ABSTRACT
Political parties, as agencies of interest aggregation and interest articulation, play an important role in stabilizing democratic governance and helping democracy take root in society. However, the effectiveness of parties in fulfilling their democratic functions depends to a large extent on the interactions between them – or put differently, the democracy-enhancing potential of parties hinges on the party system. In particular, scholars of political parties have identified three elements of party systems that are important in this regard: (1) How many parties are there? (2) How do political parties link themselves with the electorate? (3) How stable are patterns of interparty competition?
