Exam #1 Flashcards
Theories of Parties: BURKE 1770
“United body of men, promoting aligned endeavors, aligned/united national interest, unified principle”
Theories of Parties: MORSE 1896
“a single group or multiple groups, united by common principles, advancing interests for the groups they represent”
Theories of Parties: V.O. KEY 1950s
“Parties are made up of 3 parts (party organization, government, in the electorate), other things that others cared about, does not matter that much”
Faction
James Madison: common goal, passion, founding fathers found factions bad, b/c it is self-interest motivated/adverse to other citizens
Theories of Parties: DOWNS 1957
a coalition (group of people) seeking control of the government by elections (self-interested), elected office seeker!
Theories about Origins of 2 Party System: Duverger’s Law
proposes that the electoral system of a country strongly influences its party system. It argues that single-member district plurality voting systems, where the candidate with the most votes in a district wins, tend to produce two-party systems.
Duverger’s Law: Strategic Voting
Duverger’s Law: Sincer Voting
Duverger’s Law: Over and Under Representation
Social Origins Theory
The number of parties is dependent on the number of social cleavages in society.
Example of Social Origins Theory
Papua New Guinea: even though they used a plurality voting system (which according to Duverger’s Law should cause the country’s electoral system, to converge towards two parties), but there were large numbers of parties and no strategic voting. One of the reasons is because of highly segmented ethnic groups in PNG.
National Government Strength Theory
Plurality Voting
Duverger’s Law suggests that plurality voting in single-member districts creates a system where it’s very difficult for more than two parties to be competitive at the national level.
