Social cleavages and party systems - Number of parties: Duverger's theory - Summarizing Duverger's theory

4 important questions on Social cleavages and party systems - Number of parties: Duverger's theory - Summarizing Duverger's theory

To sum up, Duverger's theory states that:

The size of a country's party system depends on the complex interplay of both social and institutional factors. Social divisions create the 'demand' for political parties, and electoral institutions then determine the extent to which this demand is translated into parties than win votes (electoral parties) and parties that win seats (legislative parties).

Duverger's hypothesis states:

Proportional representation electoral rules favor multiparty systems.

Political scientists say that a country's party system has been nationalized if:

the local and national party systems are of a similar size. If the party system is not fully nationalized with the same parties advantaged in each district, SMDP electoral systems could very well have more than two parties nationally.
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A key implication of Duverger's theory is that there are two reasons why a party system may have few parties:

  • Some countries may have few parties, despite the fact that they are socially heterogeneous, because they have a non permissive electoral system that prevents this heterogeneity from being reflected in the party system.
  • Some countries may have few parties regardless of how permissive their electoral system is, because they have few social divisions.
-> there is only one way to end up with many parties: you need a heterogeneous society and a permissive electoral system.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

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