POLITICAL

PARTIES
APRIL GRACE R. PONCE
PS 311
INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS
LEARNING OUTCOMES
CONTENTS
• Political parties: an overview
• Origins and roles
• Party systems
• Party organizations
• Party membership
• Party finance
• Political parties in authoritarian states
WHAT IS POLITICAL PARTY?

A group identified by name and ideology that fields

candidates at elections in order to win public office
and control government.
 POLITICAL PARTIES: AN OVERVIEW
It would be hard to imagine political systems functioning without political parties, and yet their
history is far shorter than most people might imagine.
• 19th century- Russian political thinker Moisei Ostrogorski was one to recognize their growing
importance in modern politics, his conclusion were fully justified. Parties were seen as a
crucial tool in 20th century, drawing millions of people into the national political process for
the first time. They became accepted as the central representative device of liberal democracy.
Reflecting this new status, they began to receive explicit mention in new constitutions. Parties
had become part of the system, providing functions ranging from being the very foundations
of government, to aggregating interests, mobilizing voters, and recruiting candidates for office.

• Therein rests the problem. No longer do parties seem to be energetic agents of society, seeking
to bend the state towards their supporters’ interests. Appearing to be at risk of capture by the
state itself and seem to be less concerned with offering voters alternatives than with promoting
their own interests.
POLITICAL PARTIES: AN OVERVIEW
• With many parties now seen as self-serving and corrupt,
Mair (2008: 230) could speculate, in contrast to
Ostrogorski, that parties are in danger of ceasing to be a
political driving force.
• In authoritarian states, parties tend to be either non-existent
(in a few cases) or else one official party dominates.
• In countries that are poor and ethnically divided, parties
typically lack the ideological contrasts that provided a base
of party systems in most liberal democracies.
ORIGINS AND ROLES
Political parties are neither as old nor as central to government as we might suppose. They seem
to be the lifeblood of democratic politics, and yet governments and states have long been wary of
their potentially harmful impact on national unity, which is one reason why parties – unlike the
formal institutions of government – went unmentioned in early constitutions

In examining party origins, we can distinguish between two types:

• Cadre parties
• Mass parties
CADRE PARTIES
• were formed by members within a legislature joining together
around common concerns and fighting campaigns in an enlarged
electorate.
• Cadre parties are sometimes known as ‘caucus’ parties, the caucus
denoting a closed meeting of the members of a party in a legislature.
Such parties remain heavily committed to their leader’s authority,
with ordinary members playing a supporting role
MASS PARTIES
• originated outside legislatures, in social groups seeking
representation as a way of achieving their policy objectives.
• acquired an enormous membership organized in local branches, and
– unlike cadre parties – tried to keep their representatives on a tight
rein.
• They played an important role in education and political
socialization, funding education, organizing workshops, and
running party newspapers,
Catch-all parties (Kirchheimer, 1966)
• These respond to a mobilized political system in which
electoral communication takes place through mass media,
bypassing the membership. Such parties seek to govern in
the national interest, rather than as representatives of a
social group, the reality being that ‘a party large enough to
get a majority has to be so catch-all that it cannot have a
unique ideological program’ (Kirchheimer, quoted in
Krouwel, 2003: 29). Catch-all parties seek electoral
support wherever they can find it, their purpose being to
govern rather than to represent
PARTY SYSTEMS
• The overall configuration of political parties, based on their number, their relative
importance, the interactions among them, and the laws that regulate them.
• By focusing on the relationships between parties, a party system means more than
just the parties themselves, and helps us understand how they interact with one
another, and the impact of that interaction on the countries they govern.
FIVE ROLES OF POLITICAL PARTIES
There are also close links between the structure of elections and the party systems that
result, if we accept the findings of the political scientist Maurice Duverger.

DUVERGER’S LAW
More of a hypothesis than a universal law, this holds that ‘The simple-majority
single-ballot system favours the two-party system’ (Duverger, 1951)

Party systems fall into one of five types:

• no-party
• single-party
• dominant party
• two-party
• multi-party
COMPARING
PARTY
SYSTEMS
EUROPE’S MAJOR PARTY FAMILIES
PARTY ORGANIZATION
A major party’s organization will include staff or volunteers
operating at national, regional, and local levels, and even at a wider
level in the case of those national parties in Europe that have formed
pan-European federations. This complexity means that any large
party is decentralized. While references to ‘the party’ as a single
entity are unavoidable, they simplify a highly fragmented reality
PARTY ORGANIZATION
A major party’s organization will include staff or volunteers
operating at national, regional, and local levels, and even at a wider
level in the case of those national parties in Europe that have formed
pan-European federations. This complexity means that any large
party is decentralized. While references to ‘the party’ as a single
entity are unavoidable, they simplify a highly fragmented reality

NICHE PARTY
A political party that appeals to a narrow section of the electorate.
They are positioned away from the established centre and highlight
one particular issue
IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY
• As developed by Robert Michels, this states that the
organization of political parties – even those formally
committed to democracy – becomes dominated by a ruling
elite

SAFE DISTRICT
• An electoral district in which a political party has such
strong support that its candidate/s are all but assured of
victory.

