A Two-Dimensional Scheme for Classifying the States According to Degree of Inter-Party Competition

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1120-1128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Cultural Base ◽  
Political Units ◽  
The Comparative Study

The student of American politics has displayed an increasing interest in the states as units of analysis. Since the states share a common institutional framework and cultural base, and at the same time differ in respect to economy, politics, and social structure, they provide excellent material for comparative studies. The political scientist has at hand a group of political units in which some of the most elusive variables are held constant. In the comparative study of American state politics, then, there is the promise that hypotheses about politics in general may be formulated and tested.The first stage of analysis is classification. Since competition between political parties for public office is a basic concept in the study of American politics, the nature and degree of party competition provide important criteria for a classification of the states. It is the purpose of this paper to point up the difficulties involved in formulating a classification of the states according to their party systems and to suggest possible categories of party competition which such a classification might include.

The Patterns of Party Polarization in East Asia

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton ◽  
Aiji Tanaka
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Party System ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Polarization ◽  
Party Choice ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
The Comparative Study

The alignment of parties within a party system shapes the nature of electoral competition, the process of representation, and potentially the legitimacy of the system. This article describes the distribution of parties and the levels of party polarization in the party systems of East Asian democracies. We examine the public's perceptions of party positions on a left-right scale to map the pattern of party competition. The evidence is based on two waves of surveys from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We describe considerable variation in the polarization of Asian party systems, which has direct implications for the clarity of party choice and the behavior of voters. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings.

How Does May’s Law Work in Multi-dimensional Competition? Intra-party Opinion Structure in Catalonia

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Montserrat Baras ◽  
Oscar Barberà ◽  
Astrid Barrio ◽  
Juan Rodríguez-Teruel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition

AbstractThis article explores how multi-dimensional competition party systems shape the intraparty opinion structure in political parties. The aim is to extend and test May’s law of ideological curvilinear disparity to multi-dimensional settings. The data are based on the case of Catalonia, a party system characterized by the relevant presence of non-state wide parties, where political competition is based on two main dimensions: the left right axis and the subjective national identity one. The paper shows that while the Catalan parties do fit with May’s law in the left-right axis, this is not the case in the national identity one. In addition, it further illustrates how the interaction between both axes affects party competition and internal opinion differences between leaders, activists and voters. The results attest the complexity of the intraparty opinion structures in multidimensional competition systems.

scholarly journals Review Essay: Whither Realignment?

1991 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Harold F. Bass
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Units ◽  
American Political Science

The “realignment era” in American political science began thirtyfive years ago, when Key (1955) proposed “A Theory of Critical Elections.” In his wake, realignment scholarship has proliferated far and wide (Bass 1991). The concept of realignment pervades contemporary scholarship on American political parties. The “textbook” treatment of the history of party competition in the United States posits periodic realigning elections that substantially alter group bases of party coalitions and establish enduring party systems. The initial analytical focus of the party in the electorate now extends to the party in government, linking elections with public policy. Since political parties constitute central integrating institutions in the political process, realignment has become a key conceptual lens for viewing and interpreting the whole of American political life. Indeed, it has escaped the bounds of scholarship and entered into popular discourse. Further, as subjects of realignment studies, the United States and its component political units now compete with numerous non-American systems.

The Digitalization of the West European Party Systems

2011 ◽  
pp. 3819-3837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Cunha ◽  
Gerrit Voerman
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Web Site ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
European Parties ◽  
Internet Connections ◽  
Party Family ◽  
The Web ◽  
West European

American politics has been at the forefront of World Wide Web use. In the early 1990s political parties and candidates started to employ Web sites to spread their message. President Bill Clinton’s second-term campaign for the 1996 election was the first time the Internet appeared as a pervasive presence in American Politics, and in which all presidential candidates had Web sites (Rash, 1997). After some time, European parties and politicians followed the lead. In this article, we intend to describe the emergence of Web sites of political parties in West European nations. Reaching out to the Web required allocating limited resources. What advantages did parties hope to reap by creating a Web site, and what disadvantages might they have encountered once the sites were in place? Ideally, a comprehensive analysis would include all political parties in every West European nation. Given the complications regarding collection of data from multiple nations, however, we focused on the parties which were represented in parliament. At the same time, not all nations are currently included in this assessment. The data set consists of information provided by country experts that kindly responded to an expert survey, which included categorizing their national parties by party family (ideologically).1 To facilitate comparative analysis, we have organized the existing data into four chronological lists (tables) and two figures such as the level of Internet penetration in countries, as well as party family, size, and ideological characteristics: 1. “Complete Chronology” provides the data according to party Web site inauguration for all parties and all nations. The calendar year is divided into three-month quadrants. Is there a correlation between the spread of party Web sites in national party systems and the emergence and development of Internet connections within individual countries? 2. “Party Family Chronology” categorizes site emergence regardless of nationality by ideological divisions ranging from “Nationalist/extreme-right” toward the left ending with “Other” (mainly regional parties). Did ideology influence parties’ decisions to initiate Web sites? 3. “National Chronology” arranges Web site emergence by individual nation. Did party size (small, medium, or large) influence the Web site creation decision? 4. “National Initiator Chronology” lists only the first political party in each nation to initiate a Web site. We also include figures that consolidate the data from the lists to portray potential patterns behind party Web emergence. Our content analysis of the digitalization of Western European parties is limited only to their decisions and motivations for initiating a Web presence. We do not intend to systematically look at other facets of digital activity such as internal uses of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) by political parties for data management (archiving or membership lists) or communication (newslists).

Do Party Systems Count?

