Duverger’s Law

            Does the type of electoral system a country has affect the effective number of parties? According to Duverger’s law, it does. Duvergrer’s law states, “the effective number of parties in any electoral district is a function of the electoral rules: SMDP rules produce two effective parties, while proportional representation rules allow for more, depending on whether or not there are multiple social cleavages.” (Hawkins) Finland is a country with several effective parties that practices proportional representation. Finland is an example of evidence supporting Duverger’s law, that electoral system affects party numbers.

            Finland has eight main parties; National Coalition Party, Social Democratic, True Finns, Centre Party, Left Alliance, Green Leaf, Swedish People’s party, and Christian Demmcrats (Finland.) To find the number of effective political parties present in Finland, I used the NEFF formula: 1/sum(p*2) (Hawkins) I divided the sum of proportion of seats in parliament for each party squared, by one. Using this formula I found that Finland has 5.83 effective parties. Clearly Finland has multiple parties.

            In Finland legislative bodies are selected through proportional representation (PR.) Proportional representation is “when representation in the legislative body is set roughly proportional to their strength in the electorate.”(Samuels)  Finland is an example of open list preference voting; for the distribution of seats within each list, candidates are ranked according to the number of personal votes they have polled (IPU PARLINE Database.) In Finland, the mathematical formula used to calculate seats distributed among parties or alliances of parties is the d’Hondt method (IPU PARLINE Database.) Finland is for the most part not a hybrid, but almost completely based off of proportional representation. The only exception is in the province of Aland where on Member of Parliament is elected through a simple majority. This is one of two hundred seats in parliament that is not chosen through proportional representation. Finland does not have a threshold.

            Finland is evidence that gives strong support to Duverger’s law on effective number of parties and electoral rules. Finland has 5.83 effective parties and elections of the legislative body are done mostly through proportional representation. Finland is one country that supports this law, however it would be useful to study other countries to see if they match this trend.

 Works Cited

"Finland." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Jan. 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland>.

Hawkins, Kirk. Political Science 150.

"IPU PARLINE Database: FINLAND (Eduskunta - Riksdagen), Electoral System." IPU PARLINE Database: FINLAND (Eduskunta - Riksdagen), Electoral System. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. <http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2111_B.htm>.

Samuels, David. Comparative Politics. New York: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.