Talk:Duverger's law
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Is it really necessary to link to two-party system twice in this article? This has been added and reverted quite a few times. -- RobLa 03:41, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
One thing I've always wondered is how Duverger's law applies in the case of other single-winner methods. Did Duverger just make a dichotomy between first-past-the-post and proportional representation? -- Dissident 19:04, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
"There are numerous counterexamples: Malta has a single transferable vote system and what seems to be stable two-party politics;"
This is a logical fallacy. "...first-past-the-post election system naturally leads to a two-party system..." is not the same as "two party system requires first-past-the-post". The fact that Malta has two parties doesn't contradict the 'law', at least as it is explained in the current article.
Unfortunately, I don't know whether the mistake is in the statement of the principal of the description of the Maltese political system, so I'll have to leave this for someone else to fix. --Rory ☺ 14:20, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)
- I agree, and further assert that it isn't merely a logical fallacy, but in fact, an inappropriate example. There are many (including myself) that have come to believe that single transferable vote also leads to a two-party system. -- RobLa 08:13, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- I won't press the point in the article - moving Malta down works for me - but I read Duverger's law as saying that first-past-the-post is more likely to produce two-party results than other voting systems are; it doesn't say FPTP inevitably leads to two parties. So there are two types of exceptions (if you can have exceptions to a principle): FPTP with several parties, and two party systems with a more proportional voting system. Incidentally, Australia only uses STV for the Senate, but AV for the more important House of Representatives. --Henrygb 23:06, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)