Party System Fragmentation and Strategic Behavior in Diff\u000berent Contexts

$: Party System Fragmentation and Strategic Behavior in Diff\u000berent Contexts$
Party System Fragmentation and Strategic Behavior inDifferent Contexts

Kai-Ping Huang

Abstract

Previous studies argued that voters’ strategic action was the key to explaining

the gradual decrease in party system fragmentation, especially in an institu-

tionalized party system. This article, however, argues that a downward trend in

fragmentation is also likely to happen in a poorly institutionalized party system,

and it is mainly caused by elites’ rational entry. When parties rely on clien-

telistic networks to secure votes, they should be sensitive about the likelihood

of winning and withdraw from competition to avoid wasting resources when the

chance is slim. Testing the effects of rational entry and strategic voting on the

effective number of competitors simultaneously across nine elections in Thai-

land, the analyses confirm that strategic behavior of elites and voters asserts

different levels of importance to determine party system fragmentation before

and after the party system became institutionalized in 2001.

Keywords: rational entry, strategic voting, party system fragmentation, AV,

SMD, Thailand

1. Introduction

As is well known in the literature of electoral system effects, two mecha-

nisms from voters and elites help a restrictive electoral system put downward

pressure on the number of competitors at the district level (Cox, 1997). Vot-

ers, facing the psychological effect of electoral rules, engage in strategic voting5

as they pour votes to viable candidates to avoid wasting their votes. Parties,

in anticipation of strategic voting, withdraw from the competition when the

Preprint submitted to Elsevier October 4, 2014

chance of winning is slim. It seems that the effective number of competitors is

reduced in such a sequence: strategic voting leads to rational entry, which in

turn makes strategic voting easier in the next election. In other words, failure10

to reach the Duvergerian equilibrium is likely, foremost, due to the absence of

strategic voting.

Previous studies argued that failure to vote strategically could come from

several sources that obscured the information about the viability of parties and

candidates (Clough, 2007; Crisp et al., 2012). Voters in newly democratized15

countries face this situation more often since electoral competition is new and

little information about the viability of candidates and parties is available until

several rounds of elections have been held (Moser, 1999; Tavits & Annus, 2006;

Tavits, 2008). Thus, we would expect that the longer a country has elections,

the less fragmented a party system is over time when voters get more infor-20

mation to ascertain the likely effects of strategic voting. However, repeated

electoral competition does not guarantee that voters would vote strategically

since it also needs parties that can secure stable support and impel individual

candidates to join established parties (Moser & Scheiner, 2012). In this situa-

tion, voters are given a few options and the information needed to determine25

viable and nonviable competitors becomes easy to come by. In other words,

stable inter-party competition and institutionalized party system help convey

the information necessary for strategic voting.

Yet, this article argues that a downward trend in district-level fragmentation

is also likely to be observed in a poorly institutionalized party system, and it is30

not caused by strategic voting but elites’ rational choice. More specifically, in

an environment where party labels are insignificant for vote choice and instead

parties rely on individual candidates’ clientelistic networks to secure votes, the

assessment of the likelihood of winning should drive candidates to stay in or

withdraw from competition to avoid wasting resources. If a candidate realizes35

that the competitor’s network is more extensive than hers and, thus, the likeli-

hood to win a seat is slim, a rational actor would avoid entering the contest in

the first place. Voters, by contrast, are unlikely to engage in strategic behavior

2

when their votes are bought or cast to show allegiance to their patrons. Since

these voters do not have the liberty to cast the ballots with free will, it is unlikely40

that they would pour votes to another candidate with the intention to affect

the election outcomes. In other words, elites’ rational entry might play a larger

role in determining the number of competitors in such a context. By contrast,

once parties can structure votes and voters tend to vote for parties instead of for

candidates (i.e. a party system is relatively institutionalized), voters’ strategic45

behavior becomes the main mechanism to determine the number of competitors

at the district level.

Unlike previous studies that scrutinized the impact of only one of the strate-

gic actions on the number of competitors, this article tests the effects of rational

entry and strategic voting on district-level fragmentation simultaneously across50

nine elections in Thailand. Thailand is chosen because the country provides

different contexts conducive to testing the hypothesis. As Figure 1 shows, the

vote shares of the top two parties in each election change dramatically from

election to election before 2001. Since 2001, the top two parties are always the

Thai Rak Thai Party (Thais Love Thais, or TRT) or its successor parties1 and55

the Democrat Party. The high electoral volatility before 2001 is the result of

party switching by individual candidates. The vote shares of the TRT and the

Democrat Party stabilize after 2001, indicating that the party system has be-

come more institutionalized than before. The changing context in 2001 is the

watershed event that allows me to inspect the relative importance of rational60

entry and strategic voting in affecting district-level party system fragmentation

at different times. Moreover, a one-country study provides the opportunity to

compare the before and after effects of key factors while holding other confound-

ing variables constant, such as social heterogeneity, political institutions, and

the level of power centralization, which are found to affect party system frag-65

mentation alongside electoral systems (Shugart & Carey, 1992; Amorim Neto &

1The TRT has been disbanded and changed its party name twice. The two successorparties to the TRT are People’s Power Party (PPP) that won the 2007 election, and the PheuThai Party (PT), which won the 2011 election.

3

Cox, 1997; Clark & Golder, 2006; Singer & Stephenson, 2009; Hicken & Stoll,

2011; Chhibber & Kollman, 2004).

(Figure 1 here)

The findings suggest that rational entry does play a more important role70

in affecting district-level party system fragmentation before 2001, but strategic

voting becomes the main mechanism afterwards. In other words, party system

fragmentation might decrease over time not due to voters’ strategic behavior

but elite decisions, which are relatively neglected in previous studies. In what

follows, I first explain the relationship between electoral rules and strategic be-75

havior of elites and voters within districts. Based on the theoretical relationship

I have proposed, I provide my arguments and hypothesis. I then illustrate the

overall trend of party system fragmentation at the district level between 1986

and 2011 in Thailand. I investigate the determinants of district party system

fragmentation in each election. I discuss the findings and their relevance to the80

extant theories in the conclusion.

