Blog 7: Duverger’s Law – Switzerland

            According to a French political scientist named Maurice Duverger, the number of effective political parties is determined by a state’s electoral system. In single-member district plurality (SMDP), the “one winner at a time” strategy tends to create two party systems. In proportional representation (PR) electoral systems, on the other hand, smaller parties can win seats if they have even a small percentage of the overall votes, so multi-party systems tend to arise from these types of systems. A brief look into the electoral structure and party systems of Switzerland will either affirm or refute Duverger’s theory.

            Switzerland has a hybrid of electoral structures, but overall it tends toward PR. Some of its regions, or cantons, are single-member constituencies; this means that one representative is voted for at a time. This does create a SMDP factor in Switzerland; however, only some of the regions are set up in this way. The rest of the parties are set up in multi-member constituencies, or, in other words, more than one representative is vote for at a time. This allows for parties that are not the dominant party to receive seats in legislature, because even parties that do not win the most votes can still receive a seat and be represented.

According to Duverger’s law, the power in the legislative body of Switzerland would be distributed between more than two parties because of the predominately PR structure of elections. Except for the five regions that use SMDP, the allocation of legislative seats is accomplished using the Hagenback- Bishoff method. Remaining seats are “distributed according to the rule of highest average”(Worldelection). Also, Switzerland’s government has an open, preferential list structure. So, not only can citizens vote for who they want in the list of candidates, but they can manipulate the lists and show their preferences.

            As would logically follow according to Duverger’s law, Switzerland does, in fact, divide political power between a number of political parties. In the elections in 2011, the SVP, SPS, FDP, and CVP political parties each received portions of more than ten percent of the total votes and more than ten percent of the total seats. These four parties received 26.6, 18.7, 15.1, and 12.3 percent of the votes and the next four largest received 8.4, 5.4, 5.4, 2.0 percent of the votes (Switzerland, IPU). The number of effective political parties can be calculated by inversing the sum of the squares of the fractions of votes that each party wins. Calculated for Switzerland, this formula indicates that there should be about 6.37 effective political parties. It has five parties that are above six percent and two that are at 5.4. This is a fairly good representation of the number of political parties Switzerland actually has. This indicates that, not only does Switzerland have a PR electoral structure, but that is very efficient in allocating seats to its effective parties.

            In the case of Switzerland, Duverger’s law hold true. Switzerland clearly has certain political cleavages that are create different political views, and PR structure of its electoral system enables Switzerland to have many different political parties.

Sources:

Elections in Switzerland. Election World.      <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Switzerland>     October 31, 2012.

Switzerland. Inter-Parliamentary Union. <http://ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2305_B.htm> October    31, 2012.