This paper examines the reception given to Duverger’s work by academics in Britain and America. Initially, his work on political parties attracted a great deal of attention from prominent scholars in the discipline. It was only later that his insight into electoral systems–“now known as Duverger’s law–“became more widely recognized. While Duverger was not the first to note the relationship between electoral systems and party systems, his work offered one of the earliest explanations for that relationship. In offering that explanation, Duverger’s work was a key step in the intellectual development of political science and of research in electoral systems.