2. Electoral Rules and Strategic Behavior within Districts

Since the publication of Making Votes Count, the relationship between elec-

toral systems and party system fragmentation at the district level has been

tested in numerous studies. Cox (1997) argues that because electoral rules de-85

termine winners and losers in district elections, they should induce strategizing

from both candidates and voters who care about the election result. Strategic

behavior of candidates and voters within districts is the mechanism that leads to

Duverger’s Law at the district level. With regard to voters, strategic voting or

strategic defection happens when voters pour votes towards viable contenders to90

affect the current election outcome.2 Parties and candidates, in anticipation of

2Strategic voting is also called strategic defection because it refers to a phenomenon inwhich a voter’s vote choice and her preference do not match (Kawai & Watanabe, 2013; 625).That is, the voter defects from her most preferred choice in hopes of preventing her leastpreferred party/candidate from winning the election.

4

strategic voting, would calculate the likelihood of winning and decide whether to

run for established parties (strategic entry) or withdraw from the contest when

the chance is slim (rational entry). If strategic behavior occurs, the number of

viable or serious contenders under different electoral rules should be close to95

or smaller than M+1, where M is the district magnitude (the number of seats

allocated in each district). The deduced result of M+1 is called the Duvergerian

equilibrium.

While Cox argues that there are two mechanisms (strategic voting and elite

actions) that help a restrictive electoral system bring down the number of com-100

petitors at the district level, he seems to weight strategic voting more than the

strategies taken by parties and candidates to impose the upper bound on the

effective number of competitors. Elites (parties and candidates) make entry de-

cision based on the anticipation of whether they are likely to become the victim

of strategic voting. Thus, even though there are many competitors in a race (as105

those early rounds of elections in newly democratized countries), the number of

competitors will gradually decrease when voters learn to vote strategically and

elites take the message to make entry decision in the next election.

Previous studies that investigated electoral system effects across different

countries also found that failure to vote strategically usually led to more en-110

trants in elections and resulted in higher party system fragmentation even un-

der a restrictive electoral system. For instance, investigating the district-level

fragmentation in several post-communist countries, Moser & Scheiner (2012)

found that although the fragmentation level was high in these countries in the

early rounds of elections, the fragmentation level decreased in some countries115

(e.g. Hungary) faster than in others (e.g. Russia and Ukraine). The varying

dropping rate was explained by the diverging degree of party system institution-

alization across these countries. Since parties in a less institutionalized party

system do not structure votes, independent candidates usually compete side

by side with parties. As a result, competitors mushroom and it is difficult for120

voters to distinguish front-runners from hopeless losers. In this situation, vot-

ers are unlikely to vote strategically since the effect of strategic voting is less

5

predictable. When voters do not vote strategically, votes are relatively equally

distributed among candidates, which, in turn, encourages entry since everyone

has almost the equal chance of winning. Thus, we generally expect that the125

effective number of competitors at the district level would stay high in a less in-

stitutionalized party system even after elites and voters have experienced several

rounds of competition.

However, it is also possible that the effective number of competitors would

gradually decrease over time mainly due to rational entry, even when a majority130

of voters do not vote strategically. More specifically, in an environment where

candidates rely on clientelist networks to secure votes, they should be more

likely to engage in rational entry because maintaining such networks is costly.

When the likelihood of winning a seat is slim, rational parties and candidates

should choose to withdraw from the competition to avoid wasting resources. The135

evidence of rational entry should appear post hoc when the size of clientelist

networks adjusts to reflect the share of votes the winner received in the last

election. The winner’s vote share, therefore, provides information about the

likelihood of winning to the potential challengers in the next election. Thus,

the initial fragmentation of the party system might be high due to the lack140

of strategic voting, but the number of contestants should decrease with each

election cycle (Cox, 1997; 173-178).

On the other hand, if parties can secure stable support from different societal

groups, it indicates that a party system is relatively institutionalized. Since

parties now have social roots, we would expect that electoral volatility tends to145

be low as different societal groups keep supporting the parties that represent

their interests (Mainwaring, 1999; Mainwaring & Zoco, 2007). When parties can

structure votes and represent different preferences of voters, the possible winners

will be common knowledge for both voters and contenders (Cox, 1997; 77). That

is, voters are able to have ranked preferences for parties according to the interests150

they represent. Voters’ preferences, then, provide the information about the

competitiveness of parties in the contests. In this context, voters can derive the

information about parties’ competitiveness from the socioeconomic construction

6

of their districts and engage in strategic behavior (Kawai & Watanabe, 2013).

As a result, strategic voting should become more important than rational entry155

to affect fragmentation in an institutionalized party system.

The discussion above indicates that an institutionalized party system is the

precondition for electoral systems to trigger strategic voting. Different electoral

systems, district magnitudes in particular, put varying degrees of pressure on

voters to vote strategically. In a nutshell, the smaller the district magnitude is,160

the higher the pressure. Thus, a single-member district vote system (SMD) puts

the highest pressure on voters and the pressure is gradually eased as the mag-

nitude gets larger. This rule is applicable to most electoral systems nowadays

since voters are generally given one ballot. However, when voters have multiple

ballots at hand, things become more complicated.165

Thailand used two electoral systems between 1986 and 2011. Approval vot-

ing (AV) was used between 1986 and 1996, and in 2007, while mixed-member

majoritarian system (MMM) was used in 2001, 2005, and 2011. AV is an elec-

toral system that gives voters multiple ballots to select candidates in multi-seat

districts.3 Magnitude under AV elections ranged from one to three but most of170

them elected three candidates. Voters were not required to cast all ballots but

cumulative vote was not allowed. In addition, voters could split the ballots to

candidates of different parties or cast a bloc vote for all candidates representing

the same party. Parties, then, had to nominate the number of candidates equal

to the district magnitude. On the other hand, MMM has two tiers. The district175

tier uses plurality rule to elect candidates in single-member districts (called the

SMD tier), while another tier uses the proportional representation (PR) vote

system to select parties (called the PR tier). Voters have two separate ballots

to cast in each tier.

