Subnational Determinants of National Multipartism in Latin America

Subnational Determinants of National Multipartism in Latin AmericaAuthor(s): Erika MorenoSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 179-201Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3598649 .

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ERIKA MORENO The University of Iowa

Subnational Determinants

of National Multipartism in Latin America

Recent research points to the importance of subnational elections as variables

shaping the national party system in federal states (Jones 1997b; Mainwaring and

Shugart 1997; Samuels 2000). I propose that the effects of subnational elections are not limited to federal states but instead can be seen throughout the region. This paper examines the impacts of gubernatorial elections across eighteen Latin American countries during the most recent democratic period. The analysis suggests that intermediate subnational elections do exert an influence on national party systems, whether the state is federal or not, and particularly influence how many parties are elected to a

legislature's lower house.

The Political Implications of Decentralization in Latin America

The 1980s saw the dissolution of brutal, authoritarian regimes and the rebirth of democracy across Latin America. Since then, and particularly in the last fifteen years, the region has undergone sweeping institutional reforms to decentralize governmental authority. Domestic policy makers and external supporters, typically international financial institutions, encouraged reforms aimed at political and fiscal decentralization. Reformers typically saw these measures as means to reduce national expenditures, localize (and improve) service provision, foster innovative policy solutions at the local level, and encourage local participation in early policy-making stages. At a more abstract level, decentralization also holds a special appeal for its perceived ability to deepen democratic practices. Few articulate this sentiment better than Alexis de Tocqueville, who noted that "local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within people's reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it" (De Tocqueville 1945). Further, decentralization is seen as a societal good because it can enhance the responsiveness

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Erika Moreno

of government through an institutionalized sanctioning mechanism: regular elections. Ineffective subnational officials face the threat of such a sanction on a regular basis and may face other, similar sanctions from their constituents during their terms.'

Studies in this area often focus on the causes of political and fiscal decentralization. Increasingly, researchers have turned their attention to the effects of decentralization, particularly in developing areas. For instance, several studies have examined the causal relationship between decentralization and the provision of services [Inter American Development Bank (IADB) 1997; Weisner 1994] and development strategy (see Manglesdorf 1988). Few studies to date have explored the effects of political decentralization on national party systems.

I contend that the process of decentralization has myriad effects beyond the devolution of authority, including the potential to alter existing party systems. Evidence from Brazil and Argentina suggests that direct elections to fill state offices, particularly gubernatorial posts, can impact the number of parties that compete and win in national electoral contests (see Jones 1997b, Samuels 2000). Few studies have explored, however, the effects of subnational elections on national multipartism in countries throughout the region. This study seeks to expand our under- standing of the effects of subnational (gubernatorial) elections on multipartism across eighteen Latin American nations from 1953 to 1999. In the following section, I review some of the main causal explanations for multipartism, including the regional impact of gubernatorial elections.

Multipartism in Latin America

The concern over democratic stability in this region sparked interest in identifying the factors that encourage multipartism and its (potentially) deleterious effects on presidential governments. Among the most serious consequences are interbranch stalemate and political turmoil that may result in governmental collapse (Mainwaring 1993; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997; Shugart and Carey 1992). The fixed terms of presidential regimes mean that multipartism can disturb the delicate balance needed to ensure the proper functioning of the policy- making process, especially when accompanied by high levels of ideo- logical dispersion (Mainwaring 1993; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997).2

Among the most often cited factors contributing to multipartism are electoral formulas and district magnitude. It has long been known that plurality rules discourage multipartism, in part because they are extremely disproportional. In other words, plurality formats produce

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distortions in the translation of votes into seats, thereby decreasing the number of small parties that gain representation. Furthermore, electoral formats produce a series of psychological effects on voters that further damage the electoral fates of small parties. Distortions created by electoral formats become transparent to the electorate over time. Voters choose the most appealing of the viable alternatives to prevent wasting their votes on hopeless candidates (or parties) (Duverger 1954; Riker 1986). Disproportional formats (like plurality electoral rules) punish small parties, thereby decreasing the chance of multipartism. Majority run- off formats are somewhat less forceful in their psychological and mechanical effects (in the first round) than are plurality contests, but they do not rival proportional representation systems for increasing the prospects of third (and lesser) parties.

While proportional representation (PR) differs dramatically from plurality contests, PR systems can be quite varied, especially with respect to the effect of list systems on the calculus of potential candidates. In most closed-list systems, parties control the order in which candidates appear on lists. This control may increase the power of party elites relative to rank-and-file members and possibly punish political entrepreneurs lacking favorable list placement (Carey and Shugart 1995; Mainwaring 1993). In contrast, non-party list systems allow voters to convey preferences among candidates on party lists. Although votes may be pooled across the party first, seats for party members are determined by the percentage of votes that individual candidates receive. Therefore, strong candidates do not necessarily need to create their own parties to win seats when they are not placed at or near the top of the list.

