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The Effective Number of Parties: A New Approach

Grigorii V. Golosov
Party Politics 2010 16: 171 originally published online 10 September 2009
DOI: 10.1177/1354068809339538

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PA RT Y P O L I T I C S V O L 1 6 . N o . 2 pp. 171–192

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THE EFFECTIVE NUMBER OF PARTIES

A New Approach

Grigorii V. Golosov

ABSTRACT

The Laakso–Taagepera index of the effective number of parties, while

satisfying most of the requirements of this aggregate quantity, tends to
produce unrealistically high scores for party constellations in which the
shares of the largest parties exceed 50 percent, and can produce mis-
leading results in several other situations. After reviewing the structural
properties of the Laakso–Taagepera index and supplements or alterna-
tives to it proposed in the literature, this article proposes a new index that
eliminates several problems inherent in the mathematical form of indices
using the Herfindahl–Hirschman measure of concentration as computa-
tional core. The proposed index is tested on a set of party constellations
from recent elections in new democracies and non-democratic electoral
regimes. The results confirm that the new index works better than earlier
proposed alternatives in measuring the effective number of components
in highly fragmented and highly concentrated party systems.

KEY WORDS
number of parties
party system fragmentation

Introduction

The ‘effective’ number of parties is a very simple general concept that entails
a complex methodological problem. Conceptually, the effective number of
parties is simply the number of ‘viable’ or ‘important’ or (to put it most
radically) ‘real’ political parties in a party system that includes parties of
unequal size. In comparative political party research, we need to distinguish
between a four-party constellation with party vote-shares (0.52, 0.45, 0.02,
0.01), which is ‘effectively’ a two-party system, and a four-party constella-
tion with party vote-shares (0.40, 0.25, 0.20, 0.15), which is ‘effectively’ a
case of multipartism. There should be a way to discount very small parties.
The methodological problem is that there are none readily available. Of
course, it is possible to set an arbitrary threshold of exclusion, discounting
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 PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 6 ( 2 )

all parties that fail to reach 1 or 3 or 5 percent of the vote.1 Yet it is clear
that a 5 percent party might be unimportant if other parties enjoy massive
support, and it might be quite important if other parties are comparably
weak; for instance, if the largest party’s vote-share is 15 percent. Then we
need to quantify the idea of the ‘effective’ number of parties in a systematic
way that allows for taking into account the relative sizes of parties, which
is impossible without using a measure expressed as a mathematical formula.
One such measure, the Laakso–Taagepera effective number of parties
(Laakso and Taagepera, 1979), is most widely used in comparative research
on political parties and party systems (Amorim Neto and Cox, 1997; Cox,
1997; Lijphart, 1984, 1994; Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1994). In this
analysis, I attempt to demonstrate that while the Laakso–Taagepera index
(NLT) is indeed a very good measure, a better measure still is possible. The
purpose of this article is to propose such a measure. In the first section of
the article, I briefly overview the relationship between NLT and the index
that serves as its computational core, the Herfindahl–Hirschman index of
industrial concentration, thus placing NLT within a wider context of aggre-
gate quantities used in social science research. In the second section, I
analyse the properties of NLT. Then I discuss the critiques of NLT and the
proposed alternative or supplementary measures, which will help identify
major problems that have to be solved by an alternative index. In the fourth
section, I propose a new measure and discuss its properties in relation to
those of NLT. In the final section, I illustrate these properties on a limited
set of real-life party constellations.

Computational Core of the Laakso–Taagepera Effective

Number of Parties

The Herfindahl–Hirschman index of industrial concentration (HH), devel-

oped in the 1940s, is widely used in applied economics, and it is currently
employed as a standard measure of industrial/market concentration in the
US economic statistics (Warren-Boulton, 1990; see also Taagepera and
Grofman, 1981). One of the substantial properties of HH is that it is related
to the fundamental measures of dispersion, such as the mean and the
standard deviation:
1
HH = –– + nV (1),
n
where n is the number of components (and therefore 1/n is the mean) and
V is variance, defined as:
x

∑ (s − (1/ n))
i
2
(2).
V= σ = 2 1
n

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Here, si is the size of the i-th component expressed as its decimal (absolute)
share of the total, and σ stands for the standard deviation. The notation
above and below the summation sign demonstrates that it involves all
components from the largest (S1) to the smallest (Sx).
Thus formula (1) can be rewritten as follows:
x
1
HH = –– +
n Σ1 (si – (1/n))2 (3).

x x
Since, under the given conditions, Σ1 si = 1 and Σ1 1 = n, it can be further
mathematically reduced:
x x
⎛ 2si 1 ⎞ 1 x 2 2 n x
HH = –1
n– + Σ (si – (1/n))2 = –1
– + Σ ⎜si2 – –––
n n + ––2⎟ = –n– + Σ si – –n– + ––2 = Σ si2.2
1 1 ⎝ n⎠ 1 n 1

In the end, we get the formula that is much simpler than formula (1) and
that is standard for HH:
x
HH = Σ1 si
2 (4).