3There are three features defining the electoral system (Colomer, 2007; 263). First, thedistrict magnitude is greater than one. Second, the number of ballots each voter has is smallerthan or equal to the district magnitude. Finally, plurality or majority rule might apply. Thereare several names for the electoral system, such as multiple non-transferable vote (MNTV),block vote, or plurality-at-large voting. Here the electoral system is referred to as approvalvoting following Cox (1984).

7

Voting behavior under SMD has been scrutinized in many studies. Gener-180

ally speaking, voters are likely to engage in strategic voting under SMD due to

the strong incentive embedded in the electoral rule. Nonetheless, many studies

found that other factors, such as intense competition, recognition of wasted-

vote situation, partisanship, preferences for specific candidates, significance of

party label for vote choice, and the level of party system institutionalization185

also played a role in reducing or discouraging strategic voting (Alvarez & Na-

gler, 2000; Blais & Nadeau, 1996; Blais et al., 2001; Duch & Palmer, 2002; Karp

et al., 2002; Kawai & Watanabe, 2013; Moser & Scheiner, 2012; Myatt, 2007).

By contrast, voting behavior under AV is relatively understudied, especially re-

garding strategic voting. Therefore, it is necessary to explain the voting pattern190

under AV to which now I turn.

2.1. Strategic Voting under AV

If we only focus on district magnitude and the information load needed to

discern the possible outcomes of strategic voting, it might not be difficult for

strategic voting to take place under AV when the district magnitude is smaller195

than five (Cox & Shugart, 1996). However, AV’s multiple ballots make the effect

of district magnitude less certain. Since voters have multiple ballots at hand,

they can cast the ballots with different combinations, ranging from outright

ticket splitting to bloc votes. Depending on how voters vote, it might pose

varying degrees of difficulty for strategic voting to take place.200

I will argue that different voting patterns under AV can either increase the

information load for voters to discern the likely effect of strategic voting or

make the decision-making process simpler like that under SMD. If a majority

of voters tend to split tickets for candidates of different parties, it is difficult

to guess who the front-runners would be simply because of the large number of205

competitors in the race. Suppose that an AV district elects three candidates,

the information load is still manageable since the district magnitude is smaller

than five. But parties tend to (or they are required to) nominate the number

of candidates equal to the number of ballots (which is also equal to district

8

magnitude in most cases) in hopes of securing all ballots from the same voter210

(Carey & Shugart, 1995; Colomer, 2007).

However, voters do not necessarily cast bloc votes even though they are given

the options as blocs/parties. When voters lack strict dichotomous preferences

for these blocs or parties, ticket splitting is likely to happen (Cox, 1984). In

other words, a voter who is indifferent about the blocs/parties might split her215

tickets for candidates of different parties. If she wants to to cast a strategic

vote, she would have to know the viability of these candidates. Suppose that

there are five blocs/parties participating in the contest, there are possibly fifteen

candidates, which requires much information to ascertain the viability of these

candidates and the likely outcome of strategic voting. I suppose that in a large220

electorate, a voter might just vote for her most preferred candidates until she

exhausts her ballots. This is probably why AV is hailed as strategically proven

and is said to always elect the Condorcet winner if it exists (Brams & Fishburn,

2005; Laslier, 2009).4

By contrast, if voters tend to vote for blocs/parties, the number of competi-225

tor is greatly reduced. As voters see the competition as between blocs/parties

and cast all ballots for one bloc/party, it should be easier to ascertain the viabil-

ity of these blocs. Despite its large district magnitude, an AV electoral game is

like a grouped SMD game in this context, which should provide a strong incen-

tive for strategic voting. However, to direct voters to vote in bloc, blocs/parties230

will need to distinguish themselves from other blocs/parties so voters can de-

velop ranked preferences. I will argue that this is more likely to happen in an

institutionalized party system in which parties represent the interests of different

societal groups and voters rank their preferences for parties accordingly.

In sum, an institutionalized party system provides the precondition for re-235

strictive electoral rules to induce strategic voting. When parties cultivate sup-

4Although Thailand’s AV is slightly different from the AV these authors discussed sinceThai voters were give a certain number of ballots to cast for candidates, not signaling theirapproval for each candidate, I will argue that this is still the theoretical expectation forThailand’s AV.

9

port from a segment of the society and that party labels convey the information

about the interests being represented, competition between parties is transpar-

ent and open to observation. In this context, the competitiveness of parties can

be ascertained at least based on the socioeconomic construction of a district.240

The likely effects of strategic voting, therefore, are more predictable and strate-

gic voting is likely to take place. Moreover, voters under AV electoral system

also tend to bloc vote for parties in this context. This voting behavior makes an

AV game similar to a SMD game, which should tend to induce strategic voting.

By contrast, if parties cannot structure votes and voters tend to vote for candi-245

dates, voters should have difficulty engaging in strategic behavior because the

information load for making a strategic decision is heavy and difficult to come

by. However, if parties and candidates rely on clientelist networks to secure

votes, rational entry should lead us to see a decrease in fragmentation at the

district level over time.250

3. The Thai Context and Hypothesis

Before the rise of the Thai Rak Thai Party, major parties in Thailand relied

on individual candidates and party factions to win seats instead of attracting

voters with policies (Ockey, 1994; 2003). It is not uncommon that party leaders

“bought” strong candidates in order to win state power (Connors, 1999). Since255

party label was insignificant for vote choice and frequent party switching and

the short life spans of parties testified that established parties did not possess

advantage in the electoral arena, strategic entry is unlikely the main mechanism

determining the level of party system fragmentation. Instead, it would be more

likely that rational entry is the main mechanism determining the fragmentation260

level.