Early research also demonstrates that district magnitude is an important factor in determining levels of multipartism (Taagepera and Shugart 1993). As district magnitude increases, we can expect con- comitant increases in levels of multipartism, mainly because larger districts reduce systemic disproportionality and offer greater opportunity to a larger spectrum of candidates and parties (Lijphart 1990). Where district magnitude is low, however, one would expect fewer parties to compete or win seats since there are fewer seats available for competition. Research on the effects of district magnitude in presidential systems indicates that it is a much less decisive factor in presidential systems (Jones 1993). Nevertheless, district magnitude must be accounted for in any examination of multipartism.

Contemporary research on multipartism has explored the contamination (or pull) effects of presidential elections on the number of parties found in the national legislature (Jones 1994; Mainwaring 1993; Shugart and Carey 1992). The evidence suggests that we can expect

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Erika Moreno

concurrent presidential elections to "contaminate" legislative elections and reduce the likelihood of multipartism (Jones 1994; Shugart and Carey 1992). Concurrent presidential elections reduce the number of parties in the legislature by influencing voter evaluations of candidates. Since presidential elections are considered highly salient elections (Cox 1997), voters will allow their impressions of presidential candidates to filter down to congressional candidates. Parties associated with successful presidential candidates can increase their presence in the legislature because voters will often evaluate legislative candidates by considering their ties to presidential candidates. Moreover, congressional candidates benefit from the media attention given to their party when they have a presidential candidate in the running. In contrast, nonconcurrent elections result in relatively fewer votes for the party (or parties) associated with the president in power (Campbell 1991; Piereson 1975; Shugart 1995; Shugart and Carey 1992), thus increasing the chances of multipartism.

Political reforms undertaken throughout the 1980s and 1990s, however, introduced a variety of new factors that may affect the likelihood of multipartism. To date, only a handful of studies have addressed these factors. For instance, Jones (1997b) was the first researcher to fully explore the effects ofsubnational electoral arrangements on national outcomes in Argentina. Jones's time-serial analysis concluded that concurrent, winner-take-all subnational elections in Argentina were capable of reducing the number of viable parties that competed and won in lower house races. The findings were significant because they demonstrated that national electoral arrangements, like presidential election timing,3 were not significant once subnational factors were included in the analysis.

In a similar vein, a recent study of multipartism in Brazil rested on the premise that the country's federal character and long history of subnational politics makes it a prime case to examine the electoral effects of gubernatorial elections (Samuels 2000). The analysis found strong support for the contention that the effective number of candidates competing in gubernatorial elections serves as a strong predictor of the effective number of lists submitted to congressional races. In short, gubernatorial elections in Brazil exert a strong coattails effect on national elections. Further, Samuels concluded that national factors, like the proximity of presidential elections, do not play a significant role in determining the number of lists in national congressional elections.

As is evident, the few studies that explore the relationship between subnational and national party systems typically do so within the context of federal nations with long histories of political decentralization.

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Argentina and Brazil represent two of the most-decentralized federal nations in the hemisphere. The effects of gubernatorial elections should come as little surprise since both nations have strong local-party systems and long histories of nationally relevant state organizations (see Ames 1994, Jones 1995, Jones 1997a, and Mainwaring 1997). I contend, however, that recent efforts to decentralize, and particularly efforts across the region to open up state offices to direct election, can alter existing national party systems. Further, gubernatorial elections are salient enough to impact national outcomes regardless of whether they are carried out in federal or unitary states.

Why Gubernatorial Elections Matter across the Region

In this section, I elaborate a rationale for the saliency of gubernatorial elections across the region. I also present a series of hypotheses that address the manner in which state-level contests affect national electoral outcomes.

Although several subnational posts (including state assembly, mayoral, and municipal offices) were opened up for direct competition in the 1990s, gubernatorial elections have the greatest potential to attract the attention of voters because these posts exert greater influence over the lives of citizens than do other subnational positions. Moreover, governors are the most easily identifiable elected subnational officers, compared to the numerous representatives found in state assemblies. Governors often have less administrative and political authority than their national counterparts, but they retain significant power as the highest-ranking subnational executives.

Governors are elected in districts that are often as large-if not larger-than national legislative districts. What is more, gubernatorial districts are likely to serve as springboards for national office because political boundaries for gubernatorial races are often the same as those for congressional races. As a result, highly visible challengers may be lured into competing for gubernatorial offices. In turn, political celebri- ties increase the media attention given to gubernatorial elections. This publicity contrasts sharply with the attention given to subnational contests conducted in smaller districts, like mayoral races, that are less likely to attract candidates able to gain state- or district-wide support for a successful electoral bid.4

The size of the gubernatorial district also represents an ideal size for emerging political movements. Indeed, advocates of decentralization would argue that the expression of local political concerns is a direct result of the process of decentralization (Hoskin 1998; Dietz and

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Erika Moreno

Shidlo 1997). The districts are small enough to provide a regionally based alternative to established parties and, at the same time, they are ideally suited for forays into national politics because they map well onto congressional district boundaries. For instance, several emergent, regionally based parties in Colombia have used gubernatorial posts to showcase their platforms, build electoral bailiwicks, and launch charis- matic figures into the lower chamber in recent years (see Moreno 2001). These features may provide emerging regional parties with an opportunity to expand into the national arena, at least insofar as they are able to win legislative seats for their district. In contrast, success at the municipal level is unlikely to sustain the electoral aspirations of local parties that wish to enter the national arena.

