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⁷ Taagepera, and Shugart, , Seats and Votes, p. 65.Google Scholar

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⁹ This second process is the one Duverger calls ‘fusion’, arguing that it is one of two ways (party elimination being the other) that bipartism is established. While he does not say as much, Duverger seems to imply that (under the plurality formula) elite activity works through fusion, voter-driven effects through elimination.

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¹⁷ The descriptive analysis Duverger provides depends a great deal on this latter approach.

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²¹ Where bicameral legislatures exist only contests for the popular (lower) house are recorded.

²² The Mackie and Rose Almanac includes all parties that have at least once secured more than 1 per cent of the vote in a national election.

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²⁴ The leading party is defined as the one with a plurality of the vote.

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²⁶ This data constraint is perhaps the major limitation of this study. But even Taagepera and Shugart's Seats and Votes is missing data for various countries for particular periods and relies on guesstimates for others. See their Table 12.2, pp. 138–9, where, for instance, data for Denmark, 1913–32 is missing, while question marks signal uncertainty about cases like Germany 1920–33.

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³¹ For estimates, see Taagepera, and Shugart, , Seats and Votes, Table 12.2, p. 138.Google Scholar This may also testify to the difficulty of producing reliable district magnitude data.

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³⁴ For a graphical presentation of an analysis which rests upon numerical estimates of district magnitude, see Taagepera, and Shugart, , Seats and Votes, Figure 13.2, p. 144.Google Scholar