Southern Political Science Association
The Effect of Legal Thresholds on the Revival of Former Communist Parties in East-Central
Europe
Author(s): Bryon Moraski and Gerhard Loewenberg
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Feb., 1999), pp. 151-170
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The Effect of Legal Thresholdson the Revival of
Former CommunistParties in East-CentralEurope
Bryon Moraski
Gerhard Loewenberg
University of Iowa
Since 1989 six Centraland East Europeancountrieshave held competitiveelections under 17 different electoral systems. After some experimentation,the new electoral systems, adopted on the
initiative of noncommunistparties, provided for proportionalrepresentation,with legal thresholds
designed to protect the new parties from smaller,more recent, and more extreme formations.These
legal thresholdsfavorednoncommunistparties initially but subsequentlyappearedto facilitate a return of postcommunist parties to power. A multivariatemodel of the effect of electoral system
thresholds in 13 elections confirms that they contributedto disproportionalitybut fails to confirm
thatthey consistentlyfavoredeither formercommunistor noncommunistparties. Furtheranalysis reveals that legal thresholds have exaggerated the effect of volatility in the electorates on the
representationof parties in parliament,causing systems of proportionalrepresentationto behave
more like single-memberpluralitysystems.
Introduction
The revival of competitive elections in East-CentralEurope in 1989 was in
some respects a replay of the democratizationthat had occurredthere after the
First WorldWar.In 1919-20, as 70 years later in 1989-90, democratizationentailed the design of new electoral systems. Then as now, the architects of new
systems were highly uncertain about public support for the principal political
parties existing in each of their countries.Then as now, the forces of the status
quo had an attachmentto majority-votingsystems, which had prevailedin the established empires and appearedto favor established elites. Then as now, their
challengersfavoredvariantsof proportionalrepresentationas the only way of assuring themselves a presence in the newly elected bodies. In each case, within
half a dozen years, the decisions that were made had importantand unexpected
consequences. In the mid-1920s, these consequences consisted of the multiplication of political parties, facilitated by PR systems designed with exquisite
fairnessto representeven the smallest parties.In most countriesdesperateefforts
were made to modify proportionalrepresentationto prevent the further"splintering" of parties (Kaisenberg 1931). Most of these efforts failed and the
disintegrativethreats posed by proportionalrepresentationwere never wholly
forgotten.
THEJOURNALOF POLITICS,
Vol.61, No. 1, February1999, Pp. 151-70
? 1999 by the Universityof Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin,TX 78713-7819
152
Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
Seventy years later a far greaterunderstandingof electoral systems had developed, partly as a result of European experience before and after the Second
WorldWar,and partlyas a result of substantialscholarshipon the consequences
of electoral laws. The purpose of this paper is to examine the efforts to calculate
the consequences of alternativeelectoral systems adopted in Poland, Hungary,
the Baltic States, and Russia in and after 1989. Today the correlatesof proportionality of outcomes are well understood.The literatureshows that three factors
are the principal influences: (1) the "electoral formula"-majoritarian,proportional, or semiproportional;(2) the "effective threshold"of votes that a party
must achieve to gain representationaland (3) the size of the assembly (Lijphart
1994). But generalproportionalitydoes not exhaustthe interestof those who design electoral systems. Gary Cox recently noted that "disproportionality,
however measured, seems . . . of less . . . interest than the political character of
disproportionality"(1991, 350). That is certainly the aspect that concerned the
architectsof electoral laws who wanted to use them to shape the party systems
of Centraland EasternEuropein and after 1989.
The aim of the authorsof these electoral systems was to achieve a reasonable
degree of proportionality,both to legitimate the new systems and to insure the
representationof a set of new political parties that did not yet know their
strength.But those who draftedand then rewrotethe electoral laws also endeavored to favor particularpolitical tendencies. In an initial set of negotiations,
entrenchedcommunistregimes were able to insist on electoral systems that they
expected to be favorableto themselves. After these regimes had experienced a
series of electoral defeats, the noncommunistparties were able to insist on new
electoral systems that they expected to favor them. This paper assesses the success of these efforts by examining the proportionalityand disproportionalityof
election outcomes in Poland,Hungary,the Baltic States, and Russia, particularly
the differentialeffect of the new electoral laws on the postcommunistand noncommunist parties. We selected these six countries for our analysis because a
scholarly literatureexists that allows us to describe the negotiations that led to
the new electoral systems in these states, and because both their electoral systems and their consequences vary.
One principalquestion guided our research:Did the use of legal thresholdsin
the proportionalrepresentationsystems adopted in East-CentralEurope introduce disproportionalityin outcomes that inadvertentlyfavoredthe revival of the
former communistparties?To answer that question, we sought answersto four
preliminaryquestions:(1) What were the motives of the framersof the electoral
laws? (2) Did they achieve their aims in the first elections that were conducted
under them? (3) Were there unanticipatedconsequences? (4) Were efforts made
to change the original laws to deal with unanticipatedconsequences?
'The "effective threshold"combines the legal threshold requiredwith the effect of constituency
size or "magnitude"(see Lijphart1994, 25-29).