I contend that "robust" federalism is not a necessary or sufficient characteristic for determining whether or not state- or local-level contests will influence national elections. Rather, cases that exhibit the most minimal levels of decentralization5 (i.e., the direct election of governors) can alter national party systems because those contests garer public attention.6 The rationale is rather simple. Research in the region suggests that various sectors of civil society pressured national governments for decentralization in several states-often through public demonstrations (see Escobar-Lemmon 2000).7 As a result, we might expect citizens to manifest continued interest in state and local politics. Gubernatorial elections, in particular, are salient contests because several sectors of civil society supported their creation as a means to "deepen" democratic practices and create new avenues for representation. Further, interest generated by the introduction of these new levels of political contestation justified extensive attention by the media and civil society.

Therefore, I posit that the first set of gubernatorial elections in a given country are likely to attract as much attention as founding elections conducted in new democracies; thus one might expect high rates of participation and substantial media attention. But how do these contests affect party systems? More specifically, do gubernatorial contests influence the number of parties elected to national legislatures? Although early contests may encourage voters and a variety of political actors to participate, the effects of these contests on national party systems may not be immediately evident. The creation of new political actors (parties) at the subnational level requires that interested citizens overcome collective action dilemmas to organize effectively in the first set of elections. If collective action problems are resolved in advance of the competition, then new actors must still contend with established alternatives that may present stronger candidates in national legislative

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races conducted in that district. Forays into national politics are likely only once new actors have consolidated their support in a given state. Thus, as gubernatorial elections become regular features of the electoral arena, new parties are more likely to establish themselves at the state level. Ultimately, new actors should become viable alternatives to national parties in congressional races only after state support is secured. Therefore, I hypothesize that the effective number of parties elected to the lower chamber will increase as gubernatorial elections become regular features of the electoral arena. In the absence of gubernatorial contests, national electoral arrangements will explain variations in multipartism.

Alternatively, one might argue that the process used to elect governors may influence national elections. In other words, gubernatorial contests may exert influence on lower house elections through a form of electoral contagion commonly attributed to presidential races (see Jones 1997b). When multiple elections are held concurrently, voters focus their attention on the most salient election to reduce their information costs. (This theory assumes that voters have limited resources, that is, time to learn about each and every candidate presented to them for each race.) As a result, voters often evaluate some candidates by considering their ties to parties or personalities in other, more salient contests. Electoral contagion results from the combined effects of timing, which allows contamination across elections, and electoral formats, which can determine the number of viable parties or candidates in salient elections. If salient contests are chosen through highly disproportional formats, then voters can focus on a few parties or candidates and use those evaluations in other contests. Electoral contagion not only affects the decisions made by voters-it also has the potential to structure ballot decisions. Specifically, political parties anticipate the effects of contagion and limit their participation in legislative contests that are likely to be influenced by concurrent and highly disproportional elections.

I suggest that the format and timing of gubernatorial elections may be important in determining the manner in which gubernatorial elections will affect national elections. I draw on the vast literature on electoral systems (see Duverger 1954, Lijphart 1990, and Rae 1967, among others), which suggests that majority run-off elections are more likely to harbor multiparty systems than plurality elections because of the psychological and mechanical effects of plurality formats. Further, I contend that the influence of gubernatorial elections will vary according to the timing of those elections, relative to congressional contests. Concurrent elections will magnify the effects of electoral formats, but

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Erika Moreno

nonconcurrent elections will significantly diminish the effects of those formats. Accordingly, I expect that the number of effective parties in the lower chamber will be lowest where national legislative elections are held concurrently with plurality elections for governor; nonconcurrent elections will have similar but less-marked effects. In contrast, the presence of concurrent majority run-off governor elections will increase the number of parties at the national level, whereas nonconcurrent elections will have similar but less-marked effects.8 In the absence of gubernatorial elections, national electoral arrangements alone will be responsible for multipartism.

Data and Variables

Recent electoral reforms in Latin America have left indelible marks on the political landscape of the region. Although many recent reforms have addressed national structures, some of the most significant reforms have opened up subnational offices to direct election (Dietz and Shidlo 1997; Jones 1995). Eight nations currently allow for the direct popular election of governors (see the Appendix). Only three of those countries, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, had experience with intermediate- level elections at the beginning of the 1980s. Although simple plurality is the most common format used to determine gubernatorial contests,9 the timing of subnational elections varies across countries and across time within countries.

