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Senior Citizens, helped to recruit its early members from unions, and continued to underwrite its activities. Although committed citizen activists, such as Ralph Nader or John Gardner, occasionally provide an energizing impetus for launching new organizations, many public interest groups rely on patronage from wealthy individuals or foundation sponsors to get launched (Walker 1983), as well as on favorable mass media treatment to bolster their legitimacy. Once an organization is formed, its survival, growth, and effectiveness depend on its ability to attract and hold new members and other organizational sponsors. Labor unions and business associations can acquire substantial war chests through dues and assessments on their members, but PIGs have more limited capacities to tap potential diffuse constituents’ money. The virtual collapse of Greenpeace in the 1990s underscores the vulnerability of many activist organizations to quickly dwindling support.

For more than three decades, a central paradigm to explain member contributions has been the economic or rational choice model developed in Mancur Olson Jr.’s Logic of Collective Action

(1965). Olson considered the conditions under which people would voluntarily contribute their resources to an organized group seeking a public good (such as a governmental farm crop subsidy) from which no eligible recipients could be excluded. Olson argued that utility-maximizing actors would refuse to pay for public goods that will be produced regardless of their contributions, and thus would take a ‘‘free ride’’ on the efforts of other members. As a result, the model predicts that most political organizations should fail to mobilize their potential supporters if they were to rely solely on public goods to obtain sustenance. Olson concluded that such entities are viable only if they offer ‘‘selective incentives’’ to prospective members in exchange for their contributions toward the organization’s public-good lobbying efforts. These inducements might include magazine subscriptions, group insurance, social gatherings, certification and training programs, and similar benefits from which the organization could effectively exclude noncontributors unless they pay dues and assessments. In Olson’s formulation, a political organization’s policy objectives are reduced to a secondary ‘‘by-product’’ of its members’ and supporters’ interests in obtaining personal material

benefits. Despite his appealing analytical arguments, Olson’s propositions were repeatedly challenged by empirical investigations of the incentive systems of real voluntary organizations. Members often respond to diverse inducements apart from personal material gains, including normative and purposive appeals and organizational lobbying for public goods (Moe 1980, pp. 201–231; Knoke 1988, 1990, pp. 123–140). For example, right-to- life organizations appeal to their supporters’ religious, ideological, and emotional convictions about the illegitimacy of abortion and the necessity to take direct action to shut down clinics as well as to campaign on behalf of prolife politicians. The availability of picnics or T-shirts could hardly provide a compelling motivation for most participants in these groups. The internal economies of political organizations turn out to be more complex than originally believed. Organizational leaders have an important role in defining the conditions and prospects for their members and in persuading them to contribute to collective efforts that may run counter to the members’ short-term personal interests.

The governance of political organizations is often posed as a choice between oligarchic or democratic alternatives. Persistent leadership and staff cliques in labor unions, trade associations, fraternal organizations, professional societies, and other types of associations are frequently interpreted as evidence of an inevitable ‘‘iron law of oligarchy.’’ However, apart from labor unions (with their legal monopolies on occupational representation within certain industries), most voluntary groups are too dependent on their members for critical resources to enable officials to flout the memberships’ interests in the long run. Consequently, most political organizations’ constitutions provide for an array of democratic institutions, including competitive elections, membership meetings, referenda, and committee systems (Berry 1984, pp. 92–113; Knoke 1990, pp. 143–161). But actual practices of consulting members to formulate collective actions vary widely, and researchers have only begun to examine how the democratic control of political organizations shapes their capacities to mobilize their members for collective actions. The analytic task is further complicated by the complex interactions of formal governance processes with executive and leadership actions,

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bureaucratic administration, environmental conditions, and the internal economy of member incentives.

Political organizations serve a dual function for a political system. First, they aggregate the interests of citizens holding similar preferences, enabling them to press their demands on government officials more effectively. By articulating member demands and pooling the scarce resources of weak individuals, interest groups fashion a louder voice that is not readily dismissed by those in positions charged with public policy making. However, not all interests are created equal. Because higher-socioeconomic-status groups are more likely to join and participate in political organizations, the pressure-group system is biased against representing the views of less organized class, race, gender, and ethnic interests (Verba et al. 1995; Van Deth 1997). Second, political organizations provide public authorities with channels to communicate policy information and provide benefits to their electoral constituencies. Adroit politicians can manipulate public opinion to some degree by selectively targeting which interest groups will receive coveted access to present a case for modifications to pending policy decisions. Public officials and political organizations have a mutual interest in delivering policy successes that permit them both to survive to play the influence game again and again (Browne 1998, pp. 226–228). The fragmentation of political power among numerous policy arenas in the American federal system offers many aggrieved groups several institutional pressure points—legislatures; executive agencies; regulatory bodies; and courts at the local, state, and national levels—through which to raise their demands and promote their preferred solutions ontothe public policy agenda for debate and resolution. This duality of political organizations at the interface between the state and its citizenry assures that the interest-group system exerts a crucial, if constitutionally ambiguous, impact on shaping many outcomes of collective political action.

