Party Politics

The study of general election outcomes can be helped by finding better approaches for visualizing large quantities of information and asking questions about its patterning. We review the Nagayama or ‘all possibilities' triangle display, and show that it can only legitimately be used to show an overall ‘field’ of results that is logically feasible, called the effective space of competition, which varies with the number of observable parties. We apply this reductionist view to analysing outcomes in three leading plurality rule systems (the USA, India and Great Britain), focusing on evidence of the Duvergerian psychological effect acting on voters during campaign periods. The Effective Competition Space view illuminates some key differences across countries, and variations with rising numbers of parties competing. We next consider a more holistic approach, the ‘crown’ diagram, which links electoral district outcomes more closely to the most important politico-ideological dimension in each country. Both views suggest some tentative evolutionary hypotheses for the variegated development of plurality rule systems over time. Britain is a highly nationalized party system, but one that has moved substantially away from Duvergerian predictions of two-party focusing, and towards multiparty politics. The USA seems to be a case of ‘stunted development’. India shows a partial Duvergerian conformity, yet combined with a substantial vertical scatter of non-Duvergerian results. Applications to over-time and regional analysis within countries are also sketched.

Despite a vast pan-European literature on extreme right parties (ERPs), few studies speak convincingly to questions of party membership and activism. This article draws on a unique membership dataset to examine contextual predictors of membership of the British National Party (BNP), currently the dominant representative of the extreme right in British politics. We operationalize and test for the impact of both demand-side and supply-side factors, including the seldom examined effects of historical legacies, and of party activism and electoral success on membership levels. Aside from congregating in urban areas that are more deprived and have low education levels, we also find evidence of a ‘legacy effect’, whereby membership levels are higher in areas with a historic tradition of extreme right activism. This research is the first ever systematic investigation of national extreme right party membership.

The article applies and develops Katz and Mair’s ‘cartel party’ thesis to the Russian case. Challenging the accepted characterization of the Russian party system as ‘hegemonic’, the article contends that this underplays the systemic importance of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and its collusion with pro-Kremlin parties in the fields of electoral and party reform. By applying the concepts of cartelization to the Russian case, it appears that the intersection of state and party goes beyond simply the ‘top-down’ establishment of political parties towards a party system in which there is inter-party collusion around a strong state-based regime.

To what extent is citizen political participation, such as electronic or personal contact with members of Congress, stimulated by membership in organized interest groups? I use data from a nationwide survey conducted by Zogby in 2007 to assess the extent to which Americans contact congressional offices, and whether membership in more activist-oriented groups, such as citizen groups, stimulates greater rates of contact than membership in professional associations or no group membership at all. I also examine whether this group ‘effect’ on participation breaks down by the method used, low-effort electronic contact (mail, email, web-based contact pages, on-line petitions) versus high-effort contact such as personal meetings with lawmakers. I find that the role played by interest groups in facilitating communication can be substantial. In the case of members from lower socio-economic backgrounds in particular, membership in a citizen group helps compensate for lack of knowledge and resources regarding how to contact Congress.

A vast literature suggests that voters in new democracies ‘sell’ their vote to patrons providing private or small-scale club goods, or, alternatively, that such goods are distributed along ethnic lines to reinforce ethnic voting. In either case the outcome is undermining democratic accountability. This study finds that citizens in one new democracy – Ghana – expect (and get) the patronage but at the same time engage in economic voting. Eighty-five percent of citizens first and foremost expect their legislators to supply private or small-scale ‘club’ goods. This acts as a strong incentive for politicians to actually supply such goods, which is confirmed by participants’ observational data and more than 250 interviews conducted by the author. Despite this, citizens do not vote based on how well or how poorly incumbent MPs provide clientelistic goods. A multivariate analysis reveals that voting for the opposition or the incumbent is determined by evaluations of the state of the national economy and of the government’s policies. What the literature has portrayed as an ‘either-or’ is ‘both’, and this is perfectly rational: Extract as much as one can in terms of private and small club goods but vote based on economic factors. The literature suggests that clientelism dominates elections in newer democracies and thus undermines democracy. The findings from this study suggest that while distribution of clientelistic goods is common, this does not necessarily undermine the mechanism of democratic accountability in elections.

How are party coalitions shaped and reshaped? Elected officials choose coalitions to win elections, but they must work to maintain those coalitions. Non-elected political actors, advancing an ideology at odds with the party coalition, can undermine the party. This article explores this possibility in the case of partisan change on slavery in the Antebellum United States. Intellectuals in 1850 divided into two camps over slavery and the other major issues of the day at a time when slavery cross-cut the two parties in Congress. The ideological division matches one that develops in Congress a decade later, suggesting that the parties responded not just to electoral incentives, but also to this elite division.

We present a novel method which can be used to show that contemporary party systems may originate much further back than is usually assumed or might be expected – in reality many centuries. Using data on Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, jurisdictions with party systems that differ significantly, one of which poses significant challenges to the universality of many political science theories, we show how using surnames as markers can confirm the obvious explanation for the Northern Ireland party system and then propose a novel explanation for the Irish party system. We suggest that surnames could be an objective way of studying migration patterns and ethnic heritage which may be important in explaining party systems.