A very useful property of HH, as well as of all indices based on it, is

exactly that it allows for excluding from our calculus the actual number of
components. In cross-national research using aggregate election results,
with minor parties often lumped together under the heading ‘others’, this
widens the scope of empirical inquiry to countries with underdeveloped
electoral statistics reporting. HH is also a probability measure, with an
important implication for electoral studies. This was noticed by Rae (1967:
55–6), who, when introducing his index of party system fractionalization
(F = 1 – HH), emphasized that it represented ‘the frequency with which pairs
of voters would disagree [in their choice of parties] if an entire electorate
interacted randomly’. Obviously, HH is the frequency with which they
would agree to vote for the same party. The third advantage shared by HH
and F is that the values of both indices run from 0 to 1, which is often
considered as a desirable property for indices used in statistical analysis.
All these useful properties notwithstanding, neither HH nor F were widely
accepted in political science, and they were decisively squeezed out of circu-
lation after Laakso and Taagepera (1979) proposed their effective number
of parties, defined as 1/HH:
1
NLT = ––––
x (5).3
Σ si2 1

The crucial parameter on which NLT outperforms both HH and F is that

it has more intuitive content. Unlike earlier indices, NLT can be interpreted
as the number of equal-sized parties to which the given constellation of
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 PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 6 ( 2 )

unequal-sized parties is equivalent. As put by Taagepera (2002: 5): ‘N[LT] =

3.2 evokes the image of approximately three parties, while the corresponding
HH = 0.31 or F = 0.69 evoke no such images. . . . The latter are abstract
indices, while N[LT] can be visualized.’4 Indeed, in most cases the visualiza-
tions provided by NLT do not fail to meet our intuitive expectations. Yet this
crucial advantage of NLT comes with a couple of strings attached. Its relation
to the generally accepted measures of dispersion is so unclear that, until
recently (Feld and Grofman, 2007), few – if any – political scientists were
even aware of this relation; and, as such, NLT is not a probability measure.
Overall, the conceptual credentials of HH are better in the sense that it is
more directly related to the fundamental concepts of quantitative social
science research. The question is whether it is really important for us to
measure the effective number of parties with an index that is related to the
mean and the standard deviation, and that also represents probabilities of
voting for different parties. Together with those political scientists who seem
unanimously to reject HH in favour of NLT, I am inclined to believe that it
is not. Thus the major criterion against which different measures of the
effective number of parties is evaluated in my analysis below is intuitive
content. This criterion, simplistic as it is, seems to be in correspondence with
the actual conceptual loading of the effective number of parties.

Properties of the Laakso–Taagepera Effective Number of Parties

By its algebraic construction, NLT is a weighting mechanism: it weights each

of the components by its own size, attributing larger weights to larger com-
ponents, which allows for nearly discounting the smallest ones. The major
properties of the index that make it instrumental as a measure of the effec-
tive number of parties are thus: first, and most importantly, if all components
in the given party constellation are equal, then the value of NLT equals the
actual number of components; second, if the components are not equal, the
values of NLT are smaller than the actual number of components; and, third,
if any of the components in the given party constellation becomes smaller,
so that the actual number of components goes up, the value of NLT also goes
up. For instance, the value of NLT for a four-party constellation (0.52, 0.45,
0.02, 0.01), 2.11, is greater than for a three-party constellation (0.52, 0.46,
0.02), 2.08.
These three properties are necessary for any index that is intended to
measure the effective number of parties. Therefore they can be viewed as
basic requirements that have to be fulfilled by such indices. Below, for the
sake of brevity, I occasionally refer to them as the first, second and third basic
requirements.5
Other properties of NLT are index-specific and stem from its mathematical
form. In order to estimate these properties, it is useful to follow Dunleavy
and Boucek (2003) by concentrating on the upper and lower limit values of
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the index (in other words, its theoretical maximums and minimums) at any
given size of the largest component, s1. The upper limit values of the index
are achieved when, in addition to s1 of a specified size, the given party
constellation includes an infinite number of infinitely small components. For
such constellations:
1
NLT = ––2 (6).
s1
The lower limit values of the index are achieved for party constellations
in which all components are equal to s1, while the smallest component is
the remainder. If s1 > 0.50, these are necessarily two-component constella-
tions where the second component is the remainder. Equal-component
constellations involve zero-size remainders. The general formula for the
lower limit values of NLT is:
1
NLT = ––––––––––––––––– (7),
Zs1(s1 – 2 + Zs1) + 1
where Z is the integer quotient of 1 and s1. It can easily be established that
if 1/s1 = Z, formula (7) is equivalent simply to 1/s1. This is not only the NLT
formula for all equal-component constellations, but also the only conceiv-
able formula satisfying the first basic requirement for such constellations.
A useful property of NLT is that it can be calculated not only on the basis
of the decimal shares of components, as in all formulae above, but also on
the basis of the raw numbers of votes or seats received by each of the parties.
In order to achieve that, we have to use a different formula:

2
⎡ x ⎤
⎢ ∑ si ⎥ (8),
NLT = ⎣ 1x ⎦
∑ si2 1
where si is the number of votes or the number of seats received by the i-th
party. This formula yields values equivalent to those yielded by formula (5),
yet it avoids minor deviations stemming from rounding. Of course, for a
user of contemporary software who can afford not to round the absolute
shares of seats or votes, no discrepancies between the values yielded by the
two formulae occur.
It is also noticeable that when introducing NLT, Laakso and Taagepera
(1979) described it as part of a wider family of indices whose generic
formula is:

1/(1 – a)
⎡x ⎤ (9).
Na = ⎢∑ sia⎥
⎣1 ⎦

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This generic formula does indeed produce a number of reasonable indices

that satisfy all three basic requirements identified above. If a > 2, the values
of such indices are always smaller than the values of NLT, which, as we will
see, might be desirable in certain situations. In fact, it is possible to argue that
the index based on a = 3 generally outperforms NLT at large values of s1. Yet
if the values of s1 are small, the levels of fragmentation registered by NLT tend
to be more intuitively plausible. Perhaps for this reason, and also because they
are more difficult to compute, indices based on a > 2 were never actually used
in political science, even by their creators. In fact, their attention was largely
consumed by two theoretically interesting indices that belong to this family,
one based on a = 0 (under this assumption, the effective number of parties is
simply the actual number of parties, which does not satisfy the second basic
requirement and makes the formula pointless), and the other based on a =
infinity. In practice, the latter formula can be reduced to 1/s1. Some impli-
cations of this formula for unequal-sized party constellations are discussed
below. For the moment, it is sufficient to say that if viewed as a general
formula for computing the effective number of parties, this formula does not
satisfy the third basic requirement and has to be rejected only for this reason.

