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Why have political parties? What function do
they play?
Why do some countries have more parties
than others?
Why do some issues become salient in some
countries (and at some times) but not others?
 Economics versus moral values?
 The rise of post-materialism, environmentalism?
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Return to Aristotle and our basic questions
about redistribution and democracy:
 Why don’t the poor vote to expropriate the rich?
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Why parties?
Cleavages in democracies since the 19th
century
The impact of social cleavages on party
systems
The role of electoral institutions
Putting it all together
A political party can be thought of as a group of
people that includes those who hold office and those
who help get and keep them there.
Why do we need political parties to structure political
life, even in non-democracies?
Political parties serve several purposes:
They structure the political world.
Remember our discussion of social choice instability.
In particular, they structure the legislative process.
They recruit and socialize the political elite
They mobilize the masses
They provide a link between the rulers and the
ruled.
Political scientists often categorize
democracies in terms of the type of party
system that they exhibit.
They typically distinguish between party systems
based on the number and size of the parties they
contain.
A nonpartisan democracy is a democracy with no official political
parties.
A single-party system is one in which only one political party is legally
allowed to hold power.
A one-party dominant system is one in which multiple parties may
legally operate but in which only one particular party has a realistic
chance of gaining power.
A two-party system is one in which only two major political parties
have a realistic chance of gaining power.
A multiparty system is one in which more than two parties have a
realistic chance of gaining power.
Effective Number of Parties
It is a measure that weights the number of parties by the
share of votes or seats they get.
So a party that is large is counted more than a party that is
very small.
The idea is to down-weight the Monster Raving Loony
Party, the Beer-Drinkers’ Party, etc.
Among full democracies, the range is from the United
States (around 2) to Brazil (18).
A quick tour of social cleavages:
Urban-rural cleavage
Confessional cleavage
Secular-clerical cleavage
Class cleavage
Post-materialist cleavage
Ethnic and linguistic cleavages
Regional cleavages
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Can we explain the number of parties by
examining social cleavages?
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Can we explain the number of parties by
examining social cleavages?
 Count the number of cleavages?
 Examine whether they are reinforcing or cross-
cutting?
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What is a social cleavage anyway?
Where do they come from?
Primordialist vs. constructivist viewpoint
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Primordialists vs. constructivists
 Is ethnicity socially constructed?
 What about the class cleavage?
A classic argument: The more social cleavages there
are in a country and the more that these cleavages are
cross-cutting, the greater the demand for distinctive
representation and the greater the demand for
political parties.
Social cleavages create the demand for political
parties.
But electoral institutions determine whether this
latent demand for representation actually leads to the
existence of new parties.
Specifically, non-proportional electoral systems act
as a brake on the tendency for social cleavages to be
translated into new parties.
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Mechanical effect
Strategic effect
 Strategic voting
 Strategic entry
The mechanical effect of electoral laws refers to the
way votes are translated into seats.
When electoral systems are disproportional, the
mechanical effect:
punishes small, geographically dispersed parties (Liberals)
or large, geographically concentrated parties (Labor)
Rewards large, geographically dispersed parties
(Conservatives) and small, geographically concentrated
parties (SNP, Bloc)
The strategic effect of electoral laws refers to how the
way in which votes are translated into seats influences
the “strategic” behavior of voters and political elites.
When electoral systems are disproportional, their
mechanical effect can be expected to reward large parties
and punish small parties.
As a result, voters have an incentive to engage in
strategic voting and political elites have an incentive to
engage in strategic entry.
The strategic voting essentially means voting for
your most preferred candidate who has a realistic
chance of winning.
Strategic entry refers to the decision by political
elites about whether to enter the political scene under
the label of their most preferred party or under the
label of their most preferred party that has a realistic
chance of winning.
Strategic Entry Game
There are two left-wing parties (L1 and L2) and one rightwing party (R).
If both left-wing parties compete in the election, then the
right-wing party will win for sure.
If only one left-wing party runs, then the right-wing party
will lose.
Strategic Entry Game
The worst possible outcome for the left-wing parties
is if the right-wing party wins (0).
The best possible outcome for each left-wing party is
if they win (1).
The second best outcome for each left-wing party is
if the other left-wing party wins (λ, where 0 < λ < 1).
As you can see, both L1 and L2 face incentives
for one of them to drop out of the race.
They face incentives for strategic entry.
But how do they coordinate on which one of
them should drop out?
The coordination game is asymmetric and therefore
has distributional consequences.
One way to solve this coordination problem is for the two
small parties to merge into a single party.
Example: The Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party
merged to creat the Liberal Democratic Party in the UK in 1988.
The more disproportional the electoral system, the greater
the incentive for small parties to merge or to form
coalitions.
This incentive not only encourages mergers between
small parties but it can also deter the entry of small
parties in the first place.
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What is it?
How does it work?
Why does India have so many parties? Why
do different parties compete in different
regions of Canada?
Why are third parties so rare in the United
States?
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There seems to be an emerging consensus in
the literature about an interaction effect.
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Religion
Immigration
Environment, climate change?
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Functionalist arguments about social
heterogeneity
Colonial and historical legacies
Strategic elites
 Boix
 Calvo
 Strategic fools?