Party Politics

http://ppq.sagepub.com Sources of Post-Communist Party System Consolidation: Ideology Versus Institutions

Shale Horowitz and Eric C. Browne Party Politics 2005; 11; 689 DOI: 10.1177/1354068805057605 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ppq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/6/689

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V O L 1 1 . N o . 6 pp. 689706 London Thousand Oaks New Delhi

SOURCES OF POST-COMMUNIST PARTY SYSTEM CONSOLIDATION

Ideology Versus Institutions Shale Horowitz and Eric C. Browne
ABSTRACT

What are the causes of party system consolidation in the postcommunist democracies? It is frequently hypothesized that differences in electoral systems and presidential powers help to explain variation in party system consolidation. In addition, it can be argued that the numbers and support levels of political parties should be affected by the ideological peculiarities of different countries voting publics. Population size might also be expected to affect the ease with which additional party organizations can be developed and maintained. As far as the availability of data permit, we construct relevant institutional and ideological measures for all 23 post-communist democracies. Regression analysis shows that ideological concentration of electorates is the most consistent and powerful determinant of party system consolidation. Proportionality of electoral systems has a weaker tendency to reduce party system consolidation, while strength of the presidency and population size appear to have little or no impact. Future research should explore whether ideology has played a similar role in other regions. It might also examine the policy consequences of party system consolidation.

KEY WORDS electoral systems ideological concentration institutional concentration party systems post-communism

Introduction
Particularly in new democracies, the number and relative strength of parties represented in the legislature is commonly viewed as a highly signicant measure of political development. It is often argued, for example, that a large number of weak parties reects political immaturity and, in any case,
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that it inhibits policy change and coherent policy outcomes. On the other hand, some argue that systems dominated by a single party, or even by two large parties, may do a poor job of representing the electorate, and in some cases verge on being undemocratic.1 Given such strong interests in the consequences of party system consolidation, we focus in this article on the prior question of causes of what explains variation in party system consolidation. With the liberalization and collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and early 1900s, 28 autonomous political systems have emerged 29 if Montenegro is counted as separate from Serbia. Of these, 23 arguably have political systems sufciently pluralistic to merit examination as new party systems under democracy. This large number of countries, making near-simultaneous transitions to democracy, provides a great opportunity for examining the sources of party system consolidation. Interestingly, in the rst decade or so following the transition to democracy, the post-communist democracies have had far more fragmented party systems than did Western European and even Latin American democracies at comparable stages of transition (Bielasiak, 2002). What combination of factors explains this high degree of fragmentation? There has already been much work on the causes particularly the institutional causes of party system consolidation in the post-communist democracies. However, there is little consensus in the literature. Some have argued that proportional representation (PR) electoral systems tend to reduce party system consolidation, whereas others have argued that PR had the opposite effect in the early period of post-communist party formation (e.g. Bielasiak, 2002; Geddes, 1995; Ishiyama, 1999; Moser, 1999). Some have argued that strong presidencies retard party system consolidation, but others do not nd this effect (e.g. slund, 1995: 5763; DAnieri, 2000; DeBardeleben, 1997: 184). We seek to bring greater consensus to this literature in two main ways. First, empirical results in the existing literature are heavily based on case studies or on small statistical samples. We broaden the empirical base to include all the post-communist democracies for which data are available. Second, in the literature, insufcient attention has been paid to ideological characteristics of party systems.2 Ideological characteristics are here understood to refer to the degree of public support for the main positions on the most salient policy issues. These support levels can be seen in public opinion polls, but polls with uniform questions across time and especially space are not available. The support levels are also reected in the vote shares going to the set of parties holding the relevant ideological and policy positions. Such aggregate levels of support for ideologies and policies are here considered independently of the number of institutionalized parties taking each of the positions. Theoretically, the extent of ideological consolidation should affect party system consolidation. Some people can be expected to vote for a party that 690

