The Political Science of Giovanni Sartori

Abstract

This article reviews Giovanni Sartori's contribution to contemporary political science. Sartori, who has just turned eighty, re-founded Italian political science and taught a generation of political scientists. He has made important contributions on democracy, party systems, and on political and constitutional engineering, and has written many significant methodological articles. Conceptual clarity, analytical rigour, methodological awareness, and interest in theory-building have allowed Sartori to become one of the most prominent political scientists of the 20th century.

Full text

the political science of giovanni
sartori
gianfranco pasquino
University of Bologna and the Johns Hopkins Bologna Center, Via Belmeloro, 11,
40126 Bologna, Italy
E-mail: gianfranco.pasquino@fastwebnet.it
doi:10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210003
Abstract
This article reviews Giovanni Sartori’s contribution to contemporary
political science. Sartori, who has just turned eighty, re-founded Italian
political science and taught a generation of political scientists. He has made
important contributions on democracy, party systems, and on political and
constitutional engineering, and has written many significant methodologi-
cal articles. Conceptual clarity, analytical rigour, methodological aware-
ness, and interest in theory-building have allowed Sartori to become one of
the most prominent political scientists of the 20th century.
Keywords democracy; party systems; representation; constitutions
INTRODUCTION
T
he very re-appearance of political
science in Italy is in itself a
major and highly deserved tribute to
Giovanni Sartori’s
1
intellectual and organi-
sation al activitie s. To cut a long story short,
F ascism destroyed what had existed in
terms of Italian political science. The foun-
ders, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto and,
though German by birth, Roberto Michels,
had not, after all, created a ‘school’. After
1945, there were no heirs to the scholars
who had launched the theory of the ruling
class, elaborated the analysis of elites, and
formulated the iron law of oligarchy. There
was only one department of Political
Sciences (in the plural), the already famous
‘Cesare Alfieri’ of Florence, but not a single
chair in Political Science.
Sartori was obliged to start his career
studying and teaching political philosophy
and writing on Hegel and Marx, Croce and
Kant. In retrospect, this experience
proved to be very useful because it gave
him the masterful capability in logic and
the analysis of concepts that he has put to
such very good use. Although already a
member of the international circuit of
political scientists, the non-existence of
political science as a discipline in Italian
universities meant that he first had to
become full professor of Sociology. By
1966, following a reform of the depart-
ments of Political Sciences that he himself
had forcefully advocated, he was able to
move to Political Science. From 1969 to
1972 he served as Dean of the department
in Florence. In addition to having been
instrumental in promoting reform of the
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33

political science curriculum, he founded
and directed the Centro Studi Politica
Comparata, from which have come all
second-, and most third-generation Italian
political scientists. Then, in 1971, Sartori
founded the Rivista Italiana di Scienza
Politica. By that time, he had already
published widely in Italian and in English
and was well established as a top political
scientist. Though having also received an
offer from Oxford, he moved to Stanford in
1976 and in 1979 became Albert Schweit-
zer Professor in the Humanities at Colum-
bia University, where he is now Professor
Emeritus. Sartori, born in May 1924, has
just turned eighty, but he has lost none of
his energy. He divides his time between
New York and Italy and is a frequent,
active and provocative participant in de-
bates on Italian current affairs. His knowl-
edge of political science continues to serve
him (and many of us in Italy) well.
As a scholar, Sartori is not the author of
just one book, written and re-written. Nor
has he confined himself to just one topic.
He has left important and long-las ting
marks in three major fields of political
science: the theory of democracy; party
systems; and constitutional engineering.
Above all, Sartori is a truly comparative
political scientist. He has always thought,
and has tried to prove, that progress in
research goes hand in hand with progress
in theory – and, consequently, that if there
is no progress in theory, progress in
research is highly unlikely. Finally, to Sar-
tori, progress is not just measurement and
quantification. As he has written: ‘W ords
alone beat numbers alone. Words with
numbers beat words alone. And numbers
make sense, or much greater sense, within
verbal theory’ (Sartori, 1976: 319). For
what it is worth, I could not agree more.
DEMOCRACY
Sartori’s first major book was Democrazia
e definizioni. First published in 1957, it
went through several editions and Sartori
himself translated and partly reformu-
lated it for the American edition: Demo-
cratic Theory (Sartori, 1962, 1965). He
never stopped writing about democracy.
The synthesis of his ideas can be found in
his two-volume work, The Theory of
Democracy Revisited, part one of which
covers ‘The Contemporary Debate’, and
part two ‘The Classical Issues’ (Sartori,
1987a). A condensed, largely reorganised
version with a large appendix discussing
the state of democracy after the fall of the
Berlin wall was later published in Italian
as Democrazia. Cosa e` (Sartori, 1993).
What is it that makes Sartori’s many
writings about democracy so important
and lasting? First of all, he is never
parochial. His books are about the ideas
and the theories of democracy as they
have been formulated and revised
through time by all authors of signifi-
cance. Secondly, he analyses, assesses,
and criticises all the contributions that
impinge upon his subject, and does so
with a tremendous amount of knowledge.
By discussing, criticising, and, whenever
appropriate, praising their interpreta-
tions, he takes seriously all the authors
who have contributed to our knowledge of
democracy. For a taste of Sartori’s keen
attention to developments in the field, I
would suggest, in particular, his splendid
chapter on ‘Vertical democracy’ where the
arguments of the elitists and the anti-
elitists are thoroughly revisited (Sartori,
1987a). Finally, Sartori also developed his
own theory of democracy, one that is
intelligently constructed around a combi-
nation of Schumpeter’s competitive the-
ory and Friedrich’s anticipated reactions.
‘He divides his time
between New York and
Italy and is a frequent,
active and provocative
participant in debates on
Italian current affairs.’
european political science: 4 2005 political science of giovanni sartori
34

