XII. Political Parties
In what ways is this category relevant for democracy (is it peripheral or central)?
While there is no global convergence on some democratic “end of history” it is clear
that there is a widespread acceptance of and enthusiasm for democratic norms and
institutions around the world—at least as an abstract ideal. Solid majorities, in both the
developed and developing world, regularly express their support for democracy in public
opinion surveys. And yet, while most citizens in developed and developing democracies are
supportive of the idea of democracy, opinions about the fruits of democracy tend to diverge
sharply. Two-thirds of respondents in the Western Europe and North American report
being satisfied with the way democracy works in their country. In other regions support for
democratic ideals is tempered with a recognition that democratic government has often
fallen short of hopes and expectations. As a result, citizens in developing democracies are by
and large disillusioned and dissatisfied with the performance of their particular democracy
(see Table 1).
Table 1
Dissatisfaction with Democracy
Region
Dissatisfaction with Democracy
(average %)
W. Europe/N. America (most recent
year available)
24
Latin America (2007)
63
Africa (2005)
45
Asia (most recent year available)
50
Indonesia (2001)
73
Philippines (2001)
55
Thailand (2006)
32
Sources: Europe/N. America, Asia, World Values Survey; Latin America,
Latinobarometro; Africa, Afrobarometer; Indonesia and the Philippines, World
Values Survey; Thailand, East Asian Barometer.
Some of this dissatisfaction can be traced to people’s widespread distrust of and even
antipathy towards the building blocks of modern democracy--political parties. In most
developing democracies less than half of respondents have any confidence or trust in their
country’s political parties (Table 2).
Table 2
Confidence in Political Parties
Region
Confidence/Trust in Political
Parties (average %)
W. Europe/N. America (most recent
year available)
75
Latin America (2007)
20
Africa (2005)
48*
Asia (most recent year available)
42
Indonesia (2001)
31
Philippines (2001)
45
Thailand (2006)
39
*Average of trust in governing and opposition parties. Sources: Europe/N.
America, Asia, World Values Survey; Latin America, Latinobarometro; Africa,
Afrobarometer; Indonesia and the Philippines, World Values Survey; Thailand, East
Asian Barometer.
Ironically, it seems that in the eyes of many people, political parties, the hallmark of
modern democratic government (as expressed in Schattschneider’s famous quote), have
become the one of the biggest obstacles to democratic consolidation and good governance.1
In the words of one Thai politician “political parties are the weakest link in the system.”
(Thai Politicians 1999).2
The extent to which parties are a democratic cornerstone or the weakest link in the
democratic system is a natural preoccupation of both political scientists and political
practitioners. This preoccupation reflects the central role for political parties in modern
democratic government. During elections political parties provide a means of aggregating,
1
Political parties created democracy...[M]odern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.
(Schattschneider 1942)
2
See Mainwaring (2006) for a similar diagnosis of what ails Andean democracies. For
example.
organizing, and coordinating voters, candidates, and donors. For politicians political parties
are vehicles for solving collective action problems and coordinating the behavior of
legislative and executive actors. Political parties also provide a means for balancing local
concerns with national interests and long-term priorities with short-term political exigencies.
In new and developing democracies parties do all these things and more. Political
parties are often the most immediate and potent symbols of democracy to voters in new
democracies and can either bolster support for democratic norms and institutions or, when
they are weak or ineffective, can undermine support for democracy. In short, the progress of
democratic consolidation can very much hinge on the kind of party system that emerges in
developing democracies.
Measurement and Indicators
A necessary first step towards the goal of measurement is distinguishing between
parties (defined as any group of candidates that contests an election under a common party
label) and party systems (defined as a pattern of intra-party organization and inter-party
electoral competition.) Unfortunately, the literature is often imprecise about whether the
democracy-supporting characteristics are located at the party or system level, or both. Any
attempt to develop indicators should include both dimensions. Once data are collected for
all possible parties in a given polity care must be given in combining individual party
information to create a single system-wide indicator. In general larger parties should be given
greater weight in calculating indicators.
Unfortunately there is no widely accepted single party/party system indicator. Party
and party systems vary along a variety of dimensions and there is no single dimension that it
is clearly superior to others when it comes to predicting the level of/success of democracy.
The closest thing we have to a single indicator, party system institutionalization, is actually
multidimensional itself. Below I discuss several possible indicators and the challenges
associated with each. See Table 4 for a summary.
Number of parties: At the most basic level muti-party competition is a necessary condition
for democracy. Parties systems consistently dominated by a single party are categorically
different from fully competitive systems and should be identified as such. In addition, it is
possible to derive arguments about the link between the number of parties (both nationally
and locally) and the quality of democracy from the existing literature. Party systems with
large numbers of parties are highly representative, and provide voters with partisan options
that are close to their ideal points. On the other hand, party systems with only a few parties
privilege accountability and can encourage the sublimation or aggregation of narrow ethnic
or regional differences.
Key Questions:
 Do multiple parties compete and regularly win seats in elections? (Alternative: Does a single party
dominate elections and governance?)
 What is the effective number of parties (nationally and at the constituency level)?
Nationalization: Do parties compete and win seats nationally, or are they more localized or
regionalized? There are several existing methods for assessing the degree of nationalization,
focusing on both parties and party systems. The aggregation/inflation measure used by
several authors measures the extent to which the same set of parties are the frontrunners in
all constituency across the country (specially, ENPavg-ENPnat/ENPnat) (Cox 1997,
Chhibber and Kollman 1998, Hicken 2009). The measure is bounded between 0 and 1 and
higher numbers indicate less nationalized party systems.3
Another approach often used is to measure the extent to which party support is
consistent across districts nationally (Rose and Urwin 1975; Caramani 2000, 2004; Jones and
Mainwaring 2003). A related approach is to measure the extent to which movement in a