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is not closest to their own preferences if that party is considerably more likely to win representation and inuence policy than the party that is closest to their preferences. Presumably, such strategic voting behavior is crucial in explaining why democratic systems do not have much larger numbers of politically signicant parties. In this context, greater ideological diversity in the electorate should tend to produce more parties. Why? The more distant the preferences of the most likely winning parties from those of a given voter, the less likely the voter will be to shift his or her vote away from more ideologically proximate alternatives. This should also be so after controlling for variation in democratic political institutions. For example, plurality, single-member district (SMD) electoral systems may increase the incentive to vote for larger parties. But voters with fundamentally differing ideologies will still be more hesitant to vote for such larger parties. Strong presidencies may create incentives for notables to form additional parties, but in the presence of greater ideological diversity there should be scope for more such presidential parties. Our empirical ndings support these theoretical points about the importance of party systems ideological characteristics. We nd that political institutions particularly SMD electoral systems do affect party system consolidation, but their effects appear to be weaker than those due to the extent of ideological consolidation. The next section provides a theoretical discussion and hypotheses about how party system consolidation is affected by political institutions, voter ideologies and population size. Subsequent sections describe the research design and data and review the statistical results. In the nal section we discuss the ndings and suggest avenues for future research.

Theoretical Approaches to the Sources of Party System Consolidation

In analyzing causes of party system consolidation, our unit of analysis is the HerndahlHirschman concentration index (CI) of party vote shares (e.g. Taagepera and Shugart, 1989: 7791). The concentration index squares all of the party vote shares, sums them and produces a measure that varies from 0 to 1.3 Squaring disproportionately weights parties with larger vote shares. We do not use the CI of seat shares. Seat shares are arbitrarily modied from vote shares by diverse, often complex, institutional rules beyond the control of voters. Hence, the relationship between the relevant independent variables and seat shares should be more muddied than that between these variables and vote shares. Of course, it would be possible to examine other aspects of post-communist party system consolidation. Important possibilities include change over time in the CI of party vote shares, or in the support levels of particular parties, or in the ideological composition of the party system. We leave these important questions for future research. 691

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How would seat allocation rules and presidentialparliamentary power distributions be expected to affect vote share CIs? At least since Duvergers seminal work (Duverger, 1954; see also Cox, 1997; Lijphart, 1999), scholars have hypothesized that the SMD seats system leads to widespread strategic voting. Thus, votes will be shifted to major candidates who are viewed as having a reasonable chance of winning. If this is true, then there should be greater vote share CIs in electoral systems that allocate higher shares of seats through SMDs, as opposed to large, multi-seat PR districts. On the other hand, in the new post-communist democracies, parties other than the successor of the communist party had to start from scratch. In this context, SMD electoral systems could give non-communist independent candidates an advantage over budding noncommunist parties. At least during the initial period of party formation, this factor might lead one to expect that SMD electoral systems produce lower vote share CIs. Since new democracies are being examined, we are also interested in whether electoral systems have a cumulative effect on vote share CIs. For example, suppose a country has an electoral system entirely or mostly composed of SMD seats, and suppose that heavily SMD-based elections tend to consolidate the party system. Suppose the new democracy in question has had a number of elections. Is there any cumulative learning of how to vote strategically, or do voters learn all at once? Do SMD-based systems have a greater consolidating effect after two or more SMD-based elections than a more heavily SMD-based system has on being used for the rst time? In the second and subsequent electoral cycles, this possibility can be evaluated by coding the electoral system as a simple average of the electoral systems used in the current and previous elections. Scholars also hypothesize that strong presidencies adversely affect party system consolidation (Lijphart, 1999; Sartori, 1994; Shugart and Carey, 1992). Celebrities and political notables are more likely to start new parties and resist consolidating existing parties in order to create or preserve vehicles to compete for the presidency. Familiar examples are Viktor Chernomyrdins party, Our Home is Russia, or Lech Walesas more shortlived Non-Party Bloc for the Support of Reform. Similarly, presidents initially afliated with large parties can more readily start new parties when their original parties stray too far from presidential policy preferences. This was done, for example, by Mircea Snegur in Moldova. Also, knowing that leaders can use small parties to capture or hold the presidency, voters may be more willing to vote for such small parties. However, it is not necessarily clear that this occurs proportionately more the stronger are the powers of the presidency, or even that it only occurs when the presidency is not weak. For example, even though Slovakia has had a weak presidency, both iar and Rudolf Schuster created parties and used them as bases Vladimr Mec to run for president. In these cases, independent control over powerful parties was facilitated by possession of even a weak presidential ofce, while 692