This is because party factions and candidates relied on personal clientelist

networks to secure votes. Given that they needed to invest financial resources

in upholding a viable network, a winner obtaining a high vote share conveyed

information to future contenders about the size of her electoral assets. This265

10

information signals the cost of participating in the election and the likelihood of

winning. Since factions/candidates are office seekers, they should be sensitive

about the cost and withdraw from competition when the likelihood of winning is

small. When the number of candidates entering the district contests decreases,

the effective number of competitors should decrease as well.270

On the other hand, since candidates relied on their clientelist networks to

distribute bribes to voters, this practice of vote buying deprived voters free will

when they went to the polls. One assumption of electoral system effects is voters

should have the freedom to cast their ballots (Cox, 1997; 77), and when their

votes are bought beforehand, it is less likely that they would vote strategically275

by pouring votes to another candidate. The fact that voters accepted bribes

and cast their ballots accordingly also indicates that they did not have strict

preferences for candidates/parties. Although it was found that voters took

bribes but voted for other candidates, they simply cast sincere votes for their

most preferred ones (Hicken, 2009; 103). In both cases, voters did not have the280

intention to change the election outcome, which is another assumption necessary

for strategic voting to take place.5

By contrast, urban voters and the southerners (both were the constituents

of the Democrat Party) tended to cast bloc votes (Hicken, 2009; 2013), which

indicates that they had ranked preferences for parties. However, these voters285

were in minority among the electorate before 2001. Moreover, the Democrat

Party faced challenge from several new parties in urban areas since 1992, such

as the Phalang Tham Party (Moral Force). When urban voters faced several

options that they liked equally, they also tended to split tickets for different

parties.6 The situation is similar to what Cox (1984) discussed in Britain’s290

5Voters should have a myopic goal. That is, they only care about the current electionoutcome. See Cox (1997; 76-79)

6In Bangkok, for instance, 8 of 12 districts elected only one party in the September electionin 1992. The number of one-party districts decreased to be 4 of 13 districts in the 1995 election.In the 1988 election, there were only 5 districts among 13 elected a single party. Nevertheless,one-party districts were between 7 and 10 of 12 (sometimes 13) districts in most elections,except 1988 and 1995.

11

multi-member district elections, in which liberal voters split tickets for parties

holding similar ideologies. Although Cox used “strategic voting” to describe

the voting behavior, I will argue that it is actually sincere voting. Since the

behavior does not involve defection from a voter’s preferred choice (the voter

likes the parties equally), it does not conform with the definition of strategic295

voting used in this article. Note that I do not argue that voters do not vote

strategically when they split tickets; it is possible that they can vote sincerely

and strategically by splitting their tickets. However, to split tickets with the

intention to change the election outcome, a voter has to heed which candidate

in her less preferred party she should vote for to achieve that goal. A wrong300

decision would give her the lowest payoff when her most and less preferred parties

do not win any seats. Ticket splitting is risky especially when the supporters

of her least preferred party bloc vote. Since the information to discern the

outcome of strategic voting is difficult to come by and the likely effect of such

action is less predictable, strategic voting is unlikely the main mechanism that305

brings down the effective number of competitors when voters tend to split tickets

before 2001.

However, the Thai party system began to institutionalize since 2001. As

Figure 1 illustrates, the two parties that enjoy stable support after 2001 are the

TRT and the Democrat Party (DP). The TRT mainly attracts the rural and310

urban poor, while the DP appeals to the urban middle class and the southerners

(Kitirianglarp & Hewison, 2009; Thabchumpon & Duncan, 2011). The conver-

gence between societal groups and party support provides information about

the distribution of voter preferences in a district based on the socioeconomic

characteristics of the district. Thus, even with more parties entering the con-315

tests, voters can still detect possible winners and pour votes to those parties.

In other words, I would expect that strategic voting should be the main cause

of a reduction in the number of competitors at the district level after 2001. The

testable hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis: Rational entry poses relative importance to determine the effective320

12

number of competitors before 2001, but strategic voting becomes the main cause

after 2001.

4. Change in the Fragmentation of the Thai Party System

Before testing the hypothesis, we shall look at the change in party system

fragmentation over time. The fragmentation of the party system is shown in325

Figure 2. Following the literature in the field, I measured party system frag-

mentation by the effective number of parties (ENP).7 Although AV has large

district magnitude, the predicted number of viable parties can be either two or

four depending on whether the majority of voters cast bloc votes or split tickets.

If the majority of voters cast bloc votes, the number of viable parties should be330

close to two since AV becomes a grouped SMD game. If the majority of voters

split tickets, the number of viable parties should be four since the majority of

districts elect three winners.

(Figure 2 here)

As discussed earlier, voters are likely to split their tickets when their votes335

are bought and when they do not have ranked preferences for parties. The

average ENPs at the district level echo this argument and are between two and

four in the period between 1986 and 1996. Moreover, the overall trend is that

party system fragmentation is in decline until the 1996 election. I will argue that

the downward trend is the result of rational entry where strong winners drive340

away potential contenders in the next election. With fewer and fewer parties

participating in elections, the average ENP decreased over time.

The fragmentation level rose in 2001 and then fell in 2005. It increased

again in 2007 and dropped in 2011. The 2001 election adopted SMD at the

district-tier, which was new to parties and voters. Thus, it is likely that the345

result is new electoral system shock as elites and voters learned to coordinate

7ENP was constructed by Laakso & Taagepera (1979), which is weighted party vote shares.The indicator is calculated by the formula ENP = 1∑n

i=1 v2i

, where vi is party i’s vote share.

13

under the new electoral rule. The 2007 election re-adopted AV and it seems

that AV’s large magnitude encouraged entry and led to higher fragmentation

at the district level. The averaged ENP dropped again in 2011 simply because

SMD was re-installed in the district-level elections. However, I will argue that350

the increasing ENPs in 2001 and 2007 should be understood by the formula

calculating the effective number of parties. The ENP index is sensitive to two

factors – the vote share of the first winning party and the number of parties

in the contest (Dunleavy & Boucek, 2003). When the vote share is more than

a majority or there are a small number of contenders, the ENP tends to be355

small. However, if the first-place winner has only a plurality and there are

many contenders, the ENP tends to inflate.

