Maurice Duverger
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Maurice Duverger | |
---|---|
Member of the European Parliament | |
In office 25 July 1989 – 18 July 1994 | |
Constituency | Italy |
Personal details | |
Born | Angoulême, Charente, France | 6 May 1917
Died | 16 December 2014 | (aged 97)
Political party | Italian Communist Party Democratic Party of the Left |
Maurice Duverger (French pronunciation:
Duverger studied the evolution of political systems and the institutions that operate in diverse countries, showing a preference for
A staunch communist and Soviet Union admirer, he wrote following the February 1956 speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that Stalin had been no better and no worse than the majority of tyrants who preceded him, adding that the Russian Communist Party was a living organism whose cells were continuously rejuvenated, and that the fear of purges had had the effect of keeping the militants on edge, constantly reviving their zeal.[1] From 1989 until 1994, he was a member of the Italian Communist Party, later the Democratic Party of the Left, in the European Parliament. In 1981, he was elected a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He died at the age of 97 on 16 December 2014.[2]
Career
A member of
After the War, he taught in the faculty of law and economic sciences in Paris, 1955 to 1985, and contributed to
Political parties
Having as a point of reference their structure, Duverger in his book Les Partis Politiques (1951) distinguished parties between elite-based parties and mass-based parties. Elite-based parties rather prefer the quality of their members over their quantity, their affiliates being people of great influence on local or national scale. They have flexible and disorganized structures, in general are weakly disciplined and lack developed pragmatic content, allowing each of their members to benefit from an enormous freedom of action. Their funding is generally provided by a sponsor, and as their strength comes from their elected representatives, they are typical parties of parliamentarian creation, which depend on the reputation and support of their benefactors.
Mass-based parties possess a secure organization and a strong structure arranged as a
Duverger's Law
With discovery attributed to Duverger, he observed the effect and recorded it in several papers published in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of further research, other political scientists began calling the effect a "law" or principle. Duverger's law suggests a nexus or synthesis between a party system and an electoral system: a proportional representation (PR) system creates the electoral conditions necessary to foster party development while a plurality system marginalizes many smaller political parties, resulting in what is known as a two-party system.
In political science, Duverger's law is a principle which asserts that plurality rule elections structured within single-member districts tends to favor a two-party system. This is one of two hypotheses proposed by Duverger, the second stating that "the double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to multipartism."[3]
Works
- Les partis politiques (1951)
- La participation des femmes à la vie politique (1955)
- Les finances publiques (1956)
- Méthodes de la science politique (1959)
- De la dictature (1961)
- Méthodes des Sciences sociales (1961)
- Introduction à la politique (1964)
- Sociologie politique (1966)
- La démocratie sans les peuples (1967)
- Institutions politiques et Droit constitutionnel (1970)
- Janus: les deux faces de l'Occident (1972)
- Sociologie de la politique (1973)
- L'autre côté des choses (1977)
- King's Mate (1978)
- Les orangers du lac Balaton (1980)
- Factors in a Two-Party and Multiparty System, in Party Politics and Pressure Groups (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972), pp. 23–32.
- Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State
- The Study of Politics ISBN 0-690-79021-X
- La République des Citoyens (1982) ISBN 2-85956-311-3
- Lettre Ouverte aux Socialistes (Collection Lettre ouverte) ISBN 2-226-00326-6
- Modern Democracies: Economic Power Versus Political Power ISBN 0-03-077280-X
- La Cohabitation des Français ISBN 2-13-041498-2
- Europe des Hommes: Une Métamorphose Inachevée (1994) ISBN 2-7381-0262-X
- The Idea of Politics: the Uses of Power in Society(1966)
- The French Political System
- L'Europe dans tous ses États (1995)
See also
References
- ^ Raymond Aron, Mémoires, Bouquins (Robert Laffont), 2003 (1983), p. 466.
- ^ Le Gendre, Bertrand (22 December 2014). "Mort de Maurice Duverger, le 'pape' de la science politique française". Le Monde (in French).
- ^ Sartori, Giovanni (1994). Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes. Macmillan.
External links
- Classification of political parties (in Spanish)
- Personal profile of Maurice Duverger in the European Parliament's database of members
- Short biography Archived 2006-05-12 at the Wayback Machine (in French)