Measuring Party System Change: A Systems Perspective
| Author | Zim Nwokora,Riccardo Pelizzo |
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717710568 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717710568
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(1) 100 –118
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717710568
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Measuring Party System
Change: A Systems
Perspective
Zim Nwokora1 and Riccardo Pelizzo2
Abstract
The term ‘party system’, explained Giovanni Sartori, refers to the pattern of interactions among
relevant parties. That pattern can be represented as a type and treated as a proper unit of analysis.
When ‘party system’ is defined in this way, it becomes clear that the scholarship lacks a direct
measure of ‘party system change’. The Sartori approach to party system change is not the only
legitimate way to understand this concept, but it does target an undoubtedly important feature of
political systems – namely the stability of interactions among relevant parties. This article develops
a new indicator, the index of fluidity, which measures the extent of such stability. Applying the
index to Africa, we show that there is significant cross-national variation in fluidity and weak
correlation between fluidity and (Pedersen) volatility.
Keywords
party systems, party system change, Africa, Sartori typology, fluidity
Accepted: 19 March 2017
Political scientists often emphasise the importance of party systems for understanding
how political systems operate and the outcomes they deliver (see, for example, Mainwaring
and Scully, 1995; Tsebelis, 2002). Early research concentrated on party systems’ static
properties (i.e. their composition at a point in time), which were theorised in two contrast-
ing ways. One approach followed Duverger (1954) and Sartori (2005 [1976]) by treating
party systems as types and examined the effects of different types on governance out-
comes. The use of types captures the theorisation of party systems as proper systems, that
is, as distinct entities with system-level, or emergent, properties (Bardi and Mair, 2008;
Collier and Adcock, 1999; Sartori, 2005). ‘The concept of system is meaningless’, Sartori
1 School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC,
Australia
2Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan
Corresponding author:
Zim Nwokora, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University,
Melbourne Campus, 221 Burwood Hwy, Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia.
Email: z.nwokora@deakin.edu.au
710568PSX0010.1177/0032321717710568Political StudiesNwokora and Pelizzo
research-article2017
Article
Nwokora and Pelizzo 101
(2005: 39) confirms, ‘unless the system displays properties that do not belong to a sepa-
rate consideration of its component elements’, namely ‘the parties’. The various types
embody the fundamental differences among party systems or their ‘functional properties’
(Sartori, 2005: 113). Therefore, any other contrast, or the variation within a type, holds
less significance.
Another line of inquiry rejected this strict systems perspective, especially its theorisa-
tion of party systems as types (e.g. Laakso and Taagepera, 1979; Rae, 1967). A ‘logic of
gradation’ was assumed instead (Sartori, 2005: 263), and a ‘party system’ becomes, then,
the collection of parties ‘that simply happen to share a common political setting’ (Bardi
and Mair, 2008: 152; see also Katz, 2015). Differences among party systems are differ-
ences of degree, rather than of kind, and can be summarised with continuous measures of
attributes such as the number of parties (fragmentation) or their ideological separation
(polarisation). And the effects of party systems can be investigated by correlating such
measures against outcome variables. Thus, there is no need to differentiate and compare
types. This approach, which is probably now the more prevalent theory (see, for example,
Wolinetz, 2006), was rejected by Sartori, who argued that measurement could be valid
only if it followed and incorporated classification – ‘the either-or treatment cannot be
bypassed’, he explained (Sartori, 2005: 265).
In recent decades, there has been growing recognition of the importance of the dynam-
ics of party systems (i.e. their propensity to change over time), which, it has been argued
(Mainwaring and Scully, 1995), matters as much as their static properties. A ‘party sys-
tem’ can ‘change’ irrespective of how its static attributes are conceptualised. If a party
system is assumed to be a fully fledged system, then system change refers to change of
type (Mair, 1979, 1989a, 1989b). Whereas if a party system is assumed to be no more than
the collection of parties, then system change refers to change in the make-up of that col-
lection. ‘Party system change’ in this second sense can refer to developments that do not
produce type change, including change in the identity of parties or marginal change in
fragmentation or polarisation. Crucially, although we can think about system change
while assuming that a ‘party system’ is (1) a fully fledged system or (2) a collection of
parties, the current scholarship provides no way to measure system change in the first
sense. This article aims to address this gap.
We develop a measure of system change in which party system types form the unit of
analysis; it therefore attempts to operationalise the Duverger/Sartori theorisation of party
systems as proper systems. We draw on the Sartori framework, especially its typology, for
this purpose. Despite its imperfections, the framework provides the most credible basis
for a systems-based measure of party system change. It was a landmark contribution to
systems theorising about parties. Sartori’s typology, which captures how parties can inter-
act in democratic and non-democratic settings, remains widely used (see, for example,
Bardi and Mair, 2008; Mair, 1997; Ware, 1996; Wolinetz, 2006). Furthermore, the value
of the framework for understanding party system change is well established. It is the point
of departure for theoretical studies (Mair, 1989b; Smith, 1989) and for empirical studies
of system change in specific countries (Bardi, 2007; Mair, 1979, 1989a; Quinn, 2013;
Ware, 2009). The framework has influenced the design of quantitative indicators of sys-
tem change (e.g. Bartolini and Mair, 1990; Bértoa and Enyedi, 2014; Chiaramonte and
Emanuele, 2015; Pedersen, 1979, 1980; Powell and Tucker, 2013). However, none of
these indicators treat ‘the system’ as a distinct entity, which means that they do not meas-
ure the magnitude of ‘party system change’ when this notion is understood in Sartori
terms. The measure we develop aims to capture exactly this quantity.
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