Abstract
Votes from Seats by Shugart and Taagepera is a third contribution to the monographs presenting logical models of electoral systems which follow-up on Seat and Votes (Taagepera and Shugart, 1989) and Predicting Party Sizes (Taagepera, 2007). Even though the authors are frequently referring to the previous pieces, the monograph brings substantive and relevant contributions to the electoral studies which I will discuss below.
The most intriguing aspect of the book is the fact that the authors develop “quantitatively predictive logical models” capable of surprisingly accurate estimations of electoral outcomes, while using as few as two fundamental quantities—the number of assembly seats and average district magnitude. Their approach to quantitative research and the employment of statistics is rather unique. Instead of testing vaguely formulated hypotheses on empirical data, they firstly develop a logical model which provides an estimate of the outcome in hard-numerical values. Only after that do the statistics comes in to test whether the logical model suits the empirical data to a satisfactory degree, for statistical conventions. This may sound like an unnecessarily complicated approach. However, in the light of the current heated discussions regarding the usage of statistics (see, e.g., Benjamin et al., 2017; Lakens et al., 2018), it represents a promising and trustworthy enterprise.
Even though this book has its predecessors, Shugart and Taagepera start from the very basics in the first part (Chapters 2–6) where they scrutinize the possible mechanical arrangements of electoral systems (Chapters 2 and 3), provide useful indicators for measuring their performance (Chapter 4), and present the influence of various electoral arrangements on several archetypal cases (Chapters 5 and 6). You may wonder why, if the work presented in Votes from Seats is built only on assembly size and average district magnitude, did they decide to waste time and space on basics? Well, first of all the argument Shugart and Taagepera are trying to make is that, despite the complexity of electoral rules, at the very core of their institutional set up there are constraints which can provide us with a valuable hint about the overall effects (or benchmarks, if you will) of a given electoral system. Besides that, the logic presented by the authors works best for simple electoral systems and, as we move towards their more complex counterparts, the scatter around the predicted values expands. In order to understand the varying accuracy of logical models along the simple versus complex systems dimension, a reader must be aware of the elements which could build up the complexity.
In the second part, dedicated to the interparty dimension of politics, the book makes an unprecedented critique of two fundamental views in the contemporary electoral studies. Firstly, the conventional wisdom dictating that the casted ballots processed through an “intervening control box”—the electoral mechanism—are the main determinant in the distribution of seats (i.e. votes → electoral system → seats). However, Shugart and Taagepera demonstrate (Chapter 7) that the electoral system plays a substantial role and, therefore, cannot be perceived only as simply a “control box.” Instead, the institutional set-up of an electoral system must be perceived similarly to votes because they both affect seats from opposite directions (i.e. votes ↔ seats ← electoral system), which is the main reason why the book is titled Votes from Seats.
The second relevant point relates to the interaction between districts and country-wide politics. Contemporary electoral studies see district-level competition as the main building block which, together with other districts within a given system, conjointly determine the structure of the party system. That was the main reason why Duverger’s (1954) expectations have been tested primarily at the district level and their limited occurrence at the country level was not perceived as a big deal. However, Shugart and Taagepera demonstrate (Chapters 7 and 8) that advanced Duverger’s expectations based on assembly size and average district magnitude correspond to outcomes on the country level to a surprisingly high degree. In the second step, it is the district-level competition that must be additionally adjusted because of its “embeddedness” in a national system (Chapter 10). Both arguments represent original and important theoretical contributions to electoral studies.
The third part “brings the president in” (Chapters 11 and 12), which means that the previously developed logical models are tested in the specific context of presidential regimes. Authors show that the institutional set-up (Chapter 11) and timing (Chapter 12) of assembly elections have an influence on presidential competition. Shugart and Taagepera draw “bigger picture” of interactions between electoral institutions in presidential regimes and make the point that various elections within a system simply cannot be perceived separately. Most importantly, they offer also a tool which allows to grasp some influences between the elections held in the same country.
The fourth part of the book deals with the intraparty dimension of representation and, therefore, speaks to the current debates on the personalization of electoral systems. It demonstrates how the ballot structure influences the competition among candidates (Chapter 13) and determines the nomination strategies of parties (Chapter 14). The third and fourth parts of the book could be criticized for having shakier theoretical foundations compared to the second part. Nonetheless, the mechanisms described there are still relevant for constitutional engineering and thus their inclusion is fully legitimate.
A multitude of original logical models published for the first time is not the only contribution of Votes from Seats. Relevant work done by Shugart and Taagepera speaks also to the method itself. In numerous places in Predicting Party Sizes, Taagepera (2007) warns that in the case of more complex electoral systems, “all bets are off regarding consequences.” The fifth part of Votes from Seats presents the extension to logical models for more complex electoral systems with an upper tier (Chapter 15) and empirically manifests that logical models provide an important hint for determining the effects of an electoral institution in a more complex environment—in terms of the complexity of the electoral mechanism as well as societal heterogeneity (Chapter 16). The book, therefore, also adds to the space perceived as a dead end by Taagepera a decade ago.
Overall, the contribution of Votes from Seats to contemporary social sciences is twofold. Substantively, it creates and formally expresses an appreciable number of connections between electoral institutions and various aspects of political competition which, through established logical models, allow us to estimate the approximate effect of various manipulations with electoral arrangements. Methodologically, it proves that quantitatively predictive logical models represent a powerful tool which allow us to grasp and express social reality through mathematical equations. I see both aspects as extremely relevant for contemporary social sciences and, therefore, Votes from Seats has my highest recommendations for any scholar in the field.