Studies of political parties in Latin America have often been descriptive and not directed to link a theoretical foundation about political parties with qualitative or quantitative empiricism. This was in part because parties in the region were usually perceived as rather unimportant in the political arena. This study attempts to correct this often unjustified proposition by focusing on the development of political parties in five Central American countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The analysis focuses particularly on the relationship between party fragmentation, party polarization, the level of democracy, and socio-economic modernization. The quantitative analysis uses a cross-national longitudinal research design and tries to overcome shortcomings in prior descriptive approaches based on case studies. The overall findings show that party fragmentation and party polarization are positively related to the level of democracy in Central America.

Les partis politiques macédoniens ont été relativement peu étudiés. Les problèmes de la construction du nouvel Etat, à la fois dans un environnement difficile et quant à l’intégration de l’importante minorité albanaise, ont éclipsé ceux du nouveau système politique. L’attention portée à l’ingénierie constitutionnelle y a contribué. Pourtant, les partis sont au cœur de la démocratie pluraliste.En dehors de la problématique commune de la formation des partis politiques dans les transitions post-communistes, le cas macédonien présente des originalités par le rôle des racines historiques pour les partis relevants et l’importance des partis ethniques, qui ont évolué entre la contestation de l’Etat et du nouveau système et l’intégration politique par la participation grandissante au jeu démocratique, y compris au niveau gouvernemental. / Macedonian political parties have been relatively little studied. In Macedonia, political system transformation has been mainly dominated by state building issues, problems related to Albanian minority integration and the process of designing a new constitutional arrangement. Nevertheless, political parties are considered to be key actors in pluralist democracy. Macedonian parties have their own particularities when compared to general models of post-communist party development. The originality of the Macedonian parties thus lies in the importance accorded to historical legacies in party formation, as well as in the role played by ethnic actors in the process of democratization.

The paper analyzes the impact that preferential voting has had on elections and the party system, particularly in the case of Peru. It presents, in the first place, the issue of preferential voting as an element of the electoral system. Then, it continues with the study of the particular case of Peru, in which it indicates its origin, the mechanics it follows, the impact on the Parliament and its evaluation. / El artículo busca analizar el impacto que tiene y ha tenido el voto preferencial sobre los procesos electorales y el sistema de partidos, de manera particular en el caso peruano. Presenta en primera instancia, el tema del voto preferencial como elemento del sistema electoral, para continuar con su estudio en el caso particular de Perú en donde señala su origen, la mecánica que sigue, el impacto en el parlamento y su evaluación.