National Party Systems Research Articles

Dominant Party Regimes in Canada and Australia: Going the Way of the Dodo Bird?

Dominant party regimes – in which one and the same party controls government over an extended period of time, whether alone or as the major player in a coalition – are not as anomalous in Western democracies as it may appear to casual observers, especially if the subnational jurisdictions of federations are considered alongside national party systems. In our paper, we probe the incidence of dominant party regimes in the federally-organized parliamentary democracies of Canada and Australia. Although extant literature indicates that Europe provides a more favorable political environment to single-party dominance than Westminster systems, both countries have experienced phases of regular alternation in government as well as dominant party regimes (for instance, Social Credit and Conservative dominance in Alberta and Ontario, and Country/National Party dominance in Queensland). In the paper, we ask whether single-party dominance is now a phenomenon of the past and, if so, why this is the case. An original dataset comprising all national and subnational election results and government formation outcomes in the two countries since January 1, 1901 (the date of the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia) as well as a dataset of government episodes of varying length – defined by the identity of the sole or largest government party – are the empirical basis of our study. Our data indicate that single-party dominance occurs more often in the Canadian provinces than in the Australian states and that it may flourish under a variety of conditions. We also find that dominant party regimes mostly appear to be a thing of the past. Explaining the increasingly rare occurrence of single-party dominance requires the consideration of a number of structure and agency-related explanatory factors.

Realignment and Entrenchment: The Europeanisation of Rifondazione Comunista

This study explores the impact of European integration on Rifondazione Comunista, through a conceptual approach that draws upon the Europeanisation literature and evaluates two sub-processes: (1) positional realignment towards European integration and (2) the entrenchment by the party of an EU dimension of issues and activities. The empirical evidence and analysis presented draws upon the party's functions of patterns of party competition, programmatic change and affiliations beyond the national party system. Findings show that Rifondazione gradually increased the use of the issue of European integration in an attempt to differentiate its European vision, thus presenting the EU as a necessary terrain of struggle. Second, it underwent slight programmatic and attitudinal realignment towards a softer approach. The intervening variables conditioning each sub-process reflect a nuanced picture, with most identified factors playing a role. These factors also reflect the wider patterns of Italian politics observed so far, allowing us to highlight the significance of national and party specificities in party-based Europeanisation.

Presidents and Parties: How Presidential Elections Shape Coordination in Legislative Elections

This article explicates the mechanisms through which presidential elections shape the legislative party system, an issue that has received little attention to date. The authors argue that presidential elections exert their influence through two distinct channels. First, they affect the incentives of candidates, voters, and parties to coordinate within electoral districts. Second and most importantly, they shape the incentives of candidates to coordinate across legislative electoral districts under a common party banner, leading to more aggregated or nationalized party systems when there are few presidential candidates. The authors find support for the relative importance of this cross-district effect using a unique data set of district-level election results from approximately 600 elections in 70 countries.

Decentralization and the Nationalization of Party Systems

On the basis of a sample of 227 elections in seventeen Western European countries over the period 1945–98, we examine to what extent party systems are shaped by fiscal and political decentralization. With the exception of a few special cases, empirical evidence does not support the existence of a robust relationship between the degree of decentralization and the nationalization of party systems.

都道府県議会における政党システム

This chapter analyzes the determinants of party systems in Japanese prefectural legislatures. We can classify four types of prefectural legislatures. The first is one-party dominant type. The effective-number of parties in such prefectures has been constantly under two. The second type resembles the party system of national diet before 1994. Their ENP has been stable between two and three. Some prefectural legislatures have been highly fragmented so that their ENP goes up more than three. In the fourth type, we see that party systems are highly disunited after late 1990s. We explain these differences among prefectures and time-series changes by electoral institutions, relations between legislators and governors, and relations between national and local party members. Statistical analyses on time-series cross sectional data of postwar 47 prefectures reveal that large magnitude of electoral districts, independent governors, non-concurrent elections of legislators and governors, and fragmented national level party systems in the prefecture cause the fragmentation of party systems in the prefectural legislatures.

Decentralization and the Nationalization of Party Systems

Based on a sample of 227 elections in seventeen Western European countries over the period of 1945-1998, this paper examines to what extent party systems are shaped by fiscal and political decentralization. With the exception of a few special cases, empirical evidence does not support the existence of a robust relationship between the degree of decentralization and the nationalization of party systems.