As is well known, Schumpeter has often
been accused of advocating a situation in
which teams of leaders compete for the
government of the country and in which,
after the victory of one team, there is no
space for voters or voter participation.
However, in his ‘feedback theory of de-
mocracy’ (Sartori, 1987a: 152), which
obviously fell within competitive theory,
Sartori suggested that neither the win-
ning nor the losing teams would stop
paying attention to the interests and
preferences of the voters. To quote di-
rectly, ‘Large-scale democracy is a proce-
dure and/or a mechanism that (a)
generates an open polyarchy whose com-
petition on the electoral market (b) attri-
butes power to the people and (c)
specifically enforces the responsiveness
of the leaders to the led’ (Sartori, 1987a:
156, italics in original). The latter concept
refers to what is now the very fashionable
analysis of accountability that is better
qualified in the sentence: ‘representation
intrinsically consists of two ingredients:
responsiveness and independent respon-
sibility’ (Sartori, 1987a: 170).
The Theory of Democracy Revisited is
remarkable for several other reasons. It is
simultaneously a book about the different
definitions of democracy provided
through time – a book that therefore
offers a splendid introduction to, and
analysis of, the history of democratic
ideas – and also a contribution to the
construction and analysis of political con-
cepts, the clarification of which has al-
ways been paramount in Sartori’s work. A
valiant attempt at this can be found in his
edited collection, Social Science Con-
cepts. A Systematic Analysis (Sartori,
1984). Sartori’s work on classification
has been his least successful undertak-
ing, and there is no denying that the
discipline moved on and continues to
move in other, more confusing and con-
fused, directions. The ‘Tower of Babel’, as
Sartori has defined it, still stands, as too
many political scientists prove unable
and/or unwilling to be precise and con-
sistent in their terminological and con-
ceptual analyses. In any case, Sartori’s
unceasing interest, accompanied by his
willingness to provide sound foundations
for the study of politics, culminated in a
small classic, really a concise encyclopae-
dia: Elementi di teoria politica (Sartori,
1987b, 1990, 1995).
While in The Theory of Democracy
Revisited, Sartori aims at creating what
he calls the theory of ‘mainstream poli-
tical democracy’, his presentation and
criticism of all the other theories and
theses remains outstanding even today.
Indeed, with surprising foresight, he ef-
fectively identified and, even more im-
portantly, fundamentally clarified almost
all the contemporary issues, such as
electoral democracy, participatory de-
mocracy, referendum democracy, and
even the construction of democracy and
democratisation. Finally, the book is not
only about democracy. It is about politics,
and political concepts – liberty, equality,
ideology – and the political alternatives to
democracy: autocracy, authoritarianism,
totalitarianism. It is a summa of what is
known and should be known, that can
still guide, cum grano salis, empirical
research.
There are two additional, particularly
important, aspects of Sartori’s theory of
democracy. The first is a permanent
lesson for all scholars and practitioners
dealing with existing or ‘real’ democra-
cies. No analysis of democracy can be
complete without drawing upon both
descriptive and normative views of de-
mocracy and then combining them – as
happens in practice. Often accused of
being ‘just a realist’ – a label he accepts
provided it is accompanied by the adjec-
tive ‘cognitive’ – Sartori does not refrain
from stating his preference for a specific
type of democracy: ‘democracy should be
a [selective] polyarchy of merit’ (Sartori,
1987a: 169, italics in original). There is
no need to stress how many theoretical
gianfranco pasquino european political science: 4 2005
35

