Making Comparisons 89 9. (Dataset: world. Variables: enpp3_democ, district_size3, frac_eth3.) Two scholars of comparative politics are discussing possible reasons why some democracies have many political parties and other democracies have only a few. Scholar I: "It all has to do with the rules of the election game. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have single-member electoral districts. Voters in each district elect only one representative, This militates in favor of fewer and larger parties, since small parties have less chance of winning enough votes to gain the seat. Other countries, like Switzerland, have multimember districts, Because voters choose more than one representative per district, a larger number of smaller parties have a chance to win representation, It doesn't surprise me in the least. then, that the UK has fewer political parties than Switzerland." Scholar 2: "I notice that your explanation fails to mention the single most important determinant of the number of political parties: social structural heterogeneity, Homogeneous societies, those with few linguistic or religious differences, have fewer conflicts and thus fewer parties. Heterogeneous polities, by the same logic, are more contentious and will produce more parties. By the way, the examples you picked to support your case also support mine; The UK is relatively homogeneous and Switzerland relatively heterogeneous. It doesn't surprise me in the least, then, that the UK has fewer political parties than Switzerland?" A Scholar I's hypothesis: In a comparison of democracies, those having single-member districts will have (circle one) fewer political parties more political parties than democracies electing multiple members from each district. B. State Scholar 2's hypothesis: The world dataset variable enpp3_democ measures, for each democracy, the number of effective parliamentary parties: "1-3 parties," "4-5 parties," or *6-11 parties." Use enpp3_democ as the dependent variable to test each hypothesis. For independent variables, test Scholar I's hypothesis using district_size3, which measures, for each democracy, the number of members per district: "single-member" districts, more than one but fewer than six members ("21 to 5"), and countries with "6 or more members" per district. Test Scholar 2's hypothesis using frac_eth3, which classifies each country's level of ethnic/linguistic fractionalization as "Low." "Medium," or "High," C. In the table that follows, record the percentages of cases falling into the lowest code of the dependent variable, 1-3 parties. Average number of members per district Single member 2 to 5 members 6 or more members Percentage having 1-3 parties