Blog 7

Tayler Goodman

PL SC 150

Blog 7

           

Duverger’s law states that the effective number of parties found in an electoral system is a result of the electoral rules.  Single-member-district plurality systems tend to produce just two effective parties while proportional representation systems allow for more.  While this is a commonly-accepted theory, does it hold true?  We will use Turkey as an example to analyze its electoral system and see if Duverger’s law explains the number of effective Turkish political parties.

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey has 550 members, each of whom is elected for a four-year term.  The electoral system is based on proportional representation and thus permits the emergence of multiple parties (“Elections in Turkey”).  The three major parties are: the Justice and Development Party, the Republican People’s Party and the Nationalist Action Party, followed by the Independents.  

While the proportional representation system allows for the emergence of smaller parties, Turkey’s threshold prevents some small parties from gaining power.  A candidate can only be elected if his or her political party is fully organized in at least half of the provinces and one-third of the districts, has nominated two candidates for each parliamentary seat in at least half of the province and has acquired at least 10% of the valid votes cast nationwide (“IPU PARLINE”). Particularly, this requirement to obtain 10% of the votes prohibits many small political parties from obtaining seats in the legislature. This can lead to a large number of wasted votes, as was the case in 2002 when only two parties won representation and 46% of the votes were lost (“Proportional Representation.”).   

Turkey’s provinces are broken up into 70 districts and have an average district magnitude of seven.  The abovementioned threshold is required nationally despite seats being awarded at the local level.  This means if a party does not gain 10% of the national vote, it does not win any seats, even though it may have won the majority of votes in a district (“OSCE/ODIHR”).  Furthermore, Turkey has a closed-listed structure based on the d'Hondt method, which also limits to some capacity the people’s choice of candidates.

Using the formula  it can be determined that the number of effective political parties Turkey should have is 2.  This is nearly the case; in the 2011 elections the Justice and Development Party won 59% of the seats and the Republican People’s Party won 25% followed by a combined 15% of the votes for the remaining two parties.  It appears that Duverger’s law applies very well to Turkey.  Having a proportional representation system, it is able to elect multiple parties, athough only two hold a significant amount of seats in the legislature.  While Turkey’s threshold of 10% of the national vote being required for a candidate to obtain a seat restricts the number of political parties that can gain power, Duverger’s law is nevertheless considerably appropriate in the case of Turkey.

       

Works Cited

"Elections in Turkey." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Turkey (accessed       October 31, 2012).

"IPU PARLINE Database on National Parliaments." Inter-Parliamentary Union.             http://www.ipu.org/parline/parlinesearch.asp (accessed October 31, 2012).

"OSCE/ODIHR Releases Needs Assessment Report for Turkish Parliamentary Elections."            ElectionGuide Digest. http://digest.electionguide.org/2011/04/20/osceodihr-releases-         needs-assessment-report-for-turkish-parliamentary-elections/ (accessed October 31,          2012).

"Proportional Representation."           http://florin.eu.pn/subfiles/publications/proportional_representation.pdf (accessed         October 31, 2012).