Path: Janda: Political Parties, Home Page > Part 1: Table of Contents > Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Institutionalization (pp 19-28), this is p. 21
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Figure 3.1:
Flowchart for Deciding Party Identity after Split, Merger, or name Change

[Editor's note: click here for an interactive, web-based version of this flowchart.]


that corresponds to BVl0l--is among the highest in the study, indicating that the literature tended to provide adequate information on the parties' founding and that the coders tended to have confidence in making coding decisions about the parties' origin. There is no significant correlation between the year of origin and our confidence in coding the variable (BVl0l vs. ACl0l).

Although the average party in the study was formed around 1930, the distribution of parties by age is highly skewed, with many more parties formed after 1930 than before--as shown in Table 3.1, which groups parties by years of origin in thirteen-year intervals. Some dates for party origin were selected from several equally likely alternatives. For example, the origins of the British Conservative Party and the American Democratic Party can be fixed at several arguable dates. Most of these, however, would still establish them as the oldest parties in the study. The date finally chosen for the Democrats was 1828, which produced the minimum value of -72 when subtracted from 1900 according to our instructions for operationalizing BVlOl. The date chosen for the Conservatives was 1832, giving the Democrats the ultimate honor for the oldest party in the study. The reasons for these choices are given in Part Two in the computer printout of the codes and supporting comments for each party.

At the other end of the scale, the newest party in our original sample was Kabaka Yekka of Uganda, founded

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