Table 1 summarizes the countries and elections examined in this study. Since this study is primarily interested in elections conducted in a nation's most recently inaugurated democratic period, I look at elections from 1980 to 1999 for most countries. The few exceptions include Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela, which had transitioned to democracy long before the "third wave" hit the region. As a result, the sample includes results for the lower chamber from 1953 until 1999 for 18 nations. An election needed to meet a few simple criteria to be included in this analysis. First, an election needed to be reasonably free and fair for all possible players. Thus, dubious elections, like those conducted in El Salvador in 1985 and Nicaragua in 1984, were excluded. Second, the data obtained had to provide a reliable representation of the votes received by most of the parties competing in that contest. In other words, I excluded cases that had multiple, often contradictory reports of vote shares (typical of some recent elections), as well as those cases that had reports of seat shares only (to the exclusion of vote share data).10 Third, I excluded elections that simultaneously selected members of two houses."1

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TABLE 1 Latin American Sample

Election Years

Argentina Bolivia

Brazil

Chile

Colombia

Costa Rica

Dominican Republic Ecuador

El Salvador

Guatemala

Honduras

Mexico

Nicaragua Panama

Paraguay Peru

Uruguay Venezuela

1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999

1980, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997

1986, 1990, 1994, 1998

1989, 1993, 1997

1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998

1953, 1958, 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998

1986, 1994, 1998

1978, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998

1985, 1988, 1991, 1994

1985, 1990, 1995

1981, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997

1991, 1994, 1997

1990, 1996

1984, 1994, 1999

1989, 1993, 1998

1980, 1985, 1990, 1995

1984, 1989, 1994, 1999

1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998

My first hypothesis suggests that gubernatorial elections can facilitate multipartism, especially as they become established features of the electoral landscape. This variable captures the elapsed time (in years) since the first gubernatorial election was conducted. For instance, national legislative elections held in 1990 in Colombia were coded 0 since no gubernatorial elections had been conducted by that date. The Colombian observation is coded 3 in 1994 (the next observation) because one set of gubernatorial elections had been conducted in 1991.

The independent variables used in this study also include aspects of national and subnational timing and electoral formats. This study is mainly interested in the combined effects of timing and formats. The contagion effects of subnational elections on the voter calculus are only likely when these elections occur simultaneously with national races. Concurrent plurality gubernatorial elections are expected to diminish the effective number of parties. In contrast, first-round majority run- off elections that are held concurrently with national assembly elections

Countries

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Erika Moreno

are expected to increase the number of parties in the legislature. This variable has five values: 2 if the contagion effects are expected to increase the number of parties (concurrent majority), 1 if they are expected to have a diminished but positive effect on national elections (nonconcurrent majority run-off elections), 0 if there are no possible contagion effects (governors are not elected), -1 if they are expected to have a diminished reductive effect on the number of parties (nonconcurrent plurality elections), and -2 if pull effects are expected to decrease the number of parties (concurrent plurality).

While testing the effects of subnational elections, I will control for national characteristics previously found to be significant, including presidential contagion. This variable has four values and is coded similarly to the gubernatorial variable: 2 if the contagion effects are expected to increase the number of parties (concurrent majority), 1 if they are expected to have a diminished but positive effect on national elections (nonconcurrent majority run-off elections), -1 if they are expected to have a diminished reductive effect on the number of parties (nonconcurrent plurality elections), and -2 if contagion effects are expected to decrease the number of parties (concurrent plurality).12 As with the governor pull variable, concurrence is strictly defined as an election that is held on the same day as elections to the lower house of the national legislature. This variable is coded to demonstrate the variations in the timing and format of presidential races, relative to legislative contests.

I would like to note that I have opted against using a multiplicative variable that accounts for the effective number of presidential candidates and the percent difference in time between the presidential election and legislative election (see Cox 1997) for several reasons. For one, the alternative may suffer from endogeneity problems since the number of candidates is likely to be determined by electoral features specific to presidential contests (timing and format). Second, and equally problematic, an alternative operationalization may create serious problems for the model and the relatively small number of observations. In contrast, the contagion variables (for presidential and gubernatorial contests) provide a relatively simple way of testing the effects of timing and format as clearly as possible without causing model specification problems.

I have also included electoral factors specific to legislative elections, like format and district magnitude. Although PR formats dominate throughout Latin America, there is sufficient variation with respect to the presence of closed-party-list PR or other list systems to warrant a variable with three values: 2 indicates that closed-list PR is employed, 1 indicates that some legislative races employ closed-list PR in mixed- member systems, and 0 indicates that a non-party list format is used.

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Finally, I also control for the impact of average effective magnitude on national multipartism. Since this variable includes very high values, like Uruguay's M = 99, and exceptionally low ones, like Chile's M = 2, I have chosen to follow traditional treatments of district magnitude by using the natural log form.

