From Individual Parties to Party Systems: A New Approach to Calculate Party Systems’ Variables

Abstract

Party systems are multidimensional spaces. Although classical work has pointed this out already, empirical research lacked the tools to model these different dimensions empirically. We provide a new empirical framework that allows researchers to utilize existing party-level data and transform them into party-system-level data. In this paper, we highlight specifically the dimensions previously pointed out by Sartori (1976): Democratic-Authoritarian, Religious-Secular, Left-Right, and inclusive-Exclusive. Three illustrative cases provide face validity for the soundness of our measures, while four descriptive interactions present the potential relationships these four new measures at the party-system level can have for future research. The empirical approach we introduce will also allow scholars to go beyond the dimensions we use here and can easily be used to compute additional party-system variables that will enrich the field of party-system research.

Keywords: Party Systems, Measurements, Parties, Left-Right, Inclusion, Religious, Democracy