and empirical implications follow from
this definition, many of them dealt with
and clarified by Sartori himself. The
second, oft-forgotten, aspect has to do
with the role of ideas and with democratic
mentalities. From this point of view, his
1969 article, ‘Politics, Ideology, and Belief
Systems’ (Sartori, 1969b), is especially
important. His argument is rather easy
and straightforward: ideological mental-
ities are less conducive to democratic
behaviour; pragmatic mentalities are
supportive of democratic behaviour. If
one wants to understand why liberal
democracies have defeated the challenge
of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes
and why religious fundamentalism has
emerged as the only alternative to liberal
democracies, then Sartori’s book provides
the indispensable analytical tools.
PARTY SYSTEMS
No scholar interested in the analysis of
contemporary democracies can afford to
neglect or minimise the role of political
parties. When Sartori first approached the
subject of political parties, he had already
written on representation and on the role
of parliamentarians. The stimulus to deal
specifically with political parties came, as
he indicated, from his dissatisfaction with
Duverger’s (1954) Political Parties, at the
time by far the best comparative study of
contemporary political parties. Three long
essays (Sartori, 1966, 1968, 1970a)
stand out in Sartori’s production of that
period and anticipate the extremely im-
portant and, in my opinion, unsurpassed
contributions further elaborated in his
major book, Parties and Party Systems.
A Framework for Analysis (Sartori, 1976).
This book was written as the first of a two-
volume study, but the draft of the second
volume was stolen and never recovered
by the author. That volume was meant to
deal with the structural–organisational
analysis of political parties. The draft of
one chapter of that work was recently
found, and is to be published in West
European Politics.
Until Sartori’s book, political scientists
had treated parties only in terms of their
number (and in a small number of un-
convincing contributions, some continued
to do so even afterwards). As a conse-
quence, only three types of party system
were identified: one-party systems; two-
party systems, and multiparty systems.
Several distortions followed because the
existence of more than two parties did not
necessarily amount to a multiparty sys-
tem; systems in which only two parties
existed could not always be considered
two-party systems, and finally, not all
multiparty systems worked and per-
formed in the same way. Sartori sug-
gested retaining the numerical criterion,
but supplementing it with a criterion
referring to the type of competition at
work in the party system. That is, he
suggested adding to the ‘format’ of the
party system, an evaluation of its ‘me-
chanics’. In so doing, he not only suc-
ceeded in formulating precise distinctions
among different types of multiparty sys-
tem, but he also convincingly indicated, in
an intellectually very rich and suggestive
chapter, the various possibilities for trans-
formation. In the case of Italy, attention
was focused on the relationship between
the Christian Democrats (DC), the party
continuously in government, and the
Communists, who comprised its continual
opposition. This situation was defined as
an ‘imperfect two-party system’. Resort-
ing to a comparative perspective, that is,
‘ySartori does not
refrain from stating his
preference for a specific
type of
democracy: ‘democracy
should be a [selective]
polyarchy of merit’.’
european political science: 4 2005 political science of giovanni sartori
36