Researchers have made substantial progress in uncovering the evolving techniques deployed by political organizations in lobbying public policy makers on specific issues (Schlozman and Tierney 1986, pp. 261–385; Knoke 1990, pp. 187–213; Baumgartner and Leech 1998, pp. 147–167). Campaign contributions and litigation are relatively

rare methods, while contacting governmental officials (legislative, executive, regulatory), testifying at hearings, presenting research findings, and mobilizing their mass memberships are the most prevalent tactics. But mustering the appearance of grassroots support by hiring consultant firms and lobbying specialists to generate calls and letters may be quickly discredited as phony ‘‘astroturf’’ (Kollman 1998, pp. 157–160). The Internet and the World Wide Web are only the most recent technological innovations to be pressed into the interest-group battle. The impact of political money, primarily unlimited political action committee (PAC) ‘‘soft money’’ election campaign contributions, is a highly emotional topic. Some researchers conclude that a corrupt campaign financing system allows large corporations to enjoy disproportionate political access and influence (Clawson et al. 1998), while others see the corporate capacity to act in unison on political affairs as more problematic and conditional (Mizruchi 1992; Grier et al. 1994). All lobbying methods aim at gaining organizational access to policy makers by winning their attention, communicating with contacts about mutual information needs, and reinforcing for those targets the importance of continuing to pay attention to the organization’s issues (Browne 1998, pp. 68–82). However, the precise conditions under which diverse lobbying tactics exert demonstrable impacts on policy decisions remain elusive.

One increasingly important strategy is collective action by a coalition of political organizations, often competing against an opposing coalition that advocates the contrary policy position. The organizational-state conceptualization of national policy domains emphasizes the shifting nature of short-term networks among organized interest groups mobilizing and coordinating their collective resources in campaigns to pass or defeat particular legislative proposals. The processes by which interorganizational communication networks generate collective action were examined in empirical studies of the U.S. national energy, health, agriculture, and labor policy domains (Laumann and Knoke 1987; Heinz et al. 1993), and in a comparison of U.S., German, and Japanese labor policy making (Knoke et al. 1996). European political scientists have been especially energetic in applying a policy network perspective to understanding how informal bargaining between interest groups

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and officials shapes policy outcomes in complex institutional settings (Peterson 1992; Verdier 1995).

Debates among European scholars about the organized representation of societal interests initially concentrated on corporatism as a distinctive form of interest intermediation. Although many definitions of corporatism and neocorporatism abound (Cox and O’Sullivan 1988), the dominant theme concerns how interest groups become incorporated into public policy-making processes through institutionalized access to the levers of state power rather than as seekers of intermittent influence and access that characterize fragmented, pluralist systems such as the United States (Baumgartner and Walker 1989). A corporatist arrangement involves explicit policy negotiations between state agencies and interest groups, followed by implementation of policy agreements through these political organizations, which enforce compliance by their members. The corporatist state takes a highly interventionist role by forming private sector ‘‘peak’’ (encompassing, nonvoluntary, monopolistic) interests groups; delegating to them quasi-public authority to determine binding public policy decisions; and brokering solutions to conflicts (Hirst 1995). In return for a stable share of power, privileged corporatist organizations are expected to discipline their members to accept the imposed policy decisions. Within national labor and other policy domains a closed tripartite network of state agencies, business, and labor organizations collaborates on solutions to such problems as workplace regulation and income distribution, and imposes these compromises on the society. Although much corporatist bargaining occurs primarily within the executive and regulatory sectors, the social partnership aspect of negotiated class conflicts should carry over into the parliamentary arena. The corporatist organizations representing capital, labor, and state interests jointly sponsor legislative proposals originated by agreement with the executive branch. Other interest groups are effectively excluded from participating in these corporatist agreements, resulting in a pattern of cumulative cleavages between them and the corporatist core. These disgruntled, excluded status groups are sources of new social movements against the corporatist monopolies; ecological, antinuclear, feminist, homeless, and immigrant groups are examples of these deprived segments.

