The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Demography and Democracy: A Global, District-level Analysis of Electoral Contestation

På svenska

Author

  • John Gerring
  • Maxwell Palmer
  • Jan Teorell
  • Dominic Zarecki

Summary, in English

According to the classical perspective, polity size and democracy are inversely related. In this article, we argue that there is an important exception that manifests itself at the district level in settings where multiparty competition is allowed. Specifically, we find that larger districts encourage greater contestation. This results from a little-noticed mechanical effect as well as from several features of constituencies that are affected by size and have direct repercussions for contestation. To demonstrate this thesis we assembled a unique dataset, the Multi-level Election Archive (MLEA), which unites electoral contests across a variety of districts (national, regional, and local) and elective offices from the eighteenth century to the present, including a total of 88 countries, 2,344 elections, 79,658 districts, and more than 400,000 contests. With this evidence we were able to conduct a broad array of statistical tests, some global and others focused on particular countries or election types, all of which support our general argument.

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

574-591

Publication/Series

American Political Science Review

Volume

109

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Topic

  • Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1537-5943