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
153
The Evolution of the Electoral Systems
The transitionsfrom communist one-partyregimes to competitive multiparty
systems in Poland,the Baltic States, Hungary,and Russia beginning in 1989 occurred in three stages. The first stage--clearly identifiable in the then still
existing Soviet Union and in Poland early in 1989, and in Lithuaniaand Latvia
in 1990-brought a modest concession by the communistregime to a united opposition. Without altering the electoral laws, noncommunist candidates were
admittedin a number of constituencies (Poland and Russia) or were allowed to
campaign in all of the constituencies (Latvia and Lithuania).The established
communistgovernmentshoped to introducesome competitionwhile preserving
their dominance. The elections that followed revealed the weakness of support
for the established communist parties. Hungary and Estonia skipped this first
stage because the CommunistParty was from the outset too weak in these two
countriesto insist on retainingthe elements of the old system. The second stage
of the transitionconsisted of the adoptionof laws designed for fully competitive
elections, in Hungaryin October 1989, in Estonia in 1990, in Poland in 1991, in
Lithuaniain 1992, and in Latvia and Russia in 1993. The thirdstage consisted of
modifications of the second-stage laws to attenuate their unexpected consequences. Table 1 contains a summaryof the provisions of the electoral systems
used in these six countriesbetween 1989 and 1997. We turnnow to a discussion
of the motives that influencedthe negotiationsin each of these countriesthrough
the three stages that we have described.
The First Stage: Adopting Laws for TransitionalElections
The first elections permittingnoncommunistpartieson the ballot in Centralor
Eastern Europe occurred in Poland in June 1989 after an agreementreached at
the RoundTablenegotiationsbetween the communistgovernmentand Solidarity.
Solidarity,the dominantopposition force in Poland, sought recognition and legalization. In return,it was preparedto accord the regime continued legitimacy
for relatively slight electoral law concessions. The communist regime assumed
that a majority of the electorate would support it. Since it had the more established candidates, the Communist Party was convinced it would do well in
elections held in single-memberconstituencies,the system all communistcountries had used to conduct their noncompetitiveelections. The forces of the status
quo in 1989-90, like the forces of the status quo in 1919-20, opposed proportional representation.
The agreement reached allowed Solidarity candidates to run in 35% of the
single-memberconstituencies for the Sejm in a system of "compartmentalized
competition"(Olson 1993). The victory of Solidaritycandidatesin all but one of
these constituencies shocked the Polish governmentas well as the communist
governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The communists had
greatly overestimatedtheir public support(Pelczynski and Kowalski 1990).
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Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
The first stage of the transitionmanifested itself in Februaryand March 1990
in two of the Baltic States, then still a part of the USSR, againstthe background
of a growing movement for independence from the USSR. In Lithuania and
Latvia, elections were held in single-memberdistrictswith a provision for competing candidates. It was a slightly modified version of the electoral law first
employed in 1989 in the USSR to foster competition without permittingmultiple parties (Elections in the Baltic States 1990, 63-66). In both countries
noncommunist,nationalistparties were allowed on the ballot. Their ability to attract majority support effectively defeated the Soviet regime. In Latvia the
nationalistPopularFrontwon 70% of the seats (Bungs 1990, 29). In Lithuania,
candidates running under the nationalist umbrella organization,Sajudis,2won
nearlythree quartersof the seats. The success of these parties led to declarations
of independencefrom the Soviet Union.
In the Russian Federation,elections to the Congress of People's Deputies also
took place in March 1990 under the same electoral law. For 1,068 seats there
were 6,705 candidates,and only 121 of them achieved the requisite 50% of the
votes on the first ballot. Voters thereforehad a wide choice among candidates,
but unlike the elections held underthese circumstancesin Latvia and Lithuania,
voters did not have a choice among organized alternatives(White, Rose, and
McAllister 1997).
The Second Stage: Adopting Laws for Fully Competitive Elections
In the second phase of the transitionto competitive elections, the communist
regimes had lost or were rapidlylosing confidenceabouttheirprospectsin singlememberconstituencies,while the opposition consisted of a variety of forces. All
parties includingthe communists(or postcommunists)were now uncertainabout
their electoral support. Negotiations turned on the calculations made by each
party of the advantagesand disadvantagesof proportionalrepresentationagainst
single-member constituency systems, of different district magnitudes, of legal
thresholds,and of electoral formulas.Partiesand leaders confidentof their visibility in the electorateadvocateda system in which at least some seats would be
filled in single-memberconstituencies;those thatbelieved that theirprincipalassets were a party label favored list systems of proportional representation
(Lijphart1992). Most establishedparties favored a thresholdto set obstacles to
new parties.The second-stage negotiationsled to mixed districtand PR systems
in Hungary,Lithuania,and Russia, and systems of proportionalrepresentationin
Estonia, Latvia, and Poland.
2Sajudiswas not a political party but served as an umbrellaorganizationfor a large majorityof
Lithuania'sproindependenceforces. As a result, this figure includes the numberof seats won by candidates that Sajudis supported,including members of the IndependentLithuanianCommunistParty.
This percentagedoes not include the results for the eight runoff seats on April 8, 1990, however.
