Second paragraph of third chapter (“Party Systems and Structures of Competition”, by Peter Mair):
The most conventional and frequently adopted criterion for classifying party systems is also the most simple: the number of parties in competition. Moreover, the conventional distinction involved here has also proved appealingly straightforward: that between a two-party system, on the one hand, and a multiparty (i.e., more than two) system, on the other (see Duverger 1954). Nor was this just a casual categorization; on the contrary, it was believed to tap into a more fundamental distinction between more or less stable and consensual democracies, which were those normally associated with the two-party type, as opposed to more or less unstable and conflictual democracies, which were those associated with the multiparty type. Thus, two-party systems, which were typically characteristic of the United Kingdom and the United States and invariably involved single-party government, were assumed to enhance accountability, alternation in government, and moderate, center-seeking competition. Multiparty systems, on the other hand, which usually required coalition administrations and were typically characteristic of countries such as France or Italy, prevented voters from gaining a direct voice in the formation of governments, did not necessarily facilitate alternation in government, and sometimes favored extremist, ideological confrontations between narrowly based political parties. And although this simple association of party system types and political stability and efficacy was later challenged by research into the experiences of some of the smaller European democracies, which boasted both a multiplicity of parties and a strong commitment to consensual government (e.g., Daalder 1983) and thus led some early observers to attempt to elaborate a distinction between “working” multiparty systems (e.g., the Netherlands or Sweden) and “nonworking” or “immobilist” multiparty systems (e.g., Italy), the core categorization of two-party versus multiparty has nevertheless continued to command a great deal of support within the literature on comparative politics.2
2 See, for example, Almond, Powell, and Mundt (1993, 117-20), where this traditional distinction is recast as one of “majoritarian” versus multiparty systems; see also the influential study by Lijphart (1984) where one of the key distinctions between majoritarian and consensus democracies is defined as that between a two-party system and a multiparty system.
This was another of the books that I got at the end of 2016, lost and then found again, to prepare a talk that I gave in Belfast that December. It was published in 1996, but it seems a bit dated even for 28 years ago; most of Eastern Europe was already two cycles into the new democratic system by then, and more could have been made of the test bed for democracy. In addition, there’s almost nothing about the actual subject of my talk, which was electoral boundaries. Still, I only paid £3.88 for it, so I can’t really complain.
What it does have is quite a wide range of essays picking out different aspects of the democratic process – not just the legal framework of the vote and the political party system, but also the roles of what we would now call civil society, opinion polls, media, the economy, and the impact of leadership, recruitment of candidates, and campaigning – the chapter on actual campaigning by David Farrell is probably the best in the book.
A useful snapshot of where research stood in the mid-1990s, but with massive gaps even then in the Global South. I hope that there is a more up to date volume out there. Meantime, you can get it here.