Alternatives and Supplements to the Laakso–Taagepera

Effective Number of Parties

Measures of the effective number of parties are single-number indices, and

it is natural for them to yield equal values for different party constellations.
This problem, if it is a problem at all, has no solution. What is important
for the measures of the effective number of parties is to produce values that
are close to our intuitive expectations, and delivering this is within the reach
of index builders. From this perspective, the major discrepancy between the
values of NLT and our intuitive expectations regarding the effective number
of parties was noticed already by the first scholar, Molinar, who devoted his
talent to the critique of NLT and was persistent enough to publish the
product in a major political science journal in 1991. This discrepancy,
indeed, is well known to everybody who has ever calculated NLT for party
constellations with s1 > 0.5. Already at s1 = 0.8, the lower limit value of NLT
is 1.47; at s1 = 0.67, it is 1.79. Most people would not agree to consider a
situation in which the largest party takes two-thirds of the vote as a nearly
two-party constellation, but this is what NLT suggests. Moreover, the upper
value of NLT at s1 = 0.67 is 2.25. Here, a two-party system is registered for
a constellation that includes one party that receives two-thirds of the vote,
and an infinite number of extremely small parties. In such situations, NLT
obviously fails on intuitive content. Yet the potential for its failure is
embedded in its mathematical form, both in its formula for the upper values,
1/s12, and in its formula for the lower limit values, which for all constella-
tions with n = 2 and s1 > 0.5 can be reduced to:
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1
NLT = ––––––––––– (10).
2(s12 – s1) + 1

Unfortunately, the alternative formula suggested by Molinar (1991:

1384–5) did not solve the problem. A very detailed and well-substantiated
critique of the Molinar index has been presented by Dunleavy and Boucek
(2003: 308–13), and I do not intend to repeat it. Suffice it to say, the index
violates the third basic requirement at approximately s1 > 0.35. It is not
surprising, then, that it registers very low levels of party system fragmenta-
tion at s1 > 0.5, thus apparently solving the major problem of NLT. Yet the
price attached to this solution is too high: most of us will not recognize the
party constellation (0.6, 0.4) as more fragmented than (0.6, 0.2, 0.2).
In practice, the Molinar index was very rarely used in political science
research. But the effort of Molinar probably contributed to a wider recog-
nition of the major problem of NLT. Among those who proposed remedies,
a prominent role was consistently played by one of the creators of NLT,
Taagepera (1999, 2005). In his 1999 article, Taagepera recommended using
1/s1 as a supplement to NLT, especially in those cases when it conceals the
dominance of the largest party (the example of India in 1952–84 is cited).
Taagepera (1999: 503) was careful enough to entirely dismiss the idea that
1/s1 could be used as a component for creating a new composite index
incorporating also NLT, rather than as a mere supplement to it: ‘This is
about as wishful as hoping to combine the mean and the standard devia-
tion of a distribution into a single measure.’ In his 2005 article, Taagepera,
recognizing the problem of significant collinearity between 1/s1 and NLT,
proposes using as a supplement to it a different and more complex measure
of balance, defined as –log s1/log n, where n is the number of components.
There have also been several attempts to develop indices that meet special-
ized research needs, such as an index that replaces proportions of seats in
the calculus for NLT with the Banzhaf voting power measures (Dumont and
Caulier, 2003), which is useful for the study of coalition politics, and an
index that counts as ‘viable’ those candidates who cross a specified quota
(Niemi and Hsieh, 2002), which is useful for the study of certain aspects of
district elections. Yet it is clear that such indices cannot be used for general
purposes. For instance, the Dumont and Caulier index simply does not
make any distinctions among party constellations with s1 > 0.5, but for
many purposes other than in the narrow field of coalition politics research,
we would prefer such distinctions to be made. In other words, these indices
do not satisfy the basic requirements of the general measures of the effec-
tive number of parties. Yet, noticeably, all the proposed supplements and
special-need alternatives to NLT deal primarily with the problem identified
above as its major deficiency, the inability adequately to represent cases of
one-party dominance.
So far, the most viable general alternative to NLT has been proposed by
Dunleavy and Boucek (2003). Before turning to the mathematical form and
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properties of this measure, it is important to note that in the process of

developing it, Dunleavy and Boucek (2003: 306) have identified a second
serious problem with NLT that previously escaped scholarly attention. They
dub this problem the ‘kink’ effect. The nature of the problem can be illus-
trated thus. Consider the lower limit values of NLT as s1 decreases from 0.51
(with s2 = 0.49) to 0.49 (with s2 = 0.49 and s3 = 0.02). At s1 = 0.51, the
value of NLT is 1.9992; at s1 = 0.49, it is 2.0807. Thus, given that at s1 =
0.50, the effective number of parties is exactly 2, the NLT value falls by more
than a hundred times as much when s1 moves from 49 to 50 percent, as it
does if s1 moves from 50 to 51 percent. Of course, the emergence of the
third component has to be registered by a measure of the effective number
of parties, and some discrepancy between the dynamics of NLT in two- and
three-component constellations is therefore justifiable. Yet I tend to agree
that NLT makes this discrepancy much more salient than is desirable. The
‘kink’ effect is visible, even though less well articulated, around all points
where NLT = 1/s1, and, as Dunleavy and Boucek (2003: 306) correctly note,
‘misleading results could be obtained especially if such data are correlated
or regressed with other variables in a quantitative analysis’.
The index proposed by Dunleavy and Boucek, who dismiss the above-cited
prohibitory statement of Taagepera by boldly rejoining that ‘two inherently
limited numbers are not much use to anyone, and if they can be combined
more productively then they should be’ (2003: 302) is simply the average
of NLT and 1/s1:
⎛ 1 1⎞ 1
NB = ⎜ x + ⎟ × (11).
⎜ s1 ⎟ 2
⎜ ∑ si
2
⎟
⎝ 1 ⎠
Like NLT, NB completely satisfies all three basic requirements of the
measures of the effective number of parties. Its values are equivalent to those
of NLT for equal-component constellations. For all other constellations, they
are smaller. The upper limit values of NB are defined as follows:
1 + s1
NB = ––––– (12),
2s12
which is by (1 – s1)/2s12 smaller than 1/s12.
The lower limit values of NB at s1 > 0.5 are defined by a more complex
formula:
2s1 + (1 / s1) – 1
NB = ––––––––––––– (13).
4(s12 – s1) + 2
For such constellations, the difference between the values of NLT and NB is:
3 – 2s1 – (1 / s1)
NLT – NB = ––––––––––––– .
4(s12 – s1) + 2

