Parties are Fun

Dan Blazo

Despite the political philosophies of early liberal democratic theorists, contemporary democracies operate by means of political parties. The term “political party” denotes a context-dependant meaning. A major party in a two-party system will generally represent a broader social and/or ideological faction of the population than a party in a multi-party system. So why do some countries have two-party systems while others have multi-party systems? Is a two-party system an indicator of a bifurcating social cleavage? Or is the institutional framework of electoral systems responsible for the political party landscape?

The majority of quantitative research on political parties upholds the Duverger Hypothesis—an institutionalist explanation. However, this explanation does not address the first of the three stages in the “process of reduction,” as enumerated by Neto and Cox. This stage is defined as, “the translation of social cleavages into partisan preferences” (152). By not accounting for this link, political scientists disregard the societal demographics that may account for partisan homogeneity or heterogeneity. In fact, Neto and Cox find that a multiplicative synthesis of the Duvergian and social cleavage approach accounts for more of the variance than either individual methodology. The Duvergerian explanation—which alleges that proportional representation and “winner-take-all” electoral constructs are the primary causes of cross-national party system differentiation—accounts for most of the cross-national variance.

The methodological synthesis employed by Neto and Cox, however, addresses a broader scope of party formation and produces more reliable estimates. The authors examine fifty-four countries using this methodology, including third-world countries. Unfortunately, they do not break down the results according to level of development. First and third world countries have been shown to exhibit different political trends in many circumstances, and a development categorization might offer insight into the effect of industrialization on party systems. Even the lack of an effect would provide valuable insight to the study of political parties.

Herbert P. Kitschelt’s article, “Left-Libertarian Parties,” oversimplifies two concepts: political parties and strategic voting. Kitschelt treats political parties as ideologically static, allowing for no inter-party influence. The endless strategic exercise of competing for votes, oftentimes through ideological shifts, is not addressed in this article. Small political parties may exist primarily because of this potential for influence, hence the recurring “flash parties” or “single-issue parties.” Left-Libertarian parties may exhibit such tendencies if they are successful in pulling a bigger party in their direction. The potential for a party’s political success without winning elections calls into question the validity of his conclusions.

The second of Kitschelt’s oversimplifications is the concept of “strategic voting.” While this term does not affect the most important conclusions of his work, it does come into play in his evaluation of Left-Libertarian support bases. Well-educated voters with left-libertarian ideologies are more likely to vote “strategically,” thus the potential for a party to win the election affects the way they will vote. Such “strategy” is a mere logistical fallacy, though it may describe the mindset of many voters. If one is to consider the potential for a party to win and, accordingly, vote for the party he prefers over the other potential winner, he inherently considers his vote to be a potential influence on the outcome of the election. In addition, he considers a vote for an unlikely winner as a vote for the less preferable party, since the preferable potential winner would otherwise receive the vote. Although this logic is self-perpetuating, it is nonetheless fallacious.

A vote for a party that one does not consider the most preferable is, and always will be, a vote that does not represent one’s preferences. The “strategy” involved in voting for the most likely winner is nonsense, given the extremely low probability of affecting the outcome of the election. I once read a report conducted by statisticians showing the probability of a single vote affecting the outcome of a presidential election in the U.S. to be so low that this would occur once every 250,000,000 years. Even then, there would be a recount, and the inevitable human error would ensure that not every vote was counted. Thus one’s vote can never be strategic from a rational standpoint. Rational choice suggests that one not vote at all, unless, perhaps, he seeks to express his ideological preferences. In this case, there is no strategy involved, for he is fully aware of the pragmatic insignificance of his vote.