The dependent variable, legislative multipartism in the lower chamber, will be measured using the Laakso-Taagepera formula for the effective number of parties (Laakso and Taagepera 1979), which does not rely on a simple count of the number of parties that gained seats in an election but instead weights parties by their size. The formula is

N=?(p,2)-1,

where Pi is the share of votes (or seats) of the ith party in the legislature. If there are three evenly sized parties in the legislature, then we might expect the effective number of parties to be approximately three. If, however, one of the parties has a larger share of the votes or seats, then the effective number of parties should decrease to reflect the vote or seat share of the larger party. By using this measure to determine the number of parties, we can approximate the nature of that party system. The calculation assumes that the researcher has the vote or seat shares of all of the parties that participated in the election, including minor parties and micro-parties. Complete election data are rarely available, however; data sources often lump minor parties and micro-parties into a residual "other" category. Clearly, this lumping can distort the calculations made by either overestimating or underestimating the effective number of parties.13 To solve this problem, I will also calculate the dependent variable with Taagepera's (1997) formula for incomplete data:

(p2/(rpl+Epi2) + p2/(r+pi2)) 2

The formula produces an average of the largest and smallest possible values for the effective number of parties, where Pi represents the vote or seat share of the ith party and r represents the vote or seat share attributed to "other" parties. This alteration to the original Laakso- Taagepera formula does not radically change the effective number of parties, but it is better able to account for extremely small parties when the data are incomplete.14 Vote totals, rather then seat totals, are used to eliminate the mechanical distortions attributed to seat allocation methods.

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Erika Moreno

Analysis

Some scholars prefer to use individual elections as the unit of analysis (for example, see Ordeshook and Shvetsova 1994); others prefer to study the effects of electoral regimes (Jones 1994; Lijphart 1990). The debate over the most appropriate unit of analysis has devel- oped over time and continues today. In 1967, Douglas Rae published the first empirically oriented study of electoral systems. It provided some support for many untested theories about electoral rules. Rae's (1967) research was replicated in subsequent studies. In nearly all of those cases, individual elections were the primary unit of analysis.

In 1990, Arend Lijphart replicated Rae's study but rather than identify each election within a country as a separate observation, Lijphart argued that an electoral regime approach was more appropriate. Lijphart criticized Rae (1967) for assuming that each election stands as an independent observation when, in fact, each election that occurs under the same electoral rules constitutes another operation of the same system. In other words, the election-by-election approach treats repeated operations as unique and in- flates the effects of electoral systems that hold more elections. As a result, analyses that use individual elections overstate the effects of electoral rules- usually in the favor of those systems that experienced the most elections.15

Lijphart's analysis is less than ideal, however, for several reasons. For one, it automatically reduces the number of observations in the sample. In the past, a reduced n-size limited the range of statistical methods that could be used. Further, some scholars have noted that regime analysis can introduce a bias in favor of nations with fewer elections (see Ordeshook and Shvetsova 1994 for a further critique of regime analysis).16 Within the Latin American context, a regime analysis would produce a bias in favor of nations that experience frequent changes in their electoral rules, potentially increasing the influence of outliers.17 The regime approach also tends to artificially increase R2 and t statistics (Ordeshook and Shvetsova 1994, 102).

Clearly, neither of these approaches is ideal. Rather than choosing one form of analysis over another, I have chosen to test the hypotheses using a pooled time-serial design.18 Pooled time-serial designs have an advantage over regime and election-by-election analyses because they explicitly address the cross-national and time-serial components of datasets like the one I use in this study. This particular design allows me to examine individual elections, thus capturing variation across and within panels (Sayrs 1989) while using an estimator that acknowledges the potential for errors attributable to panels in the study. The use of panel-corrected standard errors accounts for cross-sectional

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heteroskedastic errors, a feature common to many pooled times-series studies, without depleting degrees of freedom.19 Although the data used to test these hypotheses are unbalanced, with more cases from some countries than others, STATA20 provides an algorithm to estimate unbalanced data. Pooled time-serial designs with panel-corrected standard errors have several advantages; nevertheless, they are not completely trouble- free. Therefore, I compare results from the pooled models with results obtained from OLS regression with robust standard errors.

Table 2 presents the results of the statistical analysis. The first model tests the effects of several national-level variables as well as the effects of having directly elected governors. The model also includes a control variable to account for temporal effects on national party systems.21 The results are promising since they suggest that the presence of directly elected governors had statistically significant effects on the dependent variable. Model 2 reports the results of a simple analysis that tests the effects of national electoral arrangements, like presidential contagion, district magnitude, and party-list PR, as well as the effects of gubernatorial contagion. The presidential contagion variable is the only substantive variable that achieves statistical significance. It is remarkable that neither of the remaining national-level variables achieves significance, particularly district magnitude. This finding is consistent with several previous studies that found little support for the effects of district magnitude (Jones 1993). Model 2 also examined whether or not gubernatorial contagion affects national multipartism. Although presidential elections are important determinants, the combined effects of gubernatorial timing and format do not impact the number of parties elected to the lower chamber. This finding suggests that if gubernatorial elections have any effects at all, then the relationship is likely to be more nuanced than the one presented in this model.