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
157
HUNGARY.The fully competitive elections that took place in Hungary in March
and April 1990 were influenced significantlyby the startlingresult of the June
1989 elections in Poland.The Round Tablebargainingover the Hungarianelectoral law in the fall of 1989 produced a three-tiered electoral system as the
communistslost confidence in their electoral supportwhile each of the noncommunist parties tried to calculate their advantages among alternative electoral
laws (Benoit 1996). The nation was divided into 176 single-memberconstituencies in which seats were assigned by majorityon the first ballot and pluralityon
a runoff ballot. An additional 120 seats were assigned by proportionalrepresentation to parties that had received at least 4% of the votes in 20 multimember
districtscorrespondingto counties and rangingin size from 4 to 28 members.Finally, 90 seats were assigned by proportional representation in a national
constituency as compensationmandatesto parties that passed the 4% threshold
and that had "unused"votes in the districtsor the regions.
In the ensuing election, five noncommunist parties received nearly threefourths of the votes, while the Socialist party (MSZP)-successor to the old
CommunistParty-received only 11%.The effect of the thresholdrequirement
kept 13 partiesthathad won nearly 16%of the votes amongthemselves out of parliament.However,the overalldeparturefromproportionalityin the assignmentof
seats was principallydue to the ability of the first-placeHungarianDemocraticForum (MDF) to win most of the district runoff elections on the second ballot
(Hibbingand Patterson1992). The seats not assigned to partiesthat failed to pass
the thresholdbecame a bonus for the second- and third-placeparties.
ESTONIA. The complex electoral compromise that emerged in Hungary had its
counterpartin the single-transferablevote system adopted in Estonia in 1990.
The Russian communistregime was too weak to be confidentaboutwinning single-member constituencies,but it also opposed party-list PR, convinced that its
candidateswere more appealingthan their party label. The eventualcompromise
between the communist regime and various social organizationswas a singletransferablevote system that would act essentially as a nonlist PR system
(Ishiyama 1993, 288). Its results weakenedthe communists further.In 1992 Estonia abandoned the single-transferable vote system, and the interparty
compromiseproduceda party-list PR system with a 5% thresholdunder which
the CommunistParty failed to win any seats (Fitzmaurice1993).
POLAND. The second stage of the transitionoccurredin Poland in 1991. All Polish political leaders reacted against the majoritarianelectoral system that had
prevailedin 1989. The communists,having calculatedtheir prospects far too optimistically in 1989, calculatedthem too pessimistically in 1991 and joined the
opposition parties in opting for PR with relatively large constituencies and essentially no legal threshold.The ensuing election produceda highly fragmented
158
Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
parliament-the largestparty won just one-eighth of the vote. All told 29 parties
enteredthe Sejm with 11 partiesgaining only one seat each. Five partieswere requiredto form a majoritycoalition, and three cabinetswere in office between the
1991 election and the dissolution of parliament 19 months later (Webb 1992;
Jasiewicz 1996).
LATVIA.In June 1993 Latvia held its first parliamentaryelections since its declaration of independencein 1990. To stimulatethe creationof a strong multiparty
system, the framersof Latvia's 1993 law selected a party-listform of PR with a
4% threshold.Only eight partiespassed this threshold,the most successful being
LatvianWay,a moderateparty comprisedof reformedcommunists.The Latvian
National IndependenceMovement,which appealedto many of the victims of Soviet occupation, came in a distant second. The postcommunistEquality Party
won just over 5% of the vote (Davies and Ozolins 1994).
LITHUANIA.In Lithuaniaa parliamentarycompromise was achieved in 1992 between parties favoring single-member constituencies and those favoring
proportionalrepresentation.A mixed electoral system was adopted in which 70
seats would be allocated accordingto party-listPR with a 5% thresholdand another 71 seats would be filled by elections in single-member districts with a
provision for runoffs. In the 1992 elections, 17 political parties and electoral
blocs ran, but only 5 passed the 5% threshold. While the nationalist alliance,
Sajudis, had won the February1990 elections, the former CommunistParty,renamed the Democratic Labor Party,made a dramaticreturnto power in 1992.
With 43% of the vote it captured36 of 70 seats allottedby PR, picked up another
37 of the 71 single-memberdistrictseats, and thus attainedan absolute majority
in the 141-seat Seimas (Clark 1995). The resurgence of former communists
showed how difficult it was for those in power to anticipatethe consequences of
changes in the electoral law.
RUSSIA. The first elections to the new Russian State Duma took place in December 1993 after the last Congress of People's Deputies had been dissolved by
PresidentYeltsin and then forcibly disbanded.The electoral law governing the
election was issued by decree and thereforewas not the result of a public compromise. Nevertheless, it fits our classification of an arrangementthat was the
product of the second phase of the transitionto competitive elections. It was a
radical departurefrom the Soviet single-memberconstituency system by adopting proportionalrepresentationto fill half of the seats, an attemptto encourage
the formationof political parties.The party closest to PresidentYeltsin,Russia's
Choice, was confident that it had sufficient influence in the organizationof the
election to assure itself of at least a large plurality of seats. The entire country
served as a single district for the 225 seats allocated by PR. An additional225
seats were allocated throughsingle-memberdistricts.