Comparing the 2001 election with the 1996, we can see these effects. The

average number of parties entering the district-level contests in 2001 was 6.85,

compared to 5.68 in 1996, and the average vote share of the first-place winning360

party was 0.51 in 2001, compared to 0.57 in 1996. It is not surprising that

the 2001 election has a higher average ENP than that of 1996. However, the

increase in the number of entrants has nothing to do with parties trying to

gain representation. There were other reasons for the burgeoning of entrants

in 2001. Since 2001, parties have received state subsidies for the purpose of365

strengthening their role as intermediaries between citizens and the state; this

policy encourages the formation of small parties. To qualify for the subsidy,

parties are required to participate in elections.8 Thus, small parties entered the

contests with no intention to win seats but they nonetheless inflated the ENPs

across districts.370

The increase in the average ENP in 2007 comes from the same source. Many

former TRT members were encouraged by the military to leave the TRT and

run against the TRT’s successor party ahead of the 2007 election (Ockey, 2007).

Thus, the increase in ENPs is not due to AV’s large magnitude, but the military’s

intervention. Nevertheless, the election results proved that the intervention was375

8See Organic Law on Political Parties, mandated by the 1997 Constitution.

14

futile. The People’s Power Party, the successor party to the TRT, still won

nearly half of the district seats in the 2007 election (233 of 400 district seats).

The results, therefore, indicate that most parties were not viable parties in the

2007 election and voters have poured votes to only a few parties.

As I argued earlier, when parties can structure votes and voters have devel-380

oped ranked preferences for parties; party label provides the crucial information

for voters to discern the prospect of winning for the party they support given

the distribution of voter preferences in a district. As voters are able to distin-

guish possible winners and hopeless losers through party labels, they direct their

votes to viable parties. Strategic voting is likely the main force constraining the385

effective number of competitors after 2001, even in the 2007 election that used

AV (although we do not see this by simply comparing ENPs). By contrast, it

seems likely that the gradual decrease in fragmentation before 2001 is related

to rational entry, when candidates withdraw from contests in districts where

winners have strong support. The next section tests this hypothesis.390

5. Data and Methods

To test the hypothesis, I used the election data from 1986 to 2011 at the dis-

trict level. However, since two variables have a one-election lag, I only analyzed

nine election results. To make sure that each district covered exactly the same

territory as in the previous election, information about districting was refereed395

to ensure that the same sub-districts were analyzed even when they were in

different electoral districts across elections. In other words, the unit of obser-

vation was sub-districts and they might belong to different electoral districts

across elections.9 The purpose of this is to investigate the effects of rational

entry and strategic voting based on the results of the previous election. Note400

that the districting information is only available since the 1996 election. For

the elections between 1986 and 1995, I assigned the sub-districts based on the

9These sub-districts are khet in Bangkok and amphoe in other provinces.

15

districting information of the 1996 election.

More specifically, sub-districts of the electoral district 1 in 1996 were as-

sumed to belong to the same electoral district (District 1) in the previous elec-405

tions. Since the 1996 election had more electoral districts than the previous

elections, it is less risky that a sub-district would be wrongly assigned. That

is, a province might be divided into two electoral districts in 1996 due to the

increase in population, but the two electoral districts were one district in 1995

and the elections before it. Thus, it is less troublesome to assign sub-districts to410

an old electoral district than to a new one when sub-districts were re-assigned to

different electoral districts. The latter happens when the electoral system was

changed between AV and SMD. But these elections have districting information

that I can refer to. Electoral data between 1986 and 1992 are from Kollman

et al. (2010), and I collected the electoral data between 1995 and 2011 from De-415

partment of Administration (1995; 1996) and Office of the Election Commission

of Thailand (2001; 2005; 2007; 2011).

My dependent variable was the level of party system fragmentation at dis-

tricts. Although in the previous section, I used ENP to measure party system

fragmentation, here, to investigate the system fragmentation under AV, I in-420

stead used the effective number of candidates (ENC) as my dependent variable.

I calculated ENC with the same formula used to calculate ENP, but using can-

didates’ vote shares instead of parties’ vote shares. The original argument made

by Cox (1997) is that electoral rules affect the number of candidates entering

the contests at the district level. In a one-seat district, every party only gets425

to nominate one candidate, so the votes a candidate receives are her party’s

receiving votes. Thus, the ENC is equivalent to the ENP. In an electoral system

that has multi-seat districts (e.g. AV, open list PR, SNTV, and STV, etc.),

each party is likely to nominate multiple candidates. In Thailand’s AV, for in-

stance, each party was required to nominate a number of candidates equal to430

the district magnitude. When there are six parties competing in a three-seat

district, the number of contenders is eighteen. With such a large number, the

ENC is always greater than the ENP. Although what we concern is party system

16

fragmentation at the district level, it is more accurate to use ENC instead of

ENP in this analysis because voters cast ballots for individual candidates not435

parties.

Under AV, voters can cast their ballots in different combinations, ranging

from bloc votes to ticket splitting. Using ENP as the dependent variable would

have required an assumption that voters cast bloc votes and would have ignored

the dynamics of ticket splitting. Using ENC, on the other hand, allowed me440

to capture both. For instance, consider the scenario where party A has one

strong candidate that wins first place while the party’s two other candidates lag

behind. In total, party A’s vote share is high because of the strong candidate

(which is the only one who gets elected). This will result in a small ENP. ENC,

however, will be a large number, reflecting the poor performance of the other445

two candidates. On the other hand, if all three candidates of party A win seats,

both ENP and ENC will be small. In short, ENC captures different voting

combinations and reflects the level of fragmentation better than ENP under the

electoral rule of AV. For the elections using SMD, ENC and ENP are equivalent

since each party only nominates one candidate per district.450

Rational entry and strategic voting are the two explanatory variables. Ra-

tional entry is measured by the vote share of the winner in the previous election.

