Date of Award

11-1-2013

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

Josef Korbel School of International Studies

First Advisor

Timothy D. Sisk, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Devin Joshi

Third Advisor

Jing Sun

Keywords

Alternative vote, Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Party system institutionalization, Preference voting

Abstract

This research project examines the intervening role of party system institutionalization in determining the effect of electoral rules on the behavior of political parties. Highly institutionalized systems differ across multiple dimensions--supply stability, volatility of results, and rootedness of parties--from fluid systems. Party behavior can be depicted rationally as a response to both institutional incentives and the historical and sociological context of a nation's party system. Electoral incentives promoting certain types of party behavior can be negated by party system mechanics that deter those behaviors. The research uses a medium-N structured, focused comparison of elections from Australia, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea held under preference voting rules, a majority formula that rewards parties for cooperating formally prior to elections. Preference voting is assumed to offer a middle ground between the problems of concentration inherent to single member district plurality systems and the problems of coordination necessitated by multi-member district list PR models. Despite similar incentives, the cases differ in the type and number of pre-electoral alliances. Using party system institutionalization as an intervening variable, the thesis constructs a heuristic model to assess whether cooperation is likely in preference voting systems.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Lee T. Barrow

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

148 p.

Discipline

Political Science, Pacific Rim studies

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