POLITICAL

PARTIES
ANDPARTY
SYSTEMS

Alan Ware

133
-. -
85
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1996
 CHAPTER FIVE

THE CLASSIFICATION OF
PARTY SYSTEMS

systems involve both competition and co-operation between the different

parties in that system. This chapter examines whether it is possible and worth
while classifying these arenas of competition and co-operation. There are two
reasons why a classification of party systems has been thought to be an importan!
stage in comparing party systems.
• Far a considerable time, and especially in the l 950s, l 960s, and l 970s, most
political scientists believed that there was a lirnited number of types of party sys-
tem to be found among the liberal democracies. The earliest, and crudest,
classifications posited a distinction between two-party and multiparty systems,
though later classifications, such as Sartori's, were far more complex than this.
Ilut common to ali of them was the atternpt to explain the distinctive kind of
behaviour that was supposedly associated with each of the different types
of party system. Atternpts at classification grew out of a quite natnral ambition
bypolitical scientists.to be able to say more than, far example, that the rnain fea-
tures of the British party system indude (a), (b), and (e), while the main features
.., of the Japanese systern include (x), (y), and (z). Political scientists wanted to be
\'~ble to say that the British party system is an exarnple of a particnlar type of party
>.system-say, M-and, as snch, its features include (a) and ( b), though it also dis-
..]ílays the distinctive feature (e); on the other hand, Japan has a party system of
~··fype N, and because of this its features inclnde (x) and (y), although it also hap-
::;pens to have the pecnliar feature (z). Political science could then go on to try to
e](plain why systerns of types M and N developed in the way that they <lid.
Unfortunately, in the real world there are a large number of variables affecting

148 PARTY SYSTEMS
how particular party systems develop so that devising classificatory schema for
these purposes has proved to be a rather disappointing exerc1se. . petition of those parties that do have 'coalition potentia!'. 3
• There is a second reason why classificatory schema are regarded as impor-
tan! by political scientists, and why they continue to appear .in books abo.u! party
systems.1 For those beginning the study of comparat1ve poht1cs the class1fical!on
of party systems provides a useful way of simplifying an extremely complex real-
ity. The world of party systems would be too difficult to comprehend 1f we h.ad to
master many of their features in the twenty-plus liberal democrat1c reg1mes.
Classificatory schema, therefore, actas a guide until the relative newcomer to the
subject has acquired sufficient knowledge of particular pa.rty syste.ms to be able
to start to dispense with them. That experts in comparat!Ve pohtKS would not
now deploy such schema in their research does not mean that they are not
extremely importan! devices for starting to develop an understandmg of party
systems.
This is the context in which this present chapter has to be understood. I shall
line ways in which we might go about formulating a classification of party sys-
tems, but also show why it will fail to capture key d1fferences between party
systems that, superficially, seem to be of the same type.
Initial issues in devising a classification
In classifying party systems the first issue to be addressed is which parties should
be included and which excluded as being within the party system. To 1llustrate
why this should even be considered a 'problem' we might consider the case of the
British party system in the l 950s. . ·
Everyone talks about Britain having a two-party system m that decade-and ..
having had such a system since the early-to-mid 1930s. Yet the Labour and
Conservative parties were not the only parties to put up cand1date~ or to wm
seats in the House of Commons. In particular, during the 1950s the Liberal Party ;
contested at least one hundred parliamentary seats at each election, received
between 2.5 and 9 per cent of the vote, and had about half a dozen MPs. There.
were also candidates standing for the Communist Party and far a number of
other parties. Why do we not count all these parties when describing the British
party system? The short answer to this is that these parties were completely m~r­
ginal to British politics in the 1950s. The best formal generalization ofth1s pu~nt
is that of Sartori who devised a 'criter.io11 ..ofirrelev<ln.c_e'. far determmmg whic~
parties should be included and which excluded when class1fymg party systems ..
Sartori's criterion involves two conditions far inclus1on-1f a party meets nei:
ther of them it should not be counted as part of the party system:
l. coalition potential-the party must be needed, on at least sorne occasions,-..;
for a feasible coalition that can control government;
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 149
2. blackmail potentiaé--the party's existence affects the tactics of party com-
Only the Labour and Conservative parties met the first condition in the 1950s.
One of these two parties would always win a majority of seats at a general elec-
tion, so that the issue of other parties being included in a government did not
arise. Moreover, none of these other parties controlled such a signi:fica:qt share of
the vote, or controlled such significan! areas of social life, that they forced the
Labour and Conservative parties to modify how they competed with each other.
When discussing the Btitish case the need for having two separate conditions
in the 'criterion of irrelevance' may not seem obvious, but the point becomes
more apparent when considering states where government usually has to be con-
dm;ted on a coalitional basis. The first condition is required to distinguish those
small parties that are never needed to join a coalition government from those
that are. But, in the absence of the second condition, there would be a number of
countries with large Communist parties-including France and ltaly in the
}950s-where these parties would not then be counted as part of the party sys-
tem. This is because, after about 1947, other parties would not countenance the
Communists joining a coalition government, while the Communists could never
secure anything like enough votes to form a government on their own. Yet there
could be no doubt that, despite their lack of coalition potential, these two
Communist parties exerted a major influence in their respective countries on the
competitive and co-operative strategies of the other parties.
Now that we have identified a criterion for determining which parties are to be
included as part of a country's party system, we can turn to examine the factors
to be taken into account when devising a classification of party systems. There are
four main ways in which party systems differ from one another and which should
be bnilt into classificatory schemes of party systems:
l. the extent to which parties penetrate society;
2. the ideologies of the parties;
3. the stance of the parties towards the legitimacy of the regime;
4. the number of parties in the system.
This chapter will examine each of these elements in turn. As will become appar-
ent, far more space is devoted to examining the fourth of them than the other
three. This should not be taken as indicating that this element is somehow far
more importan! than the others. On the contrary, it will become apparent that
considering merely the number of parties in a system is a wholly inadequate basis
for classification. Nevertheless, there are two reasons for devoting so much atten-
tion to that element. First, until the publication of Sartori's Parties and Party
Systems in the mid-1970s, number-based classifications dominated most analy-
ses of party systems. Although Sartori's analysis begins by looking at the number
 150 PARTY SYSTEMS
ofparties in the system, one ofhis n1ain contributions is to expose their l~mita­
tions. However, such classifications still remain central to much academ1c and
popular discussion about party systems. Secondly, when discussing 'numbers' we
can explore severa! issues about the nature of party systems that would have to be
brought up anyway.
l. The Extent to which Parties Penetrate Society
There is considerable variation in the extent to which parties penetrate society.
At one extreme there are instances of very loase ties between voters and parties.
In these systems hardly any aspects of the parties' activities touch on the lives of
most people; few citizens identify with a party and only a small number perform
political tasks for the party. It may even be the case that relatively few voters:r:.
able to recognize the names of political parties or know who thelf leaders are. At
the other extreme, parties may be involved in many aspects of social life-most
people may be party identifiers, the newspapers they read may be party papers,_:·
:1''' many social activities may be conducted through party-related orgamzatrnns,
,.., and so on.
'·"
In general, party penetration of society affects competition between parties in
¡,,.·,
two ways.
• The less penetration there is, the easier it will be for new parties to emerge
and compete with existing parties. One of the factors which made it easy for new
1tll··'
parties to develop in Eastern and Central Europe in the early 1990s was the:
absence of voter links to existing parties-with the exception of the former:
Communist parties. Anyone could start up a new party with sorne hope of win- ·
ning converts simply because existing parties were themselves struggling to gen-
erate loyalty from their electorales. Of course, there are many institutional factors
that restrict the opportunities for potential new entrants in established liberal
democracies (such as aspects of the electoral rules), but undoubtedly party pen-;
etration of society contributes to limiting these opportunities.
• The greater the social penetration of parties, the more they are tempted to
concentrate on retaining the support of their loyalists. And the more parties ther
are in a 'highly penetrated' system, the more ali will tend to focus on retaining th
support of loyalists. In these circumstances, they have little incentive to act a
'catch-all' parties seeking votes from a w1de · range o f groups m · society.
· The
consociational system in the Netherlands (1917-late 1960s) was an example 0 t
extensive party penetration by all the majar parties. lt was a highly stable par\)'
system, arguably not in spite ofbut because of the highly partisan appeals made
by parties to voters.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 151
However, the connection being made here between party penetration of
society and stability in the party system must be qualified in three importan!
respects.
First, sorne very unstable party systems have had parties within them that <lid
penetrate particular communities quite extensively, even though, in general, the
party system was one of weak party penetration.
Examples of thi~ are the Communist and Centre parties in Weimar Germany,
and the Commumsts m the French Fourth Republic. Indeed, the fact that these
p~rties were exceptional within their respective systems arguably contributed to
their instability. This was partly because of their size and partly because of the
attitude of the Communists, in particular, to the regime. A large Communist
Party in both these regimes restricted competition for votes on the left and scared
'voters on the right, where there was little party penetration, into bolting to 'anti-
Red', anti-system parties. Therein lies a key dynamic of the instability of such sys-
. , t.~ms. In understanding this point, sorne of the interconnections between the
-·different elements of party systems can be appreciated.
' Secondly, the particular configuration of the parties in a system may prevent
'.-:.excessive instability-even in party systems where party penetration is very weak.
Far instance, the party system in the French Third Republic (1871-1940) was
not as unstable as in the succeeding Republic (1946-58). Among the factors
responsible for this was the role of the Radical Party in the Third Republic, which
was both large and at the centre of the political spectrum, while the Radicals were
a much weaker force during the Fourth Republic. Moreover, the parties were so
decentralized-they were really national alliances of local politicians-that the
party system could accommodate most shifts of voter support within the exist.
ing set of parties. The parties were porous, thereby making it difficult for new,
large organizations to form and take advantage of the lack of party penetration
of society. Similar arguments about the porous character of the parties, and the
11mnact of this on party competition, can be made in relation to the American
party system, where two-partism has survived despite the weakening of links
between parties and voters.
. Thirdly, institutional factors can inhibit the development of new parties even
m countnes where party penetration of society is relatively low.
Presidentialism and other factors have restricted the opportunities far new
entrants to the party system in countries like Argentina and Brazil and, in that
restr1cted sense, it is possible to speak of sorne South American countries as
Xhav'ing rather stable party systems.

