[2] Scholars, journalists, and politicians have theorized about a number of potential effects of political fragmentation.
The length of government coalition formation has also been argued to increase with number of parties and decreases with preexisting political groups.
[4] However, the political fragmentation of parliaments has little causal effect on a number of dimensions of the quality of democracy.
[8] The political fragmentation, represented by effective number of parties, is roughly estimated with the seat product model,[9][10] and increases with district magnitude and assembly size.
[11] Duverger's law predicts majoritarian elections with district magnitude of one favor a two-party system and proportional representation increases the number of parties.