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
159
Of the 13 parties that appeared on Russia's nationwide PR ballot, only 8
passed the 5% thresholdand gained party-list seats in the Duma. All told, 13%
of the votes went to parties that failed to gain representation,and their share of
list-seats was distributedamong the parties that did clear the 5% hurdle. However, these parties had little success in the single-memberconstituencies where
independentswon five-eighths of the seats (White, Rose, and McAllister 1997;
Wyman et al. 1994). The unexpectedpluralitywon by Zhirinovsky'sright-wing
Liberal Democratic Party in the list-system balloting demonstratedyet again
how difficult it was to design electoral laws to favor particularparties in an environmentof new and evolving political parties.
The electoral laws producedby the second-stage negotiations among the parties were the endogenous results of the transitionalregimes that had been in
office after the collapse of the communist monopoly. In many cases, however,
they producedunintendedconsequences. In Hungary,one of the new partieswon
an unintentionallystrongposition. In Lithuania,a postcommunistparty returned
to power. In Poland,the electoral system producedparty fragmentation.In Russia, PR permitteda new right-wingpartyto achieve prominenceovernightwhile
failing to provide strong supportfor the forces aroundPresidentYeltsin. Subsequent attemptsto modify these electoral systems to cope with their unintended
consequences proved difficult since those elected under these systems now favored maintainingthem.
The ThirdStage: Modifying the Electoral Laws
In Hungarythe 1990 electoral system was used again in May 1994, almost unchanged except that the threshold requirementwas raised from 4% to 5%.
However, in the 1994 Hungarianelection, it was the Socialist Party that reaped
the benefit of the single-memberconstituencies. It won nearly one-thirdof the
votes while the five noncommunistparties togetherwon just over one-half of all
votes cast. This time the threshold requirementkept 12 parties that had won
nearly 14% of the vote among themselves out of parliament.As in 1990, the
seats not assigned to the parties falling below the thresholdbecame a bonus for
the second and thirdmost successful parties, since the most successful party had
already won more than its share in the single-member constituencies and was
thereforenot eligible for many of the "compensation"mandates.Thus, the principal source of disproportionalityin both Hungarianelections was the system of
single-memberdistricts that benefited the leading party, the HungarianDemocratic Forum, in 1990 and the postcommunist Socialist Party in 1994. The
thresholdrequirementhad the effect of excluding a large numberof small parties and transferringtheir proportionalshares to the second- and third-place
parties (Benoit 1996).
Similar to Hungary,Russia's 1995 Duma elections were held under an electoral law that had been barelychanged.However,a strongincreasein supportfor
160
Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
the Communist Party in comparison to 1993, and disarray among President
Yeltsin'ssupporters,led to a fragmentationof party strengththat inadvertently
strengthenedthe parliamentaryrepresentationof the communists.Nearly half of
all votes cast for party lists went to partiesthat failed to clear the 5% hurdle,and
the distributionof the seats they might have won among the four partiesthat did
pass the thresholdled them to be vastly overrepresented.The CommunistParty
won 44% of the list-seats on the basis of winningjust 22% of the votes; the Liberal Democrats,Yabloko, and Our Home Is Russia reaped similar advantages.
The CommunistPartyalso did much better in the single-memberconstituencies
than it had done two years earlier,increasingits share of these seats from 7% in
1993 to 26% in 1995. None of the other nationalparties did well in the districts.
Independentswon one-sixth of the districtseats; the rest were divided among 11
smaller parties (Remingtonand Smith 1996).
Latvia's 1995 elections and Lithuania's1996 elections also were held under
laws that had been only slightly altered.In Latvia,the thresholdrequirementwas
raised from 4% to 5%.As in 1993, only four parties won seats in double figures.
Two of the most successful were relativelynew organizations.The leading party
in 1993, Latvian Way, acquired fewer than half as many seats in 1995 (Davies
and Ozolins 1996, 126-27). The postcommunistcoalition, Labour and Justice,
was unable to pass the new 5% threshold3while the Latvian Socialist Party received 5.6% of the vote and 5 seats (LatvianSaeima 1997).
In contrastto Latvia, Lithuanialowered its thresholdfrom 5% in 1992 to 4%
in 1996. The 1996 Seimas elections distributed141 seats more broadly than in
1992. The postcommunist Democratic Labor Party won only 12 seats, as the
HomelandUnion and Conservativesof Lithuaniaemergedas the obvious winner
with 70 seats; three other parties won seats in double digits (LijphartArchives
1997; LithuanianSeim 1996).
Like the other Baltic States, Estonia also made only slight changes in its electoral law between 1992 and 1995. Approachingthe 1995 elections, the major
governing party,the FatherlandAlliance, lost many of its members to the new
Rightist Party (which won 16 seats) and a new Reform Party (which won 19).
The Coalition Party and Rural Union, an uneasy alliance of protectionistfarm
interests and market-orientedbusiness owners, emerged as the major winner
with 41 seats (Taagepera1995). As in 1992, Estonia'sformer CommunistParty
failed to pass the requiredthreshold.Overall, the minor tinkeringwith electoral
laws in the second-stage negotiations in the Baltic States, Russia, and Hungary
had only a trivial influenceon the subsequentelection outcomes comparedto the
large shifts in votes among parties that occurredin each of these countries.
The most substantialeffort to engineer a third-phasechange in the electoral
law occurred in Poland in 1993. The 1991 electoral law had provided for a
3Labourand Justice consisted of the Latvian Democratic Party, the Latvian Social Democratic
Party,and the Justice Party.It received 4.56% of the nationalvote.
