dimension as the other three types of alliances. The difficulty in assessing the relative strengths of parties engaged in subversive or marginally subversive alliances, added to the general incompatibility of electoral and nonelectoral strategies, meant that the operational definition elaborated below could not be followed literally if parties participating in nonelectoral alliances were the subjects of coding. Rather, the coder stressed the broad categories highlighting the scale: for example, "high dependence," "moderate dependence," "some dependence," and so on.

1	Complete dependence. The party is subservient to the dominant partner in a pattern of alliances that includes explicit national electoral pacts, parliamentary coalition, and government participation, for example, the "national front" pattern.
2	High dependence. The party participates as a weaker member in a pattern of alliances that includes either explicit or tacit local electoral alliances (not nationwide), parliamentary coalition, and perhaps, but not necessarily, government participation.
3	Moderate dependence. The party participates as the stronger member in a pattern of alliances like that under code 2.
4	Some dependence. The party participates with another in a parliamentary and governmental alliance.
5	Slight dependence. The party participates with another in a parliamentary alliance, either in a supportive or opposition role, but there are no governmental responsibilities involved.
6	Virtual autonomy. The party is the dominant partner in a pattern of alliances that is described under code 1; the party benefits from support of another party without reciprocating that support.
7	Complete autonomy. The party may engage in opportunistic tacit local electoral alliances, but it does so for competitive reasons; otherwise the party does not encumber itself with relationships with other parties

.

Coding Results. Nearly all our parties received codes for BV704, and the codes were assigned with considerable confidence (see Tables 8.6a and 8.6b). There is no significant relationship between BV704 and AC704. Only about 40 percent of the parties could claim complete autonomy from other parties in the system (code 7). This suggests the importance of considering parties in the context of their relationships to other parties in the system, for perhaps half of the parties in the world enjoy some cooperative arrangement with their competition. A few in fact are so completely dependent on the dominant parties that their very existence is suffered for the particular ends of their superior partners (code 1).

Scholars are paying increasing attention to "international" political parties other than the Communist Party (Goldman 1978). The Socialists, Christian Democrats, and Liberals all maintain international organizations and for more than a decade have demonstrated varying degrees of solidarity in voting on issues in supranational legislative assemblies, such as the Western European Union. Parties operating in newer nations have also begun as branches of supranational organizations, like the RDA in Africa (see Hodgkin 1961, pp. 60-65). Relationship that domestic parties have with international party organizations or foreign governments--other than

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