Party Competition in an American One-Party-Dominant System a Formal Analysis

Abstract

In many American legislative election systems incumbents have a good chance of returning and seats tend to be retained by a party even when the incumbent fails to return. Because of this, even should a minor party reach competitive parity with the dominant party, a significant increase in elected representation will not result in the short term (five elections). Further, small amounts of bias either for or against the minor party will not appreciably influence short-term elected representation. Thus, what has long been considered one party dominated American states might better be thought of as incumbent dominated. These points are demonstrated in a formal model which is applied to Republican candidates in Oklahoma state legislative elections.

Keywords

legislative elections Markov process political competition political parties

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Brams, Stephen J. and Philip Straffin (1982) `The Entry Problem in a Political Race', in P.C. Ordeshook and K.A. Shepsle (eds) Political Equilibrium. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff.

Campbell, Angus , Philip E. Converse , Warren Miller and Donald Stokes (1960) The American Voter. New York: Wiley.

Darcy, R. (1988) `The Election of Women to Dail Eireann: A Formal Analysis', Irish Political Studies 3: 63-76.

Darcy, R. and James Choike (1986) `A Formal Model of Legislative Turnover: Women Candidates and Legislative Representation', American Journal of Political Science 30 (February): 237-255.

Engstrom, Richard (1987) `District Magnitudes and the Election of Women to the Irish Dail', Electoral Studies 6(2): 123-132.

Feller, William (1968) An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, 3rd Ed. New York: Wiley.

Kemeny, J.G. and J.L. Snell (1960) Finite Markov Chains. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.

Mercik, Jacek (1988) `Entry Problem in One Dimension Under Approval Voting for n = 2 + 1 Candidates', Paper presented at the Polish Organizational Research and System Social Science Conference, Ksiaz, 13-17 June 1988.

Ranney, Austin (1976) `Parties in State Politics', in Herbert Jacob and Kenneth Vines (eds) Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 3rd Ed. pp. 51-92. Boston: Little-Brown.