210 WORLD POLITICS culture (the Continental European democracies).The third type is not included in this classification. In what respects are Switzerland,Scandinavia,and the Low Coun- tries "in between"the Anglo-American and Continental European democracies?Here,too,Almond consistently uses the two criteria of role structure and political culture.A differentiated role structure (or a high degree of subsystem autonomy)is related to the performance of the political aggregation function in a society.The best aggregators are parties in two-party systems like the Anglo-American democracies, but the larger the number and the smaller the size of the parties in a system,the less effectively the aggregation function will be performed; in the Continental European multi-party systems only a minimum of aggregation takes place.The "working multi-party systems"of the Scandinavian and Low Countries differ from the French-Italian "crisis" systems in that some,though not all,of their parties are "broadly ag- gregative."Almond gives the Scandinavian Socialist parties and the Belgian Catholic and Socialist parties as examples.This criterion does not distinguish adequately between the two types of democracies, however:if one calls the Belgian Catholic party broadly aggregative, the Italian Christian Democrats surely also have to be regarded as such.On the other hand,none of the Dutch and Swiss parties can be called broadly aggregative. Instead of using the extent of aggregation performed by political parties as the operational indicator of the degree of subsystem auton- omy,it is more satisfactory to examine the system's role structure directly.Like the Anglo-American countries,the Scandinavian states have a high degree of subsystem autonomy.But one finds a severely limited subsystem autonomy and considerable interpenetration of par- ties,interest groups,and the media of communication in the Low Countries,Switzerland,and also in Austria.In fact,subsystem auton- omy is at least as limited in these countries as in the Continental Eu- ropean systems.According to the criterion of role structure,therefore, one arrives at a dichotomous rather than a threefold typology:the 11 Almond and Powell,259 (italics omitted). 1Almond,rapporteur,"A Comparative Study of Interest Groups and the Political Process,"American Political Science Review,Lit (March 1958),275-77;Almond,"A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics,"in Almond and James S.Coleman,eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960),42-43.Sec also Goran G.Lindahl, "Gabriel A.Almond's funktionella kategorier:En kritik,"Statsvetenskaplig Tid- skrift,No.4 (1967),263-72;and Constance E.van der Maesen and G.H.Scholten,"De functionele benadering van G.A.Almond bij het vergelijken van politieke stelsels," Acta Politica,1(I965-66),220-26