party’s support is parallel across districts. Morgenstern and Swindle (2005) label for former
static nationalization and the latter dynamic nationalization and they argue that different
combinations of these two indicators has implications for the quality of democracy.
Morgenstern and Potthoff (2005) develop a variance model that simultaneously calculates
both the static and dynamic dimensions of nationalization for individual parties. Using data
from the major parties in each system they calculate static and dynamic nationalization
scores for a large number of countries/elections.
A final set of scholars measure the extent to which the party system is regionalized—
typically using variations of the techniques described in the previous two paragraphs
(Brancati 2005; Chhibber and Kollman 1998, 2003; Hicken 2009), but also including
indicators such as the percentage of parties competing (or winning votes) in only one region
of the country.
Key Questions:
 To what extent are parties nationalized, regionalized, or localized?
Institutionalization4: By far the most discussed party/party system characteristic as it relates
to democratic consolidation is institutionalization. When parties are institutionalized, there is
more accountability, stability of interests, and programmatic policy within a democracy. In
democracies lacking institutionalized parties, party politics is often simply an arena for
charismatic or traditional politicians to gain power without any real advancement of the
public good. Note, however, that as defined in the existing literature institutionalization is
actually a system of characteristics. Operationalizing and developing transportable indicators
for each characteristic is quite the challenge.
The existing literature defines institutionalization in a variety of ways (see
Huntington 1968; Welfing 1973; Panebianco 1988; Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Levitsky
1998; Randall and Svasand 2002). One way to bring these disparate definitions together is to
think of institutionalization as consisting of an external/systemic dimension and an
internal/organizational dimension (Table 3). Starting with the external/systemic dimension,
party systems that are more institutionalized share two characteristics. First, there is stability
in the rules and pattern of inter-party competition. Second, political actors view parties as a
legitimate and necessary part of the democratic process. By contrast, in weakly
institutionalized party systems we see a high degree of instability in the pattern of party
competition. There are both high birth and high death rates—new political parties regularly
enter the system, while existing parties exit. There is also a high degree of electoral
volatility—the fortunes of individual parties vary greatly from election to election. Finally,
3
Kasuya and Moneius (2004, 2008) have developed some alternative measures that might
also be employed.
4
This section draws on Hicken forthcoming.
political actors in weakly institutionalized systems view parties as at best superfluous, and at
worse a threat.
The typical approach to measuring the stability of inter-party competition is to
calculate electoral volatility using Pedersen’s Index of Volatility: Volatility = (∑n i=1 |pit –
pi(t+1) |)/2 ) and/or by calculating party exist and entry rates (See Powell and Tucker n.d.
for a recent discussion of both of these dimensions). Legitmacy is arguably less a
characteristic of the party system than a reflection of voter and elite attitudes and might
potentially be excluded from part/party system indicators. Public opinion surveys are the
usual source of data for this indicator.
Key Questions:
 Is there a stable pattern of intra-party competition?
 Do the major political actors view parties as a legitimate and necessary part of the democratic
process?
The second internal/organizational dimension of institutionalization concerns the
nature of the party organization itself, and the parties’ links with the broader society. To
begin with, where parties are institutionalized they exhibit a high degree of what Livitsky
calls value infusion (Livitsky 1998). There are strong links between parties and identifiable
societal interests and groups of voters. Parties are ‘rooted’ in society to the extent that
“[m]ost voters identify with a party and vote for it most of the time, and some interest
associations are closely linked to parties.” (Mainwaring and Torcal 2006, 7) Party
membership is valuable in and of itself and not just as a means to an end and we can
differentiate one party from another on the basis of its constituencies and policy platform.
Where parties are not institutionalized, political parties have weak roots in society, voters and
politicians have few lasting attachments to particular parties, there are no enduring links
between parties and interest groups, and parties have no distinct policy or ideological
identities.
There is no obviously superior way to operationalize value infusion. Key questions
include:
 What is the level of electoral volatility?
 To what extent do parties have distinct, detailed party platforms?
 To what extent do parties have a district and identifiable ideology?
 To what extent do parties have distinct, identifiable and durable constituencies?
 What is the rate of party switching?
 To what extent do voters identify with a party?
 To what extent do voters split their votes across parties when given the opportunity?
A second characteristic falling under the internal/organizational dimension is
organizational routinization.5 Institutionalized parties have entrenched organizations and
established patterns of interactions. Parties are relatively cohesive and disciplined (i.e. they
are unitary actors) and are independent and autonomous from any charismatic leaders or
particular financiers (Livistky 1998). Where parties are weakly institutionalized parties tend to
5
Compare Livitsky’s discussion of behavioral routinization (1998).
be thinly organized temporary alliances of convenience and are often of extensions of or
subservient to powerful party leaders.
Again, there is no single candidate for operationalization stands out. Key questions
include:
 To what extent are there well-understood rules governing each party’s business?
o To what extent are these rules generally followed?
 Do parties hold regular conventions and, if so, are these conventions sovereign (in the sense of
making final decisions on party polity and procedure)?
 What is the number and distribution of party branches?
 What is the rate of party switching?
 To what extent to parties contain identifiable and durable factions?
 To what extent does the central party leadership control nomination, funding, etc.?
Note, Herbert Kitschelt has been running a survey of parties around the world that is
designed to collect some of these data.
Party System Institutionalization
External/Systemic Dimension
Stable pattern of interparty competition
Parties viewed as legitimate and necessary
Internal/Organizational Dimension
High degree of value infusion
High degree of organizational routinization
Table 4: Summary
Concept
Number of parties
Indicator
 Categorical
 Raw number
 ENP (nationally)
 ENP (constituency)
Data availability
National data readily
available.
Constituency-level
data increasing
available
Party or System
System
Nationalization