152 PARTY SYSTEMS
2. The Ideologies of the Parties
How a party system behaves depends also on the ideol.ogies of the parties in that
system-or rather on the particular combination of ideol~gres represented. In
Chapter 1 we saw that von Beyme identified ~ine mam fam1hes of.party ideolo~y:
(i) Liberal and Radical, (ii) Conservative, (m) s.ociahst and So~ral Democrat1c,
(iv) Christian Democratic, (v) Communist, (v1) Agranan, (vn) Regional and
ethnic, (viii) Right-wing extremist, and (ix) Ecology movement. . the co.mpetition for votes within each of the linguistic communities and making
Many party systems contain parties from only a few of these c~tegones-:::-for
·1 · ·n the 1950s had parties from only categones (n) and (m)-
examp1e, Br1 a1n 1 f
while others embrace a much broader range. Furthermore, in the case o sorne
these categories, it is possible that more than one party fr~m a particular category
might be present in the party system. This is espec1ally hkely:
(a) in the early stages of democratization in a country, or
(b) where there is great ethnic diversity, or .
(e) where ethnic divisions have a territonal bas1s, or .
( d) where electoral and other rules make it relatively easy for par!Jes to .
That the particular ideologies represented in a party sy~tem affect the dynam1cs .
of a system can be illustrated by considering the followmg.
Consider, first, two party systems that had two large parties and s'everal smaller
ones: Italy in the 1950s and 1960s (before the 'histonc comprom1se of 1976) and
Israel since the 1970s. In Italythe presence of a Communist Party as one of the two
large parties restricted the form thatparty competition took in a much more severe
way than if, say, the Socialists had been one of the larger parties. Governments fell,
and reformed, frequently in full knowledge that the DC would always be at the ;
heart of any administration, and the DC operated as ª. centrist party supportmg
high levels of social spending. The situation was very d1fferent m IsraeL From the ,
early l 970s a relatively large Social Democratic party faced a s1milarly s1zed quas1,-
Conservative party. Governments could be formed with either of them at the;
core-depending on election results and bargaining over the format10n of coah·:
tion governments with smaller parties. This opened up con_rpe!lt10.n for votes-:-bY.
comparison with the Italian case. Elections determmed the ideolog1cal complex1of
of the governmenl in a far more fundamental way. Moreover, füe rise and fall o
governments has centred far more on election results: elect10ns m Israel produceq
long periods of bargaining between the parties, but once formed, government'.
tended to survive. In Italy government instability was caused partly by the absence
of an alternative to having the DC in government, and in turn that was the res.
of it being the Communists who were the other large party. The ideolog1cai d~{
lance between the DC and the Communists contnbuted to the behav10ur o t
party system being different from Israel's .
•
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 153
Another case to consider is one where at leas! sorne of the parties bothhave an
economic/class identity and also represen! a particular group in society, such as
a linguistic or ethnic subculture. This was the case with the Belgian parties in the
)970s, where growing tensions between the Flemish and Walloon communities
produced a change from a system with two large parties and one smaller one to
a system with a larger number of parties. (The older parties split on linguistic
lines, and new parties emerged to compete for votes in one or other of the two
communities.) This changed the focus of competition at elections-intensifying
the collapse of a go.vernment far more common. Even comparatively minor inci-
dents involving the status of one of the languages in villages on the borders
between Flanders and Wallonia could lead to the fall of a government. In these
kinds of party system there is far more fragmentation, and the strategies of party
competition are more complex, than in systems where class is indisputably at the
of political conflict.
3. The Stance of the Parties towards the Legitimacy of the
Re gime
This element is best considered by returning to the ltalian example. The problem
ofthe Communists-at leas! from 1947 until the mid-1960s-was not merely
that of the ideological distance between the PCI and the other large party in the
system (the DC). lt was also that the PCI at that time was an 'anti-system' party.
lt did not accept fully the rules of the liberal democratic political game; if it had
been in government, it would have tried to change sorne of those rules. Anti-
system parties cannot be taken into government for fear that they may under-
mine the regime itself; the example of the National Socialists in Weimar Germany
is the clearest instance of this danger being realized. But the presence of large
anti-system parties, particularly when they exist on both the left and the right,
means that there are very few alternative governments and in turn this has an
impact on party competition. In these circumstances unpopular governments
are likely to generate yet more support for the anti-system parties, because of the
absence of alternatives among the constitutional parties. In turn this further
increases the immobilism of the system.
Of course, it is not only Communist and right-wing extremist parties which
may be anti-system. Regional parties can become anti-system in their pursuit of
sorne form of territorial independence; this exposes even more the difference
the ideological and the anti-system elements. Accepting the legitimacy
a regime-and the legitimacy of claims by other groups in that regime-
154 PARTY SYSTEMS
makes for greater stability in a party system even when ideological distance
remains fairly high. The PCI's adoption of Eurocommunism, and thereby its
recognition of the liberal democratic character of the ltalian state, made possible
the 'historie compromise' in 1976; in that compromise the PCJ helped sustain in
power a DC government when there was no other viable alternative government.
Moreover, a failure to accept the legitimacy of others in the political arena may
produce great instability even when the major parties are not that far apart on the
ideological spectrum. Austria in the l 920s was an example of this. The ideologi-
cal distance between 'Reds' and 'Blacks' was arguably not as great as it has been
in sorne other liberal democracies, but the mutual intolerance at both élite and
mass levels escalated to the point of virtual civil war and the collapse of liberal
democracy. At various periods in the twentieth century Argentina provides
another example of this phenomenon.
4. The Number of Parties in the System
When we think of party systems the feature we often think of first is the number
of parties in the system-the two-partism of the United States and the multiparty
character of Italy, for example. In fact, the distinction between two-party and
multiparty systems was central to how most political scientists understood party
systems right up until the 1950s. For many of them, two-partism was a superior
form-it existed instable democratic regimes, whereas multipartism was asso~i­
ated with unstable regimes, such as Weimar Germany or the French Fourth
Republic, which always seemed in danger of collapse into authoritarianism.
Two-partism
From one perspective this focusing on two-party regimes was misplaced-sim-
ply because there seem to be so few that are genuinely two-party. The main can-
didates for inclusion as two-party systems are Britain, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Malta, New Zealand, the United States, and, possibly, Venezuela since the early
1970s. There can be no doubt that Colombia, Malta, and New Zealand (before
the mid-1990s) should be included, although Malta is so small that even books
about parties which focus exclusively on European politics often fail to mention
it! Costa Rica has bipolar tendencies but nota genuinelytwo-party system, while
Venezuela's third party wins a sufficient number of seats in the legislature for
sorne authors to describe it as a 'two-and-a-quarter' party system. 4 Moreover,,
doubts may be raised as to whether Britain and the United States are clear-cut
cases of two-partism. Certainly, Britain did have a two-party system between
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 155
about 1935 and 1970, but between 1885 and 1935 it <lid not. Since 1970 the elec-
toral strength of the third party (or alliance of parties) has meant that sorne com-
mentators would prefer to classify Britain as a two-and-a-half party system (a
term we shall discuss shortly). Doubts about whether the United States should
really be counted as a two-party system arise from entirely different considera-
tions. The argument could be made that the extremely loose connections
between the different elements of the Democratic and Republican patties today,
and especially the virtual autonomy of most candidates vis-a-vis party structures,
mear that it is nota two-party system at ali, but a very complex multiparty sys-
tem masquerading as two-partism. Even ifthese argu1nents are rejected, though,
and we shall see in Section B that there are good reasons for doing so, the num-
ber of two-party systems within the liberal democratic world is still small.
'But from another perspective-a theoretical one-it is worth paying close
attention to two-partism. The reason for this is that it seems to representa limit-
ing case-the only example of a party system where there would seem to be no
_ incentive for a party to do anything but compete with its opponent; opportuni-
ties for formal or informal co-operation with other parties do not exist. Two-
partism is an example of what in game theory would be called strict or zero-sum
competition. Every vote los! by the opposing party helps your party; of course, it
helps you even more if a person who would have voted for the other party now
votes for you, but that they are not voting for your opponents is half the henefit.
When it devises its electoral strategies a party can simply calculate the likely net
gains and losses from taking a particular stance. Under strictly competitive con-
ditions there is no incentive forparties to co-operate electorally, and they have an
incentive to introduce any campaigning strategies that will yield them a net gain
1n votes.
More than two parties
However, when there are more than two parties in a system, two factors could
limit the extent of the competition between parties. First, the more parties there
are the more difficult it is to calculate the likely impact of a policy initiative on
who will vote for whom. If a party wishes to avoid risks, therefore, it has a
stron.ger incentive than a party in a two-party system to avoid a radical change of
pohoes. Secondly, however, under multipartism you may not really be compet-
1~g agamst all other parties. 5 You may be competing primarily against those par-
lles which are 'clase' to you; most of the potential voters for sorne kinds of parties
will not consider voting for you, so that there may be little point in trying to
attract then1.
Let us consider these points first in theory befare turning to examples from the
real world. In this theoretical example it is assumed that parties have very high

