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THE PIVOTAL PARTY: DEFINITION AND MEASUREMENT
Author(s) -
RÉMY DOMINIQUE
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1975.tb00782.x
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , power (physics) , government (linguistics) , third party , index (typography) , political science , law and economics , epistemology , sociology , computer science , linguistics , internet privacy , philosophy , artificial intelligence , physics , quantum mechanics , world wide web
Analyses of party strategy in multiparty parliamentary systems often refer to the idea of a pivotal party. But this notion is not uniformly treated and rarely covers the same entities. This essay is an attempt to clarify the concept and to isolate its characteristics. Among four types of “dominated” parties, the name of pivotal party should only be given to that party which controls the maximum of potentialities belonging to these parties, namely the power to modify the government majority by bestowing or withdrawing its support. This perspective also suggests the utility of an index measuring the extent of this modification.