Bibliography Party System Classification

Bibliography Party System Classification

Brett Ramsey

Bibliography – Party System Classification

Guo 10/7/04

Arian, Alan, and Barnes, Samuel H. 1974. “The Dominant Party System: A Neglected Model of Democratic Stability,” The Journal of Politics 36(3): 592-614.

In this paper, Arian and Barnes describe the dominant party system typology. They contend that this typology should exist in addition to the commonly held three typologies of one-party, two-party, and multi-party systems. In order to define the dominant party system, the authors describe in detail two nations that fit into their dominant party mold – Italy and Israel. In each of these countries, more than one party exists, yet one party dominates the political system. According to the three party system classification, these cases would not fit. The authors, therefore, create the dominant party system to allow for cases such as Israel and Italy. The authors take up another traditionally held point, that being that societal variables affect party systems, and provide counter-evidence. Using Israel and Italy as test cases once again, Arian and Barnes examine cultural aspects, such as feelings of party closeness, political socialization in families, and group voting. The differences in these areas were vast, suggesting that if societal variables do not hold up when comparing two dominant party systems, neither will they in other areas of comparison. My main point of contention with this piece lies in its being based on some large assumptions. These two cases could simply be anomalies, not to mention a selection bias problem. Work of a much more comparative nature must be done to provide more sturdy legs for this study to stand.

Blondel, Jean. 1972. Comparing Political Systems. New York: Praeger Publishers.

This book serves as another example of theory building, yet in a separate area than other efforts. The author of this work chooses to focus on “structures of government” in order to probe the fabric of political systems. While past efforts have ignored certain parts of the world due to the common assumption that they were not worthy of being studied when compared with other parts of the world, particularly the West, Blondel looks at political systems from a wide variety of places and of several different types. He hopes that this book will help future researchers in their efforts, whether aimed at structures specifically or more general goals. While the study of structures is different from other theory building efforts of the like, the lack of a theory seems to be a common theme found throughout this field of study and remains an item requiring further efforts.

Dix, Robert H. 1989. “Cleavage Structures and Party Systems in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 22(1): 23-37.

Dix attempts, with this article, to apply theories about cleavages and party systems, originally tested using Western countries, to Latin American nations. Basically, he wants to know if the Western case serves as the foundation by which other nations, Latin America in this case, have followed. Gathering information from a variety of sources, Dix comes the conclusion that Latin American party systems have developed in vastly different ways than the already-developed Western party systems. He suggests two reasons for this occurrence. The first of which derives from the fact that certain cleavages and party features were already developed before party systems came to be, while Latin American party systems developed at the same time as the parties themselves. Latin American nations have a different past, one based on latching on to elites in order to survive rather than trying to mobilize together to impact government as a group. The other difference is that class-mass-based parties have never developed in Latin America. Even when mass-based parties came about in Latin America, the results were more of an eclectic, pragmatic ideology, as opposed to mass-based parties centered on class-structure as present in Western culture. This article serves as a good step for party system literature in its attempt to generalize across sections of the world, but one criticism lies in its collection of data. The author states that the data for the study came from a wide variety of places, and no citations as to what places those might be are to be found in the paper.

Evans, Joycelyn A. J. 2002. “In Defence of Sartori: Party System Change, Voter Preference Distributions and Other Competitive Incentives,” Party Politics 8(2): 155-174.

The purpose of this piece is well stated in the title, defending Sartori’s work. Written as a response to Pennings, Evans takes up some of his arguments and criticizes them as being incorrect according to what Sartori stated and a misrepresentation of the original work. Pennings basically wrote his piece as an attempt to update Sartori’s work to deal with contemporary party system paradigms – the vote, policy, and office related functions similar to Wolinetz. Evans first grapples with Pennings’ arguments and then contends that focusing on voter preference distributions, in accordance with Sartori’s model, provides evidence for the direction of competition idea. She concludes her piece by suggesting that party systems should be studied in terms of electoral demand and its interaction with party supply, while continuing to stay within the confines of Sartori’s original ideas.

Mainwaring, Scott, and Scully, Timothy R., eds. 1995. Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

This book aims to go beyond past descriptive works on party systems and attempts to design a method by which Latin American party systems can be compared and contrasted. To achieve this focus, the authors examine levels of institutionalization in Latin American Democratic party systems. In doing so, the authors suggest that we should be able to discover what types of institutional arrangements are most favorable to building solid democracies. Twelve individual country chapters are included to serve as the data for this proposal. Mainwaring and Scully study institutions reciprocally as both acting on states and as being acted on by states and conclude that the degree of party system institutionalization shapes the ability of key structures and leaders to respond effectively to rapid change. While they also suggest that simply having party systems and an institutionalized structure do not guarantee democratic consolidation, it certainly helps. While this article only focuses on Democratic party systems, it is a move up from theory building to theory testing. Aside from only being applicable to Latin America, the only other problem apparent was defining party systems as inherently competitive among parties, leaving out one-party systems altogether. Sure, this definition serves the purpose of their paper, but it is not accurate.

Ranney, Austin, and Kendall, Willmoore. 1954. “The American Party Systems,” The American Political Science Review 48(2): 477-485.

This piece is serves as an attempt to change the way party systems are labeled as being one-party, two-party, or multi-party to something that better fits the American party system. The authors raise two important problems with the three party system categories, which leads to their newly suggested typologies. Thefirst problem is the broadly defined one-party system, where the U.S.S.R. and the state of Mississippi could both be considered one-party systems, yet there is a remarkable difference. The second problem that the authors address is the common mistake of labeling the American party system as simply one system. Using the example of Mississippi again, it is clear that a two-party system, such as the label of the country would suggest, is not present. In response to these two problems, the authors suggest adding two more party types to the previous three – one between one and two party systems and another labeled totalitarian – , and they classify each of the 48 states according to which party system they fit into. While this paper is obviously outdated, its purpose can be seen as bringing forth the original idea for amending the three party system classification.

Sartori, Giovanni. 1976. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This book is the premier work on classifying party systems. Dealing with political parties and party systems, Sartori’s purpose is to update Duverger’s classic work, Political Parties. Having a general feeling of dislike for Duverger’s simplistic definitions of parties, Sartori examines parties by way of fractions and evaluates them over six dimensions. Sartori also takes up Duverger’s one-party, two-party, and multi-party typologies and, instead, breaks party systems into seven such categories: one-party, hegemonic party, predominant party, two-party, limited pluralism, extreme pluralism, and atomization. In order to go beyond a simple counting of the parties in a system, Sartori employs ideological measures to further differentiate between systems. In multi-party systems, he measures the distance between the ideological positions taken by the parties. For single-party systems, he evaluates the intensity of that single party’s ideology. By assessing these, Sartori is able to get an indication of the dispersion of power, and the material and ideological rewards that come with it, for political systems. What remains lacking from this book is a theory. Duverger’s work was self-proclaimed theory building, as is Sartori’s. Theory building is fine, but there must eventually be some theory built from it.