Abstract
When studying party system change over time, it is tempting to use as indicators one or several of the existing measures of fractionalization and concentration. If these measures are used to study change, they will often be misleading because of their inability to discriminate among even very different diachronic patterns. Seven indicators are tested on a hypothetical set of data, and all of them fail to reflect typical patterns of change. Thus if students of party systems want to study the general phenomenon of party system stability or change, they should preferably use other types of measures. An indicator of aggregate volatility is shown to satisfy the requirements of a good indicator of party system change.
Published Version
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