Abstract

Does anyone believe that the United States would remain a two-party system if it adopted Israel’s electoral rules? Can we satisfactorily explain the presence of almost absolute party unity within the Spanish Parliament without taking into account the closed-list system employed to elect its members? Despite the underdevelopment of the field of comparative electoral systems observed by Arend Lijphart in 1985, the clear correct answer to these two questions is no. It is important to study electoral systems because they affect the answers to these questions, among others (Taagepera 2007b). Nowadays, there is no longer a lack of comparative studies on electoral rules; in fact, in Matthew Shugart’s view, the field could already be considered mature as of a few years ago (Shugart 2005). However, there is still room for improvement. In this chapter, I will briefly discuss the state of the art of this research. To this end, I will first elaborate on the definition and classification of electoral systems. I will then conduct a longitudinal review of the most important contributions in the field, starting with classical approaches and then focusing on more recent developments.