Důsledky prezidentských volebních systémů v Latinské Americe
The Consequences of Presidential Electoral Systems in Latin America

Summary/Abstract: Latin American countries have recently experimented with their systems for electing presidents which makes them an ideal testing ground of the effects of different presidential election formulas. Drawing on existing theories, five hypotheses regarding the consequences of three electoral rules (plurality, qualified plurality and absolute majority) are tested. The quantitative evaluation of these hypotheses is based on the most up-to-date and complete dataset of Latin American presidential elections. Contrary to theoretical expectations, the differences between majority and plurality systems in their levels of fragmentation of presidential contests and the vote shares received by the front-runners have been decreasing. Also contrary to existing literature, the effect of the qualified plurality rule on fragmentation resembles that of absolute majority, rather than plurality. Qualified plurality should be considered as an intermediate value of an ordinal scale between both other types of electoral rules, rather than forming part of either nominal category as is often done in existing research.

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