A Theory of Parties and Electoral Systems

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Contents

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pp. vii-ix

Preface

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pp. xi-xii

POLITICAL parties and elections go hand in hand in modem democracies, Modem mass parties were created to contest elections and electoral systems exist to structure competition among parties, Parties and elections are inexorably linked, yet we know very little of the relationship between them. ...

1. Parties, Elections, and Democracy

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pp. 1-16

MODERN democracy is party democracy; the political institutions and practices that are the essence of democratic government in the Western view were the creations of political parties and would be unthinkable without them.¹ If asked to define Western democracy, one could do little better than to say that it is the selection of major political decision makers through free elections ...

2. Electoral Law

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pp. 17-34

ELECTORAL law plays a central role in the theory to be developed here. The motivating assumption is that the principal, and certainly the immediate, object of each parliamentary candidate is to be successful personally in securing a legislative seat. Rationality takes on relevance because there are normally more aspirants to parliamentary office ...

3. An Extensive Test

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pp. 35-59

ONCE a theory has been developed deductively, it must be tested empirically. In doing this, one may pursue either, or both, of two complementary strategies. On the one hand, the theory may be tested intensively. The greater the number of hypotheses derived from the theory that can be confirmed, the greater will be the confidence that can be placed in the theory, ...

4. An Intensive Test: Electoral Experience

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pp. 60-83

THE extensive test of the predictions based on electoral law revealed results that were clearly confirmatory. If some of the correlations observed were less than spectacular, many others were remarkably strong, especially in light of the simplicity of the theory and the quality of the data. In part, as illustrated by the problem of properly coding the intraparty preference vote ...

5. An Intensive Test: Campaign and Nomination

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pp. 84-99

PRECEDING the balloting stage of an election, but primarily conditioned by expectations of voter behavior and the effects of the application of electoral laws, are the nomination and campaign stages of the electoral process. In considering campaigns and nominations, this chapter has two objectives. ...

6. An Intensive Test: Verification

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pp. 100-114

IN the preceding chapters, the electoral systems of Great Britain, Ireland, and Italy have been examined in the light of a theory of candidate rationality to the point at which specific predictions have been made regarding the nature of parliamentary parties in these countries. This chapter concludes the intensive test by doing two things. ...

7. Concluding Remarks

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pp. 115-124

RETURNING to the three questions about party systems raised in chapter 1—number, orientation, and internal unity—the findings of this analysis regarding the link between electoral system and party system may be summarized quite briefly. As in earlier studies, the intensive analysis of three systems showed that the number of parties competing ...

Appendix A. Sampling

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pp. 125-126

Appendix B. Questionnaire

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pp. 127-132

Notes

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pp. 133-146

Index

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pp. 147-151