156 PARTY SYSTEMS
levels of information-higher than they would have in the real world-about the
effect of their electoral strategies on voters and of the behaviour of their rivals.
Consider a system in which there are seven parties-A, B, C, D, E, F, and G; A's
strategies may primarily be directed towards its own potential voters and those
for B and C, while virtually none of its efforts are directed towards winning over
G's potential voters. In a sense, the range of the competition by the parties would
be more limited than in the two-party case, because sorne of the parties are not
attempting to compete with each other.
Suppose that these seven parties are competing for seats in a 100-seat parlia-
ment, and that it is widely expected that A will win about 30 seats, B about 10
seats, and C about 20 seats. Suppose further that A foresees a strong possihility
that the post-election government would include itself, B, and C, but not the
other parties. It wants to increase its own influence in negotiations on forming
that government, and sees C as a more significan! rival in this process than B. D
mises an issue (n) during the campaign which will lead to sorne Cvoters switch,
ing to D, thereby reducing the number of seats Cwill win. Providing that the via-
bility of the coalition government (A, B, C) was not affected adversely, A might
be quite contentto take no stand on (n). This would occur should the loss of seats
by C weaken its ability to oppose A; in relation to itself A would want C to be
weaker rather than stronger. The importance of that ohjective might even affect
A's willingness to compete with B. A might choose not to adopta position on (n)
even if doing so would probably lead to a net switch in votes from B to itself; A
might be better off in coalition bargaining through having a weaker e, than by
increasing its own electoral strength and its number of parliamentary seats. A's
implicit 'co-operation' with D in this regard has no counterpart in the strictly
competitive politics of two-party competition.
What about the real ,world? Can we find counterparts to this kind of party
behaviour?
• First, in segmented societies a party based in one of the subcultures may not
try to make itself attractive to voters in the other subculture. A Dutch Protestan!
party in the 1930s would not seek votes from Catholics. This kind ofbehaviour
is the very opposite of a 'catch-all' strategy in which parties seek to garner votes
from wherever they can. Other examples would include the religious parties in
Israel which make no efforts to attract secular Jews into voting for them.
• Then again, parties may puta particular effort into winning votes primar-
ily from the supporters of one rival party. Splinter parties, such as those on the
left which have broken away from social democratic parties in Scandinavia, have
often directed much of their initial effort to winning over voters frorn their 'par-
en!' party-partly because of limited resources.
• As for co-operation between parties, the problem of imperfect information
about likely vote switching probably precludes the precise type of behaviour
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 157
discussed in the example above. But there are instances in the real world of co-
operative behaviour by parties in multiparty systems-behaviour that is dictated
by the complexity of competition in the multiparty context. Indeed, as
Panebianco explains, it was just such co-operative behaviour in the Italian party
system that permitted the emergence of the Radical Party in the l 960s:
Before the emergence of the Radical party, neither the state/church cleavage nor that of
the establishment-antiestablishment found a channel of expression in the traditional
political élites. Instead, the major opposition party (the PCI), on the one hand, avoided
conflicts with the church because of its 'consociational' strategy toward the DC. On the
other, the established parties would never raise issues connected with the establishment-
antiestablishment cleavage. 6
Co-operation and competition in party systems
Now, when arguing that multiparty competition may provide opportunities for
co-operative behaviour by parties that seem to be absent under two-party com-
1 petition, two further points should be made; they caution us against drawing the
conclusion that we might expect initially to be able to draw on the basis of the
preceding discussion, namely that two-party competition in the real world will
be more competítive in sorne sense, perhaps less 'tame', than multiparty compe-
tition.
• When we return to consider the first element of party competition-pene-
tration of society-we see that where parties penetrate deeply certain sectors of
society in multiparty systems, they may use a campaign style of exaggeration
designed to appeal explicitly to party loyalists. Indeed, this was a campaign style
associated with the era of consociational politics in the Netherlands ( 1917 to the
mid-1960s). 7 That multipartism may restrict the range of electoral competition
does not make that competition less intense or aggressive.
• The theory of two-party competition can be extended in directions which
suggest .that the two competitors may not be quite such aggressive pursuers of
votes as zero-sum competition seems to imply. Suppose we assume, for example:
(1) that new policy initiatives are quite costly for a party (party activists may
be hostile to shifting the party's focus, so that time has to be spent in con-
vincing them, and so on);
(2) that most voters are not so well informed about the parties, or so inter-
ested in politics, that they are particularly responsive to policy changes by
the parties; and
(3) that it is costly for new parties to come into existence.
In these circumstances there seems to be little incentive for the parties being
attentive to the demands of voters. The governing party which is inattentive in
 THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 159
158 PARTY SYSTEMS

this way may find that it gains as many votes from disillusioned voters who pre-
Table 5. ~· Classification of party systems 1958-1990, strictly by the number 0 ¡
viously supported the other party as it loses from its own disillusioned support-
~relevant parties* 1n the_ system
ers. Rather than being drawn into intense competition with each other ov~r
policy, the parties may choose instead to compete over such matters as the -, 'Piedominant party Two-party S}.isterrís With SySter'nS With
Systems systems 3-5-parties mofe than 5
'image' of their leaders, or through campaign advertising that is non-political in >{more than _on_e parties
content. This is the way that economic competitors behave in certain kinds of _ fe/evant party but
-,- 'only óne p'arty
market-oligopolies-where there are relatively few firms supplying the good.•
~ ',Eiver controls the
An economist, Albert Hirschman, has developed a theory to explain the declin- i':lé9is~lature)
ing standard of goods supplied under oligopoly, and this analysis can be extended' Great Britain Australia Belgiu_m
to the case of party competition. 8 · New Zealand Austria Denm'ar'k
Of course, such behaviour by oligopolistic parties would be as likely to happe USA Canada Finland
France Israel
under multipartism as under two-partism. But the point being made here is tha Getr'nany ltaly
to the extent that it occurs, it tends to diminish the probability that the range o lceland Switzerl.;irÍd
lrela'nd
competition will be any greater under two-partism than under multipartism Luxemburg
Nevertheless, the two-party system remains an interesting, and distinct, _ sª~ Net_herlands
Norway
because certain forms of co-operative behaviour between the parties seems to b Sweden
precluded. For this reason, in any classification of party it should be !reate
separately.
But what are the other interesting cases for purposes of classifying par
systems? If we could not find any, then we wonld have to identify party syste
simply by the number of parties-so that we would talk about three-pa
systems, four-party systems, five-party systems, and so on. There are tw The predomi.nant party system. This is a system where one party regularly wins
approaches that can be.taken here. One takes account only of the number of fh enough parhamentary seats to control government on its own. Post-war Japan
parties, but tries to group together similar cases. The other approach brings in a (until 1993) 1s an example of such a system, as was India for about the first thirty
additional factor: the relative size of the parties in a system. We examine both · years after Il be.carnean mdependent state in 1947. In both cases a single party
turn and begin wíth the first approach. •· was able to retam 1ts predommant position with less than 50 per cent of the op-
ular vote. This kind of system must be distinguished, however, from case;like
Italy where one party is much larger than any of the others that can jo in the gov-
Approach A: Not considering the relative sizes of parties ernment and 1s :hereby the dominan! member of any coalition government.
This is the approach adopted initially by Sartori, among others. When consider While there. are importan! similarities between a country like Italy and those
ing solely the number of parties, there are three main kinds of party system,Í '.ountnes w1th predominan! party systems-for example, with respect to the
~¡'.

addition, that is, to the twb-party system:

9 largest party's relations with organized economic interests-the latter's party sys- ~I

tems have been rather different from Italy's. .i

• the predominant party system; ::¡
- -:':'" In predominant party systems the main party is faced by a divided opposition.
• Ll1e systen1 with three to five parties;
.}ven the second largest party in such a system faces great difficulties in increas-
• the system with more than about five parties.
If:f !ng the size of its electoral coalition to beco me a poten tia! rival to the dominan!
.1

