Refining Duverger's Law Using District-Level Theory and Data

选举制度的比较研究在很大程度上仅限于国家层面的总体回报，原因很简单，这些数据是以机器可读形式提供的。 这项试点研究旨在编制一系列民主国家地区一级的选举结果。 然后，研究人员将对结果进行编码，并将生成的机器可读数据集提供给学术界和公众。 该提案还旨在研究选举结构与政党数量之间的关系（长期由所谓的杜韦尔热定律主导的领域），并有意识地以地区一级为重点。 试点研究应该大大增强我们对该主题的理解。

The comparative study of electoral systems has, for the most part, been confined to aggregate national-level returns, for the simple reason that these are the data that are available in machine- readable form. This pilot study seeks to compile electoral results at the district level for a range of democratic countries. The investigator will then code the results and make the resulting machine-readable datasets available to the scholarly community and public. The proposal also seeks to investigate the relationship between electoral structure and the number of parties (an area long dominated by what is called Duverger's Law) with a deliberate district level focus. The pilot study should substantially enhance our understanding of the topic.