ENPavgENPnat/ENPnat
Static/dynamic
% of regional parties
National data readily
available.
Constituency-level
data increasing
available
System


Elec. Volatility
Party birth and death
rates
Available, but
interpretation
difficulty. Data for
smaller parties often
lacking
System


Institutionalization
 Stability
Party
Party

Legitimacy

Public opinion data
Currently available,
but lack historical
data
System

Value infusion


Elec. Volatility
Policy platforms
System
Party

IDable Ideology

IDable constituency

Party switching
See above
Increasingly available,
historically
problematic
Analysis of party
platforms only of
limited use in many
developing
democracies. Expert
surveys preferable
only available for
limited number of
cases. See Kitschelt
project.
Expert surveys
preferable only
available for limited
number of cases. See
Kitschelt project.
Possible to calculate
with detailed
Party
Party
Party

Routinization

Voter ID

Split votes

Party rules

Party conventions

Party branches

Party switching

Factions

Leadership control
historical electoral
data. Time and
resource intensive.
Surveys, increasingly
available, historically
problematic
Available for some
countries
(presidential systems,
multiple vote
systems) but
impossible for others.
Expert surveys
preferable only
available for limited
number of cases.
Expert surveys
preferable only
available for limited
number of cases.
Expert surveys
preferable only
available for limited
number of cases.
Possible to calculate
with detailed
historical electoral
data. Time and
resource intensive.
Expert surveys
preferable only
available for limited
number of cases.
Expert surveys
preferable only
available for limited
number of cases.
System
System
Party
Party
Party
Party
Party
Party