Whether Duverger's law always holds true or not is a topic of great concern. Many scholars tried to find counterexamples in their attempt to neglect the "law": Benoit, Riker, Bale, W.M Dobell, Rae. Taking into consideration the new political realm, I believe that Duverger's law does not always hold true. Political science is a discipline characterized by uncertainty and therefore Duverger's claim that his finding is a law created controversy. Sartori (1968) suggested to replace the law by a "tendency law" and Rae (1971) presented a new version of the Duvergerian prediction: "plurality election rules bring about and maintain two-party competition except in countries where (1) third parties nationally are continually one of two parties locally,
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I will begin by defining the concepts needed in my approach to demonstrate the non-universal character of the law. Firstly, Duverger's law claims that the plurality system and the electoral laws encompassed by it favours the creation of a two-party system. He therefore called the interrelationship between plurality system and two-party politics a "true sociological law'" (Duverger 1959). Moreover, he argued: "An almost complete correlation is observable between the simple-majority single-ballot system and the two-party system: dualist countries use the simple-majority vote and simple-majority vote countries are dualist" (Duverger 1959). In his attempt to prove the correlation, he used two well-known arguments: the mechanical effect (plurality system favours big parties and disadvantages small parties when it comes to allocation of parliamentary seats) and the psychological effect (people will vote 'strategically' as being aware that their party preference will never …show more content…
Having that in mind, the 2009 Indian parliamentary elections offer us an interesting situation. India uses the plurality system and therefore should be (from Duverger's perspective) dominated by two-party politics. Not only this but it should also create the situation in which a party has a majority of seats in parliament and can form a government on their own. The results of the election are completely "unusual" : no party won a majority of seats in parliament. (Indian National Congress won 206 seats, Bharatiya Janata Party won 116 seats, Bahujan Samaj Party won 21 seats, All India Trianmool Congress won 19 seats etc.). The total number of seats was 543. The government was led by the UPA coalition, comprising 11 parties. Not even the coalition had enough seats for a parliamentary majority and thus needed external support. This situation existed in many Indian parliamentary elections, including 1999 and 2004. Despite the plurality system,
I will begin by defining the concepts needed in my approach to demonstrate the non-universal character of the law. Firstly, Duverger's law claims that the plurality system and the electoral laws encompassed by it favours the creation of a two-party system. He therefore called the interrelationship between plurality system and two-party politics a "true sociological law'" (Duverger 1959). Moreover, he argued: "An almost complete correlation is observable between the simple-majority single-ballot system and the two-party system: dualist countries use the simple-majority vote and simple-majority vote countries are dualist" (Duverger 1959). In his attempt to prove the correlation, he used two well-known arguments: the mechanical effect (plurality system favours big parties and disadvantages small parties when it comes to allocation of parliamentary seats) and the psychological effect (people will vote 'strategically' as being aware that their party preference will never …show more content…
Having that in mind, the 2009 Indian parliamentary elections offer us an interesting situation. India uses the plurality system and therefore should be (from Duverger's perspective) dominated by two-party politics. Not only this but it should also create the situation in which a party has a majority of seats in parliament and can form a government on their own. The results of the election are completely "unusual" : no party won a majority of seats in parliament. (Indian National Congress won 206 seats, Bharatiya Janata Party won 116 seats, Bahujan Samaj Party won 21 seats, All India Trianmool Congress won 19 seats etc.). The total number of seats was 543. The government was led by the UPA coalition, comprising 11 parties. Not even the coalition had enough seats for a parliamentary majority and thus needed external support. This situation existed in many Indian parliamentary elections, including 1999 and 2004. Despite the plurality system,