Content area
Full Text
Maurice Duverger's Les Partis Politiques (1951) remains a major contribution to our understanding of politics. While political parties had attracted the attention of scholars since the days of de Tocqueville, Bryce, and Ostrogorski, no one had covered parties as broadly in order to explain their numbers and types of organization. In amassing data and deducing from them a theory of politics, Duverger must be accounted a founding father of the 'behavioral revolution', which was overtaking political science in the immediate post-war years. For those of us beginning our careers as students of both French and American parties, Duverger was must reading.
In revisiting the book after more than half a century, what worked and did not work in Duverger's analysis offer an uncommon test of political theory. He wrote vigorously, asserting propositions clearly, with occasional bows to their tentative nature. His survey encompassed all sorts of political organizations calling themselves a 'party', including the monopolies governing totalitarian nations. Today there is little point in revisiting that aspect of his analysis. Fascist and Nazi regimes have been defeated, while the Communist model has collapsed. Today we best understand the governing 'parties' of the world's authoritarian regimes as direct instruments of government and a species of organization distinct from those that must compete for office in free elections.
On the other hand, Duverger's analysis of parties in democracies is worth revisiting. Some of his projections about their future have fared well, while others have not. Given the central role political parties play in all democracies what did and did not work in Duverger's theory offer us a clue to understanding democracy itself. And at a time when the spread of democracy has become the central stated goal of American foreign policy, understanding the organization of parties in democracies is ever more crucial.
Duverger's analysis has two parts, (1) a description of the varieties of party organization and a projection of their future development, and (2) an explanation of the number of parties within a country. Of the two, the more successful over time has been the latter, surviving in the literature as 'Duverger's Law.' Less successful have been his projections on party organization, notably his prediction that the 'mass membership' party would replace the 'cadre' party. The...