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These algebraic complexities notwithstanding, in the end we receive the

values of NB that, at the low levels of fragmentation, are much more intu-
itively plausible than those of NLT. Returning to the examples cited above,
at s1 = 0.8, the lower limit value of NB is 1.36, which is still too large but
obviously better than 1.47, and at s1 = 0.67, it is 1.64, better than 1.79
again. The upper limit value of NB at s1 = 0.67 is 1.875 instead of 2.25
yielded by NLT. The index proposed by Dunleavy and Boucek also fares very
well on the ‘kink’ effect. In the above-cited example with constellations
(0.51, 0.49) and (0.49, 0.49, 0.02), the ‘kink’ remains if we use NB instead
of NLT, but in a radically less articulated form: the discrepancy plummets
from more than a hundred times to slightly more than three times.
When introducing their index, Dunleavy and Boucek (2003: 307) also
justify it by claiming that NLT ‘accords more influence to fragmentation of
the opposition parties than any other member of its family’, which is not
the case with NB, but they do not explain why this property of NLT is a defi-
ciency. In my view, there is no plausible way to demonstrate that NLT fares
worse than NB at registering very high levels of party system fragmentation.
Consider, for instance, an extremely fragmented constellation with s1 = 0.2
and 80 components at 0.01 each. The values of NB and NLT for this constel-
lation are very different, 12.91 and 20.83, respectively, but few people’s
intuition would unambiguously attribute greater plausibility to one of these
values. As a matter of fact, the values of NB, while being systematically
smaller than those of NLT, are not necessarily smaller than those of other
indices in the Laakso–Taagepera ‘family’. For constellation (0.8, 0.2), the
index based on a = 3 yields a slightly greater value, 1.39 against NB = 1.36.
Yet for a very fragmented 81-component constellation described above, the
index based on a = 3 yields 11.12, which is smaller than the corresponding
value of NB. In general, it would be fair to say that the index based on a =
3 is almost equivalent to NB in terms of intuitive content. However, NB
presents a better solution of the ‘kink’ effect problem, and some people will
find it easier to compute (although I do not).
In my view, NB does indeed address the major problems posed by NLT,
but the proposed solution is insufficient. As we have observed, in certain
situations, our intuition fails on visualizing the effective number of parties.
It happens not only if party system fragmentation is very high. Consider,
for instance, constellation (0.55, 0.40, and 5 parties at 0.01 each). From the
perspective of coalition-building, there is only one important party here. No
coalitions are necessary. But we are not prepared to discount the second
party as insignificant. This is registered by both NLT (2.16) and NB (1.99),
but it is not apparent what value is better. Such situations, of course, render
the intuitive content criterion irrelevant.

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The New Index: Build-up and Properties

In other situations, however, the intuitive content criterion is straightfor-

wardly applicable. Consider constellation (0.8, 0.2). How many ‘effective’
parties are there? Should we register 1.47 parties (NLT) or 1.36 parties (NB)?
Both numbers are abstract. In fact, our intuition tells a different story: in this
constellation, we have a large party, and there are all reasons for counting
it as one (this common-sense argument was made by Molinar [1991: 1385]),
and a party that is one-fourth the size of the large party. Then the effective
number of parties should be 1.25. I find such a solution not only intuitively
appealing but also logically unavoidable, especially if we think of the effec-
tive number of parties in terms of the equivalent number of equal-sized com-
ponents. The formula that yields this value, 1/s1, is already at our disposal.
The task is to build an algebraic expression reducible to this formula both
when applied to equal-component constellations, for which it will be equiv-
alent to n, and when applied to two-component constellations with s1 > 0.5,
for which it will be equivalent to 1 + (s2/s1).6
The above-stated goal cannot be achieved if we continue to use HH as the
computational core of the effective number of parties, which is the case with
the Laakso–Taagepera, Dunleavy–Boucek and Molinar indices. Equally, it
cannot be achieved if we remain within the ‘family’ of indices introduced by
Laakso and Taagepera. It is necessary to use a different index-construction
principle. Without going into detail, I will state that many such principles,
or ‘families’ of indices, are available. Of these, I select the following:
x
bsi
Nb = ∑ (14),
1 bsi + d

where b is an arbitrarily set multiplier and d is a measure of how the size

of the i-th component deviates from the size of the first component. If no
deviations occur, then d = 0 for all components, and the overall value of the
index is equivalent to their actual quantity. This satisfies the first basic
requirement of the measures of the effective number of parties. The simplest
way of constructing such an index, with b = 1 and d = s1 – si, is not produc-
tive because it violates the third basic requirement. More complex measures
are possible in abundance. Just for illustrative purposes, I report two indices
belonging to this ‘family’ that satisfy all basic requirements:
x
si
N=∑ (15), and
1 1
si + ( s1 − si ) 2
2

x (si /2)
N= ∑ (16).
1 (si /2) + log(s1 + 1) – log(si + 1)

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These two indices, while outperforming NLT on intuitive content, at least

at low levels of fragmentation, do not achieve the major goal of my index-
building enterprise. For this goal to be achieved, we need such an expression
for d that would, on the one hand, yield lower limit values equivalent to (s1
– s2) at s1 > 0.5, and, on the other hand, allow for satisfying the third basic
requirement. Uniquely, such an expression is:

d = s12 – si2.

