Journal Articles

The Quantity and the Quality of Party Systems: Party System Polarization, Its Measurement, and Its Consequences

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Previous research claims that the number of parties affects the representation of social cleavages in voting behavior, election turnout, patterns of political conflict, and other party system effects. This article argues that research typically counts the quantity of parties and that often the more important property is the quality of party competition—the polarization of political parties within a party system. The author first discusses why polarization is important to study. Second, the author provides a new measurement of party system polarization based on voter perceptions of party positions in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, which includes more than 50 separate elections from established and developing democracies. Third, the author compares party polarization and party fractionalization as influences on cleavage-based and ideological voting and as predictors of turnout levels. The finding is that party polarization is empirically more important in explaining these outcomes

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Detail Information

Series Title

Comparative Political Studies

Call Number

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Publisher

London : Sage Publications., 2008

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

00104140

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 41, No. 7, Page 899-920

Subject(s)

Voting
Party Polarization
Party Fractionalization
Turnout
The Quantity and the Quality of Party Systems

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