Some of these goal orientation variables, moreover, were considered more expendable, because they basically served to support other variables in the study. This is the case, for example, with BV601 through BV605. Conceptualized as "direct tactics" under a strategy of open competition, these variables were expected to correlate very strongly with BV600, "open competition in the electoral process." A preliminary analysis of the data for approximately 30 parties coded to that point indicated that our expectations were confirmed; BV600 correlated very strongly with all the electoral tactics variables. However much we would have liked to have observed the special features of these relationships for all the parties in the study, we decided that the price of admission would be too great if it meant frustrating the completion of the coding for all the parties and variables. Therefore, we reluctantly but necessarily stopped coding BV601 through BV605 for the rest of the project. The absence of data for these variables has nothing to do with the availability of information in the file or the tractability of our concepts and operationalizations. The information was sufficient and the definitions were adequate; only time and resources were lacking.

A party can pursue the goal of placing its avowed representatives in government positions through a strategy of restricting competition by opposing parties. This is one of three possible "pure" strategies that a party might follow, the other two being handled by variable 6.00, "open competition in the electoral process," and variable 6.20, "subverting the political system." The relationship of these strategies to one another is described under variable 6.00.

The presumption behind BV610 is that a party's members can accede to government positions if they are unchallenged by members of an opposing party. In the classical instance of a one-party state, this is the strategy of the ruling party. In the more general case, the strategy is geared to governmental parties rather than to parties out of power. A special problem confronting the conceptualization of this party strategy is whether the party actually follows the strategy of restricting competition from other parties or whether the state pursues the strategy from which the party passively benefits. Whenever possible, we seek to disentangle the activities of party and state, even in one-party regimes. But when party actions become inseparable from state actions, we accept imputations of state strategy as party strategy.

The target group for a party that follows a restrictive strategy is either another party or some social group that threatens to become an opposition party or force. The noncompetitive activities practiced by a party following a restrictive strategy tend to be focused rather narrowly on the political actions of the opposition group or groups. This is in distinction to the broader and more generally violent types of activities employed by parties which follow a strategy of subverting the political system (see variable 6.20).

Operational Definition. A party's reliance on a strategy of restricting party competition is scored in accordance with the following weights. This scoring is done in conjunction with BV600 and BV620 to ensure that the sum of the orientation scores equals the arbitrary value of 4.

0	Not oriented to restricting party competition: the party's strategy for placing its members in government posts involves either open competition with other parties or subverting the political process.
1	Generally speaking, the party's strategy is not oriented to restricting party competition, but party members engage in occasional instances of disrupting, invalidating, or proscribing opposition activities.
2	Restricting party competition plays a minor role in the party's overall strategy: the party may hamper opposition activities but its overall strategy is not dominated by these restrictive procedures.
3	Restricting party competition plays the major role in the party's overall strategy, but it employs other strategic considerations in pursuing its goal: for example, makes some effort to nominate candidates who would be expected to draw support from public
4	Relies exclusively on restricting party competition to achieve its goal: this may be done in concert with other parties on an oligopolistic basis.

Coding Results. Again, all the parties in our study were coded according to strategy within the goal orientation cluster. The distributions of codes over BV610, "restricting party competition," are displayed in Tables 7.2a and 7.2b, where it can be seen by the mean scores for BV610 that our parties tended to become somewhat more restrictive as the years progressed over the decade. About 10 percent of the parties followed a restrictive strategy exclusively, while more than 60 percent entirely avoided that strategy. Between these extremes, the parties mixed varying amounts of restriction with open competition and subversion to fashion some unique blends of goal orientation. As with BV600, our coding of BV610 had to introduce intermediate-scale positions

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