/ / A SURVEY OF AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES IN W ORLD PERSPECTIVE Paper prepared for discussion with staf f of the Center for Democratic 1977 Kenneth Janda No rthwestern University "How is your wife?" asks the first vaudeville comic. "Compared to what?" puzzles the second. The same quip might apply to one who innocently inquires about the con- dition of political parties in the United States. Such a question needs some com parative referents to help determine what is being asked as well as what constitutes an answer. This paper looks at the Republican and Democratic parties in the context of political parties across the world, providing a broad framework for evaluating "how they are" in comparison w ith parties elsewhere. The research which underlies this study involves 158 political parties operating from 1950 to 1962 in 53 countries drawn from all the m ajor cul- tural-geographic areas of the world. 1 The results of that research are being prepared for publication in a variety of forms for different lines of inquir y .2 One forthcoming publication, American Political Parties in W orld Perspective, is a book-length comparison of the Democrats and Repub- licans with all other parties on twelve key concepts in the comparative anal y sis of political parties. Some major findings of that book are sum- marized below while avoiding discussion of the com plex research m ethodology involved in the study.3 While the purely technical aspects of the research can be omitted due to the survey nature of this paper, some explanation must be given of the analytical purposes to be served through studying American parties in world perspective. This report begins then with some observations on the compar- ative analysis of political parties. The second section defines the tw elve major dimensions of part y variation and summarizes the positions of the Amer- ican parties in the distributions of the world's parties along these dim- ensions. Although a well-rounded understanding of American parties demands a probing discussion of the parties' placements on each of these key con- cepts, that is outside the scope of this paper. Instead, the third and final section selects only one dimension, the centralization of power, for closer treatment . . It concludes by inquiring whether American government is best served by national political parties which are so extremely decen- tralized in pow er that they stand virtually alone among comparable institu- tions in W estern Europe and throughout the world. The Com parative Analysis of Political Parties The method of comparative analysis can be a valuable aid to understanding in many fields of study--plants, literature, food, animals, and especiall y politics. Comparative analysis is even useful in the study of politics when