In Table 5.1 the party systems are classified by counting only those parties .
obtained at leas! 3 per cent of seats in the national legislature in a general el
tion; the number of parties indicated for each country is the median followi
each election between 1958 and 1990.
::.:c?•rty. In both India and Japan disproportionalities in the electoral system made
!l poss1ble for the Congress Party (in India) and the LDP (in Japan) to maintain
]~wer very easily even when it ceased to obtain a majority of the votes cast. The
:·P sition of the LDP changed very little between 1963 and 1993, even though
,'.? 63 Was the last occasion on which it received more than 50 per cent of the vote.
160 PARTY SYSTEMS
Moreover, a predominant party <loes not have to seek innovative ways of obtain-
ing votes in the way that parties under two-party competition must. lt relies on
identification with it as 'the party of the nation' and on preventing too many
defections by leaders of particular factions-a development that might threaten
its organizational base or its claim to be the national party.
As a category in helping us to understand the behaviour of different party
systems, the predominan! party system is valuable in that a distinctive type of
system is identified. Unfortunately, even more than in the case with two-partism,
it has always contained a small, and declining, number of exemplars.
The system with three to five parties. Many political scientists have argued that,
leaving aside the case of predominant parties, it matters a great <leal how many
parties there are in a system. In particular, a moderately fragmented party system,
one with between three and about five parties, is likely to have very different fea-
tures from one which has a large number of parties. Giovanni Sartori is among
the political scientists who have taken this view, and he puts the point this way:··
'the interactions among more-than-five parties tend to produce a different
1 was not exhibiting centrifuga! tendencies in the party system but rather cen-
mechanics than the interactions among five-or-less parties.' 10
Now there are two points to note about this claim. The first is that Sartori <loes
not believe that six-party systems will always behave very differently from five-
party systems; rather, he argues that it is around five or six parties that differences
in the behaviour of systems are observable. Furthermore, Sartori's argument
hinges on an assumption he makes about the kinds of ideologies that will be
represented in systems with more than five parties. In principie, we could ima-
gine a system of seven or eight parties that behaved like one with, say, four but
only, according to Sartori, if we make assumptions about the range of ideologies
found among those parties that Sartori would claim do not mesh with real-world
experience. In general, a three-to-five party system exhibits the same tendency as
a two-party system: parties are seeking to develop a bread electoral appeal.
Unlike the predominan! party system, where parties other than the governing
one have little incentive to maximize their appeal in the electorate, and also a
more-than-five party system, where political influence is still possible for parties
that have a relatively narrow appeal, the three-to-five party system tends to
favour bread electoral coalitions.
The system with more than about five parties. When there are more parties than
about five the dynamics of party competition are different. Even the large parties
know that they are restricted with regard to where they can hope to pickup votes.
The main fear is losing votes to those smaller parties that are closest to them in
policies and in 'image'. Correspondingly, these are the very parties from whom
they are most likely to gain votes. Throughout the system the behaviour of the
parties is directed more to attracting support from specific segments of the vol'
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 161
ing population than to attracting voters from various segments. This tendency
towards the 'localizing' of competition is a function ofboth the relatively small
size of many of the parties in the system and the fragmentation of the vote
between a number of parties.
An obvious advantage of following this approach-not considering the relative
size of parties in the system-is that it provides a simple and straightforward set
of categories. The disadvantage is that two of these categories (three-to-five par-
ties ª1'd more-than-five parties) each contain rather different kinds of party sys-
tems. It is far from evident that they could have much utility for analysing party
behav10ur.
F~rt~ermore, it i.s also not clear that 'localizing' of competition necessarily
occurs in systems w1th more than five parties, or, even if it <loes, that the result is
to drive parties towards extremist positions. Of the six countries in the 'five-plus'
category m Table 5.1, Denmark, Finland, and Switzerland do not display such
tendencies. And it can be argued, contra Sartori, that Italy in the years of the PCI
tripetal enes. Sartori's evident dislike of the PCI actuallyled him to misrepresent
the nature of electoral competition in Italy. This leaves Israel and Belgium, both
of which <lid come to display sorne of the characteristics of 'localized' competi-
t1on as the party system changed. But might we end up with more coherent cat-
egories if we were to consider the relative size of the parties in the system?
¡1
¡.¡
ih
Approach B: Considering the relative sizes ofparties ~I
11
This approach assumes that the behaviour of a party system is likely to be '"
1
influenced by the size of a party's opponents in relation to its own size. Consider, :'I
for example, sorne of the logically possible configurations with a four-party sys-
tem:
!'
ti
( 1) each of the parties might get about 25 per cent of the legislative seats at ¡¡
each election;
(2) two of the parties might usually obtain about 35 per cent of the seats while !i
the other two receive about 15 per cent each; 11
(3) one ofthe parties might receive about 45 per cent of the seats at each elec- '11
tion while the remaining parties each receive 18 per cent.
,1
It should be obvious that how the parties compete and co-operate in pursuit of
~
votes may be rather différent in the three cases and this ápproach pays attention
to th.at. It mes the idea of the 'half party' to describe smaller parties in systems,
and m particular it operationalizes the idea of the two-and-a-half party system.
¡,I
Using this approach there are, perhaps, four main types of party system, in
11
¡I
11
t
162 PARTY SYSTEMS THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 163

addition to the predominan! party system and the two-party system (see Table
5.2). These four main types are:
• two-and-a-half party systems;
• systems with one large party and severa! much smaller ones;
• systems with two larger parties and several much smaller ones;
• even multiparty systems.
This method of classifying party systems could then be combined with Approach
A in the way suggested by Table 5.3.

Table 5.3. Classification of party systems 1958-1990, by number of 'relevant'

parties_
Taking aCi::ount Striétly by nuinber ofparties
of relative size
~·---t'O{pártie_s Pr'edominant Jwo:party_ Party system:S Párty syster:ns
p~rty_systems syste_ms With 3-5 with-rríáre
partie:s thari'S párties
· ·:-'prédominant Jap-an·
pa_rty: s,Ystems
·. TWó-pcírty systeliis 'G'réat'Britain'
N'~w Zealand
.USA
TWo-and-a-half Australia
'Austria
Canada
Gethic:írl/
frel'and
1
, :sYstems:With'rt10-r€:th:a_f(
two~a_nd:a-half-párties
:Oile l_a_rg~;par:ty
E 1

~- · lSraef"
líely
1

€"'
ro.
:·France B'él_9fúm 1
a. tte1and-_, Denmark
o-c L,üxefíri'burg Firllá,rid
_Netbérráñds_ · Switze'fJa_rld
o
·.;;:;
"'u 1
""
·~

D"'
11

Iivo-and-a-half party systems. As we have noted already, these are systems con- I'
Ñ taining three parties, two of which are much larger than the other one. However,
ui
'Q) ', this category turns out to contain party systems with rather different patterns of !
:Q'>!<Úl
relations between the parties in respect ofhow they co-operate and compete with
"'"'
¡..;...,·.¡::¡
each other.
11

1
11

11
i

1
f
164 PARTY SYSTEMS
One model is that of Germany from the late l 950s until the early l 980s, and in
a modified form sin ce then. Neither of the large parties (CDU/CSU or SPD) can
expect to win a legislative majority. The smallest party (the FDP) enters a coali-
tion government with a majar party; it contests elections on the basis that it will
remain in that coalition, should the two parties continue to have a majority of
Bundestag seats between them. Changes of alliance between the FDP and the
majar parties are infrequent and occur between elections. Since the mid-1980s
Austria has followed a rather similar pattern.
Ireland between the late I 940s and the late l 980s provides another model.
However, at times during this period it looked more like a predominan! party
system or a system with one large party and severa! smaller ones, such was the
electoral strength of the largest party, Fianna Fáil. It was, and still is, much larger
than Fine Gael which could govern only in coalition with Labour (and <lid so
during 1954-7, 1973-7, and 1982-7). Because Fianna Fáil <lid not countenance
being in coalition itself until 1989, sorne elections befare 1987 were conducted by
Fine Gael and Labour on the understanding that they would form a coalitio~
government should they obtain a majority. Thus, on occasions electoral compe-
tition was genuinely three-way, but on other occasions it was 1nore of a modified,-_ ~:"
two-wayvariety ofthe kind found in Germany.
Canada, from 1945 until 1984, was different again. In terms of the relative
electoral strength of the parties it bore sorne resemblances to Ireland. But,
unlike Fine Gael in Ireland, the second largest party, the Progressive
Conservatives, sometimes won outright parliamentary majorities in Canada.
Moreover, the plurality electoral system could generate parliamentary majori-
ties for the Liberals (and sometimes the Conservatives) on less than 50 per cent
of the vote. Although a substantial minority of general elections produced no
overall parliamentary majority for any party (6 out of 14 elections, 1945-84),
coalition government was not practised. The largest party always formed a
minority government, and a new general election was usually called within two
or three years. With respect to electoral competition, therefore, this model is
similar to the classic two-party model with consisten! unrestricted competition
involving all three parties.
The Australian case represents the minimal example of two-and-a-half party
politics, al leas! in relation to electoral competition. The smallest party (the
National Party) maintains an entirely separate electoral and organizational iden-
tity from that of the Liberal Party in sorne, but not all, of the states. While in sorne
states National candidates compete against Liberals, in others they do not. But it
is only with the Liberals that it has entered coalition governments; it never allies .·
itself with Labour.
What is interesting about this category is that the dynamics ofthe different two-
and-a-half party systems are so different; this must raise considerable doubts as
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 165
to whether the relative size of parties could provide a way of overcoming the lim-
itations of a purely numbers-based classificatory scheme.
Systems with one large party and severa/ smaller ones. In these systerns the largest
party usually wins at leas! 45 per cent of seats in the legislature, but rarely-if
ever-rnore than 50 per cent of them. The main examples of these par_ty systems
are Norway and Sweden during the middle decades of the twentieth century,
although until the mid-1960s Denmark also followed a broadly similar pattern.
Duriµg these years social democratic parties were usually in government-in
Sweden, in fact, they were continuously in government from the mid-1930s until
the mid- l 970s-although the dominance of these parties seemed to have eroded
in all the Scandinavian dernocracies by the 1990s. There are sorne obvious simi-
larities between this category of party system and predominan! party systerns,
most especially in the resources available to the largest party in sustaining itself,
simply because it is in government far so much of the time. But the situation fac-
ing the largest parties in the two kinds of party systems is actually rather differ-
-ent.
Continuity in government in Scandinavia did not always depend on winning
parliamentary majorities. On the contrary, there were often long periods of
minority social democratic governments, even in Sweden. Moreover, unlike pre-
dominan! party systerns; the other parties were not without hope ofbeing in gov-
ernment. The Danish social democrats formed coalition governments with other
parties in the 1950s, while grand alliances of the non-socialist parties formed
governments in Norway in the 1960s. Maintaining social democratic dominance
mean! finding new ways of attracting the middle class-which was a continu-
ously growing sector of the population-for parties that had their roots in the
working class. This required innovative electoral strategies-in the Swedish case
modifying social welfare policies to benefit the salariat-of a kind that a pre-
dominan! party does not have to develop. Moreover, the relations between the
various 'opposition' parties involve them in keeping separate identities and com-
peting' with each other, al the same time as they know they may be required to co-
operate after an election if that produces a dramatic decline for the largest party.
The Scandinavian countries provide the classic examples of these sorts of party
system, and the similarities in their political culture, their patterns of social cleav-
age, and their institutional development suggest it might be useful to think of a
Scandinavian type of party system-providing Iceland and Finland are excluded!
However, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are not the only exemplars of party
systems that have one large party and severa! srnaller ones. For rnuch of the
period between the 1940s and the late 1980s !reland could be regarded as falling
either in this category or in the two-and-a-half party system type. And in Spain
this kind of party cornpetition emerged during the 1980s when the centre and
1
166 PARTY SYSTEMS
right-wing parties fragmented in the face of the Socialists' victory in the 1982
general election. But once these two countries are included it becomes less clear
that the similarities between the party systerns are sufficient to warrant regarding
thern as a class of party systern. Far exarnple, in the Scandinavian countries the
largest party could only retain its position through efforts at expanding its orig-
inal electoral base. By contras!, until the 1990s Irish electorel politics was dorni-
nated by conservative electoral strategies: a harking back to the political syrnbols
of the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s from which the divisions between the
parties had sprung.
Systems with two larger parties and several smaller ones. If the first two types of
party systern really correspond to the three-to-five party category ofthe 'nurn-
bers only' approach, this category contains sorne of the systerns found in the
rnore-than-five party category (see Table 5.3). The two largest parties are much
larger than any of the others but neither of thern can hope to obtain parliarnen-
tary majorities for themselves, and, moreover, post-election coalition buildiri¡(-~:
will usually involve severa! of the srnaller parties, and not just one of thern.
(The two rnain parties receive over 65 per cent of the seats between thern
while none of the srnaller parties usually gets more than 14 per cent.) The lead-
ing parties stand for very different traditions, policies, or values which rnakes far
intense rivalry between thern, and that rivalry gives considerable leverage to the
srnaller parties in extracting concessions during the formation of coalition gov-
ernments.
The two rnain exarnples in this category are ltaly frorn the rnid-1950s until the
rnid-1980s and Israel from the 1970s onwards. (Towards the end ofthe Weirnar
Repnblic-in the early 1930s-Germany was also starting to develop sorne
superficial features of this rnodel.) Considerable power rests in the hands of the
srnaller parties because of the ideological distance between the two rnain parties;
that distance made coalition governments involving the two main parties either
irnpossible (Italy, and Germany in 1932-3) or the solution oflast resort (Israel).
However, once again, there is considerable doubt as to whether the similarities
between the different cases are sufficient to warrant describing this as a separate
class of party systern. Electoral cornpetition is different in Israel frorn that in pre-
1994 ltaly because of differences in the dynarnics of coalition governrnent for-
rnation. In Israel both the Labour and Likud parties are acceptable as potential
Ieaders of coalition governrnents; srnall religious parties hold the balance of
power and use their position as leverage for extracting concessions on policy
as well as on portfolios within the governrnent. By contras!, in Italy the
Cornrnunists were not acceptable as rnernbers of a governrnent after 1947, and
after the mid-1950s the Christian Dernocrats could not hope to govern on their
own-except as a rninority government. With a centrist party as the largest party
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 167
in any Italian government, negotiations on government formation tended to
focus more on the allocation of government portfolios than on policy agendas.
Even multiparty systems. The last of the possible categories includes all instances
of party systems where there are more than two parties but where there is neither
a single large party, nor two similarly sized ones, but a rather more even distrib-
ution of electoral strength in a systern containing at least four parties. (A three-
party systern is logically possible but is an inherently unstable case that usually
can be ignored. Belgiurn hada three-party systern in the early decades of this cen-
tury which became a two-and-a-half party system during the inter-war years. lt
moved through a three-party phase again in the 1960s during the transformation
frorn a two-and-a-half party systern to a cornplex, even multipartysystern involv-
ing seven parties.) The nurnber of parties in these systerns is su ch that the range
of cornpetition is restricted-parties generally compete for the voters of parties
that are rnost like their own one. But the range of party systerns that can be
included in this category is so broad as to suggest that it too is not especially use-
ful for analytic purposes. Ali the following could be counted as instances of'even
1
multiparty systerns'.
(a) co-operation not competition. This is the Swiss case. There are four parties
which between them form an oversized coalition government which <loes not
change after an election.
(b) co-operation but with highly cornpetitive electoral rhetoric. This is the
classic 'consociational dernocracy' rnodel (the Netherlands 1917-67) and per-
haps could be considered simply as a variant of the Swiss case. Governrnents are
grand coalitions involving all the main parties, and the governmental style is one
of élite accornrnodation. However, it differs frorn the Swiss case in that election-
eering involves a far more intense appeal to group loyalties-in other words, a
more cornbative electoral style.
(e) cornpetition involving a nurnber of parties, three or four of which, as in the
Netherlands (post-1967) or Finland, rnay be rnuch larger than the others. The
composition of the governrnents is likely to change after elections in ways that
tend to, but do not necessarily, reflect major shifts in voter support; governments
may also change between elections when particular parties in the governrnent
withdraw their support. In the Dutch and Finnish cases governrnent forrnation
may be cornplex but the stability of the regirne is not in doubt. This is not the case
with a superficially similar, but in reality quite different, kind of even rnultipar-
tism found in tbe Weirnar Republic (frorn 1918 until the late 1920s) and in the
French Fourth Republic (for its entire duration).
(d) polarized and volatile electoral cornpetition. Weirnar Gerrnany in the
1920s and the French Fourth Republic are more like rnultipartisrn involving two
large parties and several srnaller ones than they are the Dutch or Finnish versions
168 PARTY SYSTEMS THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 169