Then, with b = 1, we can write the following formula for the new index:
x
si
Np = ∑ (17).
1 si + s12 − si2

Obviously, for all equal-component constellations, this formula yields NP =

n = 1/s1.
The general formula for the lower limit values of the index is rather
complex:
1− Z s1
Np = Z + (18),
s1 ( s1 + Z − Z 2 s1)

where Z is the integer quotient of 1 and s1. Yet it is clear that if Z = 1 the
formula reduces simply to 1 + (1 – s1)/s1 = 1/s1, which is what I sought to
receive.
The formula for the upper limit values of NP is:
s12 + 1 – s1
Np = –––––––– (19).
s12

These values are therefore always by (1 – s1)/s1 smaller than those of NLT.
The lower limit values of the new index, however, are not necessarily smaller
or equivalent. They exceed the values of NLT at 0.303 < s1 < 0.33, then at
0.224 < s1 < 0.25, then at 0.179 < s1 < 0.2, and so on, the pattern reiterating
itself at every equal-component constellation. Starting with s1 < 1/18, the
lower limit values of NP are always equal to those of NLT or greater than
them, which, of course, does not matter much for any practical research
purposes. However, it is practically useful to note that at very high levels of
fragmentation the distance between NP and NLT is not as well articulated
as between NB and NLT. For instance, the values of NLT, NB and NP for the
extremely fragmented constellation with s1 = 0.2 and 80 components at 0.01
each are 20.83, 12.91 and 17.03, respectively. In general, unlike with NB,
the mathematical form of the new index does not preclude it from assuming
values closely approximating those of the Laakso–Taagepera index or even
exceeding them, unless at the upper limit. But this happens only if s1 is
relatively small. For illustrative purposes, Table 1 reports the values of the
three indices most extensively discussed above, NLT, NB and NP, for eight
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 PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 6 ( 2 )

Table 1. Values of NLT, NB and NP for eight hypothetical vote or seat

constellations
Largest component, Other components,
Constellation fractional share fractional shares NLT NB NP
A 0.75 0.25 1.60 1.47 1.33
B 0.75 0.1, 15 at 0.01 1.74 1.54 1.42
C 0.55 0.45 1.98 1.90 1.82
D 0.55 3 at 0.1, 15 at 0.01 2.99 2.41 2.24
E 0.35 0.35, 0.3 2.99 2.92 2.90
F 0.35 5 at 0.1, 15 at 0.01 5.75 4.30 4.49
G 0.15 5 at 0.15, 0.1 6.90 6.78 6.89
H 0.15 7 at 0.1, 15 at 0.01 10.64 8.65 11.85

hypothetical vote or seat constellations. Four of these constellations repre-

sent minimum levels of fragmentation at any given s1 (A, C, E and G). Four
other constellations, while not reaching the maximum levels of fragmenta-
tion at any given s1, are nevertheless very fragmented, because each of them
sets s2 at 0.1 and includes 15 components at 0.01 (B, D, F and H).
As clearly follows from the table, the major advantage of the new index
over the previously proposed ones is that it yields intuitively plausible values
for constellations with s1 > 0.5.7 An additional advantage is that it fares
better than both NLT and NB in eliminating the ‘kink’ effect. Returning to
our illustrative constellations (0.51, 0.49) and (0.49, 0.49, 0.02), we find
the NP values of 1.96 and 2.08, respectively, with the ratio of (2.08–2) to
(2–1.96) as small as 2.00.
While formula (17) is useful for explicating the mathematical properties
of the new index, for the practical reasons of convenience it can be reduced
to the following entirely equivalent formula:
x
1
Np = ∑ (20).
1 1 + (s12/si) − si

Note that there is a difference between the computational algorithms of

NLT and NP. To compute the former, we start with applying the weight to
each of the component sizes by squaring it, then add up all the raised
numbers, and finally divide 1 by the sum. To compute the latter, we start
with applying the weight 1/(1+ (s12/si ) – si ), where s1 is employed as a constant,
to each of the variable si sizes, and then add up the weighted numbers. No
additional steps are required.8 Some people would claim that the new index
is more difficult to compute than NLT, and I would not deny the truth of
such claims on the assumption that the pocket calculator remains the polit-
ical scientist’s primary tool for computation. Yet such an assumption might
be wrong. A computer equipped with standard office software makes the
computation of NP about as time-consuming as of NLT. Obviously, the data
demands for the computation of the new index are no greater than for NLT,
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 G O L O S O V: E F F E C T I V E N U M B E R O F P A R T I E S

even though it might take an additional effort to identify the largest compo-
nent as such.
Like NLT, the new index can be calculated not only on the basis of the
decimal shares of components, as in all formulae above, but also on the
basis of the raw numbers of votes or seats received by each of the parties.
For this, we have to use the formula that is derivative from formula (20):
x

x ∑s i
Np = ∑ x
1
(21).
1
∑ si + (s12/si ) − si
1
x
This might seem excessively complex, but note that ∑s1
i is simply the

overall number of votes cast or seats distributed in the given election, a

statistic that is normally available without additional calculations.
One characteristic of the new index differentiating it from all HH-based
indices is that its values can be disaggregated into individual party scores.
The score of the largest party is always 1, while all smaller parties count
less depending on the size of the largest party. If viewed in dynamics, smaller
parties’ scores change not only if their seat- or vote-shares change in absolute
terms, but also if they change in relation to the seat- or vote-share of the
largest party. For instance, in a (0.8, 0.2) constellation, with NP = 1.25, the
score of the second party is 0.25, while in a (0.7, 0.2, 0.1) constellation,
with NP = 1.48, it is 0.31. Of course, such relative-size (or effective-size)
scores can be developed in many different ways, but in this case their struc-
tural incorporation into a larger aggregate quantity might be a bonus.

