What is Duverger’s Law in Political Science?

Duverger’s Law holds that simple majority electoral systems, where the highest vote getter is the winner (such as the first-past-the-post method as is practised in India), tend to become two-party systems. A relative exception to this rule is India. Here, the party system is quite diverse. But the increasing tendency of parties to be part of two opposing and large coalitions has functionally brought India’s case closer to Duverger’s Law. States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar used to buck the trend with a high number of effective political parties, but even these, especially Bihar, have moved closer to becoming a two-coalition system.