Party Politics

Duverger's law postulates that single-member plurality electoral systems lead to two-party systems. Existing scholarship regards India as an exception to this law at national level, but not at district level. This study tests the latter hypothesis through analysis of a comprehensive dataset covering Indian parliamentary elections in the period 1952—2004. The results show that a large number of Indian districts do not conform to the Duvergerian norm of two-party competition, and that there is no consistent movement towards the Duvergerian equilibrium. Furthermore, inter-region and inter-state variations in the size of district-level party systems make it difficult to generalize about the application of Duverger's law to the Indian case. The study concludes that a narrow focus on electoral rules is inadequate, and that a more comprehensive set of explanatory variables is needed to explain the size of the Indian party system even at the district level.

There is growing attention to problems of European Union (EU) legitimacy and, in particular, the lack of affective links between the political elites engaged in integration and public opinion. Political parties are in an influential position for helping to solve this problem. With the EU's largest ever enlargement in May 2004, it is important to establish whether these problems are likely to be magnified or not. Although there was a strong vote in favour of EU membership in the referenda of 2003 in post-Communist countries, this constituted more formal than substantial legitimacy for the EU. Taking the case of Latvia, it is already clear that some difficulties evident in the older member states are being repeated, notably with respect to mass opinion and European integration, as illustrated by the referendum of 2003 and European elections of 2004. On the one hand, there is a political elite now versed in EU affairs but, on the other, public opinion remains largely ignorant of what membership entails. In addition, Latvia also reveals a serious public mistrust towards the political elite, which is common in post-Communist countries, and this inhibits parties there from developing an intermediary role over European affairs. It therefore remains to be seen whether positive developments in the future linking benefits from EU membership and the achievement of democratic consolidation move Latvia towards a solution of these problems.

There has been little scholarly attention paid to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) despite the fact that it represents an influential faction within the Democratic Party. As a result, questions remain about the institutional character of the DLC, particularly with respect to its ideological structure and coherence. This represents a missed opportunity to examine the formation, operation and success (or failure) of ideological factions. The present article begins to address this oversight by examining the ideology of members of the House New Democrat Coalition. After a brief conceptual and historical description of the DLC, I offer an explanation of the Third Way, the DLC's guiding philosophy. Having established a set of expectations about DLC members, I then examine the ideological make-up of New Democrats in the 106th House of Representatives. Using ADA, National Journal and DW-NOMINATE scores, I attempt to determine whether New Democrats are ideologically distinct from their more traditional (i.e. liberal) colleagues. The results indicate that they are, though the differences may be confined to economic issues. And while ideological moderation helps explain membership in the House New Democrat Coalition, electoral vulnerability also plays a role.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is often regarded as an area where it is difficult to stabilize democracy. This notion is reinforced by the fact that, in the most recent set of elections held in the region, Islamic-orientated political parties perceived to be anti-democratic have achieved important electoral victories. This article analyses these parties in the MENA region in an attempt to discern whether support is related to a preference for anti-democratic forms of government. The research takes the form of a quantitative analysis using survey data and results indicate that electoral support for Islamic political parties is in fact driven by a rejection of the present state configuration, which in turn leads to a demand for religion to exert greater influence on the state.