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Ballot Regulations and Multiparty Politics in the States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2007

Barry C. Burden
Barry C. Burden
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

American politics is dominated by two major parties and has been for a century. The duopoly enjoyed by the Democrats and Republicans is largely the result of Duverger's Law: the tendency of a single-member district system to produce two-party competition (Duverger 1963). Minor parties ultimately fail in a single-member district system because (1) the winner-take-all approach does not reward candidates who finish third and (2) citizens vote strategically to avoid “wasting” their votes on hopeless candidates and spoiling the election (Cox 1997; Riker 1982). Because the U.S. two-party system is so dependent on its majoritarian electoral rules, one might suspect that other election regulations would have little effect on the number of parties.A longer version of this paper was presented at the conference, “2008 and Beyond: The Future of Election and Ethics Reform in the States,” Columbus, OH, January 16–17, 2007. I thank Richard Winger of Ballot Access News for comments and information.

Type
SYMPOSIUM
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 669 - 673
Copyright
© 2007 The American Political Science Association

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