Formalizing and Testing Duverger's Theories on Political Parties

1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENNETH JANDA ◽  
DESMOND S. KING
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Causal Diagram ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Cross National

Maurice Duverger's Political Parties, written more than three decades ago, remains the most prominent source of hypotheses on parties and party systems. Although many years have passed since its publication, no one has formalized Duverger's main hypotheses on political parties and subjected them to empirical test. This article identifies Duverger's key concepts on party structure, links the concepts in 19 formal bivariate propositions, operationalizes the concepts using data from a worldwide sample of 147 parties in 53 countries, and tests all 19 propositions. Twelve are supported by the cross-national empirical test. Interrelationships among these 12 bivariate propositions are shown in a causal diagram, and suggestions are made for moving beyond Duverger's bivariate thinking to more powerful multivariate theorizing about the causes and consequences of party structure.

Just a Germanic Tradition? The Cross-National Significance of Conservative Liberalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-265
Author(s):  
Kenneth Dyson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
The Cross ◽  
National Significance ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Cross National

This chapter examines the various factors that have shaped the cross-national significance of conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism in public debate, in institutions and how they operate, and in policies, across space and over time. It argues that these factors have interacted in a way that gives this type of liberalism a historically contingent character. The chapter looks at self-assessment by conservative liberals and Ordo-liberals of Ludwig Erhard in Germany, Reinhard Kamitz in Austria, Jacques Rueff in France, and Paul van Zeeland in Belgium and the sense of beleaguerment that affects them. It also considers the cross-national reception of Ordo-liberalism and the process of cross-national convergence in conservative liberalism through networks, conferences, and institutions and through the emergence of family resemblance. The chapter pays close attention to the factors driving differences in significance: founding myths and aristocratic liberalism; mainstream philosophy of political economy; religion; state tradition; state- and nation-building; parties and party systems; events and crises; net creditors and net debtors; international structure of power and Americanization; and networking though university patronage, think tanks, and media dissemination. The chapter closes with reflections on the potential for conservative liberalism.

Founding Elections

2019 ◽  
pp. 502-508
Author(s):  
Hans-Dieter Klingemann
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
Government Formation ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Comparative Analyses ◽  
Cross National ◽  
The Way

This chapter discusses (1) origin and concept of a ‘founding election’, (2) expectations associated with the consequences of such elections, (3) empirical findings of current research, and (4) the effects of founding elections on democratic consolidation. The concept is found to emphasize two criteria. The process of a founding election should provoke the formation of political parties, and the rules for the election should ensure that all major competitors regard the election as free and fair. The expectations associated with founding elections are mostly related to voter turnout, types of the emerging political parties, the structure of party systems, and possibilities of government formation. Not a great deal of empirical findings are based on quantitative cross-national research. Historically oriented studies dominate. Findings provided by comparative analyses are not easy to generalize because the countries under study and the temporal contexts are too disparate. None of the expectations to be found in the literature hold for all studies. Founding elections are at the heart of the beginning of democratic consolidation. They pave the way for the consolidation of political behaviour, in particular for the formation of ties between parties and the electorate. More empirical research is needed to generate results that are comparable across time and nations.

Political Parties, Party Systems, and Democracy in East Asia

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
HANS STOCKTON
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Curvilinear Relationship ◽  
National Comparison ◽  
Cross National

Institutionalized parties and party systems have traditionally been viewed as necessary conditions for democracies to function effectively. Although this area of research is germane to all democracies, most analyses have been divided by regional investigation. Seeking to bridge the gap, this article applies concepts and measures of institutionalization from the study of Latin America to Pacific Asia's two most prominent cases of democratic transition, South Korea and Taiwan. An effort is made to apply the approaches of Dix and Mainwaring and Scully on party and system institutionalization in Latin America to South Korea and Taiwan. Cross-national comparison reveals a curvilinear relationship between institutionalization and consolidation. Taiwan's path to consolidation has been predicated on a pattern very similar to those taken by Latin American cases, whereas South Korea, theoretically, should not be as close to consolidation as it is.

scholarly journals The representative deficit in different European Party Systems: an analysis of the elections to the European Parliament 2009-2014

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bright ◽  
Diego Garzia ◽  
Joseph Lacey ◽  
Alexander H. Trechsel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Voting Advice Applications

This paper explores the extent to which different party systems in Europe effectively represent their citizens. We argue that many European countries suffer from a “representative deficit”, which occurs when a significant portion of citizens have to vote for a political party whose stated views are actually quite different from their own. We measure the extent of this deficit in different European countries using data from EU Profiler and euandi, two Voting Advice Applications which served millions of users during the EP elections in 2009 and 2014 respectively. We find wide variation in the extent to which political parties are accurately tuned in to the preferences of their voters, a variation which is not clearly linked to the number of political parties or the proportionality of the electoral system. We attempt to explain some of this variation, and explore the reasons why some party systems offer better representation than others.

