Sue Ann Skipworth - POL 628 - Party System Emergence The readings for this week center on how party systems emerge. As will be evident in the following pages, researchers on this topic have used similar variables to explain party systems. The varying roles of partisanship are used as explanatory variables for Miller et. al (2000) such as: a general form of partisanship, relationship between voting and partisanship, relationship between issues and partisanship, and policy support by groups within the party. A couple of years later Nick Sitter used strategies of parties being catch-all, interest representation, and flank parties to explain party systems. Also, in 2002 Jakub Zielinski used established and new cleavages, number of political parties, and political opposition to explain party system emergence. The most recent study in this set of literature comes from Mozaffar, Scarritt, and Galich in 2003 where cleavages are taken up again as an explanatory variable, but is done so specifically in regards to ethno-political cleavages as well as electoral institutions. The following paragraphs give a brief summary and analysis of the literature and then a conclusion is provided of how these findings relate to the broader picture of party systems. The study conducted by Miller et. al (2000) considers the role of partisanship (independent variable) as being a factor contributing to party system emergence (dependent variable) for mass and elite groups in Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania in 1992, 1995 and 1997. The data for this study offers a variety in regards to the three countries studied where Russia and Ukraine have a much larger population and GNP than Lithuania, but Ukraine and Lithuania have a more vocalized electorate. The data comes from a face-to-face survey conducted by The University of Iowa for the mass public and elites (legislators and executive branch administrators) and is used to verify certain characteristics of a developed party system. In this study a party system is defined as the "interactions between competing political parties as well as to the relations between the party in government and the party in the electorate." Having established the definition of what constitutes a party system Miller et. al proposes four criterions that allow for such a system to emerge in Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania. The survey data collected is used in a regression model where the results indicate support for each of the four criterion established by the researchers. In accordance with the first criteria there is a connection between the masses/elites and a political party. Second, for those who identify with a political party they also vote according to their partisanship. Third, the electorate uses political/policy information to determine which party and politicians to support. This is an interesting point in that Miller et. al finds that information plays a larger role in supporting specific polices/parties rather than socialization. The reason being that the older section of the population in these areas has a much different governing background or exposure than the current situation. Therefore, information on the new style of governance is likely to be more influential than socialization in forming partisanship ties. Fourth, parties represent varying issues according to social cleavages where in Russia the cleavages center on gender and residence, Ukraine it is cleavages in age, education, residence and occupation, and in Lithuania income and education cleavages are prevalent (Miller et. al 2000). Next, is the study by Second, Nick Sitter (2002) who uses a different approach to explaining party system emergence by introducing the notion of cleavages in combination with the strategies imposed by political parties being catch-all, interest representation and parties with positions on the flanks of the system? The definition of party system in this research is "a product of the interaction between parties." Based on this definition, Sitter's argument is that cleavages, institutions, voting patterns and the organization of political parties influence the party strategy of mobilizing voters and building alliances. These strategies being mobilizing voters and building alliances in turn influence the changes and stability within a party system. To support his theory Sitter uses examples from the party system of East Central Europe. In East Central Europe parties have entered into coalition building due to economic and social problems that have lead to voter volatility. In doing so, such coalitions and alliances has increased the development of the party system. Likewise, the components of the party being cleavages, voters and the very nature of the party provide parties with a set of factors to consider when developing strategies to mobilize voters and such strategies provide for a stable party system (Sitter 2002). To further explain his theory Sitter uses 3 dimensions of opposition and competition among parties. The first dimension is the government strategy where there is competition along the left-right dimension of the party system. The second dimension is cross-cutting competition and territorial opposition where parties use interests of the electorate to gain support and essentially are mobilizing voters based on divisions relating to interests/issues within the electorate. The third dimension is a direct opposite of the first form of competition where in this case parties don't compete based on a left-right dimension, but form a new, anti-system type party where competition is at the flanks of the party system (Sitter 2002). When looking at examples from the East Central European Party System based on these three forms of competition it is found