11' Political parties

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11. Political parties party systems
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Political party

• Any political group identified by an official
  label that presents at elections, and is capable
  of placing through elections candidates for
  public office (Sartori)

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Four functions

• (1) direction to government
• (2) political recruitment
• (3) interest aggregation
• (4) brand

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Crisis of parties?

• Vision no longer radically different
• Links weakening (voter-party)
• Party membership falling ageing
• Communication TV, rather than party
• Financing subscriptions ? subsidies

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Box 11.1 parties in W Europe

• General idea
• Three levels national, sub-national,
  supra-national
• National government/opposition, legislature,
  central organization

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Party organization

• Internal organization key for understanding how
  parties work
• Genetic account (Panebianco)
• - Elite/cadre party
• - Mass party
• - Catch-all party

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Power within the party

• Roberto Michels power within the German Social
  Democratic Party
• Iron law of oligarchy who says organization,
  says oligarchy
• Oligarchy rule by and for the few

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Selection candidates leaders

• Candidates
• largely a function of electoral system
• primaries a mixed blessing
• Leaders (Box 11.4)

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Membership finance

• Paradox membership ? money ?
• Membership decline in numbers, decline in
  participation (credit card members)
• Dealignment (similar causes)
• Consequence increased reliance on state support

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Emergence of cartel parties

• leading parties that exploit their dominance of
  political market to establish rules of the game
  e.g., public funding to reinforce their own
  position

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Social base of parties

• Parties emerge at crucial points of conflict in
  history
• Reflected in parties
• ideology
• social base of support

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Three revolutions

• National revolution
• Industrial revolution
• (Post-industrial revolution)

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National revolution

• National revolution conflicts
• Center vs. periphery
• State/Church

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Industrial revolution

• Industrial revolution conflicts
• Employers vs. workers
• Urban vs. rural
• (side note Russian revolution ? Communists vs.
  socialists)

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Freezing hypothesis

• The party systems of the 1960s reflect the
  political conflicts/divisions of the 1920s
• True for the 1950s-1960s, less so today
  post-industrial revolution

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Post-industrial revolution

• Conflict
• post-materialists (Green parties) vs.
  materialists (extreme right-wing parties)
• Protest parties

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Party system

• A party system denotes the interaction between
  the significant parties
• Parties respond/interact
• Legal regulations

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Party systems

• (No party authoritarian)
• (One-party totalitarian)
• Dominant party
• Two-party
• Multi-party

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Dominant party systems

• One party is constantly in office, either
  governing alone or in a coalition
• Examples S Africas ANC, Swedens Social
  Democrats, Japans Liberal-Democrats
• ? Factionalism, sclerosis, corruption

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Two-party systems

• Two major parties compete to form single-party
  governments
• Examples Great Britain (Conservative Labor
  parties) US (Republican Democratic parties)
• Decline (except the US, perhaps Britain)

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Multiparty systems

• Several minority parties in the legislature, no
  party has majority
• ? coalition governments
• Examples Israel, Netherlands, Belgium
• Assessment mixed (good in good times, not when
  radical reform needed)

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Parties in new democracies

• Lack of cohesiveness, of mass membership, even
  ideology
• Post-communist parties follow the American,
  rather than Western European model
• Is this a potential problem?

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Parties in non-democratic regimes
authoritarianism vs. totalitarianism

• Authoritarian regimes pre-party (traditional) or
  anti-party
• Totalitarian regimes Communism vs. fascism

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Democratic centralism

• Based on two principles
• centralism top-down decision-making
• democracy bottom-up elections
• Democratic centralism centralism w/o democracy