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at the same time the presidential pulpit could be used to help build the partys following. Again, since we are examining the new post-communist democracies, we are also interested in whether stronger presidencies have a cumulative effect on vote share CIs. For example, if a country has long had a strong presidency, does that have a bigger party-dispersing effect in a given election than if a stronger presidency is being adopted for the rst time? In any given electoral cycle, this possibility can be evaluated by coding presidential strength as a simple average of the presidential powers in place in the present and previous elections. Another potentially important determinant of party system consolidation is ideological consolidation or dispersion.4 This is dened as the extent to which the electorate is more strongly unied or divided over the most politically salient ideological and policy cleavages. Ideological consolidation is likely to be a fundamental inuence on consolidation of party systems. If there are stronger ideological cleavages, there is less scope for the compromises necessary to agree on consolidation of parties. If consolidation occurs despite strong ideological cleavages, political entrepreneurs are more likely to start new parties to cater to unmet voter demand. Ideological characteristics are understood in terms of the positions of parties on the most salient policy issues. Such ideological variables must be based on standardized denitions of salient policy dimensions for all of the post-communist countries. Following in the tradition of much applied work in comparative politics, we use a two-dimensional policy space, where one dimension captures leftright differences on economic ideology and policy and the other the differences on what is variously called cultural or identity-related policies. We give more precise denitions of each policy dimension below, based on the specic ideological issues and policy challenges that faced the post-communist world in the rst dozen years of the transition. In economic policy, the main issue was whether and how to make the transition from planned or socialized economies to market economies. In what we call national identity policy, the main ideological issues were how to dene and protect the nations collective identity. The main policy issues concerned the status and treatment of internal ethnic minorities and of related ethnic minorities in neighboring countries. Along each ideological dimension, we distinguish four intervals. This 2-dimensional, 4-interval classication yields the 16-cell ideological space shown in Figure 1. The criteria for distinguishing cells (or columns) along the left-to-right economic policy dimension are as follows: Far left : Favors total or extensive state ownership and control of the economy. Market transition policies that dramatically weaken state control or unevenly affect the population are to be avoided. Moderate left : Favors private ownership and control of the economy outside 693

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Xenophobic Nationalist

14

15

6
Command Economy

9
Libertarian Economy

10

13

12

11

16

Ethnic/Regional Separatist

Figure 1. Ideological classication scheme for parties contesting elections in postcommunist democracies

of government services; favors heavy income taxation to nance a generous, broad-based welfare state. Market transition policies that dramatically weaken state control or unevenly affect the population are necessary, but should be cushioned by generous safety nets and transitional assistance. Moderate right : Favors private ownership and control of the economy outside of government services; favors moderate income taxation to nance a limited welfare state targeting the poor and the disabled. Market transition policies that dramatically weaken state control or unevenly affect the population are necessary. In order to preserve incentives for structural adjustment, transition policies should be cushioned only with limited safety nets and transitional assistance. Far right : Favors private ownership and control of the economy, including a large proportion of government services; favors only light income taxation to nance welfare policies targeting the disabled. Market transition policies that dramatically weaken state control or unevenly affect the population are necessary. In order to preserve incentives for structural 694

