If
undertaken on a world basis, the analysis of party
svstems would require a consideration of the number of
parties, of their strength, of their place on the
ideological spectrum, of the nature
of their support, and of their organization and type of
leadership. In the context of Western liberal
democracies, it is possible to limit the analysis to the
first three of these characteristics. With very few
exceptions, Western parties can be deemed to be of the
'legitimate' mass type and to have a regularized system
of leadership selection. Charismatic leadership is
exceptional and, at the other extreme, Communist parties
are becoming increasingly similar to other parties.
Western parties appeal nationally to the
electorate by trying to put across a general image;
differences are more to be found in the type of image
than in the structural characteristics of the
organization.
I.
Number of Parties in the System
Two-party
systems are rarely defined operationally. Yet, among
Western democracies, four groups are clearly discernible
(see Table 22. 1). Five countries give on average more
than go per cent of their votes to the two major parties.
Second, five countries give between 75 and 8o per cent of
their votes to the two major parties (though Belgium fell
markedly below this level at the last election). In six
countries, the two major parties obtain about two-thirds
of the votes (though Holland is somewhat different, as we
shall see). Finally, three countries give about half
their votes to the two major parties, though, for the
last two elections, France would have to be moved from
the fourth to the third category: but as the French
situation may well alter again after the end of the de
Gaulle era, it is probably more realistic to draw
conclusions from the average of the whole post-war period
than merely from developments in the1960s.
|
TABLE 22. 1. Average Two-Party Vote, 1945-66
(percentage)
|
|
|
|
United States
|
99
|
New Zealand
|
95
|
Australia
|
93
|
United Kingdom
|
92
|
Austria
|
89
|
|
|
|
West Germany
|
80
|
Luxemburg
|
80
|
Canada
|
79
|
Belgium
|
78
|
Eire
|
75
|
|
|
|
Denmark
|
66
|
Sweden
|
66
|
Norway
|
64
|
Italy
|
64
|
Iceland
|
62
|
Holland
|
62
|
|
|
|
Switzerland
|
50
|
France
|
50
|
Finland
|
49
|
Countries
belonging to the first group can be defined as two-party
systems, though there is some ambiguity in the cases of
Australia and Austria; in both these countries some
governments depended for their constitution or
maintenance on the support of more than one party. The
five countries of the second group constitute the
three-party systems, Germany having arrived at this
status as a result of the operation of the electoral
system as well as of the Adenauer tactics. The nine
countries of the last two groups are the genuine
multiparty systems, in which four, five, or even six
parties play a significant part in the political
process.
2. Strength of Parties
Little has to be said about countries of the first group,
in which go per cent or more of the electors vote for,
and go per cent or more of the seats are distributed
between, the two major parties. It is interesting to note
that discrepancies in strength between the two major
parties are remarkably small, at least if averaged over
the post-war period. While it could in theory be the case
that one party might be permanently much larger than the
other, no two-party system (i.e., no system in which the
two parties obtain 89 per cent of the votes) gives to the
larger of the two parties a permanent premium of over i o
per cerit of its own electorate. Despite differences in
social structure, for instance, between the United
States, the United Kingdom, and Austria, the electorate
distributes its preferences fairly evenly between the two
parties. Although it cannot be stated with assurance that
such a situation cannot exist in any type of social
system (there are indeed examples of uneven distribution
of party support among two-party systems outside Western
democracies), it seems possible to hypothesize, in the
absence of contrary evidence, that, in Western
democracies, two party systems show a tendency towards a
relative equilibrium between the two parties.
Countries in the three-party system group also share
several characteristics. First, disparities in strength
between the two larger parties are generally much greater
than among countries in the first group. They seem
structural in that the swing of the pendulum does not, as
among countries of the first group, diminish the gap,
even if one considers a fairly long period: the average
percentage point difference between the two major parties
among the five countries of the first group is only 1.6
if all post-war elections are taken into account; it is
10.5 in countries of the second group (excluding
Luxemburg where data for all elections were not
available) [see Table 22.2]. The often stressed
phenomenon of the German SPD, which has not been able to
achieve equality of strength with the CDU, is thus a
general phenomenon among countries of this group. It can
therefore be stated that in countries in which about 8o
per cent of the votes go to two parties the distribution
of the support tends to be uneven.