Model 3 presents a test of gubernatorial elections over time in a pooled time-serial model with panel-corrected standard errors.22 As in previous models, other national electoral features (closed-list PR and district magnitude) fail to reach statistical significance. The analysis presented in model 3 suggests that the temporal control variable, presidential contagion, and the years since the first gubernatorial election are significant factors in determining the number of parties elected to the lower chamber. When governors are not directly elected and we hold the time variable at its mean,23 we can expect the timing and format of presidential elections to impact the number of parties elected to the lower house. For instance, the results in model 3 suggest that concurrent plurality presidential elections will produce 3.5 parties in the lower chamber. Nonconcurrent presidential elections, on the other hand,

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Erika Moreno

TABLE 2 Governor Pull Effects and National Multipartism

Variables Model 1a, Model 2a0 Model 3a"b Model 4^ Model 5c

Presidential Contagion .21 .20 .18 .21 .18

(.1)* (.12)* (.11)* (.1 (.(107)*

Plurality Presidential Election

Concurrent Presidential Election

Plurality * Concurrent Presidential Election

Avg Effective District

Magnitude (log)

Closed-List PR

Directly Elected Governor

Governor Contagion (Timing and Format)

-.17

(.21)

.18

(.25)

-.20

(.21)

.02

(.25)

-.19

(.22)

.11

(.24)

-.20 -.19

(.22) (.23)

.02 .11

(.22) (.24)

1.06

(.45)**

-.19

(.24)

Number of Years Since First Gubernatorial Election

Time -.12 -.11

(.08)* (.08)

-.19

(.25)

.09

(.05)*

.09

(.04)**

-.14 -.11 -.14

(.07)* (.06) (.08)*

Intercept 4.01 4.46 4.28 4.46 4.29 (.74)** (.79)** (.74)** (.85)** (.81)**

83 83 83 83 83

R2 .13 .07 .13 .07 .11

Note: The dependent variable is the effective number of parties in the lower house or effective number of parties in the unicameral chamber. aPooled time-serial analysis with panel-corrected standard errors. bIncludes a correction for heteroskedastic errors. cOLS regression with robust standard errors. **p < .05 ; *p < .12.

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N2




are associated with 3.68 parties under plurality formats and 4.04 parties under majority run-off formats. Finally, concurrent majority run-off presidential elections tend to produce 4.22 parties in the lower chamber.

More important, the results indicate that gubernatorial elections impact national party systems over time.24 When all other variables are held at their means, we see that the number of gubernatorial elections in a system can help determine the effective number of parties in the lower house. For instance, legislative elections conducted one year after gubernatorial elections produce a slight increase in the number of parties elected to the lower house, from 4.22 to 4.31 parties. Legisla- tive elections conducted two years after governor races are associated with 4.4 parties in the lower chamber. Similarly, we could expect the effective number of parties to increase to 4.58 four years after gubernatorial elections are held. Thus, the statistical analysis presented in the pooled time-serial model with panel-corrected standard errors suggests that we might expect more parties to earn votes in legislative elections as gubernatorial elections become regular features of the electoral landscape.

Substantively, the findings suggest that new actors may be forming at the state level, competing successfully-often in spite of majoritarian formats-and, ultimately, challenging established actors in the lower house. For instance, regionally based movements may be encouraged to form political parties once gubernatorial elections are introduced. Although plurality elections tend to discourage the creation of many new actors, regionally based parties can still capitalize on state-level contests, even if they are highly disproportional.25 As a result, parties with regional strong- holds may continue to grow, relative to national parties, and eventually position themselves to compete in national elections. This analysis suggests that it was a common phenomenon across several Latin American nations.26

It is worth noting that the results derived from pooled time-serial models resemble those presented in models 4 and 5, which rely on robust forms of OLS regression. In fact, the parameter estimates and significance levels vary only minimally across the models. The similari- ties suggest that the results are consistent even when different statistical models and corrections are employed.27 The models that tested the effects of gubernatorial contests over time (models 3 and 5) perform far better than models 2 and 4, which tested the relationship between governor contagion (the combined effects of format and timing) and national multipartism. With respect to national-level factors, the analysis suggests that presidential elections play an important role in determining the effective number of parties. The analysis provided no support, however, for the hypothesized effects of gubernatorial contagion, which may be more likely in federal nations (see Jones 1997b; Samuels 2000).

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Erika Moreno

In contrast, the results seem to suggest that increases in the effective number of parties can be, at least partly, attributed to the presence and maintenance of gubernatorial elections over time. In other words, we can expect increases in the number of parties that earn votes in national legislative contests as gubernatorial elections become regular features of the electoral arena. This rather interesting finding seems to suggest that subnational elections may be delivering on their promise to enhance political pluralism by increasing the number of political actors over time, even when temporal effects are included in the analysis.

Conclusions

Recent research has pointed to the importance of subnational elections as important variables in shaping the national party system, particularly in federal nations, (Jones 1997b; Samuels 2000), but fewer studies have explored the effects of subnational elections in other countries in this region. I have demonstrated that gubernatorial elections play a significant role in determining how many parties are elected at the national level. My region-wide empirical analysis found that the number of gubernatorial elections in a system can help determine the effective number of parties in the lower house. The findings suggest that new or regionally based alternatives may benefit from political decentralization, even in spite of the disproportional formats used to determine most gubernatorial elections. Further, new actors may use state-level offices to shore up support within those states and launch themselves into national contests. These findings also point to the importance of state-level politics for national political outcomes, even outside federal nations.

