Blog 7: Finland and Duverger's Law

Finland and Duverger’s Law

                Duverger’s law indicates that electoral systems dictate the number of effective parties in a given electoral district, where the single member district plurality (SMDP) system produces just two parties competing against one another and proportional representation (PR) produces more. In taking a look at a given system, then, it should be clear whether the law holds true by first analyzing whether it is SMDP or PR, and then finding the effective number of parties in that system.

                Finland, at face value, is said to be a proportional representation system. For elections, the country is divided into 14 multi-member constituencies with one single-member constituency in the province of Aland, where the single member is elected by simple majority (IPU,  see full citation below). With the exception of Aland, the districts have magnitudes (numbers of seats) ranging from 6 to 33, with an average district magnitude of 13.33. This seems to support the notion that this is a PR system with one small modification, but the next step is to look at the methods and formulas.

                In Finnish elections, votes are cast for specific candidates rather than for party lists, although candidates are associated with certain parties. After the votes are cast, the winners are chosen through an interesting method of counting to total number of votes for each group, ordering candidates within the groups based on personal votes received, and assigning reference figures to each of the candidates based on the group vote (first in the group gets the whole group vote, second gets half, third gets a third, etc.) and then weighing candidates across the board to see who attains office (eduskunta.fi). This is a representation of the D’Hondt formula of seat allocation in a proportional representation system (again, Aland is the practically insignificant exception to all of these statements since it is a single-member district, which would technically classify Finland as a hybrid). All in all, Finland’s system is very clearly one of proportional representation.

                Now, Finland only has one chamber in Parliament, so all representatives attain office in the same chamber. The number of parties on the ballot is large, some 17 or so, but only 8 of those actually won seats in the last election, and the calculated number of effective parties according to the inverse of the Herfindahl-Hirschman index is only 5.83. This still shows a significant number of parties vying for office in the various districts, which matches up with Duverger’s claim that a proportional representation system would favor emergence of multiple parties (more than two).

                It appears in this case at least that Duverger was correct. The proportional representation system in Finland is coupled with the presence of several effective parties competing for office.

Works Cited / Consulted

Inter Parliamentary Union. “Finland.” <http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2111_B.htm> 2011.

Eduskunta.fi. <http://web.eduskunta.fi/Resource.phx/parliament/aboutparliament/presentation/elections.htx> 2012.

Wikipedia.org. “Finnish Parliamentary Election, 2011” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_parliamentary_election,_2011> 2012.