Two And Half Party System Essay

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The chosen article is the“Two-and-a-half-party System and the Comparative Role of the Half”, which was written by Alan Siaroff, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge in Canada, this article published in the Party Politics in 2003.
This article attempted to summarize various approaches of counting parties in order to identify different party systems in governments. First, the author utilized the effective number (Taagepera 1999) to analyze different party systems in various nations. Following that, he suggested that the party system should be identified by the percentage of shared seats in governments. Finally, he distinguished the special position of the “half” party to prove the existence of a two-and-a-half-party system. In addition, he also expressed that a “half” party possibly has the opportunity of “coalition” or “blackmail” in governments. …show more content…

The first one is the definition of the “half” party, this can be used to analyze the political position of the Nationals party in Australia. The “half” party can be a “wing” half party or a “hinge” half party, the former means this party always is cooperating with one major party consistently , and the latter means this party moves their position between two major parties. The second one is the statistical analysis of the Australia’s party system. The author used the statistic to examine that Australia operated by a two-and-a-half-party system for a long period of time, and he also explained that the Nationals is a “wing” half party because they were cooperating with the Liberal consistently in Australia in order to against the Labor in the government. In fact, other statistical analysis indicated that the Nationals play an indispensable role in helping the coalition won many elections (Linda & Geoff

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