Ekaterina Rashkova-Gerbrands

What legal constraints determine party system size and explain different paths of party system development? This project takes a fresh look at the debate on the link between electoral and party systems. The main goal is to evaluate the extent to which district and national electoral incentives intervene in party system development. For years, scholars have believed that the number of seats each district allocates to the national parliament is the key determinant of how many political parties there are. More recent work however, has shown that similar constraints fail to have similar effects when put to work in different places. Why? Using an institutionalist, rational-choice, framework of analysis, this project argues that other factors, such as national regulations which trump district incentives may be at play. The project will thereby not only fill the existing gap in the empirical study of the number of parties but will also integrate the disciplines of political science and constitutional and public law through a systematic and comprehensive comparative analysis of electoral regulation in Central and East-European democracies. Furthermore, it will evaluate the effect of ethnic heterogeneity and other social characteristics on party system development. The proposed research contributes to the debate on the quality of democracy most generally. It studies the important for many new, but also established, democracies question of what and how affects party system development. Examining specific electoral constraints, the project adds to the growing discussion on the effect of regulation on party democracy and from a new angle - that of the rules of competition - taps into the idea that political parties are becoming ever more linked to and dependent on the state. The focus of the project of discerning district from national institutional and social constraints and explaining how each of these determines electoral competition enriches the electoral and party system literature dealing with the number of parties by providing deeper and broader comparative analysis of party system development. By examining the relationship between party systems and legal regulation of electoral competition as stipulated in the electoral law, the project integrates the disciplines of political science and constitutional and public law, encouraging more interdisciplinarity and offering results which can be useful in both fields. In addition to the research output that the project brings, a significant asset to the community interested in party system development and/or regulation will be the systematic database of Central and East European Electoral Laws and district-level indicators. The database will be made available online and offered free to the public.