of even multipartism. They had tendencies to polarization of the party system,

which was exacerbated by the volatility of electoral behaviour that was far greater
than in either Italy or Israel. In the latter two countries parties penetrated the
societies quite deeply, and this provided stability to a system of polarized politics. Centripetal
Neither in Weimar Germany nor in France during the Fourth Republic was there competition

extensive party penetration of society. Arguably the more even strength of the
parties contributed to the volatility..°f these systems. .
(e) highly fragmented party systems where there are no large parlles, few
medium-sized ones, anda large number of small parties. This was the experience
of Czechoslovakia between the wars and has been a feature of the early stages of
party politics in many of the new democracies in Eastern and Central Europe.
[tshould be clear from this discussion that merely considering the number of
parties in a system (even when allowing for their relative sizes) is inadequate Centrifuga!
when attempting to classify party systems. Most of the categories contain party competition
systems that differ from each other in crucial respects. A more adequat"
dassificatory schema would involve embracing all four of the elements that were
identified. But this seems to leave us with a problem. Any classification which
took account of all aspects of these elements would be extremely complicated. -
Clearly, classification requires us to simplify-and this was the approach adopted
by Sartori whose analysis marked a significan! advance in this regard, and to
which we now turn.
Although he <loes not discuss party penetration directly, his view seems to be
that, in so far as they are relevant to party systems, variations in penetration
would be responses to the variables he <loes include. Thus, in segmented societies
5. Sartori's Classificatory Schema like the Netherlands, with distinct Protestan!, Catholic, and secular subcultures,
deep party penetration is a necessary organizational response to segmentation.
Sartori's classificatory schema goes beyond previous approaches that considered The problem with this approach is that not ali segmented societies have high
merely the numbers of parties in a system. His analysis is built around two vari- party penetration-Canada <loes not, for example-and party penetration can
ables-party fragmentation and the ideological distance embraced by the parties behigh in sorne non-segmented societies (Italy) and low in others (France, espe-
in the system (see Fig. 5.1). cially befare 1958). And we have already seen that the extent of party penetration
• party fragmentation. He utilizes a measure of fragmentation that takes is likely to have an impact on competition within a party system. Nevertheless,
11
account of the number and relative size of the parties in legislatures. this is the sort of 'price' that has to be paid in an attempt at simplification.
• ideological distance. Sartori's framework is quite explicitly related to a Sartori's second variable, ideological distance, is a very broad one. It includes
<left-right' ideological spectrum. Where there is wide division between par- not only the range of party ideologies found in the regime, but also a rather dif-
ties on, for example, 'lifestyle' issues such as the environment, reproductive ferent variable, the altitudes of parties to the regime itself and to other parties in
rights, and so on, this <loes not feature as ideological distance between the the regime. That is, according to Sartori, ideologically extreme parties are likely
parties in that system. to be anti-system parties, centrist parties will not be. This is probably a more
In addition to this 'narrow' notion of ideological distance, Sartori also <loes not acceptable simplification than the previous one, although it <loes mean ignoring
treat party penetration of society or the stance of the parties towards the regime cases like Argentina or inter-war Austria where intolerance of opponents was not
directly linked to extremist policy demands.
as separate variables.
 THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 171
170 PARTY SYSTEMS
· ¡·fi classification differs markedly from the schema introduced earlier in this chap-
The snnp 1 ed vers1on
· of Sartori's model is shown in Fig. 5.1. The key . to _:"•
. ·1 · that c110 r Sartori the crucial feature of any party system is not ter.
un derstan ding i is ••
·i· party system is but the direction of party compet1t10n,
h -w~~-a
· ·· b
. . h
·ih centripetal or centnfugal. With the former t ere is a
.
Compet1t1on can e ei er . Segmented multipartism
he political spectrum; part1es cannot succeed by tak-..·
strong pu11 to t h e cent re o ft ..
. · · · 1 d with the far ends of the pohtical spectrum. By con-. Segmented multipartism exhibits high levels of party fragmentation, b.ut this is
ing up posit1ons assoc1a e
·fu al ompetition the political centre becomes weakened as·.·. not accompanied by centrifuga! competition between the parties. The parties are
trast, un der cen tri g e . --::
. 1 one or both of the extremes, and parties thereby have• not driven to compete far extreme positions; rather parties in societies having at
voting support moves o . ..
incentives to take on extreme pohcy pos1t1ons. )east two quite distinct sub.cultures appeal to group solidarities on the one hand
and co-operate in governrrient formation on the other. This prevents a general
drift to extremism that fragmented competition might otherwise require.
Two-partism
Omitted from this model, but only because he regards itas a phenomenon found
. S · -partism combines low party fragmentation and sma!fr
Accord1ng to artor1 1wo . . ·:· in the early stages of democratization, is atomized multipartism-competition
. · d. b 1 en the parties with that small distance bemg preserved.
ideolog1cal istance e we ' . . h /'. involving fifteen or twenty small parties. Either such systems collapse or consol-
· ¡e
by the centnpeta iorces m
· the svstem A party that became extremist m suc_..
.. . . h A d ..·
ª. of the parties produces a party system of the kind that is embraced by the
e ¡ ally and would be forced back mto t e centre. n , in.
system wouId su f ier e ec or
1 . .h . 1 rnodel.
fi d two-partism is often associated w1t centnpeta ten
the real worId , we do n ",.· Allowing far the fact that there may be problems of defining the borders
dencies. between theSe categories, what are the limitations of the basic Sartori framework?
One point, recognized by Sartori himself, is that purely mechanical measures of
Polarized multipartism fragmentation result in one-party predominan! systems (like Japan's) being
. ¡· · resents the opposite tendency. The centre is weakened_ assimilated into the moderate multipartism category-even though the domi-
Polanzed mu tipartism rep nance of a party like the LDP means that the dynamics of)apanese electoral com-
· f ties at one extreme or the other. The lack of alterna
by the dram o votes 1o par . f h h petition are very different from those in, say, Sweden or Luxemburg. It makes
. to the part1es
tives · a¡rea dYin
· government weakens the part1es o t e centre w e.·.' . _-_,
unpopular. In Germany, the French Fourth Repub11c more sense either to modify the measure of fragmentation orto omit predomi-
b
the governn1ent ecomes . 11 nan! party systems from the framework. A niore serious problem, and one not
·¡ · h ¡ 1970s these tendencies produced reg1me co apse;
and Chie m te eary . . ·· recognized by the author, lies in Sartori's view of segmented multipartism as
Sartori's account similar developments were ev1dent in Italy.
inherently more stable by comparison with polarized pluralism. Writing in the
The model identifies two further kinds of multipartism-moderate and seg; mid-1970s this seemed a defensible position. The recen! experience of Belgium
mented. may suggest a rather different conclusion. In fact, the segmentation of party pol- j;