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
161
relativelyunrestrainedsystem of proportionalrepresentationproducinga highly
fragmentedSejm. All but one of the partiesthat had served in the coalition governmentsjoined in an effort to revise the electoral law before the election of
1993 in orderto consolidateparty representationin parliament.The new law decreased average districtmagnitude,introduceda 5% thresholdrequirement(8%
for parties forming alliances), and raised the thresholdfor seats assigned in the
national constituency from 5% to 7%. The d'Hondt calculation favorable to
largerparties was adopted as the formula of proportionalrepresentation.These
changes reducedthe numberof parties representedin the Sejm from 29 to 7 (including one alliance and one exempted national minority party). Remarkably,
over one-thirdof the votes were cast for 27 parties and one coalition that failed
to meet the thresholdrequirement.The seats that might have gone to these parties under a pure system of proportionalrepresentationwere assigned to the
parties that passed the threshold.This enabledthe two postcommunistpartiesthe Democratic Left Alliance and the Polish Peasants Party-to win nearly
two-thirdsof the seats togetherwith only little more than one-thirdof the votes.
Moreover,while the changes were adoptedwith the supportof the strongestparties (with the exception of the centrist Democratic Union), three of these
parties-the LiberalDemocraticCongress (KLD), the Civic Alliance (POC), and
the Union of Real Politics (UPR)-miscalculated their electoral prospects and
failed to pass the newly enacted threshold (Jasiewicz 1996; Tworzecki 1994;
Gibson and Cielecka 1996).
Poland conducted its third fully competitive election in 1997 without altering
the 1993 electoral law. This time, however,the noncommunistparties were the
ones that profitedmost from the disproportionalityof the results. Just five parties (plus the Germanminority)gained parliamentaryrepresentation,but only 10
parties had campaignednationally and only 12% of the voters cast ballots for
partiesthat failed to pass the threshold.Having learnedthe cost of being divided,
the noncommunistgroups campaignedunder a broadly based umbrellaorganization, Solidarity Election Action, which won over 34% of the votes and
received 44% of the seats. Together with the Freedom Union, which had not
joined this alliance, the noncommunistshad a majorityin the Sejm sufficientto
form a coalition government.Meanwhile the two postcommunistparties were
also modestly overrepresentedin parliament,togetherwinning 42% of the seats
on 35% of the votes. The outcome demonstratedthat thresholds can benefit
whateverparty or coalition of parties gains electoral pluralitiesregardlessof its
political color.
The third-stageelections thereforeexhibitedthe stabilizationof electoral systems having strong elements of proportionalrepresentationin contrastwith the
systems of single-member constituencies that had been monopolized by the
CommunistParty before 1989. They are the result of the waning of communist
influence, of bargainsbetween weakened communist parties and newly created
noncommunistparties,and of calculations,generallymiscalculations,of partisan
162
Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
advantage.We turn now to an examinationof the disproportionalitiesproduced
by these systems.
Measuring Disproportionalityand the Effect of Thresholds
The parties that controlled the governments during the second stage in the
transitionof electoral laws had a vested interestin establishingrules that favored
them. They enjoyed significant influence in determining these rules. The assumption everywherewas that some degree of proportionalrepresentationwas
necessary for the developmentof a strong multipartysystem. In addition,many
framersbelieved electoral thresholdswould providethe necessary hurdlefor excluding small, special interest and right-wing extremist parties. They also
regardedthresholdsas obstacles to the survivalof what appearedto be seriously
weakened communistand postcommunistparties.
Proportionalrepresentation,however, opened the parliamentsof these countries to the fluctuationsof public supportin newly democraticcountriesnot yet
having stableparty systems. The economic and social dislocationsresultingfrom
rapidtransitionsto a marketeconomy quickly exposed governingpartiesto public dissatisfaction. The revival of ethnic tensions in some countries fed some
parties on the right of the political spectrum.The superiororganizationof postcommunist parties in comparison to wholly new formations gave them initial
advantageseverywhereexcept in Estonia and Latvia. As we shall see, the principal effect of thresholdswas not to create obstacles to particularparties but to
exaggerateswings in electoral supportin the allocation of parliamentaryseats.
To test the effect of the threshold provisions of the electoral laws, we calibratedthe degree of proportionalitybetween the distributionof votes and seats
for each party,for each election, and separatelyfor the group of noncommunist
and postcommunistparties, respectively.We used a least squaresmeasure (LSq)
calculated as the square root of one-half of the sum of the squareddifferences
between vote and seat shares:
LSq
;
((Vi
_
Si)2
The measureessentially weights the deviationsfrom proportionalityby theirown
values which in turn makes the larger deviations account for more in the summary index than the small deviations (Lijphart 1994, 58-62). Among similar
measures,the Rae index (see Rae 1967) understatesthe disproportionalityof PR
systems and the Loosemore-Hanbyindex overstatesit; LSq splits the difference.4
We were interestedparticularlyin how the electorallaws of Centraland Eastern
Europe affected the disproportionalityof representationof the noncommunist
as opposed to the communist and former communist parties. Our dependent
4Fora detailed discussion of the differentmeasures of proportionality,see Cox (1991), Gallagher
(1991), and Lijphart(1994).
