Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-c75p9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-01T14:29:32.220Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On Duverger and “Laws of Politics”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2022

Alfred G. Cuzán Open the ORCID record for Alfred G. Cuzán [Opens in a new window]
Alfred G. Cuzán*
Affiliation:
University of West Florida, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In “In Laws of Politics and How to Establish Them,” Erik Weber contends that my arguments for the existence of “five laws of politics” are “inconclusive.” Although the “empirical evidence is impressive,” he avers, the “underlying social mechanisms” responsible for the adduced relationships are missing. Without it, he adds, no empirical relationship rises to the special status of a “law” of politics. Helpfully, Weber did not stop there. Using the example of Duverger’s laws, he suggested ways to close the “argumentative gap.” In this article, I aim to do just that.

Information

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 213 - 217
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Ashby, W. Ross. 1960. Design for a Brain: The Origins of Adaptive Behavior. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
Budge, Ian. 2019. Politics: A Unified Introduction to How Democracy Works. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy. 1999. “The Limits of Exact Science, from Economics to Physics.” Perspectives on Science 7 (3): 318–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy. 2020. “Middle-Range Theory: Without It, What Could Anyone Do?” Theoria 35 (3): 269–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colomer, Josep. 2005. “It’s Parties That Choose Electoral Systems (or, Duverger’s Laws Upside Down).” Political Studies 53 (1): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coppedge, Michael. 2012. Democratization and Research Methods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuzán, Alfred G. 2015. “Five Laws of Politics.” PS: Political Science & Politics 48 (3): 415–19.Google Scholar
Cuzán, Alfred G. 2019. “Five Laws of Politics: A Follow-Up.” PS: Political Science & Politics 52 (3): 457–64.Google Scholar
Cuzán, Alfred G. 2022a. Laws of Politics: Their Operations in Democracies and Dictatorships. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cuzán, Alfred G. 2022b. “The First Two Laws of Politics: Nannestad and Paldam’s ‘Cost of Ruling’ Revisited.” Acta Politica 57:420–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuzán, Alfred G. 2022. “Replication Data for: On Duverger and Laws of Politics.” Political Science & Politics. DOI:10.7910/DVN/OKEKRX.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duverger, Maurice. 1959. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. Translated by North, Barbara and North, Robert, with a Foreword by Brogan, D. W.. Second edition, revised. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., MacKuen, Michael B., and Stimson, James A.. 2002. The Macro Polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heggen, Richard J., and Cuzán, Alfred G.. 2022a. “Incumbent Party Reelection in Australia, Canada, and the United States: An Exponential Decay Model.” PS: Political Science & Politics 55 (3): 490–96.Google Scholar
Heggen, Richard J., and Cuzán, Alfred G.. 2022b. “The Cost of Ruling: An Exploration in U.S. Gubernatorial Elections.” Paper presented at the April 21–23 meeting of the State Politics and Policy Conference, Tallahassee, FL. https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2022-1j9ll.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nannestad, Peter, and Paldam, Martin. 1999. “The Cost of Ruling: A Foundation Stone for Two Theories.” Denmark: University of Aarhus, Department of Economics. Working Paper No. 1999-9. https://ssrn.com/abstract=165709.Google Scholar
Soroka, Stuart N., and Wlezien, Christopher. 2009. Degrees of Democracy: Politics, Public Opinion, and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Erik. 2022. “On Laws of Politics and How to Establish Them.” PS: Political Science & Politics 55 (3): 457–61. DOI:10.1017/S104909652200035X.Google Scholar
Wlezien, Christopher. 1995. “The Public as Thermostat: Dynamics of Preferences for Spending.” American Journal of Political Science 39 (4): 981–1000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wlezien, Christopher. 2017. “Policy (Mis)Representation and the Cost of Ruling: U.S. Presidential Elections in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (6): 711–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Cuzán Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OKEKRX
Link