Making Candidates Count: The Logic of Electoral Alliances in Two Round Legislative Elections

Electoral systems have been shown to influence strategic voting and the development of party systems but the focus has rarely been on the strategies that parties adopt to take advantage of the electoral system under which they compete. Electoral pacts form one such strategy. We present a bargaining model which allows us to explore the factors influencing the extent and content of electoral pacts under the majority run-off. We then test the model empirically using data from the 2002 French legislative elections on the electoral pact formed by the Socialists and the Greens. We find strong support for the hypotheses derived from our theory indicating that the more likely a joint candidate was to influence the outcome in the constituency the more likely it was to be included in the parties’ agreement. Furthermore, in line with our theory, we show that the same factors have stronger influence on the likelihood of observing a joint Socialist candidate than a Green candidate. ∗Département de science politique, Université de Montréal, CP 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, H3C 3J7, Canada. Email: [email protected]