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adjustment, transition policies should be cushioned only with very limited safety nets and transitional assistance. The criteria for distinguishing cells (rows) along the top-to-bottom national identity policy dimension are as follows: Extreme nationalist (top): The highest collective goals are protection of national security and national cultural identity, and the pursuit of national economic prosperity. These goals justify the use of discriminatory policies and, if necessary, force. Ethnic minorities have no claim to equal rights, and/or neighboring territories containing large concentrations of the states dominant ethnic group should be incorporated. Moderate nationalist (top center): The highest collective goals are protection of national security and national cultural identity, and the pursuit of national economic prosperity. Ethnic minorities have a claim to equal rights as long as this does not jeopardize national security, national cultural identity and economic prosperity. There is no right to forcibly intervene in the affairs of neighboring territories containing large concentrations of the states dominant ethnic group unless the related ethnic groups political and cultural rights are seriously threatened. Moderate autonomist (bottom center): Protection of the majoritys national ethnic identity and pursuit of collective policy priorities must be reconciled with protection of minority ethnic or regional identities and priorities. This is usually to be achieved through some kind of federalization of political powers down to the regional and local levels. Secessionist (bottom): Protection of minority ethnic or regional identities and priorities cannot be reconciled with majority pursuit of national ethnic priorities. Such minority protection can only be achieved through political independence of minority regions, achieved through secession, adherence to a similarly constituted neighboring state or, at a minimum, special autonomy status combined with constitutionally imbedded minority veto power over important legislation at the national level. The ideological space and associated sorting of parties are based on party platforms and on journalistic and academic coverage of election campaigns. First, we found that the economic policy and national identity policy dimensions were by far the most widely emphasized and discussed. It would be possible for future work to add other policy dimensions. Such work should avoid adding policy dimensions that are not highly salient, or policy dimensions that are highly correlated with the economic and national identity policy dimensions. Second, we follow the almost universal practice of distinguishing moderate and extreme positions on each side of the two policy dimensions. We do not nd that observers are able to make systematically ner distinctions among ideological positions.5 A nal independent variable worth considering is population size. Larger population sizes should drive up organizational costs for potential new 695

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parties. In smaller countries, then, it should be easier to build competitive new parties in response to discontent with the present and past performance of existing parties.6 The populations of the 23 post-communist democracies vary from under 1 million in Montenegro to about 150 million in the Russian Federation. In sparsely populated Estonia and Latvia, observers have noted a tendency for parties to break up and re-form with each electoral cycle. On the other hand, Russia specialists have pointed to the difculty of organizing viable new nationwide parties. However, it does not necessarily follow that more easily formed new parties will remain small and contribute to a more fragmented party system. They might also grow rapidly and displace pre-existing parties, such that party systems end up little changed. It is possible that choice of constitutions and electoral systems may be related to the extent of ideological consolidation. For example, Easter (1997) and Geddes (1995) argue that the choice of political institutions reects the short-term electoral interests of the parties presiding over the transition from the old regime. Probably the most plausible hypothesis emerging from this approach would be that more economically left-leaning political systems would be more likely to adopt SMD electoral systems. This is because already existing, strongly supported communist parties might be expected to maximize their legislative advantage through SMD systems. In contrast, new, relatively fragmented and strongly supported centerright parties or coalitions might be more likely to maximize aggregate or partyspecic seat gains through PR systems. The implication is that economically left-leaning political systems may also have an indirect impact on party system consolidation through their effect on electoral system choice. As a general rule, economically left-leaning ideological spectra, with their strongly institutionalized reformed communist parties, appear to have been more consolidated. If that is true, then a greater tendency to choose the SMD electoral systems might indirectly reinforce such consolidation. Is there a similarly plausible hypothesis about why countries adopt strong or weak presidencies? While some have argued that strong, economically far-left communist parties prefer a strong presidency to preserve an option of restoring authoritarian rule, others have argued that a strong presidency offers a relative advantage to poorly institutionalized centerright opposition parties seeking an initial electoral breakthrough (e.g. Dellenbrant, 1994; Suny, 1995). It seems more difcult to justify a strong expectation about the relation between ideological consolidation and choice of presidential powers. Finally, Ishiyama (1997) argues that factors other than electoral interests of parties may be important inuences on institutional choices. One such factor is the tendency to revert to the form of any pre-communist democratic institutions. Another is that transitional elites often appear to make institutional choices not to maximize legislative seats for particular parties or coalitions, but to assure the success of the initial democratic 696