This well-ordered corporatist framework seems to be breaking down as a result of the 1986 Single European Act that leads inexorably to an integrated internal market (Mazey and Richardson 1993; Fligstein and Mara-Drita 1996). Simultaneously, a ‘‘Europe of regions’’ is developing, with such areas as Scotland, Brittany, and the Basque country of Spain attaining formal representation and integration into European Union (EU) affairs. The Union is not yet a state, because it still lacks full sovereign power to make and enforce many types of decisions, particularly taxation. Rather, EU policy making is nonhierarchical, open, complex, conflictful, and unpredictable. With Brussels emerging as a supranational forum for resolving social, environmental, producer, and consumer conflicts, new forms of interest representation and lobbying are arising to tackle the expanding EU policy agenda. To varying degrees across different policy domains, the member states are steadily losing control over intergovernmental bargains, while ‘‘networks of actors . . . have become guardians of the policy agenda at the subsystemic level of EU governance, over which political controls are often weak or attenuated’’ (Peterson 1997, p. 7). In sum, the European Union is embarked on a huge, unforeseeable natural experiment that seems likely to transform traditional corporatist state-society relations into a system more closely resembling the ‘‘disjointed pluralism’’ of United States (Mazey and Richardson 1993, p. 24). The situation offers unbounded theoretical and research opportunities.

Despite occasional pessimistic appraisals that ‘‘interest-group studies have defined themselves into a position of elegant irrelevance’’ (Baumgartner and Leech 1998, p. xvii), research on political organizations is thriving at several levels of analysis, from the individual members to organizational political economies to the integration of societal interests into national and supranational polities. Analysts must exert greater effort to link these diverse focuses into a comprehensive explanation of interest organization behaviors situated within their sociopolitical environments. Especially promising avenues include developing formal models of rational social choice at the micro and macro levels; developing models of intraand interorganizational exchange network; accounting for historical and institutional differences in interest representation processes across diverse national settings; and the functions of nongovernmental agencies

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(such as the World Health Organization) and pressure groups (such as Amnesty International) in the world system. Given the vastly expanded sociopolitical functions of modern states in all their permutations, a better understanding of the roles that political organizations play as developers, mediators, expresser, and manipulators of societal interests is indispensable.

Interests in National Policymaking. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press.

Hirst, Paul 1995 ‘‘Quangos and Democratic Government.’’ Parliamentary Affairs 48:341–359.

Knoke, David 1990 Organizing for Collective Action: The Political Economies of Associations. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

——— 1988 ‘‘Incentives in Collective Action Organizations.’’ American Sociological Review 53 (June): 311–329.

(SEE ALSO: Political Party Systems; Voluntary Associations)

REFERENCES

Baumgartner, Frank R., and Beth L. Leech 1998 Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and in Political Science. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Baumgartner, Frank R., and Jack L. Walker 1989 ‘‘Educational Policymaking and the Interest Group Structure in France and the United States.’’ Comparative Politics 21:273–288.

Berry, Jeffrey M. 1984 The Interest Group Society. Boston:

Little, Brown.

——— 1977 Lobbying for the People: The Political Behavior of Public Interest Groups. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Browne, William P. 1998 Groups, Interests, and U.S. Public Policy. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Clawson, Dan, Alan Neustadtl, and Mark Weller 1998

Dollars and Votes: How Business Campaign Contributions Subvert Democracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Cox, Andrew, and Noel O’Sullivan (eds.) 1988 The Corporate State: Corporatism and the State Tradition in Western Europe. Hants, England: Edward Elgar.

Fligstein, Neil, and Iona Mara-Drita 1996 ‘‘How to Make a Market: Reflections on the European Union’s Single Market Program.’’ American Journal of Sociology

102:1–34.

Gray, Virginia, and David Lowery 1996 The Population Ecology of Interest Representation: Lobbying Communities in the American States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Grier, Kevin B., Michael C. Munger, and Brian E. Roberts 1994 ‘‘The Determinants of Industry Political Activity, 1978–1986.’’ American Political Science Review 88:911–926.

