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Defining and measuring party system nationalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

Ignacio Lago  and
José Ramón Montero
Ignacio Lago*
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas, Barcelona, Spain
José Ramón Montero
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Marie Curie, Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain
*
*E-mail: ignacio.lago@upf.edu
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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new measure of party system nationalization based on a minimalist definition of the phenomenon. A perfectly nationalized party system is a party system with only national parties or, in other words, without sub-national parties. Instead of the homogeneity of parties’ vote shares or the number of parties throughout the country, our measure captures the aspirations of parties to be national whose proxy is the proportion of districts (weighted by seats) that a party runs a candidate. The measure is compared with existing indicators through a longitudinal analysis of 256 elections in 18 Western European countries from 1945 to 1998.

Keywords

nationalizationpartiesparty systemsEuropeelections
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 191 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2013 

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