POLITICAL-PARTY SYSTEMS AND FUNDAMENTAL MODELS OF OPPOSITION

This article, which is taken from a longer work on political party systems, analyses the fundamental models of opposition, distinguished (after R. A. Dahl) by their degree of concentration, their identifiability, their goals, etc., and indicates their dependence on party systems. Emphasis is placed, amongst other things, on the situation which arises when there are one or two relevant anti-system parties (in the latter case, creating a so-called bilateral opposition). It also analyses the role which an anti-system party of this kind can play (e.g. by exercising what G. Lavau calls the tribunal function), including the problematisation of alternation in the government. Various other possible situations, their advantages and dangers, are illustrated by examples from history, from contemporary stabilised Western democracies, and from the newly-emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, primarily the Czech Republic.