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Effective Number of Parties by Country 2024
First introduced by sociologist Maurice Duverger, the effective number of parties (ENP) metric is more than just a way to keep track of the total number of political parties active in a country at a given time. Keeping an eye on it and analyzing the ways it might change over time is a fairly reliable way to assess how fragmented or cohesive a country’s political situation may be.
Assessing the differences between active political parties at a given time, as well as the relative strength of each, can also shed valuable light on how politically diverse a country’s people may be. Here’s a closer look at ENP stats for various countries around the world, as well as a few factors that may influence this metric.
Effective Number of Parties by Country
As of 2023, the following world countries have the highest effective number of parties stats.
Country | # of Parties |
|---|---|
| Lebanon | 33.57 |
| Vanuatu | 11.36 |
| Brazil | 9.91 |
| Belgium | 9.70 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 9 |
| Colombia | 8.74 |
| Netherlands | 8.54 |
| Malaysia | 7.72 |
| Indonesia | 7.47 |
| Papua New Guinea | 7.38 |
In addition to indicating the overall degree of political fragmentation within a country, ENP can also be used to predict the potential for coalition governments.
Potential Factors Influencing Effective Number of Parties
A variety of different complex factors can play into why a country’s ENP metric is as high or low as it is at a given time. Here are some examples. The effective number of parties in a country can often depend on what the political culture is like there. In some countries, numerous parties are the norm and have been for a long time, making the emergence of new parties more likely. But in countries like the United States with a long-standing two-party system in place, the emergence of strong new parties is rare.
Countries with greater levels of diversity as far as ethnic background, native language, and so forth may eventually give rise to multiple active parties to represent different social subsections. This could naturally leWad to a higher ENP over time as some of those parties gain strength. Forces like civil unrest or powerful social movements can eventually lead to the emergence of new political parties to represent associated interests. Should any of those parties gain power, the country’s ENP will eventually go up.