TABLE22.2. Average Strength of the Two
Major Parties
in Two- and Two-and-a-half Party Systems
(percentage votes cast)
|
Two-party systems
|
Two-and-a-half party systems
|
|
|
|
Difference
|
|
|
Difference
|
|
United States
|
49-50=
|
1
|
Germany
|
45-35=
|
10
|
|
New Zealand
|
48-47=
|
1
|
Canada
|
36-43=
|
7
|
|
Australia United
|
47-46=
|
1
|
Belgium
|
43-35=
|
8
|
|
Kingdom
|
45-47=
|
2
|
Eire
|
46-29=
|
17
|
|
Austria
|
46-43=
|
3
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mean disparity between the two major
parties=1.6
|
Mean disparity between the two major
parties=10.5
|
Three-party
systems also have another, and converse, characteristic.
They all have two major parties and a much smaller third
party. While it would seem theoretically possible for
three-party systems to exist in which all three
significant parties were of about equal size, there are
in fact no three-party systems of this kind among Western
democracies: all the three-party systems are in the
second group; all systems of the third group have more
than three significant parties. It can thus be stated
that, while theoretically possible, a genuine threeparty
system is not a likely type of system among Western
democracies: countries of the second group should
therefore be more strictly labelled as
'two-and-a-half-party systems'. It may indeed be
permissible to add, after considering the evolution of
party systems, particularly in the early part of the
twentieth century, that genuine three-party systems do
not normally occur because they are essentially
transitional, thus unstable, forms of party systems.
The situation arising out of the 1965 Belgian election
was thus of particular interest, since the upsurge of the
Liberal party and the decline of the two major parties
was such that Belgium appeared to have moved into the
exceptional and seemingly transitional position of a
'genuine' three party system. If the proposition advanced
earlier is correct, it would seem that in the next few
years Belgium will move to one of three types of further
changes. The Liberals could return to their 'normal'
position of small party; they could displace one of the
two major parties (an unprecedented development in
Western Europe since all the movements happened in the
other direction); a split could occur among the
supporters of one or both of the major parties and
Belgium might move from the second group of countries
(two-and-a-half party systems) to the third or fourth
(multiparty systems). From the experience of other
Western democracies the first and third of these three
outcomes appears more probable than the maintenance of a
genuine three-party system.
We included
Holland among the countries which constituted the third
group, composed of those countries in which the two
largest parties obtained about two-thirds of the votes of
the electorate. But if we consider the relative strength
of the two major parties, the five other countries of the
group differ markedly from Holland, in that they have one
very large party, which might be defined as dominant as
it obtains about 40 per cent of the electorate and
generally gains about twice as many votes as the second
party. In fact, in both Norway and Sweden, the mechanics
of the electoral system have sometimes enabled this
dominant party to obtain the absolute majority of seats
in the Chamber. But these countries are at the same time
multiparty systems as they all have four or five
significant (and often well-structured) parties playing a
crucial role in the operation of the political system.
Four of the five Scandinavian countries are included in
this group (the fifth being Italy), though in Iceland the
dominant party is not the Socialist but the Conservative
(Independence) party. The Fifth Republic, at least under
de Gaulle, appears to be moving towards this pattern of
party system, though the characteristics of the Gaullist
party are such that it seems unreasonable to predict that
the present party configuration is likely to survive de
Gaulle. Thus, alongside two-party systems and
two-and-half-party systems, the third group should be
defined, not so much as a multiparty system in which two
parties obtain about two-thirds of the votes of the
electorate, but as a multiparty system with a dominant
party which obtains about two-fifths and less than half
of the votes.
Finally,
the last four countries (if Holland is included and
France maintained in the group in the view of the past
and possible future performance of that country)
constitute the genuine multiparty systems: they have no
dominant body and indeed seem to show a pattern of
political behaviour in which three or four parties are
equally well placed to combine or form coalitions. Recent
electoral movements in Holland appear to bring that
country gradually nearer towards this model: the slow
decline of the Labour party and the patterns of
governmental formation have tended to conform fairly
closely to those which have been customary of
Finland.
3. Ideological Spectrum and Party
Strength
Western
democracies can therefore be divided into four groups, if
both numbers and strengths are taken into account: five
are in the two-party system group, five in the
two-and-a-half-party system group, are in the group of
multiparty systems with dominant party, and four in the
group of multiparty systems without dominant party. But
the party system can only wholly be defined if we take
into account the position of parties on the ideological
spectrum, particularly when the system does not have a
'symmetrical' character.
Even in Western democracies, parties are difficult to
categorize accurately. The United States and Eire always
had parties which do not fit in any easily recognizable
typology. The French Gaullists are not ordinary
Conservatives, though they may have to be lumped with
Conservatives for comparative purposes. The other
multi-party system countries all have parties of a
somewhat peculiar type, such as the two Conservative
partles in Holland, the Swedish party in Finland, and the
party of the Peasants, Artisans, and Bourgeois in
Switzerland. In all these cases, certain rough
approximations have had to be made.
