Duverger’s disciplinary and field-defining research on political parties

Abstract

Duverger was an innovator who shaped the discipline of political science to a degree that few others have. His Political Parties, published originally in 1951 in French, and then in English in 1954, was well ahead of its time, bearing the seeds of modern political science. Duverger saw political parties as existing at the nexus of mass politics and institutionalized political routines backed by legal force. For his study, he focused especially on the relationship of individuals within parties to the organizational routines and rules of the parties themselves. Always moving between levels of analysis, Duverger with great care made fine distinctions among types of phenomena. It was crucial to his analysis that he describe in detail, first, the various types of people within parties, and second, the types of parties as organizations. He was one of the few at mid-twentieth century to move beyond institutional description and formulate predictive scientific hypotheses. Using his considerable skills at categorization, his finding commonalities and pinpointing differences among institutions in the analysis of party systems are perhaps his greatest legacies to political science.