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an overall governmental philosophy, which characterizes an ideological faction, and discrete government policies, which provoke issues factionalism. Thus, southern Democrats would constitute more of an ideological faction in the U.S. Congress than an issue-oriented faction, which would be more appropriate to party divisions related to U.S. military action in Vietnam.

Zariski later qualifies his definition of a faction by requiring that the members maintain "a reasonably lengthy period of association--several months, at the very least" (p. 37). Accepting this criterion of durability, we ignore fleeting "factions" as labeled by writers who are not using the term very precisely. Instead, we look for evidence of formalized interaction and joint consultation that exists over some minimum period of time, established as a year or more.

The main fact in assessing factionalism is, of course, determining the sheer existence of a faction. But factions can be more or less distinct, depending on whether or not they are labeled and whether or not factional membership can be determined. At the extreme, factions may be so distinct that they maintain their own organizations, with offices, staff, and officials, and operate largely independently of the party organization or in opposition to it.

Another important facet of factionalism is the size of the factional group, relative to the size of the party as a whole. In general, smaller factions are judged to be less threatening to party coherence than are larger factions, and the size of the factions is judged to be more important for party coherence than for the existence of formal organization.

One additional possible distinction in assessing party factionalism is whether the factional conflict erupts into a party split or purge. The occurrence of splits or purges over ideological matters has to be treated gingerly, however, for either may indicate the development of "coherence" in the party as well as indicating the existence of "incoherence." The distinction depends on the timing of the event. If it occurs at the beginning of the time segment under consideration, it leads to coherence; if it occurs later, it signifies incoherence.

The final issue in determining the existence of party factions is establishing where they may occur. In parliamentary democracies, there is the inclination to look for factions within the party's legislative membership, and this is a likely and important locus for factional activity. But factions also occur outside of the parliamentary party membership in parliamentary democracies as well as in other political systems. In general, we insist on identifying the "factionalists" as party members, but even this is difficult to require for nonmembership parties. In such parties, we require that members of the proposed faction be at least regarded as strong party identifiers.

Operational Definition. The higher the score on this variable, the greater the degree of ideological factionalism. The party is scored the highest applicable code from the following scale.

0

Ideological concerns are not subject to public debate and disagreement among party leaders.

1

Ideology is a matter of public debate and disagreement among party leaders but not enough to promote factional tendencies.

2

Ideology is a matter of debate and disagreement, factional tendencies are present, but factions are not clearly distinguished in the sense of labeled groupings with identifiable membership.

3

Ideological concerns have created a "small" faction within the party, but the faction does not have a formal organization of its own.

4

Ideological concerns have created a "small" faction within the party with some formal organization of its own or have provoked a split after the beginning of the period.

5

Ideological concerns have created a "large" faction within the party--"large" defined as about 25 percent of the membership or more--but the faction does not have a formal organization of its own.

6

Ideological concerns have created a "large" faction within the party with some formal organization of its own or have provoked a split after the beginning of the period.

Coding Results. The literature was usually quick to comment on the existence of ideological factionalism, leading us to rate about 85 percent of the parties on BV1002 (see Tables 11.3a and 11.3b). In nearly one-third of the parties, disagreement over ideology constitutes no force for factionalism whatsoever (code 0). On the other hand, one party out of every ten manifests its ideological conflict either by a formal intraparty organization or by an out-and-out split. Perhaps reflecting the generally good quality of the data underlying this variable, there is no significant relationship between BV1002 and AC 1002.

Basic Variable 10.03: Issue Factionalism

The section under variable 10.02 discusses the conceptualization of factionalism in general within the specific context of "ideological factionalism." Variable 10.03 also refers to a specific type of factionalism, "issue factionalism." Issue factionalism is based on disagreement over one or more discrete substantive issues in politics. This stands in contrast to ideological factionalism, which is based on conflicting emphases in the context of an overall governmental philosophy. To differentiate

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