The rationale is that if the winner’s vote share is high in the previous election,

it indicates the size of the clientelist network of the winner and it should deter

potential contenders from entering in the next election. When the number of455

candidates decreases in the next election, ENC should tend to be smaller. In

other words, I expect to see a negative effect of rational entry on ENC. Note

that in the elections that use AV, rational entry is defined by the last-place

winner’s vote share. That is, in a three-seat district, rational entry is measured

by the third-place winner’s vote share.460

Strategic voting is measured through the SF-ratio provided by Cox (1997).

The SF-ratio is the ratio of the votes between the second-place loser and the

first-place loser. For instance, in a three-seat district, the first-place loser is

the fourth candidate ranked by the receiving votes in descending order. The

17

rationale is that if there is strategic voting, we shall see voters pour votes to465

the first-place loser in order to make him/her win the last slot. When this

happens, votes are relatively concentrated in the front-runners, thus creating a

lower ENC. The SF-ratio is between 0 and 1, with 1 indicating no vote pooling

to viable contenders. I calculated the SF-ratio under AV using candidates’

receiving votes instead of parties’ receiving votes. Since the dependent variable470

is ENC in the elections using AV, SF-ratio is calculated based on the same unit

(candidates). For the elections using SMD, a candidate’s receiving votes are

his/her party’s receiving votes.

The analyses controlled for four variables in both electoral systems. The first

control variable is the number of parties participating in the district election.475

Although most analyses controlled for district magnitude as it directly related

to the number of candidates in the contest, I controlled for the number of

parties instead due to a Thai regulation. The regulation required parties to

field candidates in up to at least one-fourth to one-half of the total number of

parliamentary seats, depending on the election year (Hicken, 2009; 96, footnote480

20). That is, even though parties might like to field candidates in only a few

districts where they had a good chance of winning seats, they had to participate

in other districts to comply with the regulation. This regulation led to more

parties than necessary entering races in districts with small magnitudes since it

was easier there than in larger districts to run the required number of candidates485

(which, as stated earlier, must be equal to the number of seats in contention).10

Moreover, state subsidies to political parties mentioned earlier also encouraged

entrants based on a reason irrelevant to the concern over election results. Thus,

the number of competing parties must be controlled for, since it also affects

the dependent variable. It is reasonable to omit district magnitude because the490

effect of the number of parties overlaps with that of district magnitude to some

extent. Omitting district magnitude also makes the statistical results under

10For instance, the average ENP of two-seat districts is 3.10 across all AV elections. Theaverage ENP of three-seat districts is only slightly higher, to be 3.29.

18

different electoral systems comparable.

The second control variable is the margin of victory in the last election. The

margin of victory is the vote gap between the last winner and the first loser.495

That is, in a three-seat district under AV, the margin of victory is the vote

difference between the candidate who won the last seat and the candidate who

was right behind, divided by the former’s votes. Thus, a large value means

the last winner garners far more votes than the first loser. By contrast, a

small value indicates that the competition between the last winner and the first500

loser is pretty tight. The purpose is to investigate the effect of strategic voting

with different conditions. In a district with a large margin in the last election,

voters might think that strategic voting is unlikely to change the outcome of the

current election given the overwhelming support the winner garnered last time.

Even though voters pour votes to the first loser, the first loser would still lose.505

Since defection from the most preferred choice would not change the outcome,

the incentive for strategic voting is reduced in those districts. By contrast, the

effect of strategic voting should be more evident in districts with a small margin.

Contests in these districts are competitive, which is thought a reason to trigger

strategic voting (Moser & Scheiner, 2012; 153-154).510

The index of margin of victory is between 0 and 1, and I recoded the index

into a dichotomous variable, with 1 meaning the index greater than 0.2 and 0

otherwise. Following Cox (1997), we shall see that the effect of strategic voting

is more salient in districts with a small margin than in districts with a large

margin. The third control variable is, therefore, the interaction term between515

strategic voting and the margin of victory in the last election. Finally, I also

controlled for the region of South. The South is the stronghold of the Democrat

Party and, thus, the party tended to enjoy stable support even before 2001

(Askew, 2006). Moreover, voters there tended to bloc vote for the Democrat

Party, resulting in lower level of party system fragmentation in the region.520

The purpose of the analysis is to inspect the relative importance of rational

entry and strategic voting to determine ENC at different times. Thus, in order

to compare the relative importance of these two variables across elections, I plot

19

the absolute values of the estimated coefficients and inspect their changes over

time. I expect to see the values of rational entry are larger than the values of525

strategic voting before 2001, and the values of strategic voting become larger

by contrast afterwards. Since the dependent variable, ENC, is continuous, all

the models are estimated using OLS.

6. Findings and Discussion

Table 1 shows the results. Winner’s vote share in the last election has a530

negative effect on ENC. That is, the higher the vote share the winner garnered

in the last election, the lower the ENC was observed in the current election,

other things being equal. By contrast, SF-ratio has a positive effect, meaning

that the larger the ratio (no vote pooling to the front-runners), the higher the

ENC was the result. Although I argued that strategic voting should have small535

effects before 2001, it does not mean it should not have any effect at all. Urban

voters were found to be more likely to cast bloc votes, which indicates that they

were capable of ranking parties. This means voters were also capable of strategic

voting although they were in a small number among the electorate. Note that

in the districts where the margin of victory in the previous election was greater540

than 0.2, the coefficient of the SF-ratio tended to be smaller, although most of

them are not statistically significant (see the interaction term of SF-ratio and

the margin of victory). The results indicate that a close race in the last election

did tend to intensify the impact of the SF-ratio on the current election. The

number of parties, as expected, has a positive effect on the dependent variable,545

except in the 2011 election. The South tended to have lower ENC on average

compared to other regions, although in some elections the region had higher

ENC on average.