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breakthrough and associated substantive policy-making goals. Again, it is also unclear that the interests of individual party leaders are always the same as those of their present parties. These factors add sufcient complexity to make it much less likely that there are strong relations between extent of ideological consolidation and institutional choices. Nevertheless, it is important to investigate the possibility that extent of ideological consolidation may have indirect effects on party system consolidation through any direct effects on institutional choice.

Research Design and Data

We seek to account for the extent of party consolidation at three points in time during the development of the post-communist democracies. The rst point is the initial democratic election conducted sometime before the end of 1990. The next time point is the latest election occurring within 5 years of the rst election (prior to the end of 1995), and the nal point the latest election within 10 years of the rst election (prior to the end of 2000).7 This provides us with three different tests of how the hypothesized independent variables affect party consolidation. It also makes it possible to test for cumulative as well as one-time effects. Ordinary least squares regression is used to estimate the relative importance of the various factors hypothesized to inuence party system consolidation. The 23 post-communist democracies studied are: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The following variables are dened and measured for our models of the causes of party system consolidation: 1 Party Vote Share Concentration Index: This is how we dene party system consolidation as a dependent variable. Party vote shares are measured at three points in the development of post-communist party systems. The three points are the rst election in 1989 or 1990 (or March 1991 for Albania); the last election occurring before the end of the rst 5-year interval following the rst election (i.e. 1994 or 1995, depending on the country; or September 1996 for Bosnia-Herzegovina); and the nal election prior to the end of the second 5-year interval following the rst election (i.e. 1999 or 2000, depending on the country). The concentration indices are calculated as the sum of squares of party vote shares. Parties earning less than 1 percent of the vote are excluded from the calculations. 2 Ideology Vote Share CI: This is based on classications of parties according to the 2-dimensional, 16-cell scheme of Figure 1. Up to 16 ideological 697

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vote shares are calculated for the same elections used to calculate the party vote share concentration indices. These ideological vote shares are used to construct ideological CIs. Parties earning less than 1 percent of the vote are excluded from the calculations. Proportionality of Electoral System (PR-SMD): This is the share of parliamentary seats allocated by PR electoral districts, as opposed to SMDs. Where there are two or more houses of parliament, the seat share is calculated for the lower house. Shares are for the electoral system prevailing in the given election. Simple Average PR-SMD: This is the simple average of the PR-SMD variable over all the elections up to and including the election in question. Here, averages include any relevant additional elections that may have taken place between the rst election, the last election in the 19945 interval and the last election in the 19992000 interval. For example, in the case of Poland the last election for the 19992000 interval took place in September 1997, and there were three previous elections. So the simple average of the PR-SMD variable would in this case be taken over the electoral systems prevailing in four elections. Relative Strength of Parliament or Relative Weakness of Presidency (PARL-PRES): This variable rates the constitutional strength of the presidency over three intervals. Weak presidencies with ceremonial or strictly delimited emergency powers are ranked as a 1. Strong presidencies with decree powers or with veto power that can only be overridden by supermajorities are ranked as a 0. The intermediate, semipresidential systems give popularly elected presidents the power to appoint prime ministers or entire governments, making the government accountable to the president as well as the parliament. In cases of specied types of deadlock over the appointment of governments or important legislation, such systems usually allow the president to dissolve parliament and call new elections. These semi-presidential systems are ranked as a 1/2.8 It is also possible to construct a related but different variable by collapsing the semi-presidential and presidential categories and ranking both as a 0. Simple Average PARL-PRES: This is the simple average of the PARLPRES variable over all the elections up to and including the election in question. Again, averages include any relevant additional elections that may have taken place between the rst elections, the last election in the 19945 interval and the last election in the 19992000 interval. Population: This is the population (in millions) of the country.