Federalized Party Systems and Subnational Party Competition: Theory and an Empirical Application to Argentina

In 1949 V.O. Key wrote about the importance of state-level one-party in the southern United States for organizing local authoritarian rule in a nationally competitive party system.1 Key's study documented a phenomenon that continues to pose theoretical puzzles to contemporary scholarship on party systems: the simultaneous existence of competitive party politics and noncompetitive party politics in one national party system. In addition to documenting U.S. party system dynamics at the subnational level that were distinct from those at the national level, Key also uncovered important institutional interac tions between noncompetitive state party systems and the competitive national party system. These findings (and many others that followed about U.S. state party politics) pro vided significant possibilities for theory building about parties and party systems. How ever, this theoretical promise was stifled by two subsequent developments in political science. The first was the impermeability of boundaries between American and com parative politics, which relieved Americanist scholars of the burdens of generalization and comparative theory builders of the burden of paying close attention to U.S evidence. The second was the theoretical development of comparative literatures on party systems, whose most influential scholars overlooked or rejected the incorporation of subnational contexts into their theorizing about party systems. As a result, scholars of American politics developed an extensive empirical literature on state party politics while com parative theorizing about parties and party systems remained oblivious to the theoretical implications of this trend. Today there is new interest in how and why the quality of democracy varies across subnational territorial units of countries.2 Party system dynamics are a crucial piece of the puzzle. However, the comparative literature on parties and party systems offers few theoretical tools to scholars interested in this topic. This is because in that theoretical tradition party systems are conceived of and measured nationally. Their systemic prop erties are assessed at the national level, and the indicators used to measure those proper ties (usually votes for national offices or seats in national legislatures) are national. This practice has created a situation of conceptual and measurement incompleteness that hinders new discoveries in the study of party competition across jurisdictional bound aries of the nation-state. 21

Party System Nationalisation and Non-uniform Vote Switching. Evidence from the Czech Republic

National rather than regional party systems are the norm in most democratic states. This has been interpreted as meaning that most voters view inter-party competition in the same way. With a high level of party system nationalisation the relative proportion of electoral support attracted by par- ties across all constituencies tends to be very similar although the absolute level of party support changes across elections. Sociological and institutional explanations have been used to account for party system nationalisation. Both of these explanations have generally made causal inferences using aggregate data. The link between party system nationalisation and the individual voter has not been examined in the same detail. Here this link is explored using an ecological inference analysis of vote switching. This research, using the Czech Republic as a case study, shows that the presence of high party system nationalisation evident across a pair of elections may be associated with non- uniform electoral swings. These results demonstrate that evidence of party system nationalisation should not be taken to mean that all voters view elec- toral choices in the same way.

Local Party System Nationalisation: Does Municipal Size Matter?

Local party systems are not necessarily copies of their country's national party system. Some national parties do not field candidates in all municipalities, while in other municipalities there are non-partisan lists/local parties. In this article it is hypothesised that the larger the municipality (in number of inhabitants), the more the local party system will resemble the national party system (and vice versa). The hypothesis is tested using data from the 2001 local elections in Denmark. For this purpose, an index of local party system nationalisation is developed. The index is formulated in general terms so as to make it applicable in other settings and in comparisons between countries and over time.

Party politicisation of local councils: Cultural or institutional explanations for trends in Denmark, 1966-2005

Local government party systems are not necessarily copies of the national party system. In many countries, local party systems have come to resemble the national one more and more – a process Rokkan termed ‘party politicisation’. The traditional expectation has been that the take-over of local politics by political parties, through a gradual process of societal modernisation, would eventually be complete. More recently, however, it has been suggested that reorganisations of the institutional set-up – that is, amalgamations of municipalities – could entail developments in the degree of local party system nationalisation. This article investigates cultural and institutional explanations for party politicisation by analysing the Danish case from 1966 to 2005 – a period that witnessed both major amalgamation reforms and periods of stability in the local government structure. The data suggest that dramatic party politicisation does not lend itself to cultural explanations, but originates exclusively from changes in the institutional set-up. Party politicisation is not a gradual process, but comes – at least in Denmark – in leaps coinciding with major reorganisations of the local government structure.

The Model of Europe and Other Contributions to the Study of European Political Development

Flora, P., Kuhnle, S. and Urwin D. (1999) State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bartolini, S. (2000) The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980: The Class Cleavage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Caramani, D. (2004) The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bartolini, S. (2005) Restructuring Europe: Centre Formation, System Building, and Political Structuring between the Nation State and the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferrera, M. (2005) The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bozo, F. (2001) Two Strategies for Europe: De Gaulle, the United States, and the Atlantic Alliance. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

From consensus to competition? Ideological alternatives on the EU dimension

According to the literature on European Parliament (EP) elections, parties do not offer real choices to voters on European integration. Indeed, in most European Union (EU) countries, there has been broad consensus about integration between the main parties. Importantly, previous research shows that this elite convergence is not replicated among the voters. Using European Election Study (EES) data from the 1999 and 2004 Euroelections, this article analyses the ideological dispersion of parties on the EU dimension in the EU member states. We examine the development of inter-party competition on the EU dimension between the two elections, and then test the impact of various factors – divided into public opinion, national party system and EU hypotheses – on the breadth of party positions over integration. The strongest link exists between government size and ideological alternatives, with large coalition governments hindering party competition on the EU dimension. However, overall our hypothesized factors explained only a small portion of between-country differences.

Decentralization and the Development of Nationalized Party Systems in New Democracies: Evidence From Latin America

The extent to which a party system is nationalized—with nationalization being defined as the degree to which major political parties obtain similar vote shares throughout the national territory—has considerable consequences for political representation, public policy making, and even the survival of democracy. Yet, so far there is little empirical evidence about the conditions that promote or inhibit the development of nationalized party systems in new democracies. Using electoral data from 89 elections in 16 Latin American democracies, this article provides a systematic analysis of the effect of decentralization on party system nationalization. The results show that political decentralization and fiscal decentralization inhibit the development of nationalized party systems, thus suggesting that a trade-off exists between decentralized governance and party system nationalization. These results are robust when controlling for ethnolinguistic fractionalization and characteristics of the electoral system.

Introduction: Government Coalitions in Multi-level Settings—Institutional Determinants and Party Strategy

Government formation is an essential aspect of party politics. In those countries with a multi-level system of governance, coalition formation itself is a multi-level game. This special issue brings together contributions that explore regional coalition formation in Belgium, Spain, Germany and Italy. Party coalition choices appear to be constrained by systemic determinants, such as whether the federal setting tends to be joint or competitive, bipolar or multipolar, majoritarian or consociational and uni- or plurinational. Furthermore, the distribution of veto powers in the multi-level decision-making structure is a crucial determinant of how integrated party coalition strategies are across levels. Other key factors that explain these choices pertain to how integrated national and subnational party systems are and to individual party attributes, such as ideology, goals and internal organization. Last, but not least, it appears that the role of personal relations both within parties at different governing levels and between parties at the same level is also highly important, as multi-level settings are characterized by great complexity.

Party Matters

This article addresses the relationship between political decentralization and the organization of political parties in Great Britain and Spain, focusing on the Labour Party and the Socialist Party, respectively. It assesses two rival accounts of this relationship: Caramani's `nationalization of politics' thesis and Chhibber and Kollman's rational choice institutionalist account in their book The Formation of National Party Systems. It argues that both accounts are seriously incomplete, and on occasion misleading, because of their unwillingness to consider the autonomous role of political parties as advocates of institutional change and as organizational entities. The article develops this argument by studying the role of the British Labour Party and the Spanish Socialists in proposing devolution reforms, and their organizational and strategic responses to them. It concludes that the reductive theories cited above fail to capture the real picture, because parties cannot only mitigate the effects of institutional change, they are also the architects of these changes and shape institutions to suit their strategic ends.

The Composition of Public Spending and the Nationalization of Party Systems in Western Europe

Do political institutions shape the structure of public spending? Based on a sample of 141 elections in eighteen Western European countries over the period 1970-1998, this paper shows that governments' margin of maneuverability to design and implement fiscal policies depends on the level of party linkage or the nationalization of party systems, defined as the extent to which parties are uniformly successful in winning votes across districts. The mechanism behind this argument is that in weakly nationalized countries there are additional transaction costs to change the budget as a consequence of the survival of local parties and interests. Therefore, the composition of public spending is more rigid here than in highly nationalized countries.

Europeanization and the variable influence of the EU: national parties and party systems in Western and Eastern Europe

The literature on the Europeanization of post-communist states often points to the substantial difference between this process and that occurring in the older member states.1 Primary attention has ...

Does the nationalization of party systems affect the composition of public spending?

Do political institutions shape the structure of public spending? Based on a sample of elections in eighteen Western European countries over the period 1970–1998, this paper shows that governments’ margin of maneuverability to design and implement fiscal policies depends on the level of party linkage or the nationalization of party systems, defined as the extent to which parties are uniformly successful in winning votes across districts. The mechanism behind this argument is that in weakly nationalized countries there are additional transaction costs to change the structure of budgets as a consequence of the survival of local parties and interests. Therefore, the composition of public spending is more rigid here than in highly nationalized countries.

Recognition Rules, Party Labels and the Number of Parties in India

This Research Note offers an alternative explanation for the variation over time in the number of parties in India's national party system. It is argued that the actual number of parties has changed in direct response to the incentives provided by the official rules and regulations on party recognition. In turn, the raw number of parties has shaped the effective number of parties positively: the more parties enter the electoral race the weaker the reductive impact of the plurality electoral system, which leads to an increase in the effective number of parties.

Dominant Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Africa

In a recent publication in this journal, Mozaffar and Scarritt claim to have found a puzzling combination of low fragmentation and high volatility in African party systems. However, if we look at national party systems rather than Africa-wide averages, include regime type as a variable and specify dominance, we find three different constellations: dominant party systems with relatively low volatility, non-dominant and pulverized party systems with high volatility and dominant authoritarian party systems with high volatility. The real surprise is that dominant parties in authoritarian regimes have higher electoral instability than dominant parties in democracies. The analyis is based on data from 78 elections in 20 African countries with at least three consecutive multiparty elections.