Advantage Ratio as a Tool in Post-Communist Electoral Reforms ...

narrow margin) to exceed the raised threshold, or their gain would not have be
sufficient for representation by the original rules anyway.
Serbia
The modification increasing the number of electoral districts came relatively
shortly before the election in 1997, which among other things contributed to the
boycotting of voting by a part of opposition (Goati 2001: 123-124; Lučić 2002: 31). With
regard to the smaller proportion of wasted votes and to reducing the lead of the winner
as opposed to the second strongest party, the AR of the strongest party was somewhat
changed but it still remained evidently better than the AR of other parties. There was a
certain change in their group, when the parties with strong regional background gained
more support (at the expense of the boycotting national opposition).
Montenegro
Similarly as in Serbia the second reform was only a temporary step that was
followed in the third reform by cancelling districts and introducing a national threshold
instead of regional thresholds. The structure of parliamentary parties was thus
somewhat changed in 1996. While in 1992 only parties supported by Montenegrins (or
Serbians) gained seats, in 1996 three parties got into the parliament (even though with
small representation) that represented smaller, locally concentrated ethnic groups (two
parties representing Albanians and one representing Bosniaks). The system was
disadvantageous for parties with more scattered support, especially the Social
Democratic Party (SDP) that gained nearly twice as many votes than both Albanian
entities together (Centar za monitoring – Izbori). The presence of strongly
overrepresented minority parties (the Bosnian Party of Democratic Action had a little
lower AR than the election winner, while both Albanian parties had it much higher)
explains the big difference between the weighted and unweighted mean of the AR of
other entities. The second strongest (and besides the winner the only nationwide party)
party achieved clearly lower overrepresentation than the winner, and the small gains of
minority parties didn’t much have much effect on the weighted value. On the other
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