Kennan Howlett
11/1/12
Blog Post 7
Duverger’s Law in Italy
A
prime example of Duverger’s Law is clearly demonstrated in Italy. The law
states that electoral rules determine the number of effective parties in any
electoral district.[i] Democracies tend to use
certain types of electoral systems, the single-member district plurality, which
promotes two large parties, and the proportional representation system, which
allows for a larger number of effective parties.[ii]
Italy has a proportional representation system. This means that Italy’s
political parties’ representation in the legislative body, in this case the
Chamber of Deputies[iii], is set proportional to
their strength in the voting population[iv].
Duverger’s mathematic equation shows that Italy has more than two effective
parties, which is also depicted in Italy’s electoral rules.
Italy has a proportional voting
system with a parliamentary government. Parliament is bicameral with the
Chamber of Deputies (lower house), and the Senate of the Republic (upper house). The Chamber of Deputies divides Italy into 26 constituencies
with a total of 630 seats[v]. Each region in Italy gets
between 1-3 constituencies, the number of seats or magnitude allotted to each
electoral district is determined by the proportion of the district’s population
as compared to all of Italy’s population. The formula Italy uses to disperse
seats is a type of proportional representation party list called Imperiali
Quota which calculates the minimum number of votes required to win a seat.
Candidates on the lists are placed in order of priority (preferential
structure) so that the most desired ones get seats in parliament. Italy has
large coalitions between parties to ensure the larger portions of society get
their voices heard, even if it must be through coalitions. There are specific thresholds in Italy for both parties and
coalitions. There must be a minimum of 2% of the national vote for any party
within a coalition, a minimum of 4% for any party not in a coalition, and a
minimum of 10% for a coalition.[vi]
To
test Duverger’s Law in Italy, I used his equation Neff=1/∑(p2). I took the sum of the percentages of seats won
by each party squared, and divided that number by one. Seven total parties and
the category of ‘other parties’ were used and after my calculations I found
that there were approximately three effective parties in Italy, which agrees
with Duverger’s law. This also makes sense because Italy has a number of social
cleavages with immigration issues, economic disparity, and the dichotomy
between the north and the south. Proportional representation is usually the
resulting system in democracies with such social cleavages. With a proportional
representation system, Italy has three effective parties, so based off my
findings from Italy, I would concur with Duverger in saying that the effective
number of parties greatly depends on the electoral rules
[i] Wikipedia. Italian Parliament. Electoral System. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Italy#.
Accessed November 1,
2012.
[ii] Shively,
W. Phillips. Power and Choice: An
Introduction to Political Science (New York: McGraw-Hill,
2012), 230-236.
[iii] Inter-Parliamentary
Union. Italy. PARLINE database. http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2255_E.htm.
Accessed November 1, 2012.
[iv] Shively,
W. Phillips. Power and Choice: An
Introduction to Political Science (New York: McGraw-Hill,
2012), 230-236.
[v] Inter-Parliamentary
Union. Italy. PARLINE database. http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2255_E.htm.
Accessed November 1, 2012.
[vi] Wikipedia. Italian Parliament. Electoral System. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Italy#.
Accessed November 1,
2012.
It was interesting to see how Italy worked. I've always been somewhat interested in Italian government, so to read a bit about the Italian electoral system was nice.
ReplyDeleteI was also interested to see how Italy's electoral system was set up. I was particularly interested in the way that Italy's threshold is different regarding individual parties and coalitions. The 2% threshold for parties within a coalition seems to suggest that Italy wants to promote the formation of coalitions between parties.
ReplyDeleteGood post
ReplyDeleteVery similar to Denmark. I wonder what would happen if the US followed a system like these European countries.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see that many systems of government in Europe are very similar to each other; Italy seems to hold to this rule as well.
ReplyDelete