Data on party vote shares, electoral systems, presidencies and ideological positions of parties are taken from Berglund and Dellenbrant (1994), Center for Political Analysis (2002), Center for the Study of Public Policy (2002), Dawisha and Parrott (1997ad), Derksen (2002), East and Pontin (1997), European Forum (2002), Inter-Parliamentary Union (2002), Karatnycky 698

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et al. (1997), Keesings Record of World Events (19892001), Nordsiek (2002), OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (2002), PoliSci.com (2002), Rose et al. (1998), Shvetsova (1999) and Szajkowski (1994). Population gures are taken from World Bank (1996: 1889, 222).

Findings
Table 1 reports results for a number of models seeking to account for the causes of party system consolidation. We caution the reader that, for 198990, vote share data were unavailable for a large number of countries, especially those, mainly in the former Soviet Union, that used exclusively SMD electoral systems. In both Models 1A and 1B, which cover the rst elections, the ideological vote share CI is the most powerful predictor of party vote share CI. The electoral system proportionality variable, PR-SMD, and the population variable are not statistically signicant. In the trimmed model (1B),9 weakness of the presidency has weak statistical signicance, but the direction of the inuence is the opposite of what is expected. That is, in the rst post-communist electoral cycle, strong presidencies are associated with higher rather than lower party vote share CIs. Models 2A and 2B look at the second, 19945 electoral interval. Again, the most powerful predictor of party vote share CI is ideological vote share CI. In contrast to the 198990 period, PR-SMD is a statistically signicant predictor. More proportional electoral systems are associated with less concentrated party vote share CIs. PARL-PRES is not statistically signicant, although it now assumes its expected positive sign. Again, population size is not statistically signicant. Models 3A and 3B look at the third, 19992000 electoral interval. Ideological vote share CI is again the most powerful predictor. Proportionality of electoral systems is again the second most powerful predictor, although its statistical signicance declines in the trimmed model (3B). Once more, weakness of presidency and population size are not statistically signicant. Suppose that Models 2A3B are replicated, but that the proportionality of electoral systems and weakness of presidency variables are taken as simple averages of the institutional codings over the current and previous elections. Again, this captures the possibility that more proportional electoral systems and stronger presidencies may have stronger votedispersing effects if voters have more elections to learn about the hypothesized incentives. The estimated relations for all the variables are virtually identical for the 19945 interval. For the 19992000 interval, the estimated relations are weaker for the electoral system and presidency variables, and otherwise virtually identical. These results are available from the authors. Thus, electoral systems and presidential powers do not appear to have had strong cumulative effects on party vote share CIs. Given at least one 699

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Table 1. OLS models of party system consolidation (vote share concentration indices) Model 1A 19891990 Ideology vote share CI PR-SMD PARL-PRES 0.810 (0.464) 0.071 (0.090) 0.180 (0.200) 0.002 (0.008) 0.153 (0.179) 0.515 0.238 12 1.858 Model 1B (Trimmed) 19891990 0.928** (0.366) Model 2A 19945 0.491** (0.208) 0.113** (0.053) 0.049 (0.049) 0.0002 (0.0006) 0.070 (0.086) 0.521 0.393 20 4.076** Model 2B (Trimmed) 19945 0.586*** (0.179) 0.083* (0.043) Model 3A 19992000 0.257* (0.144) 0.085** (0.044) 0.050 (0.038) 0.0001 (0.0005) 0.137* (0.067) 0.391 0.256 23 2.890* Model 3B (Trimmed) 19992000 0.313** (0.134) 0.058 (0.039)
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0.255* (0.131)

700

Population Constant R-squared Adjusted R-squared N F

0.149 (0.157) 0.468 0.350 12 3.958*

0.044 (0.073) 0.478 0.417 20 7.799***

0.126* (0.061) 0.322 0.254 23 4.752**

*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10. In Models 1A1B, not all data were available for Armenia, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Note that eight of the 11 are former Soviet Republics. In Models 2A2B, not all data were available for Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia and Ukraine. In the trimmed B models, less statistically signicant variables are dropped.

