slight between the two situations, and thus the difference is slight in the coding.

With the variable scores presented separately for 1950-56 and 1957-62, we are now able to note changes in parties over time. Comparing the negative mean for BV201 for the first part of the period with the positive mean for BV201 for the second, we see that the parties in the study tended to move from outside to inside of government circles. Particularly striking is the doubling of declared one-party states (code 16) from 1950-56 to 1957-62. Analysis of the data by country would show that most, but not all, of this growth is due to the emergence of single-party states in Africa. Again, such substantive analysis of the data lies beyond the scope of this volume.

The amount of power associated with leadership of the national government varies considerably across countries. Nevertheless, this is assumed to be the key governmental office, possession of which is coveted by members of all political parties. The party that claims the national governmental leader (either the prime minister or an effective president) has special access to the policy-making process, although the amount of influence that "the party" can exert on the policy making through the leader may again vary considerably.

A special distinction needs to be made here between claiming the national governmental leader and participating in the government. In parliamentary systems, "the government" is usually defined in a collective sense as cabinet-level ministers. In this view, a party can participate in "the government" by holding one or more ministries in a coalition with other parties. This aspect of governmental participation is tapped in basic variable 2.03, "cabinet participation."

Operational Definition. Scoring is in terms of years, with any amount less than a year counted as a whole year. Thus, the maximum score that a party can get on "governmental leadership"--given the standard thirteen-year period and the standard division between 1956 and 1957--is 7 for the first half of the time period and 6 for the second half. Because these standard divisions are themselves unequal in numbers of years and also because the halves when adjusted to account for country peculiarities may be even more unequal, we standardize the governmental leadership score by dividing the number of years the party is credited with holding governmental leadership by the number of years in that part of the time period for the country of concern.

Coding Results. We were able to score all parties in each half of our time period on "governmental leadership," attributing party claims to governmental leadership with nearly complete confidence - as confirmed by the very high means for AC202 reported in Tables 4.2a and 4.2b. The means for BV202 show that the average party exercised governmental leadership approximately one-third of the time, with the average proportion of time in office slightly greater for 1957-1962 than for 1950-1956. The distributions for both periods are decidedly skewed, however, with a clear majority of the parties never claiming the seat of power. There is no significant correlation between BV202 and AC202.

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