"Les Partis Politiques"

Abstract

rT 1HIS SHORT, critical essay is based on the review of a bold and intelligent book, a major product of the new direction taken by French political science since the war, which deserves to be widely read among American students of politics. In Les Partis Politiques, Professor Duverger turns sharply away from the traditional French emphasis on formal public which he holds to be far less important to an understanding of contemporary government than a knowledge of political parties, and from the almost equally traditional French approach to parties through the study of doctrine and families of ideas. It is not his aim, however, to explain away parties in terms of nonpolitical factors. While he observes the connection that parties frequently have with social and economic classes, his approach is not Marxist. Nor does he follow the neo-utilitarianism of the group theorist who treats parties as little more than coalitions of interest groups. For Duverger, parties have, so to speak, a life of their own. They are not merely epiphenomena of other social forces. They are, to put the point strongly, independent variables in the sense that their behavior in the context of their respective party systems expresses tendencies, or indeed, compulsions, which develop autonomously within this subject matter and which may be studied in the hope of arriving at authentic sociological laws peculiar to that subject matter. From what aspect of parties and party systems do these tendencies proceed? For Duverger that aspect is neither doctrine nor social base, but structure, and he devotes the two parts of the book respectively to the internal structure of parties and to the structure of party systems. Here, as he points out, he is a follower not of Marx or Benjamin Constant, but of Ostrogorski and particularly Michels. Like the latter, he finds that even a party sincerely committed to democratic doctrine will be compelled by the necessities of political warfare to adopt an oligarchic structure. But while accepting Michels' iron law, he goes beyond Michels' limited concern both in his analysis of internal structure and of the structure of party systems. Party program, for instance, will tend to be a function of these structural patterns. If a party is doctrinaire and impractical, the reason may be the beliefs of the members or even national character. Duverger does not dogmatically exclude these possibilities. He directs attention, however, to other questions, such as the position of the militants in the structure of the party. Two parties with much the same beliefs and social bases will