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previous election, the full effect appears to be yielded by electoral systems and presidential powers in force at the time of the given election. Suppose next that all the models are replicated with a presidential dummy variable in which the presidential and semi-presidential cases are all coded as a 0, and parliamentary systems still as a 1. Here, again, all of the estimated relations are virtually identical. Results are available from the authors. Finally, suppose that the countries in which democracy was weakest those classied as not free in the yearly Freedom House rankings are excluded from the samples.10 This rule excludes Romania for the 198990 interval, Serbia for the 19945 and 19992000 intervals and Kyrgyzstan for the 19992000 interval. The estimated relations are then similar but weaker for the 198990 interval, and similar but stronger for the 19945 and 19992000 intervals. Again, results are available upon request. Across all the time periods, then, ideological vote share CI has the highest and most consistent level of statistical signicance, and accounts for the overwhelming majority of explanatory power. The most consistently signicant institutional variable is proportionality of electoral systems. Weakness of the presidency is not statistically signicant except in the truncated sample of Model 1B, where its inuence is estimated to be in a counterintuitive direction. On the other hand, weakness of the presidency has the predicted sign in the larger samples of Models 2A and 3B. Population size has consistently low statistical signicance. Here it is also appropriate to comment on the possibility of endogeneity between ideological consolidation and institutional choices. Overall, more ideologically consolidated political systems had weak tendencies to choose more heavily SMD-based electoral systems and weaker presidencies.11 Note that the latter nding contradicts the hypothesis that, in the post-communist context, more ideologically concentrated systems should be more likely to choose stronger presidencies. Hence, any indirect effects of ideological consolidation on party system consolidation through effects on institutional choices appear to have been relatively weak.

Discussion and Conclusions

Models 1A and 3B examine the relative importance of ideological and institutional factors in the consolidation of party systems, while also controlling for population size. The models show that ideological consolidation appears to be a far more important inuence on party system consolidation than institutional factors. Among institutional factors, strong presidencies usually had the anticipated negative effect on party system consolidation, but showed weak statistical signicance. For the rst post-communist election, strong presidencies were estimated to affect party system consolidation in a 701

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counter-intuitively positive direction. This may be due to the small and biased sample, since the missing data points are disproportionately from elections in what were at the time Soviet Republics. In the second and third electoral intervals, more heavily SMD-based electoral systems facilitated greater consolidation of party systems than more heavily PR-based systems. The lack of a stronger and more signicant relationship in the rst, 198990 electoral interval could also be due to the small and biased sample size. Another possibility is that, while SMD systems apparently encourage strategic voting for parties more likely to win seats, this effect may be counteracted in the rst election by special factors. For example, party system consolidation is generally weaker on the centerright than on the centerleft. In the rst elections, many ideologically reformist countries returned large majorities to popular fronts that subsequently splintered. Such dominant popular fronts were highly successful regardless of the electoral system. As a result, the consolidating effect of SMD systems may have been blunted in the rst elections. In the second and third electoral intervals, there appears to be no signicant cumulative impact of institutional rules, and in particular of types of electoral systems. Apparently, once it becomes reasonably clear how to vote strategically, most of the voters inclined to do so will do so right away. It does not take them more than one electoral cycle to react. These data and results lead us to two main conclusions. They are relevant not only for the new post-communist democracies, but also for both new and old democracies generally. First, party system consolidation is likely to depend at least as strongly on ideological consolidation as on institutional rules (e.g. Bielasiak, 1997; Kitschelt, 1995). Analyses that fail to take ideological consolidation into account are more likely to exaggerate the importance of institutions. Second, the greatest barrier to taking ideological consolidation into account is measurement. It is time-consuming to classify various parties at various times along the most salient policy dimensions. Moreover, as the sample expands to cover regions with more variable historical pasts and contemporary policy agendas, the task becomes increasingly difcult. Again, however, the alternative is a large explanatory decit along with a tendency to exaggerate the impact of other variables. Future work might move in at least two directions. As discussed, it would be interesting to try to explain change over time in the post-communist party vote share CIs, or in the support levels of particular parties, or in ideological vote share CIs. There are often signicant difculties in measuring changes in support levels of particular parties. When a party splits, which splinter if any is to be coded as the successor of the old party? Should this depend on inheriting the organization, the top leader or leaders, the largest share of the old popular support base, or some combination of such factors? Such measurement difculties do not arise for change over time party vote share CIs or for ideological vote share CIs. 702

