The take-up of mechanisms designed to temper proportional representation shows that countries don’t choose their electoral systems and rules in a vacuum

Some countries attempt to ‘temper’ the political party system unpredictability by introducing measures to halt fragmentation, such as representation thresholds. Here, Damien Bol, Jean-Benoit Pilet, and Pedro Riera argue that national legislators are more likely to adopt one of these electoral mechanisms when a large number of other countries have made similar choices in recent years.