Heinz, John P., Edward O. Laumann, Robert L. Nelson, and Robert H. Salisbury 1993 The Hollow Core: Private

———, Franz Urban Pappi, Jeffrey Broadbent, and Yutaka Tsujinaka 1996 Comparing Policy Networks: Labor Politics in the U.S., Germany, and Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kollman, Ken 1998 Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest Group Strategies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Laumann, Edward O., and David Knoke 1987 The Organizational State: A Perspective on the Social Organization of National Energy and Health Policy Domains. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Mazey, Sonia, and Jeremy Richardson 1993 ‘‘Introduction: Transference of Power, Decision Rules, and Rules of the Game.’’ In Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson, eds., Lobbying in the European Community. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mizruchi, Mark S. 1992 The Structure of Corporate Political Action: Interfirm Relations and Their Consequences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Moe, Terry 1980 The Organization of Interests: Incentives and the Internal Dynamics of Political Interest Groups. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Olson, Mancur, Jr. 1965 The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Peterson, John 1997 ‘‘States, Societies and the European Union.’’ West European Politics 20(4):1–23.

——— 1992 ‘‘The European Technology Community: Policy Networks in a Supranational Setting.’’ In David Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes, eds., Policy Networks in British Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Salisbury, Robert H. 1994 ‘‘Interest Structures and Policy Domains: A Focus for Research.’’ In William Crotty, Mildred A. Schwartz, and John C. Green, eds., Representing Interests and Interest Group Representation. Washington: University Press of America.

Schlozman, Kay L., and John T. Tierney 1986 Organized Interests and American Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.

Van Deth, Jan W. (ed.) 1997 Private Groups and Public Life: Social Participation, Voluntary Associations and Political Involvement in Representative Democracies. London: Routledge.

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Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady 1995 Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Verdier, Daniel 1995 ‘‘The Politics of Public Aid to Private Industry: The Role of Policy Networks.’’ Comparative Political Studies 28:3–42.

Vogel, David 1996 Kindred Strangers: The Uneasy Relationship between Politics and Business in America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Walker, Jack L. 1983 ‘‘The Origins and Maintenance of Interest Groups in America.’’ American Political Science Review 77:390–406.

DAVID KNOKE

POLITICAL PARTY SYSTEMS

DEFINITIONS

Political parties have been defined both normatively, with respect to the preferences of the analyst, and descriptively, with respect to the activities in which parties actually engage. Normative definitions tend to focus on the representative or educational functions of parties. Parties translate citizens’ preferences into policy and also shape citizens’ preferences. Parties are characterized as ‘‘policy seeking.’’ Thus, Lawson (1980) defines parties in terms of their role in linking levels of government to levels of society. She states, ‘‘Parties are seen, both by their members and by others, as agencies for forging links between citizens and policy-makers.’’ Von Beyme (1985, p. 13) lists four ‘‘functions’’ that political parties generally fulfill: (1) the identification of goals (ideology and program); (2) the articulation and aggregation of social interests; (3) the mobilization and socialization of the general public within the system, particularly at elections; and (4) elite recruitment and government formation.

Descriptive definitions usually stay closer to Max Weber’s observation that parties are organizations that attempt to gain power for their members, regardless of constituent wishes or policy considerations. Parties are characterized as ‘‘office seeking.’’ ‘‘Parties reside in the sphere of power. Their action is oriented toward the acquisition of social power . . . no matter what its content may be’’ (Weber 1968, p. 938). Schumpeter ([1950] 1975) applies this type of definition to a democratic setting. He argues that parties are organizations

of elites who compete in elections for the right to rule for a period. Or as Sartori (1976, p. 63) puts it, ‘‘a party is any political group identified by an official label that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections (free or nonfree), candidates for public office.’’

The present article employs a descriptive definition but also investigates how well parties perform functions described in the normative definitions. Thus, a party system may be characterized as the array or configuration of parties competing for power in a given polity. The focus here will be almost exclusively on Western-style democracies.

ORIGINS

Von Beyme (1985) suggests three main theoretical approaches to explain the emergence of political parties: institutional theories, historical crisis situation theories, and modernization theories. (Also see LaPalombara and Weiner 1966.)