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
163
variablesare thereforethreemeasuresof disproportionalityof the representation:
(1) for the noncommunistparties;(2) for the postcommunistparties;and (3) for
all partiesoverallin each election.5
We measuredthe legal thresholdas the percentageof the nationalvote in each
election that the electoral law requiresa political party to attainto receive seats
in the national parliament.To examine alternativeexplanations of the proportionality of results, we also considered the influence of the average district
magnitude and the effective number of parties, using Laakso and Taagepera's
(1979) self-weighting measure of vote shares.6As a measure of the evolution of
the party system, we included as a variable the number of months that had
elapsed since the first fully competitiveelection in the country.
We considered only those parliamentaryelections7 conducted under proportional representationin the six countries. The cases include all of the seats in
each of the following elections: Estonia 1990, 1992, and 1995; Hungary 1990
and 1994; Latvia 1993 and 1995; and Poland 1991, 1993, and 1997. In addition,
the analysis examines those seats allocated by proportionalrepresentationin
Russia in 1993 and 1995 and in Lithuaniain 1992 and 1996. Together,these
elections provide 14 cases for analysis.
Analysis
To examine the relationshipbetween legal thresholds,districtmagnitudes,the
effective numberof parties, the time since the startof competitive elections, and
measures of disproportionality,we undertook a series of bivariate analyses.
These show that legal thresholdsare stronglyand significantlyrelatedto the level
of disproportionalityof an election as a whole and of the representationof postcommunistparties.As thresholdsincrease, so does disproportionality.However,
the effect of thresholds on the disproportionalityof noncommunist parties is
weaker and does not attain significance (see Table 2).
Theresultssuggestthatthe thresholdshadthe effect of overrepresentingthe postcommunistpartiescomparedto theirnoncommunistcounterparts.A closer look at
the individualcases remindsus thatwhile the postcommunistbloc in each country
usually consists of one or at most two parties, the noncommunistparties are numerous.There is consequentlymore variancein their disproportionality.We turn
below to a multivariateattemptto explain the patternof their disproportionality.
District magnitude also appearsto be related to the disproportionalityof results, although none of the correlationsattain significance. While increases in
magnitude should decrease disproportionality,the bivariaterelationshipacross
countries is positive. A closer look at the cases reminds us that Russia uses a
5Like Lijphart(1994), we exclude from the calculationextremely small parties.
6N, = l / E Vi2.
7In countries with two parliamentarychambers, we examined only the elections to the lower
chamber.We omitted the Estonianelection of 1990 from the multivariateanalysis.
Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
164
TABLE2
Bivariate Relationships between Thresholds, District Magnitude,
Effective Number of Parties and Time, and the Disproportionality
of Election Results (Pearson r)
Disproportionality
Noncommunistdisproportionality
Postcommunistdisproportionality
Disproportionalityfor all parties
Threshold
Threshold
0.31
(.14)
0.41
(.07)
0.49
(.04)
District
Magnitude
Effective Number
of Parties
Months
0.22
(.22)
0.21
(.24)
0.26
(.18)
0.26
(.18)
0.17
(.28)
-0.22
(.23)
-0.07
(.40)
-0.10
(.37)
0.28
(.16)
0.31
(.14)
0.33
(.12)
0.53
(.03)
Note: Numbers in parenthesesindicate significance for a one-tailed test.
single national constituency for the proportionalrepresentationside of the ballot (M = 225), yet both in 1993 and especially in 1995 Russian elections
produced hugely disproportionateresults-the effect of thresholds overwhelming the effect of high districtmagnitude.With Russia excluded, the relationship
between magnitude and disproportionalitybecomes negative for both the noncommunistparties and for all parties. It remainspositive for the postcommunist
parties, probablybecause of the influence of high magnitudesand high disproportionalityin Lithuania.
The bivariate correlations reveal multicollinearity among the independent
variables. Specifically,the length of time since the first freely competitive elections is strongly correlated with threshold levels, reaching significance at the
95% confidence level. This reflects, as we know, the motives of the parties that
shaped these laws. The existence of this multicollinearityobviously violates the
assumptionsunderlyingmultivariateregression analysis. Overall, the initial inspection of the influence of thresholds gives us some confidence in their
influence on disproportionality,reminds us of the advantageof dealing with a
small numberof cases when interpretingcross-nationalfindings, but remindsus
also that having a small number of cases puts serious obstacles in the way of
multivariateanalysis. We will returnto these problemsbelow.
While the bivariateanalysishelps to clarifythe relationshipbetweenthresholds
and disproportionality,it fails to determinewhetherlegal thresholdshave consistently favoredone bloc of partiesoveranother.To determinethis, we examinedthe
effect of disproportionality(see Table 3) on the noncommunistand postcommunist parties in each election between 1990 and 1997. We detectedthreepatterns.
