ABSTRACT
The question this chapter addresses is the relevance and utility of the Lipset/ Rokkan party-cleavage thesis for the analysis of party politics in the Third World. Given the vast potential scope of this subject, I have had to limit discussion to some central issues, inevitably thereby failing to do justice to the theoretical complexity of the party/cleavage model or to the intricacies of specific Third World cases. I begin by briefly addressing some significant definitional problems and conceptual ambiguities within the question as posed. I then consider some of the other difficulties in the way of an answer. The third and longest section examines some of the more obvious respects in which the experience of Third World countries would seem to depart from the pattern of party system formation described by Lipset and Rokkan, and suggests that underlying these differences have been more fundamental differences in terms of the pattern of national economic and political development and of system autonomy. In conclusion, however, I indicate ways in which the model may nonetheless have something valuable to contribute to our understanding of party politics in the Third World.