Table 22.3 shows the panorama of party strengths within
the ideological spectrum. Group I, except for the United
States, is fairly homogeneous: the four other countries
in the group have a large Socialist party and a large
Conservative or Christian party, together with a small
other group, whose position in the centre is perhaps
sometimes problematic. Countries of group 2 have two
types of party systems: Belgium, Germany, and Luxemburg
resemble countries of group I, except that the centre
party is stronger and, as we noted earlier, this
increased strength is mainly at the expense of one only
of the two major parties (in fact the Socialist party).
The other two countries of the group (Canada and Eire)
are different: the small party is not the centre, but the
left-wing, party and, probably not quite accidentally,
the right-wing party Is not Christian but Conservative.
In the early part of the twentieth century, it would
probably have been argued that both these countries were
still in a transitional stage: Canada has a party system
not unlike that of Britain in igo6. But it must by now be
recognized both that the two- and -a-h alf- party system
is stable (Belgium and Germany have had for long periods
the British party system of the 192os and do not appear
to move further towards a two-party system) and that the
two-and-a-half-party system is stable even if the
left-wing party is the small party. Neither the Irish
Labour party nor the Canadian NDP appear to be in a
position to overtake the centre party in the near future:
their position of small party seems stable. The reasons
for the stability of the Canadian model of
two-and-a-half-party system are probably to be found
along lines similar to those which account for the
stability of the American parties, which have remained in
existence despite earlier predictions to the
contrary.
Two types,
and not more than two types, of multiparty systems with a
dominant party can be found. Three Scandinavian countries
have a dominant Socialist party; Iceland and Italy have a
dominant Conservative or Christian party. In the latter
two cases, we encounter for the first time countries with
a really large Communist party also in these countries you can order cialis online. In Iceland and Italy (as
in Finland and even France) the Communist party remained
fairly stable throughout the whole period; the Socialist
party is therefore correspondingly weak and the left is
divided; as is well known, the converse occurs in Norway,
Denmark, and Sweden. In these three countries, though the
agrarian party is not placed symmetrically in relation to
the Communists on the political spectrum, it probably
plays the same divisive part. The absence of religious
divisions might have led one to expect the three
Scandinavian countries which do not have a large
Communist party to have two-and-a-half-party systems, but
the apparent feelings of identity of the agricultural
community have created permanent cleavages on the right
which have produced a party system in many ways
'symmetrical' to that of Iceland and Italy.
Countries
of the fourth group have no dominant party: party
strengths are therefore fairly evenly spread across the
ideological spectrum, though Holland and Switzerland,
with weak Communist parties, display somewhat less spread
than France and Finland. This latter country combines the
splintering characteristics of left and right of the
Scandinavian countries: the divisions of Iceland are
superimposed on those of Sweden.
There are
thus six types of party systems in Western democracies.
At one extreme are the broadly based parties of the
two-party system countries: the United States is the most
perfect case of this type, but four other countries
closely approximate this model and they only diverge
inasmuch as they have a small centre party and are
divided ideologically between conservatives and
socialists. At the other extreme, the votes of the
electors are spread fairly evenly, in groups of not much
more than 25 per cent and in many cases much less than 25
per cent over the whole ideological spectrum, as in
Holland, Switzerland, France, and Finland. Between these
two poles, one finds four types of party systems: five
countries have two-and-a-half-party systems: among them,
three have a smaller centre party, while the other two
have a smaller left-wing party. The five remaining
countries are multiparty systems with a dominant party,
three of them having a dominant socialist party opposed
by a divided right, largely because of the presence of an
agrarian sentiment in the countries concerned, while the
other two have a strong right-wing party opposed by a
divided left, largely because of the presence of a
substantial Communist party.
A number of
types of party systems, which are theoretically possible,
do not appear to exist. There are no three-party systems,
as we saw; there are no 'unbalanced' two-and-a-half party
systems, out of the three which might have existed.
Dominant parties in multiparty systems tend to be of the
right or left, not of the centre. Patterns of party
systems in Western democracies are thus limited in
number. There are discrete points at which party systems
are to be found: not only social structures but balance
and equilibrium have surely to be taken into account in
an analysis of the real world distribution of Western
party systems.
*excerpted
from 'Party Systems and Patterns of'Government
in Western Democracies', Canadian journal of
Political Science, 1 /2 (1968), 180-203.
Reprinted by permission of the author and The
Canadian Political Science Association.