Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T14:01:33.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Electoral Systems and Party Systems in East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Benjamin Reilly
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Over the past two decades, numerous East Asian states have undergone transitions to democracy. One of the most distinctive aspects of democratization has been the way East Asian democracies have sought to manage political change by institutional innovations that aim to influence the development of the region's party systems. These reforms have typically tried to promote more centrist and stable politics by encouraging fewer, and hence larger, political parties. The result is an increasing evolution of the region's electoral and party system constellations toward more majoritarian elections and, in some cases, nascent two-party systems.

Keywords

democracyelectoral systemspolitical partiesAsia-Pacific
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Party Choice and Partisanship in East Asia , August 2007 , pp. 185 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. See Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1947), 269.Google Scholar

2. See Lijphart, Arend, Patterns of Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

3. This is the definition suggested by Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

4. However, we should also note that the articles on citizen attitudes and electoral behavior in the rest of this collection exclude the semidemocracies and focus on the democratic polities that are included in each of the three major public opinion surveys of East Asia.Google Scholar

5. For excellent recent surveys of Asian electoral systems, see Croissant, Aurel, Bruns, Gabriele, and John, Marei, eds., Electoral Politics in Southeast and East Asia (Singapore: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2002); Hicken, Allen and Kasuya, Yuko, “A Guide to the Constitutional Structures and Electoral Systems of East, South and Southeast Asia,” Electoral Studies 22 (2003): 121–151; and Nohlen, Dieter, Grotz, Florian, and Hartmann, Christof, eds., Elections in Asia and the Pacific, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

6. Also see Reynolds, Andrew, Reilly, Ben, and Ellis, Andrew, Electoral System Design (Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2005).Google Scholar

7. Maisrikrod, Surin, “Political Reform and the New Thai Electoral System.” In Hsieh, John Fuh-sheng and Newman, David, eds., How Asia Votes (New York: Chatham House, 2002), p. 196.Google Scholar

8. Sakamoto, Takayuki, “Explaining Electoral Reform: Japan Versus Italy and New Zealand,” Party Politics 5, no. 4 (1999): 431–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Krauss, Ellis S. and Pekkanen, Robert, “Explaining Party Adaptation to Electoral Reform: The Discreet Charm of the LDP?” Journal of Japanese Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 7.Google Scholar

10. Hsieh, John Fuh-sheng, “The SNTV System and Its Political Implications.” In Tien, Hung-Mao, ed., Taiwan's Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).Google Scholar

11. See Lin, Jih-wen, “Party Realignment and the Demise of SNTV in East Asia,” unpublished paper, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, (2005).Google Scholar

12. May, R. J., “Elections in the Philippines, May 2001,” Electoral Studies 21, no. 4 (2002): 673–680.Google Scholar

13. Rood, Steven, “Elections as Complicated and Important Events in the Philippines.” In Hsieh, and Newman, , eds., How Asia Votes, p. 152.Google Scholar

14. Sherlock, Stephen, “Consolidation and Change: The Indonesian Parliament After the 2004 Elections” (Canberra: Centre for Democratic Institutions, 2004), p. 4.Google Scholar

15. At the time of writing there were eight single-member constituencies in Cambodia, up from six in 1993.Google Scholar

16. See Reynolds, , Reilly, , and Ellis, , Electoral System Design, p. 27.Google Scholar

17. See the article by Chu, Yun-han and Huang, Min-hua in this special issue.Google Scholar

18. Hutchcroft, Paul D. and Rocamora, Joel, “Strong Demands and Weak Institutions: The Origins and Evolution of the Democratic Deficit in the Philippines,” Journal of East Asian Studies 3 (2003): 259–292.Google Scholar

19. This provided the pretext for the declaration of martial law by Sukarno in 1957. See William Liddle, R., “Coercion, Co-optation, and the Management of Ethnic Relations in Indonesia.” In Brown, Michael E. and Ganguly, Sumit, eds., Government Policies and Ethnic Relations in the Asia-Pacific (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).Google Scholar

20. Murray, David, “Thailand's Recent Electoral Reforms,” Electoral Studies 17, no. 4 (1998): 527.Google Scholar

21. McCargo, Duncan, “Introduction: Understanding Political Reform in Thailand.” In McCargo, Duncan, ed., Reforming Thai Politics (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2002), p. 7.Google Scholar

22. Chung-si, Ahn and Hoon, Jaung, “South Korea.” In Marsh, Ian, Blondel, Jean, and Inoguchi, Takashi, eds., Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1999), p. 152.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. 162.Google Scholar

24. Fearon, James D., “Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country,” Journal of Economic Growth 8 (2003): 195–222. As with all such exercises, Fearon's index includes some questionable classifications: the majority population in the Philippines, for instance, is categorized as “lowland Christian Malays,” which effectively elides many salient subnational ethnolinguistic cleavages. I therefore recalculated the Philippines measure using data from Asian-Pacific Cultural Center, A Handbook of Asian-Pacific Countries and Regions (Taipei: Asian-Pacific Cultural Center, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. The effective number of parties is the inverse of the sum of the squared proportions of the vote or the seats of all parties. For n parties, and for p i representing the proportion of seats won by party i , See Laakso, Markku and Taagepera, Rein, “Effective Number of Parties,” Comparative Political Studies 12 (1979): 3–27.Google Scholar

26. Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction.” In Lipset, and Rokkan, , eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967).Google Scholar

27. Bingham Powell, G., Contemporary Democracies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 84.Google Scholar

28. In addition, the calculation of the number of parties also has an impact. In Malaysia, for example, the Barisan Nasional is counted as one party, in line with electoral statistics, rather than as the 14-party coalition that contested the 1999 elections.Google Scholar

29. Reilly, Benjamin, “Political Parties and Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific Region,” Asia Pacific Issues: Analysis from the East-West Center 71 (December 2003): 1–8.Google Scholar

30. Constitution, Art. 99 and Electoral Law, Art. 35.Google Scholar

31. Hartmann, Christof, Hassall, Graham, and Santos, Soliman M. Jr., “Philippines.” In Nohlen, , Grotz, , and Hartmann, , eds., Elections in Asia and the Pacific, p. 195.Google Scholar

32. My thanks to Yusaku Horiuchi for these Japanese data.Google Scholar

33. See Sakamoto, , “Explaining Electoral Reform,” pp. 431–432.Google Scholar

34. The classic statement of this is Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: Wiley, 1954).Google Scholar

35. Diamond, Larry, “Toward Democratic Consolidation.” In Diamond, Larry and Plattner, Marc F., eds., The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 239.Google Scholar

36. See Haggard, Stephan and Webb, Steven B., Voting for Reform: Democracy, Political Liberalization and Economic Adjustment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

37. See Reilly, Benjamin, Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar