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Party system
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Party system
A party system is a concept in comparative political science concerning the system of government by political parties in a democratic country. The idea is that political parties have basic similarities: they control the government, have a stable base of mass popular support, and create internal mechanisms for controlling funding, information and nominations.
The party system concept was originated by European scholars studying the United States, especially James Bryce, Giovanni Sartori and Moisey Ostrogorsky, and has been expanded to cover other democracies. Party systems can be distinguished by the degree of political fragmentation, proportionality of seats-to-votes ratio and barriers to entry to the political competition.
Main classification of party systems is using the number of parties. Counting the "effective number" of parties is somewhat tricky since the decisions need to be made as to which parties shall be included into the count. Including all parties usually makes little sense: for example, in the 2005 United Kingdom general election 16 entities run candidates and 12 got seats in the parliament, however, no researcher would argue that UK at the time had a 16- or 12-party system. The practical choice would be between a two-party (Labour won 35% of the vote, Conservatives 32%), or three-party system (Liberal Democrats got 22%). Some researchers suggest to exclude parties with low percentage of votes (for example, Alan Ware recommends a 3% threshold), others, like Giovanni Sartori, suggest looking at the history of participation in the governments. The 2005 UK example will yield 3 parties if Ware's definition is used and 2 parties if Sartori's definition is chosen, since the Liberal Democrats almost never influenced the government formation.
The classification is based on the typology originally proposed by Jean Blondel (1968):
Sartori splits the original Blondel's "one-party" category into true one party (no other ones exist), "hegemonic" (other parties exist, but there is no practical competition), and "predominant", where competition exists, but one party on a regular basis gets over 50% of the votes. He had also split the multiparty system into "moderate pluralism" (3–5 "relevant" parties) and "extreme pluralism" (6–8 parties) and introduced an "atomized" party system, where the political system is so fragmented that adding one more party does not affect the political process at all. The functioning of the moderate pluralism resembles the two-party rule: there are two camps separated in the political spectrum with established electorate, the competition occurs for the voters in the political center, the political forces are "centripetal". The "polarized pluralism" is different: "anti-system parties" position themselves at the fringes of the spectrum are detached from the center, so the parties in the center are left without a credible election threat. This results in deep political divisions, "centrifugal forces", and "irresponsible oppositions" that do "outbidding" secure in their knowledge that they will not have to govern and thus can safely over-promise. Sartori declares that the 5-party threshold between moderate and extreme pluralism is not a cause of change, but a result of the process of elite accommodation in the moderate case and lack thereof in the extreme pluralism.
Democratic party systems in most European states have increasingly fragmented over time. That means that the number of relevant parties surged, while the average size declined. Hence, the effective number of parties increased.
The European Parliament has compared to other parliaments a higher number of political parties with 206; to reduce political fragmentation the parties are organized into 7 political groups. Two structures of party system have been identified in the European Parliament since its first universal direct election in 1979, albeit the main EU party groups remained the same:
Italian party systems are usually considered only since the foundation of the Italian Republic (1946) as pre-fascist parties lacked a wide popular base.
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Party system
A party system is a concept in comparative political science concerning the system of government by political parties in a democratic country. The idea is that political parties have basic similarities: they control the government, have a stable base of mass popular support, and create internal mechanisms for controlling funding, information and nominations.
The party system concept was originated by European scholars studying the United States, especially James Bryce, Giovanni Sartori and Moisey Ostrogorsky, and has been expanded to cover other democracies. Party systems can be distinguished by the degree of political fragmentation, proportionality of seats-to-votes ratio and barriers to entry to the political competition.
Main classification of party systems is using the number of parties. Counting the "effective number" of parties is somewhat tricky since the decisions need to be made as to which parties shall be included into the count. Including all parties usually makes little sense: for example, in the 2005 United Kingdom general election 16 entities run candidates and 12 got seats in the parliament, however, no researcher would argue that UK at the time had a 16- or 12-party system. The practical choice would be between a two-party (Labour won 35% of the vote, Conservatives 32%), or three-party system (Liberal Democrats got 22%). Some researchers suggest to exclude parties with low percentage of votes (for example, Alan Ware recommends a 3% threshold), others, like Giovanni Sartori, suggest looking at the history of participation in the governments. The 2005 UK example will yield 3 parties if Ware's definition is used and 2 parties if Sartori's definition is chosen, since the Liberal Democrats almost never influenced the government formation.
The classification is based on the typology originally proposed by Jean Blondel (1968):
Sartori splits the original Blondel's "one-party" category into true one party (no other ones exist), "hegemonic" (other parties exist, but there is no practical competition), and "predominant", where competition exists, but one party on a regular basis gets over 50% of the votes. He had also split the multiparty system into "moderate pluralism" (3–5 "relevant" parties) and "extreme pluralism" (6–8 parties) and introduced an "atomized" party system, where the political system is so fragmented that adding one more party does not affect the political process at all. The functioning of the moderate pluralism resembles the two-party rule: there are two camps separated in the political spectrum with established electorate, the competition occurs for the voters in the political center, the political forces are "centripetal". The "polarized pluralism" is different: "anti-system parties" position themselves at the fringes of the spectrum are detached from the center, so the parties in the center are left without a credible election threat. This results in deep political divisions, "centrifugal forces", and "irresponsible oppositions" that do "outbidding" secure in their knowledge that they will not have to govern and thus can safely over-promise. Sartori declares that the 5-party threshold between moderate and extreme pluralism is not a cause of change, but a result of the process of elite accommodation in the moderate case and lack thereof in the extreme pluralism.
Democratic party systems in most European states have increasingly fragmented over time. That means that the number of relevant parties surged, while the average size declined. Hence, the effective number of parties increased.
The European Parliament has compared to other parliaments a higher number of political parties with 206; to reduce political fragmentation the parties are organized into 7 political groups. Two structures of party system have been identified in the European Parliament since its first universal direct election in 1979, albeit the main EU party groups remained the same:
Italian party systems are usually considered only since the foundation of the Italian Republic (1946) as pre-fascist parties lacked a wide popular base.