The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (198 page)

 
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Tautologically, the set of all the significant parties in a country, their interactions, and (sometimes) the electoral system and voter loyalties that produce it. Divided by some into ‘ one-party systems’, ‘two-party systems’, and ‘multiparty systems’ ( see also
Duverger's law
); others doubt the analytical usefulness of the distinction. In the introduction to their influential
Party Systems and Voter Alignments
(1967), S. M. Lipset and S. Rokkan argue that party systems in Western democracies typically ‘
froze
’ the pattern of
cleavages
that existed at the time of the enfranchisement of the working class, so that current party alignments reflected policy disputes and interest alignments of decades earlier. The study of parties in Europe is still heavily influenced by the Lipset/Rokkan typology, although their remarks about the effects of electoral systems on party systems have been superseded.

 
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(1623–62)
French mathematician, scientist, and religious apologist. He touched on politics in a manner similar to that of
Augustine
. Human misery is the result of the corruption of human nature at the Fall. Man without God is ruled by self-love which blinds him to true justice and is the origin of social and political disorders. Human greatness consists mainly in man's ability to realize his wretchedness. He may be a reed, but he is a ‘thinking reed’ (
Pensées
). But what can he do about it? Only an infinite being can help him, only God can save him from the social and political disorders that originate in his self-love, and help him to attain his aspirations. By implication Pascal is saying what Augustine said before him: true justice on earth can only be attained through faith in God and God is found in Jesus Christ .
Pascal was also one of the founders of the theory of probability and statistics. This originated with problems in gambling, but soon spread to serious applications in all the social sciences including politics (for some modern ramifications see also
cost-benefit analysis
;
decision theory
). His most famous argument in probability is ‘Pascal's Wager’ which has been described as a game-theoretic argument in favour of believing in God (or at least trying to believe, or going through the motions of believing). God either exists or He does not; if He exists He rewards believers with eternal life and punishes unbelievers with eternal punishment. Even if the probability of God's existence is very small, the penalty of eternal punishment is so devastating that the expected value of believing in God will always exceed that of not believing in Him. Given Pascal's premisses, the argument is valid; but all depends on God being the particular sort of God posited in the second premiss. However, the Wager is part of a broader argument that reasoning alone cannot lead to a knowledge of first principles. For Pascal, only religious belief can.
CB 

 
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The exercise of power or authority over another person to prevent self-inflicted harm or to promote that person's welfare, usually usurping individual responsibility and freedom of choice. The paternalism of a parent (strictly, a father), even one who restricts the liberty of a child in the child's own interests, has not generally been thought to require extensive justification. It is alleged that children are incapable, through ignorance or inexperience, of sound judgement, and need protection from themselves as well as from other persons. Legal or state paternalism refers to the use of law or other state activity to prevent adult citizens, as well as children, from harming themselves, or to promote their welfare. A range of paternalistic interventions is available to the state, from the provision of advice and information, through taxation policies which make items expensive and less available, to the coercive prohibition of activities, or the prescriptive requirement of activities. Because some of the forms of intervention risk imposing the legislator's view of what is harmful or welfare-promoting, they have been seen as inimical to liberty. On the other side, citizens are certainly capable of bringing harm upon themselves (even on their own view of harm) through ignorance, short-sightedness, and so on. Treatments of the possible justifications for state paternalism consider whether a balance needs to be struck between liberty and welfare, the impact of different possible mechanisms of paternalist intervention, the relationship between ‘preventing harm’ and ‘promoting well-being’, the nature of
interests
, and the legitimate purposes of the state.
AR 

 
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In
game theory
and
social choice
theory, the property that the same initial state may give rise to different outcomes by different routes. Any good choice procedure ought to be path-independent.
To understand what is at stake, consider four skaters
A
,
B
,
C
, and
D
, and seven judges. The judges rank the candidates on their performance. Their rankings, in descending order, are:

Three judges: 
ABCD
Two judges: 
BCDA
Two judges: 
CDAB

Note that every single judge considers that C is better than D. Now consider two variants of the Borda count. Variant 1 says ‘Rank every candidate’. Variant 2 says ‘Eliminate any candidate who is unanimously beaten, then rank every remaining candidate’. By Variant 1,
A
gets 11 points,
B
gets 12 points, and
C
gets 13 points. So
C
wins,
B
comes second, and
A
third. By Variant 2,
A
gets 8 points,
B
7 points, and
C
6 points—the order of the candidates has been turned upside down! This shows that this version of the Borda count violates path-independence. Note the similarity (though not the identity) of
independence of irrelevant alternatives
.