An Empirical Test of the New Index

Indices remain abstract until they are tested on real-life data. To cite a recent
example, Dunleavy and Boucek (2003) test their index on a set of 102 post-
war elections in seven countries, including Canada, Japan and five countries
of West Europe. Laakso and Taagepera (1979) tested their index exclusively
on West European cases. Thus, with a few exceptions,9 the testing grounds
for measures of party system fragmentation were provided by the world of
well-established democracies. This is problematic. For a test of an effective
number of parties measure to be adequate, the set of real-life cases has to
include at least some cases indicating how the measure under examination
performs at the extremes, that is, in those situations when party systems are
either extremely fragmented or extremely concentrated. Few such situations
are available in the world of well-established democracies. For instance, of
the 102 elections tested by Dunleavy and Boucek (2003), in only 12 was the
vote-share of the largest party smaller than 30 percent, including nine in
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 PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 6 ( 2 )

France, two in Italy and one in Japan. At the same time, there is no single
case with s1 > 0.6. In my view, this concentration on well-established democ-
racies should be rejected for two reasons. The methodological reason has
already been stated above: we need to know how indices perform at the
extremes, not in situations that are bound to generate moderate scores. In
such situations even indices with significant deficiencies, such as the Molinar
index, assume quite intuitively appealing values. However, they are not very
different from what other indices indicate.
The second reason is more practical. In 1979, when Laakso and Taagepera
proposed their effective number of parties, the world of well-established
democracies was almost synonymous with the world of democracy in general.
Since then, however, we have witnessed a massive ‘third wave’ of democ-
ratization (Mainwaring, 1999), and, as a setback, a wide spread of what is
sometimes called ‘electoral authoritarianism’, when quasi-democratic insti-
tutions are used to legitimize, for internal use, and conceal, for external use,
the authoritarian practices of government (Schedler, 2006). Hence the emer-
gence of two distinct types of party systems that are often characterized by
extremely high and extremely low levels of fragmentation, respectively: the
‘inchoate’ party systems of those new democracies that struggle for demo-
cratic consolidation (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995: 22–8), and those party
systems in which, while some opposition exists, the dominance of the largest
party is exercised at scales unthinkable even in the ‘uncommon’ democracies
of the 20th century (Pempel, 1990; Rimanelli, 1999). In order to describe
such systems adequately and to incorporate them within the mainstream of
comparative research on political parties, we need an index that works well
at the extremes.
These are the reasons why I test the new index on a dataset from two
regions that are generally recognized as representative of the two types
identified above. The party systems of East Central Europe and the former
Soviet Union (ECE/FSU) are used as an example of ‘inchoate’ party systems,
primarily because one of their most salient characteristics is high fragmenta-
tion (Lewis, 2000), while the emerging party systems of sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA) are often characterized by the existence of a ‘predominant single
party’ (Manning, 2005: 716).10 In order to make the test even more pointed
to the extremes, I use different bases for computing effective numbers of
parties, votes for ECE/FSU, which allows for registering higher levels of
fragmentation, and seats for SSA, which allows for registering lower levels
of fragmentation. Thus constructed, the set of cases includes 42 national
vote distributions from nine countries of ECE/FSU (1990–2006) and 38
seat distributions in lower or single chambers of national legislatures in the
same number of countries of SSA (2000–7), which makes 80 observations
overall.11
Table 2 gives the average effective numbers of parties, calculated using
three different measures (NLT, NB and the new index, NP) for groups of cases
defined by geography and the sizes of the largest components. The first
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 Table 2. Aggregate values of three effective number of parties indices for 38 seat distributions in sub-Saharan Africa and 42 vote
distributions in East Central Europe/former Soviet Union
Size of the
largest party Index
(s1, in decimal NLT NB NP
shares of No. of
Region seats/votes) observations Mean Median Range Mean Median Range Mean Median Range

Sub-Saharan s1>0.7 12 1.56 1.60 1.17–1.95 1.42 1.46 1.13–1.68 1.31 1.33 1.09–1.54
Africa 0.5<s1<0.7 17 2.17 2.11 1.80–3.09 1.89 1.88 1.64–2.52 1.70 1.72 1.49–2.35

185
s1<0.5 9 4.25 3.89 2.74–8.22 3.54 3.13 2.42–6.25 3.46 3.07 2.28–7.55
All SSA cases 38 2.47 2.09 1.17–8.22 2.13 1.87 1.13–6.25 2.12 1.70 1.09–7.55

East Central s1>0.35 13 3.73 3.83 2.80–5.36 3.02 3.05 2.46–4.02 2.99 2.88 2.32–4.14
Europe / 0.3<s1<0.35 12 5.43 5.54 4.18–7.16 4.27 4.30 3.55–5.18 4.65 4.55 4.14–5.67
Former s1<0.3 17 7.16 6.94 5.33–10.06 5.65 5.47 4.35–8.09 6.46 6.40 4.97–10.61
Soviet Union All ECE / 42 5.60 5.54 2.80–10.06 4.44 4.38 2.46–8.09 5.00 4.91 2.32–10.61
FSU cases