that the competition based on the left-right dimension creates volatility for parties because personality of candidates is salient for voters. The parties engaging in the cross-cutting competition strategy creates confusion for voters in how to align themselves. The flank parties or those at the extreme right or left have a declining membership base (Sitter 2002). The varying outcomes of these competitive strategies may lead to a change in a current party system or may provide for a more stable party system. Certainly, it seems logical that the potential success of any of these competitive strategies by parties depends on the current status of the political environment. In situations where there are significant policy issues being debated then the flank party strategy may be more successful if these parties provide a specific stance on these highly debated issues and the electorate can identify those stances and thus support that party. The party system may change in that voter allegiance changes from the parties that converge on the "center" of the ideological/issue spectrum to a flank party. Ultimately, the cleavages within the electorate and party, the electoral/governing institution and voting patterns will influence the type of strategies as mentioned above by the parties. The stability of the party system stems from the type strategies imposed by parties as well as the number of parties competing in the electoral competition (Sitter 2002). Jakup Zielinski (2002) incorporates some of the same thinking as Sitter in regards to cleavages being important to the party system. However, Zielinski offers a somewhat different perspective on how cleavages and the number of existing parties influence party systems. Here, Zielinski uses how the number of parties established in a party system corresponds to the number of cleavages/issues politicized. To make clear, Zielinski's theory is that the number of political parties in a political system provides for certain cleavages as taken up by these parties, which creates the political opposition and competition among parties. From this competition emerges a strong and stable party system. However, a question is raised regarding the likelihood of new cleavages being taken up by these political parties or by new political parties. To provide some insight into this situation Zielinski uses a social cleavage theory to define cleavage in the political system and game theory analysis to address frozen/thawing political systems that may accommodate new cleavages. Within the framework of the social cleavage theory, a social cleavage exists if there are at least two varying groups on an issue in which they oppose one another and this cleavage is politicized if there is a political opposition (Zielinski 2002). For the game theory analysis Zielinski considers the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. Given there are 3 candidates they are each going to remain in the election during the early stages because they is too much uncertainty at that point on who will do better or worse, but the uncertainty diminishes as the electoral competition proceeds. At that point, candidates begin to withdraw based on such information. In this time of withdraw it is usually the new candidates who withdraw and not the older/incumbent candidates (Zielinski 2002). This situation is supported by previous research in the field of incumbent advantages where name recognition, more resources and so on give the incumbent an edge over new candidates. However, in this situation the old candidates may not necessarily continue with the competition based on the incumbent advantage, but do so because they believe the new candidates will disengage from the competition. In turn, the new candidates do disengage from the competition because they expect the older politicians to remain. Since candidates impose a strategy for entering an election based on these circumstances mentioned leads to a party system freeze (Zielinski 2002). When candidates withdraw from the competition the party system undergoes changes whereby the cleavages brought about by each candidate are re-arranged depending on which candidates remain in the competition (Zielinski 2002). For example, if there are three candidates with opposing views on three different issues and there are three different cleavages represented by these three different candidates as one candidate withdraws from the competition the issues at hand decline from three to two and the emphasis placed on the cleavages rotate. Therefore, the elimination of candidates in the early stages of electoral competition determines which cleavages will be politicized. These cleavages that are politicized stay with those candidates and their respective parties for years to come. It is at this point that the question of whether or not new cleavages can become politicized after a party system is in place or for a party system to move from being frozen to beginning to thaw is addressed. Zielinski notes that in order for a political system to "thaw" a candidate must form a new political party and remain in the political competition. However, the problem is that according to the game theory noted above new candidates are not likely to embark on this challenge because they feel it is unlikely they will be successful in such an endeavor, which means the thawing process is unlikely as well. This study instigates some concern over the development of party systems in terms of the number of parties in the electoral competition and the repercussions of fewer parties engaging in competition leading to fewer politicized cleavages. Given that new candidates drop out of the electoral competition based on a perception that the old candidates will not drop out leads to further concerns