ABSTRACT
Political scientists are as indebted to Maurice Duverger as historians are to Marx. Duverger stands in relation to theories of party development much as Marx does in relation to broader social theories. A similar point can be made about the American scholars, particularly Schattschneider, who advanced the still popular belief in the virtues of the responsible party—meaning a highly organized, programmatic, and cohesive party. The pluralist’s party norm involves more than the avoidance of class consciousness in the older European socialist sense. A pluralist might well argue that large-scale party activism is a symptom of dysfunction because it occurs especially when parties are organized around intense and highly divisive programs and policies, notably those associated with deep class cleavages. A peak of European socialist party development, and of socialist-type party development, came at about 1950 in what were then, by American standards, considerably less advanced economic and social circumstances.
