ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some of the varying historical conditions which have affected Western party systems, particularly in their formative periods, in order to point out some major differences in the bases of cleavage in the existing and emerging democracies. The emergence of the socialists as a political force within the context of manhood suffrage changed the structure of much of European politics. The modern ideological conflicts affecting industrial society originated in the problem of locating old preindustrial upper classes, the church, the mass citizenry, and the working class within the polity. It is impossible to locate the determinants of the varying party systems in the democratic developed nations by a simple analytic framework. The considerably greater cultural and historical diversity of the "third" world than that of the developed nations complicates the search for a single set of factors associated with the propensity to sustain competitive party systems among the less developed nations.
