Predicting Party Sizes

Born in Tartu, Estonia, 1933, Rein Taagepera became a war refugee in 1944, completed Estonian-language grade school in Germany and French-language high school in Morocco. He has B.A.Sc in engineering physics and M.A. in physics (University of Toronto), and Ph.D. in solid state physics and M.A. in international relations (University of Delaware. After 6 years of industrial research at DuPont Co., he has taught political science at University of California, Irvine since 1970 and also at University of Tartu, Estonia since 1992. He ran third in Estonia's presidential elections 1992, and was in 2001 the founding chair of a political party that later won the elections. He has over 100 research articles in electoral studies and comparative politics, Baltic area studies, Finno-Ugric linguistics, and physics. His books include Seats and Votes (with Matthew Shugart), The Baltic States: Years of Dependence 1940-1990 (with Romuald Misiunas), and The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State.

• 1. How Electoral Systems Matter ; PART I. RULES AND TOOLS ; 2. The Origins and Components of Electoral Systems ; 3. Electoral Systems - Simple and Complex ; 4. The Number and Balance of Parties ; 5. Deviation from Proportional Deviation, and Proportionality Profiles ; 6. Openness to Small Parties: The Micro-Mega Rule and the Seat Product ; PART II. THE DUVERGERIAN MACRO-AGENDA: HOW SIMPLE ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AFFECT PARTY SIZES AND POLITICS ; 7. The Duvergerian Agenda ; 8. The Number of Seat-Winning Parties and the Largest Seat Share ; 9. The Seat Shares of All Parties, and the Effective Number of Parties ; 10. The Mean Duration of Cabinets ; 11. How to Simplify Complex Electoral Systems ; 12. Size and Politics ; 13. The Law of Minority Attrition ; 14. The Institutional Impact on Votes and Deviation from PR ; PART III. IMPLICATIONS AND BROADER AGENDA ; 15. Thresholds of Representation and the Number of Pertinent Electoral Parties ; 16. Seat Allocation in Federal Second Chambers and the Assemblies of the European Union ; 17. What Can We Expect From Electoral Laws? ; Bibliography