Blog 7

Brittney Griffith- Durverger's Law      
  According to Duverger's law a country will have a set number of effective parties
based on the established rules for that country's elections. If a country has SMDP rules
they will have two major effective parties. For countries with proportional representation
or some form of proportional representation they will have more. I will apply Duverger's
law to the country of Greece.
Greece is a a type of proportional representational form, they claim to be what is
called a “reinforced proportionality.” This type of proportional representation comes with
two extra rules. One, to obtain seats in the parliament the party must obtain at least three
percent of the vote. Two, the party that wins the largest amount of votes receives fifty
extra seats in parliament. This is why I would say Greece is like a hybrid system, because
it does have a party that wins but also has multiple parties that still have seats in
parliament.
Greece has six major parties that received seats in the election of 2009, according
 to vote and the NEFF equation, Greece has 3.4 major effective parties. I do think that
 Greece does abide by Durverger’s law, it is a type of proportional representation and
 does have more than two parties that are effective. I’d say the major effective parties of
Greece are the (In order of most powerful), Panhellistic Socialist Movement, New
Democracy, Communist Party, and the Popular Orthodox Rally, Coalition of the Radical
Left, and lastly the Ecologists Greens. Each have seats and representation in parliament (WIKI).
Electoral rules for Greece are apt have changed over the years but as of now this
is how they stand. District magnitude, or M, is the amount of votes that are divided out to
each district. Seats in Greece are distributed according to the Hagenbach-Bischoff
System, but also fifty of the seats remain for the winning party. The formula is a mixture
 of plurality and proportional representation like mentioned in the previous paragraphs.
 The Threshold is the amount of votes a party needs to obtain a seat in parliament. In
Greece the threshold is that parties need three percent of the vote (IPU). The List
structure in Greece is set up by candidate not by party. So the voter goes in picks the
candidate he or she wants and the votes are distributed accordingly.
In conclusion, I would say Greece follows and does match Durverger’s law very
closely, their electoral rules and system have some differences but overall they match the
points outlined.

Sources:
"Elections in Greece." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Oct. 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Greece>.
"Greece Electoral Rules." IPU PARLINE. Parline Database, n.d. Web. <http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/Modlist.asp>.