looking also at the cases of the Spanish
Republic in the 1930s, at the Weimar
Republic, and at the Fourth French Re-
public (later, at the end of the 1960s,
Chile also conformed to the pattern),
enabled Sartori to formulate his category
of ‘polarised pluralism’, that is, of a party
system characterised by the existence of
anti-system oppositions, by a large ideo-
logical spread, by the occupation of the
centre, by the impossibility of alternation,
and by very low overall performance. In
my opinion, even more important fea-
tures of Sartori’s classification are its
identification of a predominant party
system and its distinction between two-
party systems and limited multiparty
systems. In predominant party systems,
one party, always the same, repeatedly
wins, over a long period of time, enough
seats to enable it to govern alone. Leav-
ing aside all the other criteria, Italy never
had a predominant party system because
the DC never won enough seats to govern
alone (and it never desired to). By con-
trast, Sweden and Japan can correctly be
classified as historically predominant
party systems.
The distinction between a two-party
system and a limited multiparty system
is best exemplified by comparing Britain
and Germany up until 1987, when the
Greens emerged as a party to be counted
because of their relevance in electoral
competition and in the formation of gov-
ernmental coalitions. In Great Britain,
only two parties were in a position to win
an absolute majority of seats. One of
them, not always the same (hence alter-
nation in office), did, and always decided
to govern alone. It was a genuine two-
party system. In Germany, there was at
most only one party capable of winning an
absolute majority of seats. It did not
govern alone. Alternation was possible
and in fact took place because one party
(the Liberal party) decided to form coali-
tions with either one (the CDU/CSU) or
the other (the SPD) of the two parties.
Hence, though small, often smaller than
its British counterpart, the German Liber-
al party had to be counted. In contrast to
the British Liberal party, it was relevant in
the making of governmental coalitions.
But the German party system should by
no means be defined as a two-and-a-half
party system. It was a limited multiparty
system, as its subsequent evolution has
convincingly shown. As for the British
party system, it remained a two-party
system even during the long period of
Conservative rule from 1979 to 1997 and
has of course continued to be such since
then.
Interestingly, even the party systems of
polarised pluralism have evolved accord-
ing to the transformation rules stated by
Sartori (1976: 291), that is following
changes in either (i) the electoral system;
(ii) the constitutional structure, or (iii) the
degree of international autonomy. All
three types of change easily apply to the
transformation of the polarised pluralist
systems of France (1946–1958) and Italy
(1947–1989) into somewhat extreme
multiparty systems characterised by al-
ternation in office. To conclude on this
point, there is, in my opinion, still a lot to
be learned and a lot to be done in moving,
with Sartori’s help, from classification to
measurement and, therefore, in providing
a dynamic theory of party-system
change.
The analysis of political parties has
attracted the attention of many scholars,
above all many sociologists who are
fundamentally interested in the ‘social
bases of politics’ (the subtitle of Lipset’s
(1960) rightly famous book, Political
Man). Sociologists, Sartori (1969a)
claims, resort to social variables as in-
dependent variables in order to explain
the origins, the evolution, and the tasks,
in terms of voting and preference repre-
sentation, of political parties. Political
scientists ought to have a different ap-
proach/perspective. For political scien-
tists, political parties themselves are the
gianfranco pasquino european political science: 4 2005
37

