Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PARTY SYSTEMS
PARTY POLITICS
Political parties are found in vast majority of countries and in most political systems.
Parties can range from being authotarian or democractic
They seek to come in power either through elections or through revolution
They may espouse ideologies of the left, right or center. Or diavao political ideas
together.
By the late 1950s some 80% of the world’s states were ruled by political parties.
Political parties are a part of the structure of mass politics.
Parties of the modern kind first emerged in the USA. Despite abhorence of parties
felt by the ‘founding fathers’ who created the US constituion.
TYPES OF PARTIES
Cadre and mass parties
Representative and integrative parites
Constitutional and revolutionary parties
Left wing and right wing parties
The most common distinction is that between cadre parties and mass parties the
term cadre party orginally meant a party of notables, dominaeted by an informal
group of leaders who saw little point in building up a mass organization. Such parties
invariably deveoped out of parlimentary factions or cliques at a time when the
franchise was limited. However the term “cadre” is now more commonly used in
communist parties to denote a trained anad professional party members who are
expected to exhibit a high level of political commitment and doctrinal discpline.
An example of cadre parties
The communist party of the soviet union
The nazi party in germany
The fascist party in italy
The chinese communist party
Most modern day parties fall into category of what “otto Kirchheimer”
termed ‘catch all parties” these are parties that drastically reduce their
ideological baggage in order to appeal to the larget possible number of
voters.
The best example of Catch all parties are found in USA in the
form of the Republicans and Democrats. Modern de-Ideologized
socialist parties such as the German Social democracts and Labour
Party found in UK also fit this descritpion because they form a model of
a mass party which focuses on leadership and unity and downgrades the
role of indvidual party member in trying to build up broad coalition of
support rather than relying on a particular social class or sectional
group.
PARTIES OF REPRESENTATION AND
PARTIES OF INTEGRATION
Their primary function is to secure votes in elections. They thus attempt
to relfect rather than shape, public opinon, in this respect representative
parties adopt a catch-all strategy and therefore place pragmatism before
principle and market research before popular mobilization.
The Sweden, social democractic labour party has held power for 65
years
MULTIPARTY SYSTEMS
Copetion amoongst more than two parties reducing the chances of a
single party government and increasing the likeleidhood of coalistions.
Howerver it is difficult to define multiparty systems in terms of the
number of major parties.