000			01320pab a2200169 454500
008			180718b1999 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100			_aGaines, Brian J.
245			_aDuverger's law and the meaning of Canadian exceptionalism
260			_c1999
300			_ap.835-61
362			_aOct
520			_aDuverger's law is an unusually simple and specific elaboration on exactly how political institutions "matter": It proposes that plurality rule elections result in two-party competition. Canada is commonly thought to violate the law at the national level, but to match its predictions at the district level, and thus not to constitute a genuine counterexample. In fact, analysis of a vast data set of Canadian election returns reveals that these elections are multicandidate events, district by district, year after year. An explanation for this multipartyism may lie in the complicating factor of federalism, because Canadian provinces often feature strikingly different national and provincial party systems. Generally, the Canadian case illustrates that theories relating party systems to electoral law but not to other institutions are unrealistically parsimonious. - Reproduced
650			_aDuverger, Maurice
650			_aPolitics and government
773			_aComparative Political Studies
909			_a43996
999			_c43996 _d43996