Institutional Theories. Institutional theories explain the emergence of parties as largely due to the way representative institutions function. Parties first emerge from opposing factions in parliaments. Continuity, according to such theories, gives rise to stable party constellations based on structured cleavages. These theories seem most relevant to countries with continuously functioning representative bodies, such as the United States, Britain, Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands. However, institutional theories do not explain developments well in some countries, such as France, because continuity of parliament has been absent, and the parliament’s strength and independence has come repeatedly into question. The timing of the franchise is also relevant, but its effect is indeterminate because a party system has often been partly established before the franchise was fully extended. Moreover, liberal bourgeois parties that have helped establish parliamentary government have often been opposed to extending the franchise to the lower classes, while leaders such as Bismarck or Napoleon III have sometimes extended the franchise in nonparliamentary systems for tactical political reasons (von Beyme 1985, p. 16). Likewise, Lipset (1985, chap. 6) argues that a late and sudden extension of the franchise has sometimes contributed to working-class radicalism because the lower classes were not slowly

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integrated into an existing party system. Voting laws can also affect the structure of the party system. Single-member districts, with a first-past- the-post plurality winner, as in the United States and in Britain, are said to encourage a small number of parties and ideological moderation (competition for the center). National lists, with proportional representation (PR), are said to encourage multipartism (fractionalization) and ideological polarization. However, PR may have this effect only if it is implemented concurrently with the extension of the franchise, because alreadyestablished parties may otherwise be well entrenched and leave little room for the generation of new parties. Lijphart (1985) notes that voting laws may also affect other features of political life, such as voter turnout and efficacy or system legitimation, but that these effects have not been extensively investigated.

Crisis Theories. Critical junctures in a polity’s history may generate new political tendencies or parties. Crisis theories are especially associated with the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC’s) project on Political Development (e.g., LaPalombara and Weiner 1966; Grew 1978). According to SSRC scholars, five such crises can be identified in political development: the crises of national identity, state legitimacy, political participation, distribution of resources, and state penetration of society. The sequence in which these crises are resolved (if only temporarily) and the extent to which they may coincide can affect the emerging party system. Thus, Britain’s well-spaced sequence contributed to the moderation of its party system. The recurrent piling up of crises in Germany from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, and the attempt to solve problems with penetration (strong-state measures) contributed to the fragmentation, polarization, and instability of its party system. The piling up of all five crises in midnineteenth century America contributed to the emergence of the Republican Party—and the second party system. From a slightly different perspective, von Beyme (1985) notes three historical crisis points that have generated parties. First, the forces of nationalism and of integration during the nation-building process have often taken on roles as political parties. Second, party systems have been effected by breaks in legitimacy as a result of dynastic rivalries, as between Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists in mid-nineteenth

century France. Third, the collapse of parliamentary democracy to fascism has produced characteristic features in the party systems of post-authori- tarian democracies: ‘‘a deep distrust of the traditional right; an attempt to unify the centre right; [and] a split on the left between the socialists and the Communists’’ (p. 19).

Modernization Theories. Some theories, following the tenets of structural functionalism, argue that ‘‘parties will not in fact materialize unless a measure of modernization has occurred’’ (LaPalombara and Weiner 1966). Modernization includes such factors as a market economy and an entrepreneurial class, acceleration of communications and transportation, increases in social and geographic mobility, increased education and urbanization, an increase in societal trust, and secularization. LaPalombara and Weiner argue that the emergence of parties requires one, or both, of two circumstances: citizens’ attitudes may change, so that they come to perceive a ‘‘right to influence the exercise of power,’’ or some group of elites or potential elites may aspire to gain or maintain power through public support. Clearly, not all elements of modernization are necessary, since the first party systems (in the United States and Britain) emerged in premodern, agrarian, and religious societies. Also, not all modernization theories are functionalist. Thus, Moore (1966) and others have suggested the emergence of a bourgeoisie increases the probability of the emergence of democracy.

Probably the most influential theory of the origins of party systems is by Lipset and Rokkan (1966) and Lipset (1983). While ostensibly anchored in Parsonsian functionalism, theirs is a comparative-historical approach that borrows from each of the categories listed here. According to Lipset and Rokkan, the contours of the party systems for western European states can be understood in the context of the specific outcomes of three historical episodes. The three crucial junctures are (1) the Reformation, ‘‘the struggle for the control of the ecclesiastical organizations within the national territory’’; (2) the ‘‘Democratic Revolution,’’ related to a conflict over clerical/secular control of education beginning with the French Revolution; and (3) the opposition between landed and the rising commercial interests in the towns early in the ‘‘Industrial Revolution.’’ A significant fourth struggle between owners and workers

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emerges in the later stages of the Industrial Revolution. Lipset and Rokkan suggest that the shape of current party systems was largely determined during the stages of mass mobilization in the pre– World War I West.

