In democratic politics, party systems can be assessed for political stability and ideological distribution based on the way parties are counted. Each method counts parties differently for specific political systems and contexts, which is important for the stability of political systems and for comparative studies.
Party politics, an important element of democratic politics, is divided into two dimensions: individual parties and party systems. A party system is a group of political parties that operate in an organized fashion. Whereas individual party analysis focuses on the evaluation of the organizing and valorizing functions of political parties in the service of their causes, party system analysis focuses on the interaction between parties. A key part of party system analysis is the counting of parties. A large or small number of parties is an important indicator of the ideological distribution of the political system and the stability of the political situation. This is because the party system is closely related to political stability. In other words, the number of parties shows whether the ideological distribution is centrifugal or centripetal. This helps us understand how close or far apart parties are ideologically, making party counting an important tool for assessing political stability.
Until recently, different approaches to party counting have been proposed to improve our understanding of political phenomena. The emergence of these different methods is part of an academic effort to analyze party systems more accurately and in more detail. So, what are the different ways of counting political parties? First, there’s the “simple” method. In this method, all parties that are recognized by the rules of a political system are considered equally eligible. This has the advantage of making it easy to determine the number of parties by treating all parties equally. However, this approach fails to account for the fact that the number of valid parties is not always fixed and can vary depending on the political situation at any given time. In particular, in the case of a cabinet accountability system, the number of valid parties can vary depending on whether the election is pre- or post-election. For example, even if there are several minor parties before an election, some parties may disappear or merge after the election, reducing the number of parties that can influence cabinet composition.
The binomial classification method emerged to address these issues. It only recognizes parties in the party system that have seats in parliament and are likely to participate in cabinet formation. The binomial classification is a useful tool for analysis, especially when there is a high degree of party fragmentation. In a cabinet accountability system, it is not how many parties there are, but how many parties can participate in cabinet formation that matters. However, there are limitations to this approach. For example, in a presidential system, it is difficult to compare the party system that results from a presidential election and the party system that results from a general election using a binary classification. In other words, it is difficult to use this method for cross-analyzing between forms of government. At the same time, it is a disadvantage of this method that it excludes the existence of political parties that do not influence the cabinet formation process but exist as political entities and exert political influence.
The reason for this limitation of the binary classification is that by considering only those parties that can participate in cabinet formation, it overlooks the social and political influence of other parties. However, these parties can often have a significant impact on the overall political process by strengthening their regional base or making strong arguments on specific issues.
The “indexing method” emerged as a criticism of the first two methods. It emphasizes the relative value of each party’s votes and seats, regardless of whether they are in the cabinet. This method calculates the ‘electoral effective party index’ or ‘parliamentary effective party index’ by determining the relative proportion of votes or seats for each party. If two parties participated in an election and received 60% and 40% of the vote, respectively, 1 is divided by the sum of their squares (0.36 + 0.16), resulting in an electoral effective party index of 1.9 (1/0.52). The parliamentary party index differs in that it uses the percentage of seats instead of the percentage of votes. This indexing method serves as a tool to more precisely understand the relationship between parties in elections and in parliament. It allows political researchers to better understand the degree of competition between parties and the complexity of the party system. This indexing method can be used to compare party systems in presidential and parliamentary elections on the same basis. This is because it converts the number of votes or seats a party receives in each election into a relative value and indexes it.
In the end, the number of parties in a party system depends on how it is counted. The different ways of counting parties are presented in an effort to get closer to the reality of a complex political phenomenon. More importantly, however, it is important to come up with a methodology that is not limited to a particular form of government or political situation. From this point of view, the indexing method is most effective for comparative studies of party systems across countries and for the development of general theories about party systems. It allows for an objective comparison of ideological distributions across political systems, which in turn helps to determine which party systems are appropriate for the stable operation of democratic politics. Indexing has also become an important tool in political science research because it allows for consistent analysis across different political environments. In the future, indexing will continue to play a key role in analyzing the ideological distribution of political systems and party interactions.
