A longstanding discussion in political theory concerns the relationship between factions and the possibility of attaining the common good. Madison, for example, argued that the effects of faction could be mitigated under certain circumstances. This research begins with the premise that factions involve groups of individuals whose choices are highly correlated. This assumption, which is in line with traditional concepts of factions, allows recent statistical techniques in multinomial probit (MNP) modelling to be used to indirectly compute behavioral correlations in a population. To test the capacity of this modelling strategy, MNP is used to generate geometric representations of six European polities and the U.S. Congress. Such models clarify the extent to which centripetal or centrifugal political forces connect factional patterns to political parties. The nations chosen for analysis allow for tests of several different electoral systems and how those voting rules give rise to a multitude of parties with a dominant center party.
