Maurice Duverger facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Maurice Duverger
Member of the European Parliament
In office 25 July 1989 – 18 July 1994
Constituency	Italy
Personal details
Born	(1917-05-06)6 May 1917 Angoulême, Charente, France
Died	16 December 2014(2014-12-16) (aged 97)
Political party	Italian Communist Party Democratic Party of the Left

Maurice Duverger (born June 5, 1917 – died December 16, 2014) was a very smart French person. He studied many important topics. He was a jurist (someone who studies law), a sociologist (someone who studies society), and a political scientist (someone who studies how governments and politics work). He was born in Angoulême, France.

Maurice Duverger began his career studying law at the University of Bordeaux. Over time, he became more interested in political science. In 1948, he even started one of the first political science departments in Bordeaux, France.

He became a respected professor at the Sorbonne. He wrote many books and articles for famous newspapers. These included Corriere della Sera, la Repubblica, El País, and especially Le Monde.

Duverger liked to study how political systems changed over time. He also looked at how different countries' governments worked. He preferred to use real-world facts and observations rather than just ideas.

He created a famous idea called Duverger's law. This law explains how a voting system where the person with the most votes wins (called "first-past-the-post") often leads to a system with only two main political parties.

He also invented the term "semi-presidential system". This describes a type of government like France's. It has both a president and a prime minister.

From 1989 to 1994, he was a member of the European Parliament. He represented the Italian Communist Party, which later became the Democratic Party of the Left. In 1981, he was chosen as a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Maurice Duverger passed away at the age of 97 in 2014.

Maurice Duverger's Career and Studies

Maurice Duverger finished his law studies in Bordeaux in 1942. He then taught law at Poitiers in 1942 and Bordeaux in 1943. In 1948, he founded the Institut d'études politiques de Bordeaux. This was a special school for political studies, and he was its first director.

In his first book, "The Constitutions of France" (1944), he wrote about the French government at that time. After World War II, he became very interested in social science. He taught at the law and economic sciences faculty in Paris from 1955 to 1985. He also wrote for newspapers like Libération and Le Monde.

In 1946, he started looking closely at how voting systems and party systems are connected. This became a big part of his most important book, "The Political Parties" (1951). This book is a classic for anyone studying political parties. It has been translated into many languages. His ideas from this book led to Duverger's law. He also created the terms "semi-presidentialism" and "semi-parliamentarism".

Understanding Political Parties

In his 1951 book, Les Partis Politiques, Duverger looked at how political parties are built. He divided them into two main types: elite-based parties and mass-based parties.

Elite-Based Parties

Elite-based parties care more about the quality of their members than the number. Their members are usually people who have a lot of influence in their local area or across the country. These parties often have flexible and less organized structures. They might not have strict rules, allowing members a lot of freedom. Their money often comes from a sponsor. Since their power comes from their elected representatives, they often start in parliaments. They depend on the good name and support of their wealthy helpers.

Mass-Based Parties

Mass-based parties have a strong and organized structure. It's like a pyramid, with different levels of leadership. Their members believe strongly in the party's ideology (its main ideas) rather than just its leader. Decisions are made with many members taking part. These parties get their money from payments made by their members. This means they try to get as many members as possible.

These types of parties often grow as more people get the right to vote and as democracy spreads. Elite-based parties often do political work only around elections. But this puts them at a disadvantage compared to mass-based parties, which work all the time. So, elite-based parties often change their organization to become more like mass-based parties.

Duverger's Law Explained

Maurice Duverger noticed an important pattern in how voting systems affect political parties. He wrote about this in the 1950s and 1960s. Other political scientists later started calling this pattern "Duverger's law."

Duverger's law suggests a link between how parties are formed and how elections are run. It says that a system called "proportional representation" helps many different parties grow. In this system, parties get seats in government based on the percentage of votes they receive.

However, a "plurality system" (like "first-past-the-post") tends to push out smaller political parties. This often leads to a system with only two main political parties. In a plurality system, the candidate who gets the most votes in each area wins, even if they don't get more than half the votes.

This law states that elections where only one person wins in each area (single-member districts) usually lead to a two-party system. Duverger also had another idea: that systems with two rounds of voting or proportional representation tend to create many different parties.

Works by Maurice Duverger

• Les partis politiques (1951)
• La participation des femmes à la vie politique (1955)
• Les finances publiques (1956)
• Méthodes de la science politique (1959)
• De la dictature (1961)
• Méthodes des Sciences sociales (1961)
• Introduction à la politique (1964)
• Sociologie politique (1966)
• La démocratie sans les peuples (1967)
• Institutions politiques et Droit constitutionnel (1970)
• Janus: les deux faces de l'Occident (1972)
• Sociologie de la politique (1973)
• L'autre côté des choses (1977)
• King's Mate (1978)
• Les orangers du lac Balaton (1980)
• Factors in a Two-Party and Multiparty System, in Party Politics and Pressure Groups (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972), pages 23–32.
• Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State
• The Study of Politics ISBN: 0-690-79021-X
• La République des Citoyens (1982) ISBN: 2-85956-311-3
• Lettre Ouverte aux Socialistes (Collection Lettre ouverte) ISBN: 2-226-00326-6
• Modern Democracies: Economic Power Versus Political Power ISBN: 0-03-077280-X
• La Cohabitation des Français ISBN: 2-13-041498-2
• Europe des Hommes: Une Métamorphose Inachevée (1994) ISBN: 2-7381-0262-X
• The Idea of Politics: the Uses of Power in Society(1966)
• The French Political System
• L'Europe dans tous ses États (1995)

See also

In Spanish: Maurice Duverger para niños

• Duverger's law
• Micromega rule