First, in Estonia and Latvia, legal thresholdswere steadily consistent with disproportionalityfavoringthe noncommunistparties. Second, in Lithuaniain 1992
legal thresholds favored the communist/postcommunistparties but in 1996 dis-
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
165
TABLE3
Disproportionalityof Representation of Postcommunist Parties,
Noncommunist Parties, and All Parties (Least Squares)
Cases
Estonia, 1990
Estonia, 1992
Estonia, 1995
Latvia, 1993
Latvia, 1995
Lithuania,1992
Lithuania,1996
Hungary,1990
Hungary,1994
Poland, 1991
Poland, 1993
Poland, 1997
Russia, 1993
Russia, 1995
Postcommunist
Disproportionality
Noncommunist
Disproportionality
Disproportionality
for All Parties
0.27
1.06
1.63
0.87
3.25
7.25
3.37
1.66
15.57
1.45
15.08
6.11
1.29
15.34
0.52
6.07
6.84
3.23
3.97
4.56
14.82
12.94
2.78
3.21
4.34
7.61
3.34
11.55
0.58
6.16
7.27
3.35
5.11
8.56
15.19
13.87
16.49
3.52
16.32
9.76
4.93
20.67
proportionalityfavored the noncommunistparties. Third, in Hungary, Poland,
and Russia, where legal thresholds were applied almost unchanged in both the
second- and third-stageelections, the noncommunistbloc of parties was advantaged first,the communistbloc gained disproportionaladvantagessecond, and in
Polandin 1997 the noncommunistbloc once again was advantaged.In short, the
third patternis one of cycling advantagesfrom the noncommunistto the communist bloc and then back again.
We can summarizethe way disproportionalityaffected the two blocs of parties
over time by inspectingchange in each interelectioninterval.For example, in Estonia between 1990 and 1992, where a legal thresholdwas added to the electoral
system, the resultwas thatthe postcommunistpartiessuffereda disadvantage(see
Table4, in which a negative sign indicatesthat a bloc of parties suffereda disadvantagein the time intervalindicated).By comparison,addinga legal thresholdin
Polandbetween 1991 and 1993 gave an advantageto the postcommunistparties.
The last column of Table4 providesa summarymeasureof the relativeadvantage
of the postcommunistparties. By subtractingthe noncommunistfrom the postcommunist advantage, it shows the growing advantage of the postcommunist
parties in Hungarybetween 1990 and 1994, in Poland between 1991 and 1993,
and in Russiabetween 1993 and 1995. Both in Polandbetween 1991 and 1993 and
in Russia between 1993 and 1995 the change in disproportionalitybetween the
elections reveals instances where both blocs of parties were overrepresented.In
these cases the losers were the large numbers of small parties that failed to
achieve the threshold. And the table shows the reversal of trends in Poland,
where disproportionality favored first the noncommunist parties, then the
Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
166
postcommunistparties, and finally the noncommunistparties once more, apparently bringingadvantageto whateverbloc was gaining electoral support.
We returnnow to the problem of developing a multivariatemodel of the influence of thresholds on disproportionality.We wanted to assess the relative
effect of thresholds, number of parties, district magnitude, and time since the
first competitive elections on the disproportionalityof election results overall
and of the results for the postcommunistand noncommunistparties,respectively.
However,since we had found that time since the first election was highly correlated with the existence of legal thresholds, we droppedthis variable from the
equation. To determine whether legal thresholds inadvertentlyassisted the revival of the postcommunistparties, we formulatedthree equations,one for each
of three measures of the dependentvariable.The first equationestimates the effect of electoral system factors on the disproportionalityof the representationof
the postcommunistparties; the second estimates their effect on the representation of the noncommunist parties; and the third measures their effect on the
representationof all parties. The electoral system factors are, in additionto the
legal threshold,the average district magnitudeand the effective numberof parties in each election. The multivariateregressionequationsare presentedbelow:
Postcommunist= 3.71 + 1.13 Threshold + 0.01 District Magnitude
(1)
Disproportionality
(6.70)
(.96)
(0.02)
+ -0.53 Effective Number of Parties + e
(0.74)
R2 = .22
N= 13
SEE = 5.84
Noncommunist = 0.68 + .71 Threshold + 0.01 District Magnitude
(2)
Disproportionality
(5.10)
(0.73)
(0.02)
+ 0.34 Effective Number of Parties + e
(0.56)
N= 13
R2=.15
SEE=4.44
TABLE4
Changes in Disproportionalityover Time (Least Squares)
Cases OverTime
Estonia, 1990-92
Estonia, 1992-95
Latvia, 1993-95
Lithuania,1992-96
Hungary,1990-94
Poland, 1991-93
Poland, 1993-97
Russia, 1993-95
Change in
Postcommunist
Disproportionality
Change in
Noncommunist
Disproportionality
PostcommunistMinus
Noncommunist
Disproportionality
-0.79
-0.57
-2.38
-3.88
13.91
13.63
-8.97
14.05
5.55
0.77
0.74
10.26
-10.16
1.13
3.27
8.21
-6.34
-1.34
-1.64
-14.14
24.07
12.5
-12.24
5.84
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
167
TABLE5
Influence of Number of Parties, District Magnitude, and Thresholds on
Disproportionality (Beta Weights and Significance Levels)
Independent
Variables
Postcommunist
Disproportionality
Effective numberof parties
District magnitude
Threshold
R2
AdjustedRP2
-0.21
(.24)
0.15
(.32)
0.35
(.13)
Noncommunist
Disproportionality
0.18
(.28)
0.11
(.36)
0.30
(.18)
0.22
-0.02
0.15
-0.11
Disproportionality
for All Parties
-0.05
(.43)
0.15
(.30)
0.45
(.07)
0.27
0.05
Note: Numbers in parenthesesindicate significance for a one-tailed test.