(Table 1 about here)

The purpose of this article, however, is to inspect the importance of ratio-550

nal entry and strategic voting in different contexts. Specially, I am interested

20

in knowing the impacts these two actions have on district-level fragmentation

before and after 2001, when the party system began to institutionalize. From

the table, it is clear that winner’ vote share in the last election constantly had a

larger coefficient than that of the SF-ratio to determine ENC before 2001. The555

situation, however, is reversed since 2001 as the SF-ratio had a larger coefficient

than winner’s vote share to affect the dependent variable. To better illustrate

the relationship, I plot the absolute values of the coefficients across elections

and scrutinize the changes in relative importance of these two variables over

time.560

Figure 3 illustrates the changes of rational entry and strategic voting on

both types of districts. As expected, the values of rational entry are constantly

larger than the values of strategic voting before 2001. However, the coefficients

of strategic voting are larger than the coefficients of rational entry in both types

of districts since 2001, except the 2005 election. In 2005, the TRT was highly565

popular among the electorate and the party won 308 of 400 district seats. As

the party was expected to win the election handily, the competition was not

close enough for voters to think that strategic voting would make a difference.

This is probably why the effect of strategic voting was not salient in this election

like the other ones’.570

(Figure 3 here)

The graph clearly demonstrates that both actions assert different levels of

importance to determine the district-level party system before and after 2001.

The continuing decrease in system fragmentation at the district level before

2001 was mainly due to rational entry. The effect of rational entry was not575

statistically significant in the 2001 election perhaps due to re-districting under

different electoral rules. Nevertheless, the coefficients of rational entry became

much smaller compared to those before 2001. With regard to strategic voting,

this variable has asserted more influence in determining ENC since 2001. Strate-

gic voting is based on the premise that voters have ranked preferences for parties.580

However, such preferences mainly developed after 2001 due to the TRT’s social

21

policies. Thus, strategic voting’s larger effect in the 2001 election was a surprise.

This result might have been due to the electoral rules of SMD, which can trigger

strategic voting more easily than AV. That is, given the one-ballot structure and

a small district magnitude, it is easier to distinguish front-runners and losers585

under SMD than it is under AV. For the 2001 election, the electoral system

might have been the reason for the significant effect of strategic voting. How-

ever, the 2007 election used AV and strategic voting was still the main cause in

determining the level of fragmentation. Therefore, electoral system alone can-

not explain why strategic voting became the main determinant after 2001. As590

argued in this article, change in party system institutionalization accounts for

the outcome.

Nevertheless, to rule out the effect of electoral systems on the effective num-

ber of candidates and to take advantage of the Thailand case, I ran another

analysis comparing the effects of rational entry and strategic voting across all595

AV elections. The 2007 election re-adopted AV but the context was very dif-

ferent from the previous AV elections. I ran three models with different control

variables and compared the effects of strategic actions before and after 2001. I

omitted district magnitude in the previous analysis in order to compare the re-

sults under different electoral systems. Here, I put the district magnitude back600

to the model and Table 2 shows the results. Since I am interested in knowing

the change in the effects of the explanatory variables across time, I plot the

results in Figure 4.

(Table 3 and Figure 4 here)

It is clear that the pattern I found in the previous analysis re-appears in this605

analysis, except Model 2. Model 2 controlled for district magnitude and the

effect of rational entry is larger than strategic voting in the 2007 election, which

defies my argument. However, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of nonviable parties

participating in the contests because of two regulations; therefore, the number of

parties should also be controlled for. After adding the number of parties, we see610

the usual pattern in Model 3. That is, rational entry asserts more importance

22

than rational entry to determine the district-level party system fragmentation

before 2001, but the effects of these two strategic actions are reversed afterwards.

Note that the interpretation of the effects of strategic voting is different in this

analysis compared to the previous one. The models here emphasize effects at615

different times. Although the effect of strategic voting is larger in districts

with a large margin of victory than in districts with a small margin in the 2007

election in all three models, it does not mean that the way the margin of victory

conditions strategic voting is reversed in 2007. The correct interpretation is that

the effect of strategic voting in districts with a large margin is greater than the620

effect with the same condition in the pre-2001 elections. Given that politics

has been polarized after the 2006 military coup and voters were concerned with

the election outcome, it is not surprising to see the greater impact of strategic

voting on the dependent variable in 2007, even in districts where the incentive

is low.625

Taken together, it is clear that party system fragmentation at the district

level is determined by different strategic actions at different times. Between

1988 and 1996, elites’ rational choice is the main mechanism responsible for the

downward trend. After 2001, voters’ strategic action kept the fragmentation

level low even when AV was re-adopted and new parties entered the contests630

with the attempt at inflating the number of parties in the system. Rational entry

and strategic voting asserts different levels of importance to determine system

fragmentation due to the change in party system institutionalization in 2001.

The extant literature tends to emphasize the role of strategic voting in bringing

down fragmentation over time, but this article shows that rational entry is also635

an important factor leading to the same outcome in the environment of poorly

institutionalized party system. Although this article did not inspect the effect of

rational entry under SMD in the context of poorly institutionalized party system

since no such observation was available in the Thailand case, I speculate that

rational entry should be responsible for bringing down the number of parties640

and probably even more so in the same context. Because there is only one seat

to be won under SMD, candidates who own strong clientelist networks would

23

become apparent in just a few elections. Therefore, it is probably more likely

that the effect of rational entry is stronger under SMD. Nevertheless, future

research should examine this speculation.645

7. Conclusion

This article argues that the fragmentation of the district party system is de-

termined by different mechanisms in different contexts. Testing the hypothesis

on Thailand, the statistical analyses confirmed that before 2001 rational en-

try asserted relative importance to determine the level of fragmentation. After650

2001, strategic voting took the leading role in determining the effective num-

ber of competitors. The different effects of strategic behavior by candidates

and parties versus that of voters were closely related to the political context

at different times. When parties are the coalitions of candidates who rely on

clientelist networks to secure votes, rational calculation of the costs and the like-655

lihood of winning determines the number of the contenders in the next election,

which in turn determines the fragmentation level in districts. By contrast, when

voters cast ballots for parties according to the interests parties represent, party

label signals the information about viable contenders. In this context, strate-

gic behavior from voters became the main mechanism determining the level of660

fragmentation. This article also argues that in such a context, an AV electoral

game is similar to a SMD game and both tend to induce strategic voting that

constrains party system fragmentation.