itics may help to create immobilism in a polity once there is a moderate increase 1
'
support for extreme parties. The extreme right in Belgium would not have
Moderate multipartísm
posed such problems for government formation and maintenance if segmenta-
Moderate multipartism exhibits-not surprisingly-me.dium levels of par· tion had not produced a far more fragmented party system in the l 970s and
fra mentatiun and centripetal competition. Broadly sp~aking, these are the ~ª:::, 1980s. Under such circumstances, the Belgium party system seems to have sorne
g · ¡ b 1 een three and five parties that we d!Scussed when examm!ll
systemswi11 eW . · a system However SartonºhºimseJfºmeJu des cases r
of the features Sartori associated with Italy, even though the extreme parties (in
the numb ers o f par t1es 1n · ' . . , terms) are much smaller than was the PCI at the height of its power-
d A t
Canad a an us ra 1a
r within the category of two-part1sm, reservmg the categ9
. . üf "' wl1en it could obtain between a quarter and a third of the popular vote.
. "or countries that have had, from time to time, gen ..
of mo derate p1ural1sm 1 1

• f
.· ent Moreover the straightforward measures of party ra,
coal1t1on governm . ' . d. 1 d ül
· d b Sartori result in japan bemg place m t 1e mo erate m ..
mentat1on use Y .. h t
cause of its divided opposit10n. In t ese respec s
partism category be
172 PARTY SYSTEMS
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 173

6. Evaluating the Sartori Schema

To evaluate the framework further, it is necessary to try to operationalize it. It'
should be admitted immediately that the approach to be adopted here is very
crude, though it <loes provide sorne help in assessing the Sartori model. In Fig)
5.2 an approximation to party fragmentation is taken by using the data from
Table 5.1-the average number of parties in each legislature, counting only those
parties that obtained at leas! 3 per cent of the seats for the period from the late
l 95üs to the late l 980s. This is plotted on the vertical axis. On the horizontal axis'
is plotted an approximation to ideological distance. The original data used far
this are taken from Laver and Hunt's survey of experts on parties, which we hav~··¡
used already in Chapter 1. 12 We use the data relating only to thepositions ofparty.
leaders and to only one issue, that of public versus private ownership, which tra-
ditionally has been at the heart of the division between left and right. Howey,r,
in the analysis presented on the horizontal axis ofFig. 5.2 only the largest partid
in each legislature are included; these are the ones which between therri
accounted far al leas! 65 per cent of the seats at the last e!ection held in that coun, ·
try in the l 980s. (Thus, for Sweden the three largest parties have been includedi·
since the two largest parties had only just over 63 per cent of the seats, the nexf
largest party in the Rikstag was also included.)
The data plotted on the horizontal axis is the distance between the leaders of:
the most left-wing and the most right-wing of the large parties in a country. The
minimum score possible would be zero-if there was no difference between the
parties-and the maximum score would be 19.9. The measure employed heie
omits smal!er parties because it is attempting to plot the ideological distance sep'.
El·
arating the largest, and arguably the most powerful, actors in the party system.
What <loes Fig. 5.2 revea!? With one notable exception, Britain, there does
seem to be sorne link between the fragmentation of the party system and ideo'.• E»
logical distance. In general, there is greater distance between the larger parties
when there are six or seven parties in the system than when there are only two o'r
G·
three parties in it. This seems to mesh quite well with the Sartori model whic!( 8·
views polarized pluralism as being a system involving high fragmentation, with.·'
the parties being pulled towards the political extremes.
8· G·
However, considerable caution needs to be exercised in ínterpreting the evi'-::"
dence from Fig. 5.2 and severa! comments should be noted. First, not ali th<
countries towards the bottom right-hand comer of the Figure-the polarized::
pluralism end-are examples of regimes where competition is tugging the pafü
ties away from the political centre. Danish politics is far more consensual tharf
this crude measure relating to public ownership indicates. Secondly, while;
Sartori saw Italy as an instance of polarized pluralism, the twenty years since hN