As the region enters a new millennium, many questions remain regarding the quality and stability of democratic practices and institutions. Frequent attempts at political reform, including political and fiscal decentralization, suggest efforts to address shortcomings in the region's democracies. Interestingly, the move toward decentralization may have encouraged the creation of new actors at the subnational and national levels. This observation may please some advocates of decentralization, but the move's long-term effects on a nation's ability to govern are not yet clear. Indeed, continued research is needed to identify other conditions at the subnational level that may trigger changes to national party systems. More important, further research is needed to assess the effec- tiveness and representativeness of these new actors once elected.

Erika Moreno is Assistant Professor of Political Science, 314 Schaeffer Hall, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1409.

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APPENDIX 1 Summary of Latin American Cases

Average Effective Directly Elected Governor Governor Presidential Presidential Country Magnitude (>20) Party List PR? Governors? Formats Timing Format Timing

Argentina Bolivia

Brazil

Chile

Colombia

Costa Rica

Dominican Republic Ecuador

El Salvador

Guatemala

Honduras

Mexico

Nicaragua Panama

Paraguay Peru

Uruguay Venezuela

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No (open) No (open) No (sub-party)

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No, until 1997

No (mixed) Yes

Yes

Yes

No (open) No (open)

Yes, until 1993 (mixed)

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

No

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Plurality

Majority

Plurality

Plurality

Plurality

Plurality

Plurality

Plurality

Varies Majority

Majority Varies Majority

Majority Nonconcurrent Plurality, until 1994

Majority

Plurality Concurrent Majority

Majority

Majority

Plurality Varies Plurality

Majority

Plurality Concurrent Plurality after 1989

Majority

Plurality Varies Plurality

^'s

,o

5- p

Varies

Concurrent

Varies

Concurrent

Nonconcurrent

Concurrent

Concurrent

Varies

Varies

Varies

Concurrent

Varies

Varies

Concurrent

Varies

Concurrent

Concurrent

Concurrent



Erika Moreno

NOTES

1. It is worth noting that, in some instances, elections are complemented by impeachment and recall mechanisms to ensure responsiveness of subnational officials. For instance, Colombian law mandates that citizens can request the removal of officials who do not comply with their campaign platforms or who otherwise prove themselves to be less than satisfactory to their constituents (see Hoskin 1998).

2. The indirect effect of the executive and the need to solidify post-electoral coalitions for government formation and maintenance make this less problematic in

parliamentary systems. 3. Some authors have found empirical evidence for a form of electoral contagion

that affects national legislative races (Cox 1997; Shugart 1995). Presidential contests are posited to decrease the effective number of candidates and parties that run in those contests. The salience of majoritarian presidential elections affects voter evaluations and party expectations of legislative candidates. In turn, these expectations decrease the number of viable parties or candidates in those elections and reduce the level of multipartism.

4. The exception is mayoral seats in capital cities, where mayors are often high- profile figures seeking higher office.

5. Federalism and decentralization are two, theoretically distinct concepts. Federalism refers to constitutional (or legal) provisions that establish multiple levels of political organization across municipalities, states, and national governments. Federalism can often be operationalized as a simple dichotomy: unitary or federal. Decentraliza- tion refers to the process by which governments devolve political and fiscal authority in either unitary or federal states. For example, Venezuela, a constitutionally federal nation, is one of the least-decentralized nations in Latin America, as it provides its subnational officials with less discretion over spending and other important administrative duties than it allows its national officials. Unlike federalism, decentralization is often measured along a continuum of least to most decentralized.

6. As nations continue to decentralize, both fiscally and politically, subnational offices will gain more powers and may continue to attract attention because they are powerful positions that attract sustained, serious attention from political actors as well as constituents, who may see politicians in these roles as more important to their daily lives than national policy makers. This trend remains to be seen, however, and may vary across institutional structures and other behavioral incentives.

7. Civil pressure manifested in the form of protests, strikes, and demonstrations in support of political decentralization (see Escobar-Lemmon 2000).

8. I will refer to concurrent majority run-off elections as positive pull effects because they are expected to increase levels of multipartism.

9. The single exception is in Brazil, where majority run-off formats decide gubernatorial elections.

10. For instance, I was forced to exclude the 1999 legislative election in Guate- mala simply because most reputable secondary sources reported seat shares only (e.g., IPU, Chronicle of Parliamentary Elections, Keesings Contemporary Archives, and Facts on File) and official governmental sources were unavailable to me.

11. Simply stated, this study is interested in the effects of subnational contests

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Multipartism in Latin America 197

on lower house contests only; if some contests are allowed to impact senate elections, then it would only be fair to include all upper house elections. Several elections from the Dominican Republic were therefore eliminated from the final dataset (1978, 1982, and 1990).

12. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the use of an alternative operationalization for contagion effects that includes distinct variables for timing, format, and the interaction of the two. Indeed, diagnostics confirmed the presence of multicollinearity among the separate contagion variables. Although models with separate contagion variables produced results similar to those presented in Table 2, the coefficients for those variables were plagued by low t-scores and excessively large confidence intervals. The variables representing the number of governor elections that have elapsed and temporal effects were still significant at the .10 level and correctly signed.

The presence of multicollinearity does not necessarily compromise the estimators in the model (see Gujarati 1978 and Kennedy 1998), but it tends to create unreasonable results, low t-scores, and wide confidence intervals, particularly in relatively small samples (e.g., N < 100) (Gujarati 1978; Kennedy 1998). Under these circumstances, it might be more prudent to rely on different data, drop problematic variables, or create new ones (Gujarati 1978; Kennedy 1998). Since the existing literature suggests that presidential elections are important to legislative outcomes, I could not justify drop- ping the concept. Instead, my solution was to create a new variable.

This solution accomplishes two goals. One, it removes the problems associated with multicollinearity; for instance, it reduces the low t-scores, shrinks confidence intervals, and prevents the appearance of unreasonable coefficients. Two, my contagion variable acts as an exhaustive variable that behaves in a manner similar to "effect" variables. Unlike dummy variables, where coefficients are interpreted as contrasts to an omitted category, coefficients produced from my contagion variable are interpreted as contrasts to all groups together. Prior studies suggest that the kinds of comparisons produced therein are preferable when groups are compared to several other groups rather than a single reference category (Cohen and Cohen 1983; Dixon and Gaardner 1992). Therefore, I think that my multi-category contagion variable is a better reflection of my interests, since my hypotheses suggest contrasts across distinct levels of contagion.

13. Some scholars might argue that the inclusion of such small parties is unnec- essary since they are often ephemeral political movements. This assertion overlooks the presence of new parties that are capable of growing over time as well as small parties that have cornered a niche in the political landscape, like regional parties.

14. For instance, when the votes are distributed across two parties (Party A = 80.67, Party B = 16.03, and Other = 3.3), the number of effective parties is 1.476. If we use the Taggepera formula for calculating the number of effective parties, then the result is 1.477. The formula for incomplete data does not distort the result, but it allows for greater precision.

15. For instance, nations that have longer histories of democratic rule (e.g., Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela) may also bias results.

16. This bias is made worse by Lijphart's sample, which includes a number of individual elections as electoral regimes.

17. The record of electoral and other legal reforms in the region in the last 20 years suggest that this sort of bias would indeed influence the results of my analysis. If Latin America were divided into distinct electoral regimes, where national and subnational



Erika Moreno

rule variations are fully captured over time, then we might have approximately 30 regimes. Further, the dataset would be heavily weighted by a few cases and by recent elections, causing unique problems with subsequent analyses.

18. This method of analysis has become increasingly common, particularly with studies of elections across countries.

19. For instance, least squares dummy variable models are also commonly used to analyze pooled time-series data by-as the name suggests-including dummy variables for each panel to account for panel-specific errors. These models can dramatically reduce the degrees of freedom in a sample, however, and are particularly problematic in datasets such as this one, which has a significant cross-national component.

20. The "xtpcse" command in STATA can estimate models with unbalanced data. 21. This variable controls for the effects of time on national party systems. It

counts the number of elapsed national legislative elections. Models run without this variable resembled those presented in Table 2; that is, parameter estimates and significance levels were comparable.

22. The models include corrections for heteroskedastic errors, as detected in residual plots and Cook-Weisberg tests (p < .0014) and two observations with higher than average leverage (Peru 1995 and Nicaragua 1990 were identified by leverage plots and DFFITS tests, which determine the presence of outliers).

23. To demonstrate the effects of presidential contagion, I hold the gubernatorial variable at its mode (0). The mean value for the time variable is 3.

24. To ensure that the counter variable for the number of gubernatorial elections held was not merely masking the effects of time on national party systems, I conducted tests for correlation. The results indicated that these two variables were not highly correlated (correlation coefficient = .269).

25. I am grateful to Matthew S. Shugart for his insight on this point. 26. Many nations that elect governors saw increases in the number of parties

elected to the lower chamber over time. Exceptions include Argentina and Ecuador, both of which exhibited downward and then upward pressures on the effective number of parties over time, suggesting that several other factors were at play in both cases. In Argentina, the effects of timing in particular seem to play a greater influence (see Jones 1997b).

27. The nature of the data used here may favor cases that have longer histories of democratic elections, allowing those cases to dominate the analysis and create biased estimators (e.g., Costa Rica and Venezuela). To address this potential problem, I compared the results of the pooled model and robust regression models to those that only included the three most recent elections for each country in this study. The reduced sample was analyzed using a pooled time-series model with panel-corrected standard errors and a robust regression model. All of the models yielded results similar to those shown in Table 2.

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