Building Party Systems in Developing Democracies by Allen Hicken

by Allen Hicken

This book addresses the question of why a party system with a modest number of nationally oriented political parties emerges in some democracies but not others. A key contribution of this book is the development and testing of a theory of aggregation incentives that focuses on the payoff to being a large party and the probability of capturing that payoff. The book relies on in-depth case studies of Thailand and the Philippines, and on large-N analysis to establish its arguments.

Paperback Bunko

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Shad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a decent background in Southeast Asian politics and better than decent background in Thai politics, but I had not read any in-depth studies of parties in Thailand other than Thai Rak Thai. Chapters 4 and 5 provide an excellent look at the Thai party system and application of the aggregation theory he develops in chapters 2 and 3. Hicken expertly combines logical theory with solid data and statistical analysis to demonstrate the importance of cross-district coordination in understanding the efficacy of parties at the national level and in explaining the number of parties at the national level. He convincingly argues for the significance of the size of the prize awarded to the largest party in an election and the probability that that party will get prize in order to improve aggregation and, consequently, effective national parties. Without having read a lot of research on parties, many of the terms and methods were unfamiliar to me. The focus audience is fairly narrow, but with some perseverance, I was able to understand what he was saying, where he was going, and something of the import of this new understanding for policymakers, particularly in developing democracies looking to create effective and reliable party systems. The examples of Thailand and the Philippines are persuasively presented in a way that makes them understandable and helps the reader to comprehend Hicken's contributions more clearly and thoroughly.

Prior to reading, it would have been good had I been familiar with the term "ceteris paribus" (Latin for "with other things the same" or "all other things being equal or constant", at least, according to Wikipedia) as that seems to be one of Hicken's favorites.

[Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hicken's book explores the incentives and disincentives political elites or entrepreneurs face when coordinating to compete in an election. Importantly, he identifies complexities in the factors that encourage politicians to coordinate across districts to form national parties. Across three chapters he tests a bevy of hypotheses, ranging from the effects of bicameralism to the number of Presidential contenders, in the service of a much larger argument that the centralization of both vertical and horizontal power in the national government PLUS the probability of the largest party capturing that power, are key to aggregation of parties. I appreciated the diverse approaches, including an electoral dataset, plus two case studies using Thailand and the Philippines, which provide convincing evidence, even when the cases seem somewhat unwieldy, such as the Philippines, where democratic competition was interrupted under Marco. I read Olli Hellman's review of Hicken's book, and Dr. Hellman points out that Hicken's assumptions that politicians are only motivated by capturing office is a fair one. Policy considerations complicate matters, but even in the parsimony of "narrow assumptions", Hicken's book is an important contribution to understanding emerging party systems.