174 PARTY SYSTEMS
analysis witnessed a great change in the policy stance of the former PCI which is
reflected in the location ofltaly in Fig. 5.2. Nevertheless, the measure l have nsed
would have been a poor one for Italy even in the l 950s and 1960s, since the DC
embraced the idea of extensive state activity and what divided left and right was
more fundamentally the legitimacy of the regime. These centrifuga! tendencies
were still present in Italian politics in the !990s with the rise of the Northern
League, regional tensions, and the issue of corruption being at the heart of the
Italian state; the result was a fundamental transformation of the party system. Yet
if this example suggests the limitations of the kind of evidence presented in Fig.
5.2 it also exposes the limitations of an approach like Sartori's which subsumes a
party's attitude to a regime under the notion of ideological distance.
Then there is the British exception to consider. Undoubtedly, had Laver and
Hunt conducted their survey in the early 1970s, the results would have shown a
narrower gap between the Labour and Conservative parties. How should the
wide ideological gap be interpreted? If the divergen! views of the party 1eaae1rc.-.~:
ships were to persist for a long time, the likely result would be a drift towards the
style ofpolitics evident in inter-war Austria: extreme social division within a two-
party system. But the electoral pressures for the two parties to move closer to
other have been intense, particularly for a Labour Party that wished to take office
again, and the likely outcome is that a repetition of the Laver and Hunt survey in
the late 1990s would probably show a considerable narrowing of the gap between
the parties. For this reason, it could be argued that the British experience of the
1980s does not undermine the overa!! plausibility of the Sartori framework;
indeed, it could be argued that this example shows how two·partism serves to
moderate centrifuga! pressures.
But the case of inter·war Austria, just cited, does pose serious problems for the
Sartori framework. Austrian two·partism was associated with a style of bitter,
divisive politics that eventually brought about the collapse of the regime-
precisely what is not supposed to happen in two-party systems, according to
Sartori. Two-partism <loes not necessarily push the parties towards the political
'centre-ground', and in sorne circumstances it <loes not do so. Furthermore, in
Argentina presidentialism encouraged two-partism, oral leas! dualistic tenden-
cies, but did not thereby produce a politics of consensus.
Vv1 1at, then, is the valuc of the Sartori framework? Certainly, it <loes provide us
with a starting-point for examining party systems. lt helps us to simplifythe real
world of party systems by providing a limited number of classes of systems and..
linking these classes to patterns of party behaviour. With this approach we have
got beyond simple descriptions of party systems and beyond merely counting the
number of parties. Jt is a useful heuristic device, and for that reason it is impor-
tan! when first studying party systems. But it may be doubted whet]ler it offers ·
us more than that. The connection between party fragmentation and electoral :
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 175
competition in which extremism dominates is notas clear cut as Sartori suggests.
Yet if it is a 'dead end' for purposes of seeking to explain why party systems dif-
fer, it is an interesting 'dead end' in that having explored it we are in a better posi-
tion to understand the debate about how and why party systems differ.
SECTION B
France
The French party system underwent an enormous change with the demise of the
. Fourth Republic in 1958 and the creation of the Fifth Republic. Whether that
change should be explained primarily by the new political institutions or
whether it really reflects a major transformation in French society is a matter to
be left until Chapter 6. But that there was change is not in doubt. Under the
Fourth Republic France hada polarized multiparty system; for Sartori, it consti-
tuted one of the main exemplars of polarized pluralism. Opposed to the regime
were the Communists-easily the largest party on the left, securing about a quar-
ter of the total vote-and various groups on the right. Until the early 1950s, when
General de Gaulle abandoned electoral politics temporarily and retired to his
house in the country, the most importan! right-wing opposition to the Republic
carne from de Gaulle and his supporters. In the Fourth Republic disillusionment
with government policy or with the economy could lead to dramatic shifts in
support to the extreme parties. The best-known example was the newly formed
Poujadists who obtained 11.7 per cent of the vote, and 9.4 per cent of the seats,
in the 1956 election. A populist, right-wing party, the Poujadists drew support
from peasant farmers and small shopkeepers whose livelihoods were threatened
by the economic transformation France was then undergoing.
Not only was electoral competition in the Fourth Republic centrifuga!, but it
involved a wide range of party families including Communist, Social Democrat,
Liberal, Christian Democrat, Conservative, and the extreme right. Moreover
most of these parties generally did not penetrate French society very deeply,
although in their areas of electoral strength the Communists were an importan!
exception to this pattern. Unlike British and American citizens al the time,
among whom more than four out of five identified with a particular party, only
about one-half of French citizens did so.
Compared with this pre-1958 system there are three main differences in the
 176 PARTY SYSTEMS
French party system today. First, until the mid-1980s the extreme parties eith
became weaker or changed in character, so that the centrifuga! aspects of ele
toral competition seemed to have been eliminated. Electoral support far t
Communists declined, so that by the end of the l 980s they were capablé
obtaining little more than about 1O per cent of the vote. The supporters of
Gaulle, who had been one of the main opponents of the constitution of
Fourth Republic, became the initial party of government in the Fifth Repubf
and supported loyally the regime he created. It was not until the emergence of
National Front (FN) in the mid-1980s that right-wing extremism once agai
became a major force in France. Signi:ficantly, the FN is not anti-regime in th-
same way that both Communists and Gaullists opposed the Fourth Republic, an
that is one indication of the extent of the poli ti cal transformation sin ce the l 9SÓ.
Secondly, the advent of a directly elected presidency, and the transformatio
of the French parliament from one of the most powerful in Europe to one of th"
weakest, helped to bring about a consolidation of parties. The Fourth Repub!i
(and the Third Republic befare it) had been characterized by the existenceo
small parties and parliamentary groupings. On the left the Socialist Party w ·.
reconstituted (between 1969 and 1971), bringing together the farmer party (t
SFIO) anda number of smaller socialist groupings. On the centre-right the par
ii., ties retained a separate identitybut created a formal alliance (the UDF) in 1978.
But there were limits to this party consolidation: there was not a merger betwe
the Gaullists and the UDF, nor one between the Socialists and the Communist
It was a politics of two tendencies and not two-partism.
Thirdly, with the exception of the UDF, the parties of the Fifth Republic we
far more oriented towards organizational structures that would facilitate their
contacts with mass electorates. Party penetration of society increased and vote_['.
identification with parties changed accordingly. But while this reduced sorne o
the electoral volatility associated with the 1946-58 period it <lid not remove
completely. In two general elections befare 1986 the FN had polled 0.3 and 0.2
per cent ofthe vote; in 1986 its support rose to 9.8 per cent ofthe total. Even in"
this instance it could be argued that the rise of the FN was an example not so.
much of continuing electoral volatility, as of the effects of institutional change.'
The introduction of PR for the 1986 elections provided an incentive far those,
who might earlier have voted far the far right to do so now, knowing that their
candidates might well gel elected. Furthermore, sorne critics of Presiden(
Mitterrand argue that he anticipated that this would be a consequence of chango''":
ing the electoral system, and that he was attracted to it because it would pose seri,
ous problems of electoral strategy far the RPR and the UDF.
As ofthe mid-1990s the French party system could be understood in severa!
different ways. One way is to think ofitas having two-and-a-half tendencie;.--a
left (embracing the Communists, the Socialists and their splinter group (MRG);
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 177
;~nd the Ecologists), an orthodox right (embracing the RPR and the UDF), anda
f~r-right wing (the FN). Alternatively, the French party system might be con-
ceived of as a member of the three-to-five party category (wíth five parties-PCF,
:pS;RPR, UDF, and FN) which may be in the process ofbecoming a more-than-
·five party system in which the electoral strength of the parties is fairly evenly
. balanced.
• In tbis chapter we are concerned with the German party system only until the
ending of tbe division of Germany in 1990, so that the discussion here fa cuses on
g.:.;;the stable party system established in West Germany. In Chapter 7 we examine
... possible changes in the party system fallowing reunification.
As in France, regime change has been responsible far the transformation in the
party system. But there is a significan! difference between the two cases. In France
one liberal democratic regime followed another, and the country's borders did
noiéhange between the two regimes.13 In Germany, though, the second liberal
democratic regime (the Federal Republic) occupied a somewhat different terri-
• tory from the previous democracy (Weimar), and sixteen years ofbrutal dicta-
•·· · . ·. torship lay between the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of
.:. O othe FRG. Like the French Fourth Republic, Weimar Germany was an instance of
polarized multipartism. At both extremes of the party system were parties that
;, were anti-system; support for both increased when economic conditions wors-
ened after I929, the more critica! increase being that for the National Socialists.
With the exception of the (Catholic) Centre Party, only the National Socialists of
the parties in the centre or on the right penetrated Gerrnan society deeply, and
this contributed to the instability of the system.
The system that was to develop in the FRG was a two-and-a-half party sys-
tem-encompassing a Christian Democrat, a Social Democrat, and a Liberal
party. Typically, the CDU and the SPD would receive about 80 and 90 per cent of
the vote between them, with the Free Democrats obtaining between 6 and 12 per
cent. Competition was centripetal and governrnent involved coalitions of two of
these parties. Both of the large parties carne to regard party penetration of soci-
ety asan importan! componen! in electoral success, although originally the CDU
had been an élite-based party. Coalition partners in government would cam-
paign separately from each other, but changes of coalition generally emanated
from tensions within the governing coalition rather than from post-election bar-
gaining. There are, however, three qualifications to be :nade about this charac-
terization of the FRG as a two-and-a-half party system.
178 PARTY SYSTEMS
First, it took severa! elections for the system to emerge in its complete fot
Particularly in the first election in 1949, severa! small parties between them to ·
a significan! minority of the vote, so that the Christian Democrats and SPD ca
tured only just over 60 per cent of the vote in that election. In the early 19$
Christian Democrat support grew spectacularly, so that by the 1957 elections ·
CDU and CSU won just over half the votes between them--a result no Briti ·
party has produced since 1935. 14 After that, Christian Democrat support "
slightly and it would obtain consistently between 44 and 49 per cent of the vo
Secondly, the Christian Democrats actually comprise two quite separate p
ties-the more conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) based in Bavaria ari
the CDU which is active in the rest of Germany. Unlike, for example, the Gaullis
and the UDF parties in France who would contest elections against each oth
but then ally against their opponents at the run-off stage of the electoral proces
the CSU and the CDU are not direct competitors at any stage of the elettor
process.
Thirdly, following the 1983 election when the Greens obtained over 5 per c
of the vote, sorne observers argued that West Germany was moving towards a tw
and-two-halves system. In the 1987 election the share ofthe vote obtained byth
CDU/CSU and the SPD fell to its lowest leve! since 1961-81 per cent ofthelotº
(After reunification that share was to fall yet again to 77 per cent.) But, to us·.
Sartori's term, <lid the Greens have 'coalition potential'? An SPD/FDP/ Gree ..
alliance would have been a majority coalition after both the 1983 and 1987 feder.
elections. The later alliance between the three parties in forming a government in'
one of the German states (Bremen) indicates that this coalition was not entirel ··
'unfeasible'. Nevertheless, for at least much of the 1980s the unreliability of th'
Greens as coalition partners-partly because of their decision-making struc.-
tures-meant that even the SPD was extremely wary of co-operation with them af
the federal leve!. An alliance involving the FDP and the Greens was less likely stilL
At most, the 1980s could be described, perhaps, as a two-and-two-halves party sysC.
tem in the making.
What happened subsequently to the German party system will be examined in
Chapter 7.
Great Britain
A political observer in the late l 950s would probably have described the British
party system quite simply: two-partism, involving a strong centrípeta! competi-
tive drive with a Conservative and a Social Democratic party. British parties did
not penetrate society very deeply, but they went deep enough for most voters toi
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 179
·aentify with one party or the other. Moreover, at that time two-partism was
