Popular Representation and Party Systems: Products of Electoral Reform and Tools of Survival

这项研究试图检验一个关于选举法的制定及其对一个国家政党制度的影响的两部分假设：只有当参与制定法律的政治家的政治地位得到改善时，提高政党制度代表性水平的选举程序才会实施。利用选举改革和支持或反对选举改革的政治家的数据，本研究将发现，政治生存受到威胁的政治家是否更喜欢扩大参与的规则，以尽可能多地积累支持。另一方面，有安全感的政客会支持让他们上台的选举规则，而反对允许新政党和新参与者的法律。这项研究的目标是拉丁美洲，在那里，具有不同程度代表性的政党制度首先被军事政权所取代，这些政权最近让位于民主选举的政府。

This research seeks to test a two-part hypothesis about the creation of electoral laws and their effects on a nation's political party system: electoral procedures that improve the level of representativeness of a party system will only be implemented only when doing so improves the political position of the politicians involved in making the laws. Using data on electoral reforms and the politicians who supported or opposed them, this study will discover whether politicians whose political survival is threatened will prefer rules that broaden participation in an effort to amass as much support as possible. On the other hand, secure politicians will favor the electoral rules that brought them into power while opposing laws that allow new parties and participants. The research targets Latin America where party systems with varying degrees of representativeness were replaced first by military regimes that have recently given way to democratically elected governments.