Resumen de The Impact of Intraparty Electoral Reforms on Party System Nationalization
Abundant research demonstrates that electoral rules have an impact on party system fragmentation. Building on these findings, and adopting a dynamic approach, this article investigates the effect of changes of the ballot structure on party system nationalization and shows that this effect is conditioned by levels of ethno-geographic concentration and political decentralization. Specifically, candidate-centered reforms hamper party system nationalization by making parties less likely to obtain similar vote shares across constituencies, whereas party-centered reforms tend to foster it. Moreover, concentration of ethnic groups at the district level or considerable political decentralization exacerbates the impact of candidate-centered changes. These effects are demonstrated through an analysis of an original dataset of electoral reforms and party system nationalization as measured with different indices across fifty-nine democracies and more than five hundred legislative elections.
