Teaching Party Systems: A Culinary Demonstration

Abstract

Duverger’s Law—the principle that first-past-the-post systems tend to promote two major political parties while proportional representation systems tend to promote multipartism—is a commonly taught topic in introductory and some upper-level political science courses across subfields. However, it also contains concepts that are difficult for undergraduate students to grasp, particularly those who are unfamiliar with other electoral systems. In partial response to these concerns, this article introduces a memorable in-class demonstration that utilizes food items to illustrate the logic behind Duverger’s Law. The demonstration serves as a flexible blend between lecture-oriented and active learning techniques, and can be adapted to teach other topics—such as directional and proximity models of voting, the Median Voter Theorem, and other topics in rational choice theory. Preliminary evidence presented suggests that students enjoy the demonstration, remember the concepts, and perform better on assessments related to the topic. The article concludes by challenging political science educators to develop and share more demonstration-type activities, which are commonly used in STEM and other fields.

Keywords:

• Political parties
• Duverger’s law
• demonstration
• undergraduate education

Notes

1 For instance, an instructor who is trained in American politics may not have sufficient familiarity with the many parties in the German Bundestag to feel confident in using it as an example in class.

2 I thank an anonymous reviewer for this excellent suggestion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andre P. Audette

Andre P. Audette is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Monmouth College (Monmouth, IL). His research and teaching areas are in political behavior, identity politics, and political inequality, focused especially on racial and ethnic minorities and religious groups in the United States.