Sartori Revisited

Abstract

Giovanni Sartori’s typology of party systems has long been dominant in Japanese political science. However, it has lost its relevance, at least in its initial formulation. There has been controversy regarding party system and electoral system ever since the so-called political reforms (1988-94): the identifiability/accountability argument for the two-party and first-past-the-post systems versus the representation argument for moderate pluralism and proportional representation. Yet Sartori’s typology cannot defend either of them, for it underestimates the difference between a two-party system and moderate pluralism. What is required is to modify Sartori’s typology in order to fill in the gaps (See Table 3 in Section 4). Then, it may be possible to classify party systems in a more structured way. Moreover, by distinguishing the three types of moderate pluralism (consociational, negotiational and bi-coalitional), the modified typology will make it possible to identify the party system that satisfies both the arguments. This would be the bi-coalitional type of moderate pluralism.