How the Tailor of Marrakesh Suit Has Been Altered: Advantage Ratio as a Tool in Post-Communist Electoral Reforms Research

Abstract

The text analyzes the character of the second wave of electoral system reform in post-communist countries. It describes the direction of the change in status quo after the first reform, which was usually implemented by participants on the basis of imperfect or incomplete information. We claim that the character of the second reforms favored the bigger and established parties and accentuated the tendencies towards establishing electoral competition between political parties at the expense of other participants (independent candidates). We furthermore use a sample of 40 electoral events in 15 post-communist countries to analyze the potential of the strongest electoral parties and other parliamentary parties to transform votes into seats, and we connect this characteristic with the electoral changes made, arguing that the logic of the electoral rules and the effects arising from the actual shares of the vote won in elections sometimes reinforced one another but at least in some electoral events - also ran in opposite directions.