Party relevance and party survival in new democracies

William Bianco, Christopher Kam, Itai Sened and Regina Smyth
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William Bianco: Department of Political Science, Indiana University, USA
Christopher Kam: Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Canada
Itai Sened: Deparment of Political Science, Washington University—St Louis, USA
Regina Smyth: Deparment of Political Science, Indiana University, USA

International Area Studies Review, 2014, vol. 17, issue 3, 251-261

Abstract: We argue that the move to free and fair elections is only the first step in a democratic transition. With this change, competition moves into the legislative arena, where interests are defined not in terms of support or opposition to the old regime, but over competing visions of what government should do. Thus, examining legislative behavior and legislative outcomes helps us to understand the long-term political and policy trajectory of democratic transitions. Building on game-theoretic analysis of majority-rule decision-making, our hypothesis is that, after controlling for factors such as seat share, party survival depends on party relevance—the organization’s influence over legislative outcomes. Using legislative roll call data from Hungary, Poland, Russia and Ukraine, we show that relevance is a major influence on party survival, even after controlling for seat shares and other factors. The last section of the paper discusses the implications of these results for democracy assistance programs.

Keywords: Democratic transitions; democratic consolidation; legislative process; majority rule; uncovered set (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:intare:v:17:y:2014:i:3:p:251-261

DOI: 10.1177/2233865914546500

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