Disproportionality= 3.52 + 1.54*Threshold+ 0.01 District Magnitude
for All Parties
(6.84)
(0.98)
(0.02)
(3)
+ -.14 Effective Number of Parties + e
(0.76)
N= 13
R2=.27
SEE= 5.96
where the coefficients are not standardized,e is the errorterm, the figures in
parenthesesare t-ratios,an asteriskindicates significanceat the .10 level (onetail), R2 is the coefficient of multiple determination,N is the sample size, and
SEE is the standarderrorof estimate for the dependentvariables.
The results of the multivariateanalysis suggest that thresholdsdo substantially
influence the disproportionalityof an election as a whole. However,while Table
5 confirms what we discovered in the bivariateanalysis-that thresholdshave a
greaterinfluence on the disproportionalityof the postcommunistparties than on
the disproportionalityof the noncommunists-these relationshipsdo not attain
significance. Furthermore,the model as a whole does not explain much of the
variance. Two of the adjustedR2s are actually negative, the result of the small
numberof cases and the relativelylarge numberof variables.8
While our analyses confirmed that the use of thresholds in the proportional
representationsystems of Centraland EasternEuropehas contributedto the disproportionalityof representation,we had too few cases to test the influence of
other factors that the literatureof electoral systems compels us to consider:the
8AdjustedR2 is calculatedas 1 -
(1-
R2) n
-k11 where n is the numberof cases and k is
the numberof variables.Withjust 13 cases a multiple regressionanalysis that exceeds two variables
and that explains only .22 of the variancewill have a negative adjustedR2.
168
Bryon Moraskiand GerhardLoewenberg
effective numberof parties, districtmagnitude,assembly size, and the electoral
formula. What emerges from our examinationof the experience of Centraland
Eastern Europe is that the threshold provisions of electoral systems affect disproportionalitybut that they are not singularlyinfluential.In just eight years of
experiencewith the effect of thresholdsin Centraland EasternEuropeour analysis suggests that they do not favor noncommunist or postcommunist parties
specifically, but ratherthat they favor the set of parties that increase their vote
share substantiallyfrom one election to another.
Discussion
Legal thresholdswere adopted in Centraland EasternEurope,principallyon
the initiative of the parties pushing the transitionto competitive politics. Their
purpose was to prevent party fragmentationand to enhance the advantages
these parties had from being first on the scene. In the eight years of experience
with competitive politics, the effect of thresholds has varied over time. While
they appearto have contributedto the overrepresentationof the noncommunist
parties in the early stages of the transition,they equally contributedto the overrepresentationof the postcommunistparties when they regained public support
a few years later.Where the communist and postcommunistparties returnedto
government,they retainedlegal thresholds, convinced that these had worked to
their advantage.Where the noncommunistswere in office, they too maintained
these provisions. The parties in power have consistently misjudged both their
electoral prospects and the impact of legal thresholds on their share of parliamentary seats.
Centraland East Europeanelectorateshave shown a strongpropensityto vote
against the party in power, whateverits political color. With as yet weak attachments to political parties, and with weak party organizations,electorates have
provento be volatile. Except in Estoniaand Latvia, legal thresholdshave worked
against whateverbloc of parties was in power.Their general effect has been to
amplify the swings of a widely swinging electoral pendulum, exaggeratingthe
changes in the share of the seats parties received in parliamentsas a result of
shifts in their electoral support.
In establisheddemocracies, shifts in the allocation of parliamentaryseats under proportionalrepresentationreflect shifts in the distributionof votes quite
accuratelybecause interelectionshifts in voter preferencesare small. PR has the
effect of causing the allocation of parliamentaryseats to be stable, indeed insensitive to small swings in voter preferences. Only systems of single-member
constituencies cause small shifts in voter preferences to produce large, indeed
exaggeratedshifts in the allocation of parliamentaryseats.
In Centraland Eastern Europe, the unanticipatedeffect of the use of thresholds in systems of proportionalrepresentationhas been to make these systems
highly sensitive to the swings of electoral opinion. In this respect they have
The Effect of Legal Thresholds
169
behavedlike pluralitysystems. In the shorttime span since the transitionto competitive politics, legal thresholds initially favored the newly established
noncommunistparties, as they were intended.Relatively quickly thereafter,they
facilitatedthe returnof the postcommunistparties to power.Recently,in Poland,
they facilitated the returnof a noncommunistcoalition to power.This most recent episode in electoral engineering, while reflecting a greater sophistication
than episodes earlierthis century in WesternEurope, is nevertheless a reminder
that electoral engineering is unlikely to produce the anticipatedeffects. At best,
the authorsof electoral systems can affect the next election, but even this is difficult if electoratesand party systems are evolving rapidlyand simultaneously.
Manuscriptsubmitted30 September1997
Final manuscriptreceived 29 April 1998
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Bryon Moraski is a Ph.D. candidatein political science, University of Iowa,
Iowa City, IA, 52242.
GerhardLoewenberg is professor of political science, University of Iowa,
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