over how perceptions lead to the number of cleavages to be politicized. Simply, the number of candidates in an electoral competition, according to this game theory, relies on perceptions of the new candidates in regards to the old candidates and vice versa. Therefore, it is disturbing that these perceptions lead to such great effects whereby fewer cleavages are politicized and the likelihood of new cleavages being politicized is unlikely. If the electorate changes over time due to new voters replacing the older generation or critical events change the issues for the electorate how can the party systems truly represent a changing electorate if it is frozen and unlikely to thaw? Mozaffar et. al (2003) also uses cleavages, being ethno-political cleavages, in addition to electoral institutions to explain party systems. Here, Mozaffar et. al question whether both electoral institutions and ethno-political cleavages shape the structure of a party system or do so independently. Data from 34 African countries that held multiparty elections between 1980 and 2000 where 62 elections to the lower chamber of national legislatures are used to answer this question. District magnitude and proximity of presidential and legislative elections are used for the institutional variables, the number of presidential candidates is used as an intervening variable, and fragmentation and concentration are used as the ethno-political variables. After using a regression model to test the influence of these independent variables on the party systems in Africa Mozaffar et. al found that both electoral institutions and ethno-political cleavages influenced the structure of party systems in a strategic fashion. Both ethno-political fragmentation and concentration influenced the number of parties in a party system based on cleavages, which provided a structure for the party system. These cleavages lead to a certain number of parties to be included in the party system from which alliances are formed among parties to achieve goals. These findings are quite similar to those previously mentioned where each conclude in some manner that cleavages serve an essential role in the structure, emergence and stability of party systems. The number of parties to be included in a party system is based on such cleavages. The greater the number of parties in a party system leads to greater electoral volatility as noted by both Sitter and Mozaffar et. al. However, Mozaffar et. al includes an explanation for why such fragmentation/volatility exists at least in the case of African countries, which notes that due to organizational weaknesses within the political parties the candidates must rely on ethno-political groups from which coalitions are made to hopefully ensure electoral success. Another similarity that is brought out by Mozaffar et. al is the problem of limited information about electoral institutions leading to electoral competition barriers, which further supports the influence of the information processing hypothesis proposed by Miller et. al where information played an essential role in partisanship and party system emergence. Ultimately, the findings by Mozaffar et. al suggest a curvilinear relationship between fragmentation and party system structure where low fragmentation translates into smaller numbers of parties in the party system and lower party system fragmentation. High fragmentation translates into an increased number of parties in the party system where coalitions are formed among parties to gain an electoral edge, which ultimately leads to fewer parties by the end of the electoral competition. Moderate fragmentation increases the number of parties in the party system. Here again, is a connection in the literature where both Mozaffar et. al and Zielinski address the influence of fragmentation on party systems. Zielinski provides some insight as to why there are fewer parties in the party system, which is based on the idea that new candidates perceive an unsuccessful electoral outcome and thereby eliminate themselves from the competition, which leads to less fragmentation. In conclusion, the literature presented offers a flow of information and reasoning over time on party emergence. The study conducted by Miller (2000) is somewhat different from researchers Sitter, Zielinski, and Mozaffar et. al in that it offers a framework as to how a party system emerges in general. From this framework the other three researchers are able to use similar variables such as: cleavages, party strategies, number of political parties in the party system, and party competition/opposition/alliances to answer questions of stability and changes within the party system. When looking at the results of these studies together rather than independently there appears to be a common thread. The literature alludes to the importance of cleavages in how parties develop, which contributes to the emergence and stability/change of the party system. Out of these established parties comes competition among parties, which then leads to the status of the party system. Works Cited: Miller, Arthur H., Erb, Gwyn, Reisinger, William M., and Hesli, Vicki. 2000. "Emerging Party Systems in Post-Soviet Societies: Fact of Fiction?" Journal of Politics. 62(2): 455-490. Mozaffar, Shaheen, Scarritt, James R., and Galaich, Glen. 2003. "Electoral Institutions, Ethnopolitical Cleavages, and Party Systems in Africa's Emerging Democracies." American Political Science Review. 97(3): 379-390. Sitter, Nick. 2002. "Cleavages, Party Strategy and Party System Change in Europe, East and West." Perspectives on European Politics and Society. 3(3): 425-451. Zielinski, Jakup. 2002. "Translating Social Cleavages Into Party Systems: The Significance of New Democracies." World Politics. 54: 184-211.