independent variable. Explanations of
political phenomena can, and must, be
found within politics itself. In any case, all
political explanations have to look first for
the existence of political variables capable
of providing the necessary (and, often,
the sufficient) clues.
Sartori’s theoretical concern was, at
least initially, obviously shaped by the
Italian intellectual climate. One way or
another, most explanations of Italian
political phenomena were sought in eco-
nomic and sociological variables. In gen-
eral, what could be called raw Marxist
reductionism was largely prevalent
among Italian political analysts. Sartori’s
criticism was directed not simply at the
many practitioners of this type of reduc-
tionism, but also at its consequences,
which appeared to deny the very exis-
tence of a science of politics. However,
even at the international level, some
Marxist and sociological reductionism
was present in the field of political
science. Sartori strongly objected to it
and suggested a different approach and
interpretation. He argued that ‘class be-
haviour presupposes a party that not only
feeds, incessantly, the ‘class image’, but
also a party that provides the structural
cement of ‘class reality’ ’(Sartori, 1969a:
84). It is difficult to say whether Sartori
really won the battle, but his lesson
stands as a reminder that political science
should, and indeed, can provide better
explanations of political phenomena than
sociology, especially sociology of the
more or less Marxist variety.
It is no wonder that Sartori has re-
mained faithful to his perspective and has
offered many excellent examples of and
significant contributions to the analytical
power of political science. For instance,
the explanatory power gained by utilising
simple political variables clearly appears
in his analysis of the impact upon party
systems of different electoral systems.
Sartori’s 1968 essay, ‘Political Develop-
ment and Political Engineering’, although
not especially well known, illustrates this
point and is important from at least three
points of view. First, it went against the
tide prevailing at the time when a major-
ity of the scholars studying political de-
velopment thought, more or less
inadvertently, that, once launched, poli-
tical development was a unilinear, posi-
tive, almost teleological process. Not so,
wrote Sartori, at about the time when
Huntington (1968) published his enor-
mously influential Political Order in Chan-
ging Societies. Sartori’s essay is also
notable because of its attempt to formu-
late a probabilistic explanation based on
purely political and institutional factors:
the relationship between strong and weak
party systems on which strong or weak
electoral systems are superimposed. Fi-
nally, whenever a probabilistic explana-
tion is formulated and tested some
consequences must be drawn, following
the probabilistic procedure. If factors a, b,
and c appear then it is likely that con-
sequences x, y, and z will follow. This was
a clear and original way of presenting the
foundations of political and constitutional
engineering. In fact, we find ourselves at
the intersection of two of the streams of
thought that Sartori subsequently pur-
sued: political and constitutional engi-
neering on the one hand, and the
comparative method on the other.
COMPARISON AND
CONSTITUTIONAL
ENGINEERING
Comparative Constitutional Engineering
(Sartori, 1994) represents the culmina-
tion of decades of study of the conse-
quences of electoral systems and of the
‘For political scientists,
political parties
themselves are the
independent variable.’
european political science: 4 2005 political science of giovanni sartori
38

nature and working of institutional sys-
tems. Ten years after its publication one
can confidently state that it remains the
most authoritative single study in its field.
Three aspects are especially remarkable.
The first is its methodological approach in
terms of positive and negative incentives,
rewards and penalties. The second aspect
is substantive. Significantly, Sartori not
only contributes to a more sophisticated
appreciation of the impact and the con-
sequences of different electoral systems
and suggests which electoral system is
most appropriate according to the desired
outcomes, but he also proceeds to a very
neat classification of presidential, parlia-
mentary, and semi-presidential systems
assessing their strengths and weak-
nesses in an elegant and parsimonious
manner. The latter contribution must be
stressed given the plethora of disorderly,
cumbersome classifications that do little
or nothing to advance our knowledge. The
third aspect refers to the quality of
political knowledge and is extraordinarily
significant because it has to do with
Sartori’s conception of political science
as a science. What kind of knowledge can
political science acquire and provide?
Sartori is convinced – and he says so
clearly – that the type of knowledge
acquired by political science can be put
to work to improve the performance of
political systems. Of course, this kind of
applicable knowledge must be acquired
and utilised through carefully crafted
comparative analyses.
The various comparisons currently
being offered are to some extent based
on the methodological imperatives Sar-
tori had identified and analysed a quarter
of a century before in what is probably his
most famous article, ‘Concept Misforma-
tion in Comparative Politics’ (Sartori,
1970b) – often revealingly misquoted as
‘Concept Misinformation’ (sic) – and in
the opening article, a true statement of
purpose, of the Rivista Italiana di Scienza
Politica: ‘La politica comparata: premesse
e problemi’ (Sartori, 1971). There is no
way of summarising the important les-
sons to be learned from these two, more-
than-seminal, rigorous and suggestive
articles. However, at least two elements
must be emphasised. The first one con-
cerns why scholars compare. Sartori’s
position is not that scholars compare in
order to explain specific phenomena. On
the contrary, scholars ought to compare
in order to check the validity of their
generalisations and middle-range theo-
ries. Comparison is, above all, a ‘method
of control’. The second important element
Sartori emphasises is that comparison is
a demanding method. Therefore, scholars
must learn how to compare. Sartori
specifies that in order for them to do so
satisfactorily, it is indispensable that they
acquire two types of learning: (a) how to
classify phenomena; and (b) how to move
along the ladder of abstraction (Sartori,
1970b: 1044). All this said, the best
comparative strategy consists in relying
on medium-level categories in order to
perform ‘intra-area comparisons among
relatively homogeneous contexts (middle
range theory)’.
Often, scholars interested in methodo-
logical issues get lost in the complexity of
their techniques and reflections. Sartori is
an exception. Indeed, Comparative Con-
stitutional Engineering represents the
best example of his ability to remain true
to his methodological principles. The
‘universe’ of cases is represented by
democratic political regimes and the ana-
lysis moves from electoral systems
to institutional systems. Once again it
is extremely difficult to summarise the
‘Sartori’s position is y
that scholars y ought to
compare in order to
check the validity of their
generalisations and
middle-range theories.’
gianfranco pasquino european political science: 4 2005
39

