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Chapter 15: Continuity and Change: 1950-1978 (pp. 162-169), p. 164
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Note that some of the parties that qualified for study after 1962 had been formed earlier but were not strong or stable enough to warrant consideration previously. If we allow for their inclusion among the 1950-1962 sample and carry over to 1963-1978 the original parties plus all new ones, we find ourselves with a combined sample of 208 parties that distribute across four roughly equivalent time periods as shown in Table 15.3. Note that the numbers of parties that existed in each time slice fluctuate around 150, averaging just under three parties per country. The only important difference is between 1950-1956 and 1957-1962, when there was a sizable increase in party formation. This difference can be attributed mainly to the rise of new African parties in the drive for independence and the early years thereafter.

TABLE 15.3: Existence of 208 Parties in Four Time Periods
Time Period
No. of Parties
% of All Parties
1950-1956

Original sample

135

New parties

6

142

68% of 208
1957-1962

Original sample

147

New parties

11

158

76% of 208
1963-1970

Original sample

124

New parties

30

154

74% of 208
1971-1978

Original sample

106

New parties

48

154

74% of 208

As the 1957-1962 African experience indicates, some environments are especially conducive to party formation. For our purposes, we shall limit our concern with the environment to the study of party origin by region. Employing the cultural-geographical regions described in Chapter 1, we find the 50 new parties distributed by region as shown in Table 15.4. Learning the areas where the new parties originated causes us to reconsider environmental "hospitality" in the formation of new parties. The region with the largest number of new parties is Asia, followed by Central America. Unlike Western Europe (which is third as a source of new parties), neither Asia nor Central America is apt to be regarded as suitable soil for growing parties. On the other hand, it is not surprising that Eastern Europe accounts for no new parties since 1962 (or 1950, for that matter). But note that the absence of new parties in Eastern Europe differs little from the Anglo-American cultural area, whose eight countries gave rise to only one new party after 1962 that qualified for study. Clearly, the environmental conditions that give rise to new parties are not easily summarized.

TABLE 15.4: Distribution of New Parties by Regions1
Region
No. of Parties

Anglo-American Culture Area2

1

West Central Europe

8

Scandinavia and Benelux

6

South America

2

Central America and Caribbean

9

Asia and the Far East

10

Eastern Europe

-

Middle East and North Africa

6

West Africa

6

Central and East Africa

2

Total

50

1Each region consists of five countries except the Anglo-American culture area, which has eight. See Table 1.1 for a list of all countries by region.
2The Anglo-American area includes the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which terminated in 1963. It also includes India.

Perhaps a clue to conditions that favor the rise of new parties exists in their ideological orientations. Is there a trend toward the formation of "leftist" parties? Or is "conservatism" on the rise across the world? As many as possible of the new parties were coded for their ideological orientations using the four-point State Department classification of parties as "Conservative," "Center," Non-Communist Left," and "Communist." Chapter 6 describes the State Department classification and compares its ratings of parties on a left-right scale with the description of party ideologies in a Soviet source. Given the high correlation (above .85) between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. sources, we generated a combined rating, utilizing also the descriptions of party ideologies found in the Political Handbook of the World and the Europa Yearbook. The results of scoring the parties on their ideological orientation are reported in Table 15.5.

Not all the new parties could be coded for ideological orientation. Those that could be coded revealed a small

TABLE 15.5: Percentage Distribution of New Parties1 by Ideology
Ideology
1963-1970
1971-1978

Conservative

30%
39%

Center

41
25

Non-Communist Left

18
25

Communist

11
11

Total

100%
100%

N

27
36


'Not all the new parties could be coded for ideological orientation. Only 30 of the new parties were active in 1963-1970 and 48 in 1971-1978.

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