The Consequences of Party System Inflation

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines the consequences of party system inflation, which is the degree to which more political parties compete in national-level. First, the researchers study the economic and social consequences to countries of having a large number of political parties competing in national-level elections, especially parties that represent sub-national geographic areas. Second, they collect and archive election returns for many of the world's democracies at the electoral district level. Both tasks are valuable. The former enhances the understanding of the consequences for countries of specific political systems characteristics. The latter enable the researchers to conduct their own research and also enable other researchers, journalists, and intelligence analysts to conduct their research on the politics of other countries. Most centrally, the researchers investigate whether having a large number of political parties competing has important consequences for the country's population. Is it good or bad for the delivery of public benefits and public goods to the population if political party systems are fragmented and localized versus concentrated and nationalized? With this knowledge the researchers enhance our understanding of which institutional features lead to more or less political parties, which in turn can lead to improved lives for people in democracies. In other words, by linking formal political institutions to political parties and then to policies and the policy outcomes, researchers gain leverage in understanding the consequences of institutional design, especially for new and developing democracies. As part of this project, they will be gathering and archiving constituency-level election data for use by the broader research community. They will create the Constituency Level Election Archive (CLEA), a public archive that benefits those studying comparative elections and parties, or those needing data on parties and party systems to study other aspects of politics, culture, economics, and society. This archive is a unique, useful, accessible source of constituency-level election data from many of the world's democracies. This project has four kinds of broader impacts. First, findings from the study inform policy-makers about the important causal connections between institutional design, party system characteristics, and policy-making. Second, the researchers make their data widely available through the CLEA archive. This enables scholars, policy analysts, diplomats, and intelligence analysts to use the data to study the causes and consequences of party system characteristics, and to analyze election results for other purposes. Third, the data collection portion of this project involves a great deal of collaboration with graduate and undergraduate students.