The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 1076-1077
Author(s):  
Radhika Desai
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
National Party ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Governmental Institutions

The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States, Pradeep K. Chhibber and Ken Kollman, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. xvi, 276.Mining electoral data to arrive at theories about the relationship between political party performance and party system determination and electoral and governmental institutions forms the main stream of political science. And one of its most enduring puzzles is the explanation of the patterns and diversities of party systems. With the famous “Duverger's Law” about single-member plurality systems and two-party political systems forming its point of departure, political scientists have attempted to substantiate their discipline's status as a “science” by producing theories about relationships between measurable political variables.

Why Two Parties? Ambition, Policy, and the Presidency

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Aldrich ◽  
Daniel J. Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
New Parties ◽  
The Us ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
National Electorate

Duverger’s Law suggests that two parties will dominate under first-past-the-post (FPTP) within an electoral district, but the law does not necessarily establish two-party competition at the national level. United States is unique among FPTP countries in having the only durable and nearly pure, two-party system. Following this observation, we answer two questions. First, what contributes to the same two parties competing in districts all across the country and at different levels of office? Second, why is the US two-party system so durable over time, dominated by the same two parties? That is, “Why two parties?” As an answer, we propose the APP: ambition, the presidency, and policy. The presidency with its national electorate and electoral rules that favor two-party competition establishes two national major parties, which frames the opportunity structure that influences party affiliation decisions of ambitious politicians running for lower offices. Control over the policy agenda helps reinforce the continuation of a particular two-party system in equilibrium by blocking third parties through divergence on the main issue dimension and the suppression of latent issue dimensions that could benefit new parties. The confluence of the three factors explains why the United States is so uniquely a durable two-party system.

The Political Origins of Coordinated Capitalism: Business Organizations, Party Systems, and State Structure in the Age of Innocence

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHIE JO MARTIN ◽  
DUANE SWANK
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
Multiparty Systems

This paper investigates the political determinants of corporatist and pluralist employers' associations and reflects on the origins of the varieties of capitalism in the early decades of the 20th century. We hypothesize that proportional, multiparty systems tend to enable employers' associations to develop into social corporatist organizations, whereas nonproportional, two-party systems are conducive to the formation of pluralist associations. Moreover, we suggest that federalism tends to reinforce incentives for pluralist organization. We assess our hypotheses through quantitative analysis of data from 1900 to the 1930s from 16 nations and case studies of the origins of peak employers' associations in Denmark and the United States. Our statistical analysis suggests that proportional, multiparty systems foster, and federalism works against, social corporatist business organization; employers' organization is also greater where the mobilization of labor, traditions of coordination, and economic development are higher. These factors also largely explain pre-World War II patterns of national coordination of capitalism. Case histories of the origins of employers' associations in Denmark and the United States further confirm the causal importance of political factors. Although Danish and American employers had similar interests in creating cooperative national industrial policies, trajectories of associational development were constrained by the structure of party competition, as well as by preindustrial traditions for coordination.

The Measurement of Party Competition

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 682-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Elkins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Loyalty ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Over Time

Most measures of party competition were designed for the United States or other two-party systems. The measure proposed here is intended for multiparty as well as two-party systems. It is a formalization of the notion of uncertainty: election outcomes are competitive to the degree we are uncertain who will win. By ascertaining through survey research the degree of party loyalty over time, one can calculate the chances of alternative outcomes in hypothetical replications of any given election. Since the chance that a losing party might have won is one measure of the importance of that party, this approach to party competition also provides a precise indicator of the number of parties in the system (i.e., whether it is two-party, three party, etc.). The method is applied here to data on Canadian federal elections in 1965 and 1968.

Electoral and Party Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-78
Author(s):  
André Blais ◽  
Shaun Bowler ◽  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The U.S

Electoral laws are often regarded as the key factors structuring party competition. Yet, despite having very similar electoral systems, reflecting a shared colonial legacy, the United States (U.S.) and Canada have had very different party systems. For the past 100 years, the U.S. is perhaps the most consistently two-party system among the world’s major democracies, but during this same period Canada has experienced considerable variation in the number of parties represented in Parliament at the national level. This chapter addresses both the causes and consequences of this puzzling divergence in party systems in the two countries. We also compare a number of other features of the two nation’s electoral institutions, including campaign finance rules, rules for constituency boundary drawing, bicameralism, and the mechanism for the selection of the executive, with particular attention to the U.S. Electoral College and its alleged link with two-partyism. We also examine the policy consequences of the divergence in party systems and look at the way in which party competition in the two countries may affect voter turnout.

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