Following Lipset and Rokkan, von Beyme (1985, pp. 23–24) lists ten types of parties that have emerged from this historical development: (1) liberals in conflict with the old regime, that is, in conflict with: (2) conservatives; (3) workers’ parties against the bourgeois system (after c. 1848) and against left-wing socialist parties (after 1916); (4) agrarian parties against the industrial system; (5) regional parties against the centralist system; (6) Christian parties against the secular system; (7) communist parties against the social democrats (after 1916–1917) and anti-revisionist parties against ‘‘real Socialism’’; (8) fascist parties against democratic systems; (9) protest parties in the petty bourgeoisie against the bureaucratic welfare state system (e.g., Poujadisme in France); (10) ecological parties against a growth-oriented society. No one country contains all ten sorts of parties, unless one includes splinter groups and small movements.

PARTY SYSTEMS AND SOCIETY

Even under a purely office-seeking definition, parties in a democracy must have some connection to society since they have to appeal to voters’ material or ideal interests. Yet the connection between the party system and social structure or social values is rather weak in most countries—and much weaker than would be expected under a theory that sees parties as mediating between society and the state. In many cases, organizational or institutional factors may be much more important than social factors in determining party strength.

Social Cleavages. The party types listed above clearly have some connection to divisions or cleavages in society. Parties may seek to represent social classes, religious denominations, linguistic communities, or other particular interests. Three types of politically relevant social cleavages may be identified:

1.Positional cleavages correspond to a party supporter’s place in the social structure. This may be an ascriptive position into which one is born, such as race, ethnicity, or gender, or it may be a social structural

position, such as social class or religious denomination, which one might be able to change in the course of a lifetime. Of course, the distinction between ascriptive and social structural position is not absolute, but may itself be partly determined by social norms. Also, against Marxist expectations, class determinants of party support are generally overshadowed by racial, ethnic, religious, regional, or linguistic determinants, when these are also present. One explanation for this finding is that, while one can split differences on class (especially monetary) policies, similar compromises are much more difficult where social ‘‘identity’’ is concerned.

2.‘‘Behavioral’’ cleavages, especially membership, generally have a greater impact on party support than positional cleavages. Studies have shown that while workingclass status is mildly correlated to support for leftist parties, union membership is quite strongly correlated. And while religious denomination is correlated to support for religious parties (e.g., Catholics and Christian Democrats in Germany), strength of belief or church attendance is much more strongly correlated.

3.Ideological cleavages are preferences, values, worldviews, and the like, which may not correspond entirely to one’s position in society. Indeed, ideological orientations may overshadow positional cleavages as a determinant of partisan preferences. For instance, several of the ostensibly workingclass communist parties of western Europe have traditionally drawn large percentages of their support from middle-class leftists.

Not all cleavages or issues that exist in a society are politically relevant at any given time, or if they are, they may not correspond to party support. One can distinguish between latent and actual cleavages around which politics are mobilized. Some cleavages may remain latent for a very long time before becoming politicized. For instance, women’s issues had been relevant for decades before the ‘‘gender gap’’ emerged in the elections of the 1980s. One can also consider the process of politicization as a continuum that begins when a new social division or issue emerges, develops into

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a (protest) movement, then a politicized movement, and ends—at an extreme—with the creation of a new political party or the capture of an existing party. Of course, this process may be halted or redirected at any stage.

Party Loyalty and Party System Change: Alignment, Realignment, Dealignment. Parties may persist over time, and the party system alignment may be stable. There are several possible reasons for this:

1.The social cleavages around which a party was built may persist.

2.Voters may grow up in a stable party system and be socialized to support one or another party. Studies show that when a new cleavage line emerges in party alignment, it begins with the youngest generations. These generations then carry their new party loyalties with them throughout their lives, though perhaps to a decreasing extent if the events that originally motivated them fade over time. Likewise, old-

er generations tend to resist alignments along newly emerging cleavage lines because they remain loyal to the parties they began to support in their own youth.

3.Parties may become organizationally entrenched and difficult to dislodge. Even if cleavages or issues emerge that cause voter dissatisfaction with existing parties, these parties may have the organizational resources to outmaneuver new movements or parties. They may be able to ‘‘steal’’ the new parties’ issues and absorb or coopt their constituencies, or they may be able to stress other issues that distract voters from the new issues.