The Party System

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-238
Author(s):  
Yannis Tsirbas
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
System P ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Liberalism ◽  
New Democracy ◽  
Social Conservatism

The chapter delves into the historical evolution, the characteristics, and the dynamics of the Greek party system. It presents the transformations that it has undergone in its historical course, focusing on the period after the economic crisis, by employing key concepts, covering important electoral contests, and presenting the most relevant political parties. More specifically, the Greek party system has moved from largely a system of a predominant party before the 1967 dictatorship, to limited polarized pluralism after the restoration of democracy in 1974, and then to one of the most stable two-party systems in Europe from 1981 until the onset of the economic crisis, with PASOK and New Democracy monopolizing power between them. Nationally minded versus Left, Right versus anti-Right, social liberalism versus social conservatism and, lately, pro-European versus anti-European, have been the major dimensions of conflict of the Greek party system. After decades of high institutionalization and moderate volatility, the party system imploded in the 2012 twin earthquake elections, demonstrating massive dealignment and fragmentation, with PASOK almost vanishing and new actors, like SYRIZA, acquiring the status of relevant parties. Radical, anti-systemic parties, like Golden Dawn, also gained prominence and the party system transformed into a polarized multi-partyism. Almost a decade into the crisis, the Greek party system shows signs of a hesitant stabilization and, even, indications of a weak re-emerging bi-partyism between New Democracy and SYRIZA, posing the question as to whether it will reach a new equilibrium and what this equilibrium will be, in terms of format and internal dynamics.

What's Left of Leftism?

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lee Mudge
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Full Explanation ◽  
Political Center ◽  
The Common ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Western Democracies

A novel brand of laissez-faire that lay outside the political mainstream in the early postwar years was broadly hailed at the dawn of the twenty-first century as the common sense of a global age. Yet how to understand neoliberalism as a specifically political thing, especially in the unlikely terrains of Western European and leftist politics, is unclear. This article mobilizes field theory to conceptualize and investigate neoliberal politics in Western democracies, treating the left-right axis as a variable but fundamental organizing dichotomy over which mainstream political parties exert a unique definitional influence. To trace how this dichotomy has shifted over time, I develop a novel index of political neoliberalism using data on the electoral programs of mainstream parties across 22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries between 1945 and 2004. I find that between the 1970s and 2004 a revised political center emerged, featuring a new concept of state responsibility and the means by which it should govern: a historical shift that took root across the left-right spectrum among mainstream parties and that was as much in evidence in Continental, Nordic, and southern countries as in Anglo-liberal countries. The overall trend can be fairly characterized as the rise of a specifically neoliberal politics. I suggest that a full explanation requires both a political sociology and a sociology of knowledge, attending to the organizational and cultural bases of Western party systems.

Comparing Nations and States

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 996-1018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Beer ◽  
Neil J. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Cross National

Democracy and the protection of human rights generally go together, but not in India. India is an outlier in the cross-national research that aims to explain human rights performance. Using state-level subnational data and drawing on the approaches pioneered at the cross-national level, the authors examine the reasons for the outlier status. Their findings suggest that the aggregate whole-nation human rights and democracy scores misrepresent the political experience of much of India. The authors find that participation, political parties, and the level and nature of opposition threat help us understand the incidence of human rights violations within India.

Dilemmas of Inclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaela M. Dancygier
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Equality And Diversity

As Europe's Muslim communities continue to grow, so does their impact on electoral politics and the potential for inclusion dilemmas. In vote-rich enclaves, Muslim views on religion, tradition, and gender roles can deviate sharply from those of the majority electorate, generating severe trade-offs for parties seeking to broaden their coalitions. This book explains when and why European political parties include Muslim candidates and voters, revealing that the ways in which parties recruit this new electorate can have lasting consequences. The book sheds new light on when minority recruitment will match up with existing party positions and uphold electoral alignments and when it will undermine party brands and shake up party systems. It demonstrates that when parties are seduced by the quick delivery of ethno-religious bloc votes, they undercut their ideological coherence, fail to establish programmatic linkages with Muslim voters, and miss their opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions. The book highlights how the politics of minority inclusion can become a testing ground for parties, showing just how far their commitments to equality and diversity will take them when push comes to electoral shove. Providing a unified theoretical framework for understanding the causes and consequences of minority political incorporation, and especially as these pertain to European Muslim populations, the book advances our knowledge about how ethnic and religious diversity reshapes domestic politics in today's democracies.

Tribunes and Patricians: Fringe Parties in the 21st Century

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Nedelcu
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Structural Shifts

The mid and late 2000s witnessed a proliferation of political parties in European party systems. Marxist, Libertarian, Pirate, and Animal parties, as well as radical-right and populist parties, have become part of an increasingly heterogeneous political spectrum generally dominated by the mainstream centre-left and centre-right. The question this article explores is what led to the surge of these parties during the first decade of the 21st century. While it is tempting to look at structural arguments or the recent late-2000s financial crisis to explain this proliferation, the emergence of these parties predates the debt-crisis and can not be described by structural shifts alone . This paper argues that the proliferation of new radical parties came about not only as a result of changes in the political space, but rather due to the very perceived presence and even strengthening of what Katz and Mair (1995) famously dubbed the "cartelization" of mainstream political parties.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v7i1.210

The New Progressive Dilemma through the Lens of Comparative Welfare State and Party Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Spies
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Expenditures ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

The chapter summarizes the New Progressive Dilemma (NPD) debate, identifying three arguments from comparative welfare state and party research likely to be relevant to the relationship between immigration and welfare state retrenchment: public opinion, welfare institutions, and political parties. Alignment of anti-immigrant sentiments and welfare support varies considerably between countries, especially between the US and Europe, leading to different party incentives vis-à-vis welfare state retrenchment. The chapter introduces insights from comparative welfare state and party research to the debate, discussing inter alia, political parties in terms of welfare retrenchment, immigrants as a voter group, and cross-national variation of existing welfare institutions. It addresses the complex debates around attitudinal change caused by immigration, levels of welfare support, voting behavior, and social expenditures. Combining these strands of literature, a common theoretical framework is developed that is subsequently applied to both the US and Western European context.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document