The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party
Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States,
Pradeep K. Chhibber and Ken Kollman, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2004, pp. xvi, 276.
Mining electoral data to arrive at theories about the relationship
between political party performance and party system determination and
electoral and governmental institutions forms the main stream of political
science. And one of its most enduring puzzles is the explanation of the
patterns and diversities of party systems. With the famous
“Duverger's Law” about single-member plurality systems
and two-party political systems forming its point of departure, political
scientists have attempted to substantiate their discipline's status
as a “science” by producing theories about relationships
between measurable political variables.