Compared with strategic voting, elite decision is relatively understudied in

the field of electoral system effects. The Thailand case demonstrates that elite665

action helped bring down party system fragmentation even when the role of vot-

ers was marginalized. In other words, a poorly institutionalized party system

is not necessarily associated with high party system fragmentation in the long

run. As I argue in this article, rational entry should be an important factor

determining party system fragmentation over time. It is because elites who rely670

on clientelism to secure votes are rational calculators and would only enter the

24

contests when there is a good chance of winning. Although financial consider-

ation is a common factor affecting entry decision, future work should explore

other factors that lead elites to stay in or withdraw from competition. Given

that elites play an important role in less institutionalized party systems, they675

deserve much attention in such an environment when studying the causes of

party system fragmentation.

25

Appendix

Summary Statistics of Variables

680

Election 1988Minimum Mean Maximum S.D. No. of Obs.

ENC 2.228 7.257 16.78 3.069 928Winner’s vote share in 1986 0.083 0.158 0.631 0.087 928Sf-ratio 0.047 0.684 0.997 0.259 928Margin of victory < .2 in 1986 0 0.305 1 0.46 928No. of parties 3 9.985 15 2.672 928South 0 0.164 1 0.371 928

Election 1992.1Minimum Mean Maximum S.D. No. of Obs.


Election 1992.2Minimum Mean Maximum S.D. No. of Obs.

ENC 1.735 6.929 14.23 2.525 928Winner’s vote share in 1992.1 0.08 0.186 0.619 0.086 928Sf-ratio 0.041 0.774 0.997 0.211 928Margin of victory < .2 in 1992.1 0 0.335 1 0.472 928No. of parties 2 6.489 12 2.336 928South 0 0.164 1 0.371 928


ENC 1.829 5.639 11.65 2.093 928Winner’s vote share 1992.2 0.085 0.197 0.718 0.094 928Sf-ratio 0.028 0.649 0.998 0.291 928Margin of victory < .2 in 1992.2 0 0.353 1 0.478 928No. of parties 2 5.669 11 2.17 928South 0 0.164 1 0.371 928

26











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Figure 1. National Votes Shares of Major Parties across Elections

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Figure 2. Change in District-Level Party System Fragmentation acrossElections

795

34

Table 1. Determinants of ENC across Elections

1988 1992.1 1992.2 1995 1996(Intercept) .892* 4.467*** 3.631*** 3.213*** 5.027***

(.394) (.310) (.447) (.193) (.179)Winner’s vote share* -12.931*** -15.041*** -13.021*** -6.882*** -9.040***

(.774) (.687) (.889) (.481) (.450)SF-ratio (SF) 3.832*** 2.965*** 4.279*** 3.526*** 1.909***

(.286) (.281) (.371) (.179) (.135)Margin of victory > .2 (MV)** 1.004** .711* 2.226*** 1.069*** .418**

(.379) (.352) (.406) (.196) (.144)SF*MV -.043 -.202 -2.760*** -1.726*** -.831***

(.522) (.417) (.500) (.265) (.207)No. of parties .546*** .401*** .371*** .293*** .134***

(.027) (.020) (.025) (.020) (.015)South 1.959*** .386** -.690*** -1.060*** -.215*

(.185) (.136) (.143) (.118) (.105)

R2 0.6483 0.6954 0.6777 0.7033 0.6901No. of Obs. 928 920 928 928 917

800

2001 2005 2007 2011(Intercept) 1.277*** 2.535*** 1.886*** 2.160***

(.102) (.090) (.589) (.082)Winner’s vote share* -.275 -1.400*** -2.437*** -.807***

(.205) (.126) (.525) (.233)SF-ratio (SF) 1.185*** .330*** 4.149*** 1.261***

(.092) (.097) (.627) (.073)Margin of victory > .2 (MV)** -.194** -.024 .762 -.095

(.073) (.045) (.579) (.051)SF*MV .191 .164 -.264 -.494***

(.127) (.111) (.721) (.105)No. of parties .169*** .023* .305*** -.008

(.011) (.011) (.026) (.008)South -.429*** .182*** -1.552*** -.320***

(.059) (.038) (.153) (.047)

R2 0.5150 0.2711 0.386 0.4138No. of Obs. 918 853 928 916Note: * Last winner’s vote share in the last election** Margin of victory in the last electionSignificance level * < .05, ** < .01, *** < .001

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Figure 3. Change in Rational Entry and Strategic Voting across Elections

36

Table 2. Determinants of ENC under AV Elections805

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3(Intercept) 3.596*** 1.881*** -1.103***

(.132) (.211) (.192)Winner’s vote share (WV) -11.249*** -7.675*** -4.972***

(.319) (.408) (.355)SF-ratio (SF) 3.529*** 3.767*** 3.374***

(.116) (.125) (.107)Margin of victory > .2 (MV) 1.105*** .510*** .761***

(.136) (.147) (.126)SF*MV -1.161*** -.909*** -1.071***

(.179) (.192) (.165)Election 2007 -1.918*** .767 1.257*

(.539) (.591) (.506)WV*Election 2007 8.823*** 4.256*** 1.929***

(.588) (.678) (.583)SF*Election 2007 .096 -.764 -1.871***

(.595) (.643) (.551)SF*MV*Election 2007 2.073** 1.135 3.211***

(.689) (.740) (.635)MV*Election 2007 -1.258* -.070 -2.016***

(.550) (.590) (.507)No. of parties .342*** – .347***

(.008) – (.007)District magnitude – 1.361*** 1.404***

– (.051) (.044)South -.119 -.788*** -.050

(.061) (.063) (.057)

R2 0.6102 0.5499 0.6696No. of Obs. 5549 5549 5549Significance level * < .05, ** < .01, *** < .001

37

Figure 4. Change in Rational Entry and Strategic Voting across AV Elections

38

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