content of this book of ‘relatively modest
size’ because of its sharp, highly parsi-
monious, and extremely rigorous analy-
sis. Generalisations are formulated and
checked against existing cases. If excep-
tions are found, the existing generalisa-
tions are reformulated and followed with
the statement of a law that should cover
all the cases satisfactorily. This procedure
is implemented with extreme care when
dealing with the consequences for party
systems of electoral systems and in
formulating new, more accurate ‘laws’.
This is a book that contains important
lessons for scholars and policy-makers
interested in shaping and reforming their
political systems. Unfortunately, most
of the literature on democratisation can
be accused of having underestimated
or even totally neglected the importance
of mechanisms and institutions for
the achievement of whatever desired
outcome.
CONCLUSION
In this brief essay, I have at most been
able to suggest what I think are the most
outstanding and enduring of Giovanni
Sartori’s contributions to contemporary
political science. Four major books in
particular – Democrazia e definizioni
(Sartori, 1957), Parties and Party Sys-
tems (Sartori, 1976), The Theory of
Democracy Revisited (Sartori, 1987a),
and Comparative Constitutional Engi-
neering (Sartori, 1994) – as well as
several articles published in prestigious
journals, such as the American Political
Science Review, and several chapters in
important collective enterprises, mark his
special, and from many points of view,
exceptional scholarly career. Each of his
books has been translated into several
languages and they remain essential
reading, for scholars and students alike,
in a discipline that often seems lacking in
‘institutional and professional memory’.
All this said and duly emphasised, I think
that Sartori has made two additional
immensely important contributions to
political science. First, he has led the
way in the search for true autonomy in
political research, accompanied by a solid
methodological awareness with specific
reference to comparative politics and the
comparative method. Secondly, he has
convincingly shown that good political
science does not simply mean ‘pure’
political science, focused mainly on for-
mulating neat and polished models, so-
phisticated paradigms, and the
quantification of its findings. In several
areas political science has, and has al-
ways had, a powerful tendency to become
political engineering. This tendency
should not be resisted. Rather, it should
be channelled, disciplined, and put to
work. By so doing, we will witness (and
contribute to) a better political science
not only for its practitioners, but also for
political systems and citizens. As sug-
gested by his powerful editorials (now
available as a set of collected essays in
Sartori, 2004) in the leading Italian daily,
Corriere della Sera, and in the most
important Italian weekly, l’Espresso, and
by his frequent appearances on TV as a
skilful and even abrasive discussant of
public issues, Sartori’s strongly held belief
in the significance and relevance of poli-
tical and constitutional engineering gives
additional meaning to his work in political
science.
Note
1 A scholarly assessment of Sartori’s contribution to political science is provided in La scienza politica di
Giovanni Sartori, which I have edited for Il Mulino, Bologna (forthcoming, February–March 2005). This
volume contains chapters by Domenico Fisichella, Giorgio Sola, Angelo Panebianco, Adriano Pappalardo,
Giuseppe Di Palma, Giacomo Sani, Stefan o Passigli and myself, as well as a complete bibliography of his
publications, prepared and organised by Oreste Massari.
european political science: 4 2005 political science of giovanni sartori
40

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About the Author
Gianfranco Pasquino is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna. He has written
widely on Italian and comparative politics. His most recent books are: Il sistema politico
italiano and Sistemi politici comparati, both published by Bononia University Press, in 2002
and 2004, respectively.
gianfranco pasquino european political science: 4 2005
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