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Sources: see Appendix 1.
G O L O S O V: E F F E C T I V E N U M B E R O F P A R T I E S
 PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 6 ( 2 )

inference that can be made from the data is that NP does indeed work better
on highly concentrated party systems. Most people would say that if the
largest party takes more than 70 percent of seats in the assembly, as happens
in as many as 12 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, then we observe a single-
party dominant system. Yet the Laakso–Taagepera index typically registers
one-and-a-half party format, and it does not preclude such systems from
being described as cases of bipartism. The Dunleavy–Boucek index offers
a partial improvement. The new index, however, says what is intuitively
apparent: it counts the largest party as 1 and the rest as about one-third.
For systems with 0.5 < s1 < 0.7, the values of NLT are greater than 2.0 in
the majority of SSA cases, and in one case a three-party system is registered.
The values of NB are more plausible in that they are smaller, yet NP offers
a better solution again: in fact, it attributes the value greater than 2.0 to
only one party constellation within this category, with s1 = 0.51. Turning to
the cases of ECE/FSU, we can observe how the three indices describe more
fragmented constellations. In so far as s1 remains relatively large, the pattern
observed above remains in place, even though the distance between the
values of NB and NP becomes reduced to a minimum due to the presence
of constellations with s1 < 0.51. With s1 within the (0.3–0.35) range, the
rank-ordering of index values changes: now, while the values of the Laakso–
Taagepera index remain greater than those of other indices, the values of
the new index take second place, and the values of NB third place. If s1 <
0.3, the values of NP are not only greater than those of NB; in four cases
they also exceed the values of NLT, even though the mean and median values
of the Laakso–Taagepera index remain greater.
Figure 1 scatterplots the values of two indices, NLT and NP, against the
largest party’s vote-share. NB is omitted because, while making the figure
less readable, the presence of its values would not add much information:
they are always smaller than those of the Laakso–Taagepera index, the
distance slowly increasing as s1 goes down. With the new index, the picture
is more complex. In so far as the size of the largest component exceeds 50
percent, the values of NLT and NP remain spatially separated, with the group
of NP values being located well below the group of NLT values. As the largest
parties’ shares decrease, the two groups mix up, so that the levels of frag-
mentation registered by the two indices become similar. One might be
tempted to suggest that since the values of NP are sometimes even greater
than those of the Laakso–Taagepera index, the new index is excessively
sensitive to the presence of very small parties, which would make a good
argument for using NB instead. To test the validity of this argument, it is
useful to have a closer look at the party constellation that generates the
greatest value of NP, 10.60, which exceeds not only NB (8.09) but also NLT
(9.61). This is the constellation of the 1995 national legislative elections in
Latvia. In these elections, the largest party received 15.2 percent of the
vote, three smaller parties, more than 10 percent of the vote each, and six
still smaller parties, more than 3 percent of the vote each, the remaining 7.4
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 G O L O S O V: E F F E C T I V E N U M B E R O F P A R T I E S

Figure 1. Distribution of 80 party constellations across the spaces of the

Laakso–Taagepera (NLT) and new (NP) effective number of parties indices
Note: ECE/FSU – East Central Europe/former Soviet Union; SSA – sub-Saharan Africa.
Sources: see Appendix 1.

percent being dispersed among nine microparties. In my view, the level of

fragmentation registered by the new index for this rather unusual situation
is more realistic than what NLT indicates, and decisively more realistic than
what is indicated by NB. Indeed, in this case the Dunleavy–Boucek index
allows for discounting a party whose share of the vote is one-third the size
of the largest party.
Thus the empirical test fully confirms my expectations regarding the new
index: while working much better than NLT on highly concentrated party
constellations with the share of the largest party exceeding 50 percent, it
also does not fail on registering very high levels of fragmentation in those
cases where such levels are intuitively apparent.

Conclusions

While stating that there was no perfect measure of the effective number of
parties became commonplace in scholarly papers dealing with the matter,
and while the validity of such claims cannot be denied on philosophical
grounds, a possible extension of this philosophy is that there is always room
for improvement. If the effective number of parties, as defined by Laakso and
Taagepera, tends to produce unrealistically high scores for very concentrated
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 PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 6 ( 2 )

party systems, thus failing on intuitive content, why not develop a measure
that is devoid of such a shortcoming? And, even though a partial solution to
this problem is already available, in the form of the Dunleavy–Boucek index,
why not eliminate the problem completely? This is what I have attempted
x
1
to do in this study. The new index, defined as Np = ∑ , solves
1 1 + ( s12/si ) − si
several problems faced by those who need to count the effective number of
parties. First, it satisfies all basic requirements of indices of this kind. Second,
it produces reasonably small scores for party constellations that appear to
have few important parties. Third, it registers many parties in those constel-
lations where there seems to be many parties. Fourth, it minimizes unde-
sirable side effects such as the ‘kink’ effect. This combination of properties
makes the proposed index superior to the earlier ways of counting the effec-
tive number of parties.

