentations, and research paper.
Comparative political institutions, especially analysis of electoral and party systems.
Emphasis: How to produce, test and use logical quantitative models.
The electoral systems are approached as an example of scientific study of politics: interaction between operationalization, measurement and models.

Required texts
Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy, 1999.
Arend Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems, 1994.

Distributed in class:
Rein Taagepera and Matthew S. Shugart, Predicting the number of parties. APSR 1993.
RT, Ignorance-based quantitative models. J. of Theoretical Politics 1999.
RT, Party size baselines imposed by institutional constraints. J. of Theor. Politics 2001.
RT, Designing electoral rules. In A. Reynolds, ed., The Architecture of Democracy, 2002.
RT, Arend Lijphart's dimensions of democracy. Political Studies 2003.

Recommended
R. Taagepera and M.S. Shugart, Seats and Votes,1989.
RT, Nationwide threshold of representation. Electoral Studies 2002.
RT, Implications of the effective no. of parties for cabinet formation. Party Politics 2002.

Grading
Late midterm -- 30% -- open books and notes.
Research paper -- 30%.
Participation and seminar presentations -- 30%.
Whichever is highest -- 10%.

Research paper can be on any comparative institutions. This means it is not restricted to electoral and party systems. About 15 pp., including tables, graphs, etc. Some possible topics will be suggested, but do follow your own interests. The instructor will leave for Estonia in late March, returning in September. Hence it's advisable to adhere to the deadline of 11 March.

Tentative schedule (it depends on the number of students and their suggestions)
Student presentations on chapters of Patterns of Democracy: 15 minutes
Student presentations on chapters of Electoral Systems and Party Systems: 20 minutes

13 Jan PoD, Ch. 1-4: Westminster and consensus models -- RT

15 Jan Basic features of electoral systems, and ESPS, Ch. 1 -- RT

20 Jan PoD, Ch. 5: Party systems: effective number of parties --
Ch. 6: Cabinets: frequency of MW/OP --

22 Jan Ignorance-based quantitative models, 1999.

27 Jan PoD, Ch. 7: Executive-legislative relations: cabinet life --
Ch. 8: Electoral systems: disproportionality --
Ch. 9: Interest groups: IP --

29 Jan ESPS, Appendix A: PR formulas --
Ch. 2a (pp. 10-31): Electoral Systems --

3 Feb PoD, Ch. 10: Federal-unitary contrasts --
Ch. 11: Concentration of legislative power: bicameralism --
Ch. 12: Constitutions: amendment and judicial review --
Ch. 13: Central bank independence --

5 Feb ESPS, Ch. 2b (pp. 30-52): Electoral Systems --
Ch. 3: Disproportionality, multipartism, and majority victories --

10 Feb PoD, Ch. 14: The two-dimensional map of democracy --
Ch. 15: Macro-economic management and control of violence --
Ch. 16: Quality of democracy --
Ch. 17: Conclusions -- RT

12 Feb ESPS, Ch. 4: Changes in electoral rules --
Ch. 5: Bivariate and multivariate analysis --

17 Feb Arend Lijphart's dimensions of democracy, 2003.

19 Feb ESPS, Ch. 6: Four other potential explanations --
Ch. 7: Electoral engineering --

24 Feb Predicting the number of parties, 1993.

26 Feb Party size baselines imposed by institutional constraints, 2001.

2 Mar Midterm test

11 Mar Research paper deadline

4, 9, 11, 16 Mar Student research presentations

18 Mar Designing electoral rules, 2002. Comments on research papers.

Some research topics

• Lijphart's year-by-year data set underlying his 10 variables is available for various replays.
• In correlating with economic and other outputs, L most often deals with joint-power dimension only or with federal-unitary dimension alone. But what happens to the correlations when you average the indices on both dimensions? This needs economic etc. data I do not have.

Related to "Party Size Baselines..." (2001) to be discussed late in the quarter, of which the Figure below gives an overview. The broad goal is to test each link in a "complete theory of simple electoral systems".

• Testing p=(MS)^0.25 for all 30 country periods in Mackie & Rose (1991 and 1997) for which district magnitude M can be defined. This means graphing histograms like those in Fig.2 of RT 2001.

• Testing s₁=(MS)^-0.125 for all 30 country periods in Mackie & Rose (1991 and 1997) for which district magnitude M can be defined. Graph histograms of all elections, analogous to Fig. 2 of RT 2001.

• Testing the assumption that the seat-winning party with the least seats has one seat, for all elections in Mackie & Rose (1991 and 1997) where no legal threshold applies. Graph histograms of all elections, analogous to Fig. 2 of RT 2000.

• Testing the theory with some other simple system, such as M=1 countries Canada and India.