However, newly emerging cleavage structures may overwhelm these inertial tendencies. The party system may respond in three ways to new social cleavages. The first two are processes of party ‘‘realignment’’:

1.New parties may be formed to appeal to the new constituencies. A classical example is the emergence of the British Labour Party in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the Liberals and Conservatives did not pay sufficient attention to the concerns of the growing

working classes. The more recent emergence of Green parties in some European countries is another example. The creation of the American Republican Party in the 1850s shows the explosive impact a new party can have: Lincoln’s election precipitated the South’s secession.

2.Existing parties may change their policies to appeal to new constituencies. For instance, existing parties seem now to be in the process of killing the European Greens by adopting their issues. Perhaps the best example of this process is found in American history. Bryan’s Democrats moved to absorb the Populist Party, and Al Smith’s and Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats moved to absorb the growing ur-

ban ethnic constituencies (Burnham 1970; Chambers and Burnham 1975).

3.If neither of these changes occurs, there may be a period of ‘‘dealignment’’ in which much of the population—especially new constituencies—is alienated from all parties, and turnout or political participation declines. New constituencies may organize themselves into pressure groups or social movements that fail either to form new parties or to capture existing parties. Existing parties may become internally more heterogeneous and polarized, single-issue actions may proliferate, referenda may increase, and citizen action groups may simply bypass parties. Scholars since the mid-1960s have debated whether Western polities are going through a period of realignment or dealignment (Dalton et al. 1984). Of course, both processes may be occurring: dealignment may be a way-station on the road to party realignment.

STRUCTURAL FEATURES

Certain structural features of the party system may be important independently of parties’ connections to society.

Representativeness. The electoral system determines how votes are translated into seats in the legislature. The results can vary widely. At one extreme, a system of proportional representation

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(PR) with a single national list enables even tiny parties to get representatives into the legislature. Thus, if 100 parties each received 1 percent of the vote, each would receive 1 seat in a 100-seat legislature. Such systems put no obstacles in the way of party system fragmentation. At the other extreme, first-past-the-post plurality voting with single-mem- ber constituencies tends to overrepresent larger parties and underrepresent smaller parties. Thus, if party A won 40 percent of the vote in every district, and parties B and C each won 30 percent of the vote in every district, party A would get all the seats in the legislature, and parties B and C would get none at all. Such systems discourage party system fragmentation. Still, regionally concentrated minority parties tend to be less underrepresented than minority parties whose support is spread across all districts. If 100 parties were completely concentrated in each of 100 districts, the electoral system could not prevent fragmentation. Some election systems combine features. German voters have two votes, one for a district candidate and one for a party list. If any candidate receives a majority in his or her district, that candidate gets a seat. The remaining seats are allocated proportionately according to the list votes. Furthermore, a party must receive at least 5 percent of the national vote to get any seats from the list portion. This system attempts to reduce party system fragmentation and at the same time to reduce overrepresentation and underrepresentation. It was once thought that PR reduces government stability and endangers democracy. However, recent research gives little support for this proposition: ‘‘electoral systems are not of overriding importance in times of crisis and even less in ordinary times’’ (Taagepera and Shugart 1989, p. 236).

Volatility. Party system volatility, or fluctuations in electoral strength, encompasses several different processes (Dalton et al. 1984; Crewe and Denver 1985). It includes the gross and net flow of voters between parties, as well as into and out of the electorate because of maturity, migration, death, and abstention. It also includes realignment and dealignment: changes in the electoral alignment of various constituencies, and the overall weakening of party attachments. Scholars have long debated whether electoral volatility contributed to the collapse of democracies in the 1930s, especially the mobilization of first-time or previously alienated voters. Recently, Zimmermann and Saalfeld

(1988) concluded that volatility encouraged democratic collapse in some, but not all, countries. Studies also show that most postwar antidemocratic ‘‘surge’’ parties draw support disproportionately from voters who are weakly attached to parties or weakly integrated in politically mobilized subcultures such as labor, religious, or ethnic organizations. Yet volatility and protest do not always flow in an antidemocratic direction. On the contrary, they are also normal components of democratic politics. Few would argue that the New Deal realignment harmed American democracy or that most new-left or ecology movements are antidemocratic. In order for volatility to cause trouble for democracy, it must be accompanied by antidemocratic sentiments. Indeed, massive vote switching among democratic parties may be the best hope for saving democracy during a crisis. Everything depends on the propensity of voters to support antidemocratic parties.