SELECTORATE
• The people who nominate a party’s candidates for an election
 PARTY LEADERS
The method of selecting the party leader
deserves more attention that it usually receives
(Pilet and Cross, 2014), for the obvious reason
that party leaders in most parliamentary systems
stand a good chance of becoming prime
minister.

SELECTING PARTY LEADERS IN LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES

 CANDIDATES
There are several options available for selecting legislative candidates, ranging from
the exclusive (selection by the party leader) to the inclusive (an open vote of the
entire electorate).

Who selects candidates for legislative elections?

•The electoral system: Choosing candidates for individual
constituencies in a plurality system is a more
decentralized task than preparing a single national list in
a party list system
• Incumbents: Sitting members of a legislature
have an advantage almost everywhere, usually
achieving reselection without much fuss. Often,
candidates for office are only truly ‘chosen’
when the incumbent stands down.
• Rules: Nearly all countries impose conditions
such as citizenship on members of the
legislature while many parties have also
adopted gender quotas for candidates
 PRIMARY ELECTION
A contest in which a party’s supporters select its candidate for
a subsequent election (a direct primary), or choose delegates
to the presidential nominating convention (a presidential
primary). A closed primary is limited to a party’s registered
supporters
PARTY MEMBERSHIP
Party membership was once an important channel for participation in politics, but
this is no longer the case: most major European countries saw a dramatic fall in
party membership between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Europe’s declining party membership

The recent reduction in membership has occurred in tandem with dealignment among
voters and reflects similar causes. These include:
• The weakening of traditional social divisions such as class and
religion.
• The loosening of the bond linking labour unions and socialist
parties.
• The decay of local electioneering in an era of media based
campaigns.
• The greater appeal of social movements and social media.
• The declining standing of parties, often linked to cases of
corruption.
• The perception of parties as forming a single structure of
established authority with the state (Whiteley, 2011)
PARTY FINANCE
Falling membership means reduced income for parties in an era when expenses (not
least for election campaigns) continue to rise. The problem of funding political parties
has therefore become highly significant

CARTEL PARTY
Leading parties that exploit their combined dominance of the political market to
establish rules of the game, such as public funding, which reinforces its own strong
position
THE PROS AND CONS OF PUBLIC FUNDING FOR
POLITICAL PARTIES
POLITICAL PARTIES IN AUTHORITARIAN
STATES
The party is a means of governing, and neither a source of power in itself nor a channel
through which elections are contested, won and lost.
Form of government ➩ Federal presidential republic consisting of 31 states and
the Federal District of Mexico City. State formed in 1821, and most recent
constitution adopted 1917.

Legislature ➩ Bicameral National Congress: lower Chamber of Deputies (500

members) elected for three-year terms, and upper Senate (128 members)
elected for six-year terms. Members may not serve consecutive terms.
POLITICAL PARTIES IN AUTHORITARIAN
STATES
Executive ➩ Presidential. A president is elected for a single six-year term,
and there is no vice president.
Judiciary ➩ A Supreme Court of 11 members nominated for single 15-year
terms by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Electoral system ➩ A
straight plurality vote determines the presidency, while mixed member
majoritarian is used for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate: 300 single-
member plurality (SMP) seats and 200 proportional representation seats in the
Chamber, and a combination of SMP, first minority and at-large seats in
the Senate. Parties ➩ Multi-party. Mexico was long a one-party system, but
democratic reforms since the 1990s have broadened the field such that three
major parties now compete at the national and state level, with a cluster
of smaller parties.
POLITICAL PARTIES IN AUTHORITARIAN
STATES
• A ruling party provides a counter-balance to other potential threats, notably the military.
• Elections help to identify and purge potential rivals for power. • A dominant party can oversee
elections, distribute bribes to voters and provide a channel for rewarding loyal members.
• A leading party and election campaigns provide a useful channel of information from
government to the people and, on routine matters, from people to the government.
• A national party must organize supporter networks throughout the country, thereby extending
the government’s reach into outlying districts. • A governing party educates and socializes
members to support the regime’s ideology and economic strategy. Elections campaigns attempt
the same for ordinary citizens.
SYNTHESIS
In comparative politics, there is a growing understanding of the importance of political parties.
They play a crucial role in representing interests, mobilizing support, and shaping policies.
Scholars study parties in relation to other political actors and use rationalist approaches to
analyze their behavior. This synthesis highlights the need to examine party organization,
ideology, and strategies in conjunction with other actors to understand their impact on
governance and democratic processes.
REFERENCES

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2057891119831470

Kasuya, Y., & Sawasdee, S. N. (2019). The transformation of dominant

parties in Asia: Introduction to the special issue. Asian Journal of
Comparative Politics, 4(1), 3-7.

https://doi.org/10.1177/2057891119831470
 End of
discussion
any questions?