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pradeep Chhibber ◽  
Irfan Nooruddin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
State Government ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Government Performance ◽  
Indian States ◽  
The Impact

Delivery of public goods varies significantly across the Indian states. This article argues that differences in state government expenditures are largely the result of differences in their party systems. Using macroeconomic data from 1967 to 1997 as well as postelection voter surveys, we demonstrate that states with two-party competition provide more public goods than states with multiparty competition, which, we argue, reflects differing mobilization strategies. In two-party systems, political parties require support from many social groups and therefore provide public goods to win elections. In multiparty systems, needing only a plurality of votes to win, parties use club, rather than public, goods to mobilize smaller segments of the population. In stressing the impact of party systems on state government performance in India, this article differs from recent political economy research, which has stressed either the effect of particular political parties or ethnic divisions on government performance and public goods delivery.

scholarly journals Institutionalization of the Czech and Slovenian party system

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-265
Author(s):  
Alena Klvaňová
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
System Stability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Scene

Abstract For the past two decades, the characteristic feature of the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovenia’s party system has been relatively invariable and closed to fundamental change. In both cases, there has been a distortion of the change and its nature which occurred around 2010, when new political entities began to emerge on the political scene. These entities have received support from a large part of the electorate. The reason for the success of the new political parties is mainly related to the dissatisfaction of the Czech and Slovenian public with the political situation and the conviction of citizens about the widespread corruption among public officials. The success of the newly formed entities caused the decline of primarily established parties. The aim of this article is to determine the effect of these changes on the party systems, and simultaneously to answer the question, to what extent both party systems are institutionalized. The answer to this question can be obtained by measuring the extend of institutionalization of party systems based on three criteria, which are incorporation of political parties in the party system, party system stability and quality of party competition.

The Digitalization of the West European Party Systems

2011 ◽  
pp. 387-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Cunha ◽  
G. Voerman
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Web Site ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
European Parties ◽  
Internet Connections ◽  
Party Family ◽  
The Web ◽  
West European

American politics has been at the forefront of World Wide Web use. In the early 1990s political parties and candidates started to employ Web sites to spread their message. President Bill Clinton’s second-term campaign for the 1996 election was the first time the Internet appeared as a pervasive presence in American Politics, and in which all presidential candidates had Web sites (Rash, 1997). After some time, European parties and politicians followed the lead. In this article, we intend to describe the emergence of Web sites of political parties in West European nations. Reaching out to the Web required allocating limited resources. What advantages did parties hope to reap by creating a Web site, and what disadvantages might they have encountered once the sites were in place? Ideally, a comprehensive analysis would include all political parties in every West European nation. Given the complications regarding collection of data from multiple nations, however, we focused on the parties which were represented in parliament. At the same time, not all nations are currently included in this assessment. The data set consists of information provided by country experts that kindly responded to an expert survey, which included categorizing their national parties by party family (ideologically).1 To facilitate comparative analysis, we have organized the existing data into four chronological lists (tables) and two figures such as the level of Internet penetration in countries, as well as party family, size, and ideological characteristics: 1. “Complete Chronology” provides the data according to party Web site inauguration for all parties and all nations. The calendar year is divided into three-month quadrants. Is there a correlation between the spread of party Web sites in national party systems and the emergence and development of Internet connections within individual countries? 2. “Party Family Chronology” categorizes site emergence regardless of nationality by ideological divisions ranging from “Nationalist/extreme-right” toward the left ending with “Other” (mainly regional parties). Did ideology influence parties’ decisions to initiate Web sites? 3. “National Chronology” arranges Web site emergence by individual nation. Did party size (small, medium, or large) influence the Web site creation decision? 4. “National Initiator Chronology” lists only the first political party in each nation to initiate a Web site. We also include figures that consolidate the data from the lists to portray potential patterns behind party Web emergence. Our content analysis of the digitalization of Western European parties is limited only to their decisions and motivations for initiating a Web presence. We do not intend to systematically look at other facets of digital activity such as internal uses of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) by political parties for data management (archiving or membership lists) or communication (newslists).

Party Systems and Radical Right-Wing Parties

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Kitschelt
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Issue Ownership ◽  
Initial Rise ◽  
Radical Right Parties

This chapter presents an introduction to different theories of party competition, as exemplified by the substantive puzzle of radical right-wing partisan rise. The first task, however, is to conceptualize radical right party fortunes within the context of competitive party systems. The next three sections discuss the initial rise of radical right parties through three lenses: spatial theories of party competition, institutional and historical mediators of current competitive opportunities for radical right entry, and non-spatial theories of party competition based on valence and issue ownership. This is followed by a report on research about the ongoing strategic interaction between radical right parties and their competitors after the former’s initial rise to electoral prowess. The chapter concludes with several general synthesizing hypotheses about the life cycle of political parties, with the radical right’s rise and possible future demise being a particular application.

Challenges to multiparty governments

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 793-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Klüver ◽  
Jae-Jae Spoon
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Combine Data ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Issue Attention ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

How does governing in coalitions affect coalition parties’ responsiveness to voters? In this article, we seek to understand the relationship between political parties’ participation in multiparty governments and their responsiveness to voters. We argue that the extent to which coalition parties respond to policy priorities of voters is influenced by the divisiveness of policy issues within the cabinet and the ministerial responsibility for policies. To test our hypotheses, we combine data on the issue attention of 55 coalition parties from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on government composition and data on the policy priorities of voters from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and various election studies in 45 elections across 16 European countries from 1972 to 2011. While we find that intra-cabinet divisiveness decreases coalition parties’ responsiveness, we find no effect for portfolio responsibility. Our findings shed light on the relationship between party competition and coalition governments and its implications for political representation.

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