Fragmentation. In the wake of World War II, some scholars argued that the fragmentation of party systems, partly caused by proportional representation, contributed to the collapse of European democracies. In a fragmented party system, they argued, there are too many small parties for democratic representation and effective government. Citizens are confused and alienated by the large array of choices. Because parties have to form coalitions to govern, voters’ influence over policy is limited, and they become further disenchanted with democracy. With so many small parties, governing coalitions can be held hostage to the wishes of very minor parties. Empirical studies show some support for these theses. Fragmentation is associated with reduced confidence in government and satisfaction with democracy. Governments in fragmented party systems tend to be unstable, weak, and ineffective in addressing major problems. However, other scholars argue that party-system fragmentation is not the main culprit. Fragmentation contributes to problems, but other factors are more important. Since fragmented party systems are often composed of blocs of parties (as in, e.g., the Netherlands and Italy), voters have less difficulty reading the terrain than alleged. Besides, party system polarization may contribute to governmental instability and ineffectiveness more than to fragmentation. Scholars have looked at this possibility in both the interwar period and the

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postwar period. While the evidence is not overwhelming, it tends to support the thesis.

Polarization. Sartori’s model of ‘‘polarized pluralism’’ (1966, 1976) is the most influential account of party system polarization. In a polarized party system, according to Sartori, a large (but not majority) party governs more or less permanently in unstable coalitions with various other parties. At least one extremist (antisystem) party is in quasi-permanent opposition. Extremist parties are sufficiently unacceptable to others that they cannot form alternative coalitions, but they are strong enough to block alternative coalitions that do not include themselves. Sartori argues that this leads to stagnation and corruption at the center, frustration and radicalization at the periphery, and instability among governing coalitions. He cites Weimar Germany, Fourth Republic France, and contemporary Italy as examples. Much empirical evidence supports Sartori’s model. Polarization is associated with illiberal values in postauthoritarian democracies such as West Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain.

The dynamic may also work in reverse. When intolerant and distrustful relations among political actors were institutionalized by constitutional guarantees in some postauthoritarian countries, they became crystallized in a polarized party system. Cross-national research shows that polarization harms other aspects of democracy, as well. Polarization is negatively related to democratic legitimation and trust in government, and is positively associated with cabinet instability. However, other elements of Sartori’s model have been disputed. In particular, studies in the early 1980s of Italy—the model’s current exemplar—called into question Sartori’s claim that polarized pluralism generates extremism and thus harms democracy. These studies claimed that the Italian Communists had moderated and that the centrist Christian Democrats had become less intolerant of them. However, the studies’ own evidence were not entirely persuasive, and subsequent developments— while not reversing course—do not present a decisive break with earlier patterns.

COALITIONS

Single-party government in Western democracies is relatively rare (Laver and Schofield 1990). The multiparty systems of most countries necessitates

coalition government. Even in two-party America, a president and Congress of different parties produce a kind of coalition government. (Indeed, internal party discipline is so weak in America, as well as in some parties in Italy, Japan, and other countries, that one can characterize parties themselves as coalitions of political actors.) Most work on coalition government attempts to predict which parties get into office. One of the most influential theories predicts that ‘‘minimum connected winning’’ (MCW) will form most often. This theory combines office-seeking and policy-seeking approaches, predicting that parties will form baremajority coalitions (so that the spoils can be divided among the smallest number of winners) among contiguous parties on the ideological dimension (so that there is not too much disagreement about policy). MCW theory succeeds fairly well in predicting coalitions in unidimensional party systems, but less well in multidimensional systems, which are often fragmented, polarized, and/or based on rather heterogeneous societies. Likewise, research suggests that in unidimensional systems, offices are most often allocated among the winning parties proportionately to their electoral strength. In multidimensional systems, however, offices are allocated less according to parties’ electoral strength than according to their ‘‘bargaining’’ strength, that is, how much they are needed to complete the majority. Thus, if three parties won 45 percent, 10 percent, and 45 percent of the vote, the small party would have just as much bargaining strength as either of the larger parties.

Research also shows that party-system fragmentation and polarization and the presence of antisystem parties all contribute to cabinet instability. Theorists have sometimes posited that cabinet instability leads to instability of democracy— that it may reduce governments’ capacity to solve problems effectively, and that this may reduce the regime’s legitimacy. Yet research gives only mixed support for this conjecture. Investigators have found that cabinet instability tends to depress the electorate’s evaluation of ‘‘the way democracy works,’’ but its effects on other measures of democratic legitimation and confidence in government are inconsistent. Research on contemporary democracies shows that cabinet instability is related to civil disorder and governmental ineffectiveness. But research on the period between the world wars indicates that cabinet instability cannot be

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