Autonomy of the Party System: Geographical Patterns of Party Support

Scholars conducting research on political institutionalization have offered numerous ways to measure the degree of autonomy of individual political parties and party systems: distinctiveness of organizational norms and values, control of party finances and material resources, presence of “catch-all” parties, selection patterns of party leaders, relations with its collateral associations, etc. Although geographical patterns of voting and regional strength of party support may serve as important and useful means to evaluate the degree of political institutionalization, electoral geography has been rarely employed to study comparative political parties. Many scholars argue that this is a significant shortcoming of party literature and call for a closer look at the “territorial dimension” of electoral politics and geographical aspects of party competition (Hopkin, 2003, 227). A good indicator of autonomy of a political party is the level of its nationalization, or, in other words, the extent of homogeneity of its electoral support base across the nation.1 According to Kawato, “[T]he electorate with a nationalized configuration is one that shows few regional and district differences in partisan support” (1987, 1237). As a rule, highly autonomous parties manifest a relatively equal share of the vote in different territorial constituencies. Weakly institutionalized parties draw their electoral strength from a significantly smaller territorial segment.