Electoral fractionalization of the party system (Rae index)

QoG code: cpds_frel

Index of electoral fractionalization of the party system according to the formula proposed by Rae (1968). The index can take values between 1 (maximal fractionalization) and 0 (minimal fractionalization).

Dataset
Comparative Political Data Set
Type of variable
Continuous
Downloaded by QoG on
2025-12-02
Last updated by source
2025-06-03

Categories

Political Parties and Elections

Find this variable in

Standard Cross-section - 2026 Standard Time-series - 2026 Original dataset
Details of this variable in our compilation datasets
Dataset No. Countries
Standard cross-section 36
Standard time-series 36
Dataset Available for years
Standard time-series 1960-2023

Country coverage

Click here to see the full list of countries
  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Bulgaria
  • Canada
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus (1975-)
  • Czech Republic
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Finland
  • France (1963-)
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania
  • Luxembourg
  • Malta
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Romania
  • Slovakia
  • Slovenia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

Year coverage

This variable has information from 1960 to 2023.