1
egarded as having been the norm in the past.
r More than thirty years later classifying the British party system no longer seems
uite as simple as it might have done then. It is no longer obvious that the history
_:¿fBritish parliamentary democracy can be interpreted in terms of an unremitting
:\wo-party norm. Certainly, the reconstruction of the party system in the mid-
nineteenth century-following the splintering that occurred in 1846-can be
. understood in that way. From the expansion af the franchise in 1867 through the
· further expansion in 1884, Liberals and Conservatives dominated elections, and
party whipping in Parliament increased enormously. But from 1886 until the
early l 930s the British party system is really one of moderate multipartism; there
, Were three main types of party in this system at one tüne or another:
Liberal Unionists. A significant minority of the Liberal Party split with their
party in 1886 on the introduction of Gladstone's bill providing for Irish Home
Rule. Although they served in Conservative governments, they remained an
entirely separate party until 1912. Befare then relations between the two parties
were not unlike those that developed later between the Liberal and Country
(National) parties in Australia.
-'frish Nationalists. From the 1880s Irish seats with Catholic majorities increas-
ingly returned candidates from the Irish National Party. Support from this bloc
of more than eighty MPs was crucial in keeping Liberal governments in office. Of
the seven elections between 1886 and the First World War three produced out-
right Conservative victories, one produced a majority Liberal government, and
the other three resulted in minority Liberal governments dependen! on Irish sup-
port. By 1918 the parliamentary Nationalists had lost electoral support and were
replaced by Sinn Fein MPs whose policy was not to take their seats. Ireland
(excluding six counties in Ulster) became in dependen! in 1921.
Labour Party. The Labour Representation Committee won two seats in the
year of its formation, 1900. Through a pact with the Liberals in the 1906 and the
(two) 1910 elections, Labour Party representation increased to 29 and then 42
seats (6.3 per cent of the total). With the split in the Liberal Partyin 1916, Labour
was able to emerge as the second largest party after the 1918 election. From then
on, until the 1931 election, there was genuine three-party competition in Britain.
Between 1931 and the early l 960s not only was the proportion of the seats taken
by the Conservative and Labour parties very high, but so too was their share of
the vote. Since then two developments have occurred which casi at leas! some
doubt on the interpretation ofBritain as still being a two-party system:
( 1) the share of the vote obtained by the two parties has fallen-from well over
90 per cent ofthe total at the height oftwo-partism to (typically) about 75 to 78
per cent of the total.
180 PARTY SYSTEMS
(2) there has been a much smaller decrease in the proportion of parliame
seats won by Labour and the Conservatives-from about 98 per cent to ab():
per cent of the total. Two factors account for this decrease. First, until
Unionist MPs from Northern Ireland were allied formally with the Conser
Party-dissatisfaction with Conservative policy towards Northern Ir
prompted the Unionists to sever this connection. Secondly, the Liberal
(arid its successor parties and allies) together with the Welsh and Seo
Nationalists now win more seats than they used to in spite of the distortio
the British electoral system.
Of course, given the effects of the electoral system, none of these parties
'coalition potential'. But do they have 'blackmail potential' today? Obviously
in the way that the French Communists used to. But after remembering Sartó
definition of'blackmail potential'-that the party's existence affects the tacticii:
electoral competition of those parties that do have coalition potential-the is§"
is less clear cut. Was, for example, Labour's move back towards the political
tre after 1983 the result of its nearly being supplanted by the Liberal/SDP Allia
as the party with the second largest share of the vote? If it was, then we mi
interpret the Alliance as having 'blackmail potential'. But the Labour Party kri
from poll evidence that a majority of Alliance voters would not have vÓt~d
it had the Alliance not existed; in a straight head-to-head battle with
Conservatives Labour would still have lost decisively. Its movement rightwar ·
after 1983 had more to do with its position in relation to the Conservatives thá
its policy position vis-a-vis the Alliance. This point tends to undermine the argll
ment that the British party system has moved away from being a two-party sys
tem. Of course, the changes of the last three decades may make a transformatid
of the party system more likely, but that is not the same as saying that it is n ·
longer a two-party system.
Japan
There is at least one respect in which the )apanese party system was unique among
liberal democracies. Ja pan is the only regime that was governed by the same party
on its own, and with a majority of seats in every parliament, for over forty years._-
The predominan! party, the LDP, is perhaps best regarded as a kind of right-wing..
liberal party, though that description barely captures the ideologies that il>.
embraces. The mould o[Japanese politics seemed to have been broken bythe 1993 ··
election, and as with Germany the transformation of party politics will be exam-
ined in Chapter 7. However, it may be noted here that it is still unclear what kind..:
of party system is emerging in the aftermath of the LDP electoral defeat.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 181
.rhere were large parties in other countries-notably the DC in ltaly-which
·· e in government for as long as the LDP was, but their occupation of office
ally involved coalitions with other parties. The Swedish example is also dif-
rent from the Japanese experience. In Sweden one party did govern on its own
for four decades, but this differed from the LDP case in that there were times
when the Social Democrats could rule only as minority governments. The party
:system to which Japan bore most resemblance was India (from independence
:·until 1977). In both these party systems the largest party was faced by a divided
y()pposition, and_ in both the type of electoral system used at the establishment of
the regime faohtated dommance by the largest party even when 1t secured less
than half the popular vote.
At best, India-Japan comparisons are highly superficial and very misleading.
The social and economic bases of politics in these two countries could scarcely
have been more different. India is a multi-ethnic, economically underdeveloped
society, while Japan is a relatively homogeneous society with one of the world's
;:._. Jargest economies. These differences beco me especially apparent when looking at
the kinds of parties that arase once the predominant party system ended. In India
one of the main sources of opposition was the BJP, a Hindu fundamentalist party
~that could have had no counterpart in a country like Japan where there are no
major social cleavages based on religion or ethnic identity. To put the matter
bluntly, India and Japan have never constituted sorne kind of 'Asian model' of
democratic party politics.
At the end of the 1950s a naYve Anglo-American observer of)apan might have
been tempted to see it as a two-party system in the making. Between them the
LDP and the Socialists received 90 per cent of the vote. Surely, our observer
would have claimed, there would be splintering in the LDP anda strengthening
of support for the Socialists as the latter moved further to the right to woo voters
away from the LDP? In fact, this <lid not happen; not only was there sorne splin-
tering in both parties and both consistently lost votes to new parties, but there
was far more splintering) and proliferation of new parties, in the opposition
camp than in the LDP itself. Consequently, the gap in voter support between
the LDP and the Socialists <lid not narrow-indeed, the relative gap actually
increased.
By the end of the l 960s a platean had been reached-from then on the two
largest parties consistently obtained between about 64 and 70 per cent of the
vote. Paced by an increasingly fragmented opposition who could not easily ally
with each other, the LDP could retain its predominan! position, until corruption
and scandals weakened it sufficiently that it lost its parliamentary majority in
1993.
As we shall see in Chapter 6, the Japanese electoral system was an importan!
factor in contributing to the maintenance of the LDP's predominan! position.
 182 PARTY SYSTEMS
But as importan! as this was the interpenetration of the party and othe
groups in Japan-most notably bnsiness and the civil service. The LDP di
have the kinds of clubs and facilities that were characteristic of deep party
tration of mass society-of a kind seen in the Italian Communist par
example: rather it concentrated on binding together key élites.
United States
Superficially the United States is relatively easy to classify in relation to the an
sis presented in Section A. lt has a two-party system; party penetration of sod'
today is extremely weak; in relation to van Beyme's classification of the famz
spirituelles, both the Demacra! and Republicau parties can be understooa'
'• Now sorne of these arguments are simply irrelevant or misplaced. Fmt, if it can
types ofLiberal party; and both parties are pro-regime. Undoubtedly party.co'.
petition is centripetal; parties which are perceived as having moved away fi(')
the mainstream are punished electo rally. This was the fa te of the right-wing pré
~ .¡
idential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and of left-leani
Democrat Georg e McGovern in 1972. However, once the nature of the Ameri ··
party system is examined in more detail, this brief characterization might se
more than a little misleading.
At the heart of the matter líes an issue that was mentioned briefly in Sectió
A-whether the US party system should really be regarded as a two-party syste'
at all. Certain facts are not in dispute:
( 1) The last time a new major party was formed was in 1856-60 when th ··
Republicans took the place of the declining Whig Party.
(2) In presidentia! elections third or fourth parties hardly ever poli more than,.
1 or 2 per cent of the vote. Occasionally, a third candidate <loes better than'
this-the examples this century being 1912, 1924, 1948, 1968, 1980, and;
1992. On only one occasion since 1860-in 1912-has such a candidate
beaten a candidate of one of the two major parties in to third place.
(3) Two-party domination is equally evident in elections to the US Congress.
It is rare today for someone who is not the candidate of the Democratic o.r
Republican parties to win a seat in either the House or the Senate.
(4) Even al the leve! of state politics it is the same two parties which contest
elections. In this regard American politics differs from the Canadian expe'
rience where sorne provinces have strong (third parties' which either are
not active in national elections or have much less strength there.
The main objection to considering the United States as a 'true' example of two-
partism is that the links between the various elements of the parties are so weak .
that party seems to be little more than a label. Consequently, each party contains
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PARTY SYSTEMS 183
' 'th totally opposed views on many majar issues; a Democratic member
~M
·ongres
. ' hkely
s from New Jersey, for example, 1s ' to have .v1ews
. h
. . t .atare more
¡hose of sorne New jersey· Republican than those .of a M1ss1ss1pp1
. Democrat. .
··•· d. me scholars have suggested that the Amencan system is two-party m
~,w b
•• · ly· it is possible, al the state leve!, to speak of a two-party system ut at
ame
:·:" · on · ' l level such a claim is meaningless. Somet1mes
· · ¡·Inked
· argument is
th1s
·:.~~t:~:rs. The first is that if certain institutional changes were made-say, if
·dency was abolished or the electoral system changed-then the Umted
e.pres1 . . . Th
O uld rapidly be transformed mio sorne kmd of mult1party system. e
~w . . . . d
:.dther argument is that American part1es ar~ d1ff~rent from European part1es, ~n
> 1 be fitted into a party system class1ficat1on based on European part1es,
canno . · ¡ h
'• e they are so similar to each other w1th respect to ideo ogy. T ey are
"~ecaus , , .
'Tweedledum' and Tweedledee part1es. . . . .
·be argued that changing sorne of the United States' political institutions would
transform the party system, then the same could be said of many other liberal
·Úmocracies. Jt is notan argument against considenng the Umted States as a real
example of two-partism. Secondly, the United States is not the only country
here the two largest part1es appear to be so ahke. If anythmg, before the m1d-
j980s the Canadian Liberal and Progressive Conservatives had far stronger
claims to being 'Tweedledum' and 'Tweedledee' political parties .than the two
American parties. Thirdly, from the late l 960s onwards-and part1cularly m the
1980s-the Democratic and Republican parties were becoming more dissimilar. ·-- .. ,
The northern, liberal wing ofthe Republican Party declined while southern con-
servatives moved increasingly into the Republican Party. The evidence of the
Laver/Hunt data, cited in Chapter 1, also confirms the view that the parties are
not alike; arguably they are less similar with respect to policy than the German
parties. Finally, in any federal country there may well be significan! differences
between the policies and interests represented by a party at the nat10nal leve! and
those represented at the state leve!. lt is as true of Canada as of the United States.
But that <loes not mean that we should include patterns of state party systems m
our classification of the national party system. Until the 1993 election Canada
could properly be characterized as a two-and-a-half party system, even though in
recen! years there had been a three-party system in the province of Ontario and
the Quebec Liberal Party held rather different views from the Liberal Party
nationally. The same point holds for the United States-the claim that it is a two-
party system is not invalidated by pointing to the complexity of party politics in
the United States when we take account of the federal dimension.