Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

chosen mixed and proportional systems cause a great deal of the observedrelationship between cultural diversity and electoral system choice.Again, the most parsimonious model is rather similar to the first presentedmodel in table 8.6. Electoral system choice in democracies is mainly explainedby patterns of diffusion, i.e. British legacy and regional diffusion. However,temporal diffusion is of no importance in the democratic sample. Neither isFrench colonial legacy of any relevance in explaining electoral system choiceamong democracies. All values that measure the strength of the model as awhole are certainly improved if the model is enlarged with the cultural diversityvariable, but because of the spurious relationship between cultural diversity andelectoral system choice, there is no reason to pay further attention to such amodel. Despite high Nagelkerke values in each comparison in table 8.6 and 8.7,associations between the variables are rather weak. This is largely due to therelatively small number of cases. Given these circumstances, more attentionshould be paid to the analysis of the total population. Nevertheless, the findingsamong democracies resemble those in the total data sample.222