Appendix 1. Cases and the Data for the Empirical Test

When constructing the dataset for sub-Saharan Africa, I sought to diversify

the geography of the selection while concentrating on a very narrow chrono-
logical range. Hence the data are from seat allocations in the lower or single
chambers of national legislatures of those countries that held at least one
such election in 2000 or later. Only the most recent elections for each country
were included. The low levels of democracy, however registered, small
country sizes and non-proportional electoral systems were not considered
as bases for disqualification. In so far as exclusions were made, the reasons
were technical: (1) the most recent elections in the given country returned
a one-party legislature; or (2) more than 30 percent of seats in the legisla-
ture were taken by non-party candidates or candidates of the parties that
received less than 1 percent of seats each. For the remaining cases, each non-
party legislator was counted as an individual party. Seats allocated on non-
electoral bases, if there were any, were excluded from calculations. The 38
cases included within the dataset are the following: Benin (2007), Botswana
(2004), Burkina-Faso (2007), Burundi (2005), Cameroon (2002), Cape Verde
(2006), Chad (2002), the Comoros (2004), the Republic of the Congo (2002),
Côte d’Ivoire (2000), Equatorial Guinea (2004), Ethiopia (2005), Gabon
(2006), Gambia (2007), Ghana (2004), Guinea (2002), Kenya (2002), Lesotho
(2007), Liberia (2005), Madagascar (2002), Malawi (2004), Mali (2002),
Mauritius (2005), Mozambique (2004), Namibia (2004), Niger (2004),
Nigeria (2003), Rwanda (2003), São Tomé and Príncipe (2006), Senegal
(2001), the Seychelles (2007), Sierra Leone (2002), South African Republic
(2004), Tanzania (2005), Togo (2002), Uganda (2006), Zambia (2006) and
Zimbabwe (2005). All the data are taken from the single Internet source:
http://africanelections.tripod.com.
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For East Central Europe/the former Soviet Union, a large general popu-
lation of country cases was not available. This made me use several election
results from each of the countries. For a dataset based on vote rather than
seat distributions, it was also essential to provide for greater data homogen-
eity, which was achieved by excluding elections held by non-proportional
rules, the non-proportional tiers of mixed electoral systems and whole coun-
tries that held their national legislative elections exclusively or primarily by
non-proportional rules. In those cases when the electoral system, while
being generally proportional, made provisions for independent candidacies,
each of such candidates was counted as an individual party. The 42 cases
included are Bulgaria (1991, 1994, 1997, 2001 and 2005), the Czech
Republic (the Czech National Council in 1990 and 1992, the national legis-
lature in 1996, 1998, 2002 and 2006), Hungary (1990, 1994, 1998, 2002
and 2006), Latvia (1993, 1995, 1998, 2002 and 2006), Lithuania (1992,
1996, 2000 and 2004), Moldova (1994, 1998, 2001 and 2005), Russia
(1993, 1995, 1999 and 2003), Slovakia (the Slovak National Council in
1990 and 1992, the national legislature in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006) and
Ukraine (1998, 2002 and 2006). For the majority of elections, the data are
from an Internet source: http://www2.essex.ac.uk/elect/database/.
For the most recent elections, the data are from the Internet sites of the
national electoral commissions:
http://www.2005izbori.org/results/index.html (Bulgaria),
http://www.volby.cz/pls/ps2006/ps2?xjazyk=EN (the Czech Republic),
http://www.valasztas.hu/parval2006/outroot/vdin1/en/l22.htm (Hungary),
http://www.cvk.lv/cgi-bin/wdbcgiw/base/saeima9.GalRezS9.vis (Latvia),
http://www3.lrs.lt/rinkimai/2004/seimas/rezultatai/rez_l_20.htm (Lithuania),
http://www.elections2005.md/results/total/ (Moldova),
http://gd2003.cikrf.ru/ (Russia),
http://www.statistics.sk/nrsr_2006/angl/obvod/results/tab3.jsp (Slovakia),
http://www.cvk.gov.ua/vnd2006/w6p001e.html (Ukraine).
All Internet sites were accessed in April 2007.

Notes

I am grateful to the anonymous referees of the journal for criticism and comment.
All errors of fact and interpretation are entirely my own.

1 See, for example, Ware (1995).

2 For a more complex argument leading to the same conclusion, see Feld and
Grofman (2007).
3 For a useful summary of earlier attempts, see Taagepera and Ray (1977).
4 Taagepera (2002: 5) proceeds by asserting, quite correctly, that the intuitive
content of the effective number of parties allows for it being built into logical
models. Such models, some of which are useful for prediction, are indeed central
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 PA RT Y P O L I T I C S 1 6 ( 2 )

in political science, and a crucial advantage of NLT is that it has already entered
a number of them (Taagepera, 2007). Yet it is the intuitive content of the index
that makes it useful for model-building, not vice versa. For instance, an index
might fit perfectly into a model that predicts bipartism at certain constellations
of societal and institutional influences, but if this index describes situations in
which the largest party takes more than 60 percent of the vote as cases of
bipartism, then there might be something wrong with the model.
5 Most authors who have tried to deal with the effective number of parties axio-
matically have normally pointed only to the first of these properties as the funda-
mental one (Lijphart, 1994: 68). The second requirement seems self-evident.
However, we will see that one index discussed in the literature actually failed to
fulfil this requirement. As for indices violating the third requirement for constella-
tions with more than two parties, many of them are theoretically available, and one
(Molinar, 1991) was proposed as a major alternative to NLT. The credit for making
this requirement axiomatic should be given to Dunleavy and Boucek (2003).
6 It is interesting to note, as an example of the intuitive appeal of such an approach,
that Barnea and Rahat (2007: 384) introduce the expression s2/s1 as an ad hoc
competitiveness index.
7 The idiosyncratic dynamics of NLT between constellations D and E is also notice-
able.
8 It is also worth mentioning that unlike NLT, NP cannot be meaningfully estab-
lished for constellations involving zero-size components. Such constellations,
however, are of mere theoretical interest in political science research.
9 See, for instance, Coppedge (1997) and Taagepera and Shugart (1989: 81–3).
10 Of course, it would be too far-fetched to claim that any very concentrated party
system is necessarily associated with ‘electoral authoritarianism’. For different
views on African party systems, see Bogaards (2004) and Mozaffar et al. (2003).
11 See the Appendix for more details of case selection and for the description of
data sources.

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GRIGORII V. GOLOSOV is Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Political

Sciences and Sociology of the European University at St. Petersburg. He wrote
Political Parties in the Regions of Russia: Democracy Unclaimed (Lynne Rienner,
2004) and several other books, and has published extensively on political parties and
elections, including articles in Comparative Political Studies, Europe–Asia Studies,
Party Politics, International Political Science Review and other journals.
ADDRESS: Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, European University at
St. Petersburg, Gagarinskaya 3, St. Petersburg, 191187 Russia. [e-mail: ggolosov@
gmail.com]

Paper submitted 24 July 2007; accepted for publication 28 November 2007.

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