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Another possibility is to turn from the causes of party system consolidation to its consequences. Here again, arguments about consequences, e.g. for democratization and market reform, have generally been based on single case studies or small samples. To test the various arguments that have been made, it would be necessary to look at party seat share CIs rather than party vote share CIs. Again, it would be necessary to control for the ideological characteristics of the party system, and possibly economic structure, political culture and warfare. Notably, Tsebeliss (1995) veto players framework implies that, after controlling for the ideological characteristics of party systems, party system consolidation should have no systematic effect on policy outcomes. For example, holding the number of legislative seats equal, multiple parties that are similar ideologically should have a collective effect on legislative outcomes very similar to that of a single party with correspondingly broad ideological constituencies.

Notes
1 For representative discussions, see Bartolini and Mair (1990); Lijphart (1999); Linz and Stepan (1996); Mainwaring and Scully (1995); Mair (1997). 2 Some notable exceptions are Evans and Whiteeld (1993) and Kitschelt (1995). 3 Many scholars have also used the effective number of parties, which is dened as the reciprocal of the concentration index. The effective number of parties varies upward from 1, without a limit. We use the concentration index because we nd it to be a more intuitively simple measure, but the effective number of parties would serve equally well. 4 See the seminal work of Sartori (1976) and the literature cited therein. 5 See, for example, the ne set of case studies compiled by Dawisha and Parrott (1997ad). 6 See Olson (1971). For an application to labor organization in developed countries, see Wallerstein (1989). 7 The only countries for which this periodization does not yield three different election outcomes are Albania, where the rst election was in March 1991, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the second election was not held until September 1996. The models below therefore use Albanias March 1991 election for the rst period technically stopping at the end of 1990, and Bosnia-Herzegovinas September 1996 election for the second period technically stopping at the end of 1995. 8 Such a classication is used by Fish (1998). 9 In the trimmed B models, less statistically signicant variables are dropped. 10 Freedom House classies countries as not free if the average of the political rights and civil liberties indices is between 5.5 and 7. The political rights and civil liberties indices range from 1 (best) to 7 (worst), and are themselves averages of a number of indicators. For the methodology and country rankings, see the Freedom House website: www.freedomhouse.org. See also Freedom House (2004). 11 Pooled over all three time periods, the correlations were 0.155 with the share of seats chosen by PR, and 0.242 with weakness of presidencies.

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SHALE HOROWITZ is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of From Ethnic Conict to Stillborn Reform: The Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Texas A&M University Press, 2005). He has authored or co-authored articles in Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, East European Politics and Societies, European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Peace Research, International Interactions, International Studies Quarterly, and other journals. ADDRESS: Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3210 N. Maryland Avenue, Bolton Hall 674, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA. [email: shale@uwm.edu]

ERIC C. BROWNE is a Professor of Political Science at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee. He is the author of many articles in well-known professional journals, such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the British Journal of Political Science. His research focuses on political institutions. ADDRESS: Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3210 N. Maryland Avenue, Bolton Hall 674, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA. [email: browne@ uwm.edu]

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