8.1 The origin and function of political parties
Political parties are one of the most important institutions, without them, it would be impossible to imagine a modern democracy and democratic elections.
In democracies, political parties are the main participants in the election campaign, determining their content. They nominate candidates in a number of countries they monitor the pre-election advertising. Political parties and party leaders play an important, and sometimes a major role in setting the agenda. In the governments of many countries, parties control the decision-making process, develop and implement a specific policy.
Parties exist in modern autocratic regimes as well. However, the functions performed by them in these cases, differ substantially from those tasks that they resolve in a democratic society, and the parties themselves are such only by name.
A political party is a voluntary organisation of a group of voters, striving for joint participation in the competition for state power to implement their political requests.
Parties differ from other political institutions by a number of specific features. Party is a democratic institution that performs a number of functions. Let us remember the most important ones.
Firstly, it is a function of the expression and representation of group interests at the political level.
Secondly, the parties perform the function of the group interests’ accumulation; highlight the most important and formulating them in a program. In different societies, accumulation of interest occurs in different ways, and this varies depending on the role of parties.
Third, an important function of the parties is the recruitment of the ruling elite. Under recruitment, there is meant the selection of cadres for the party and other political organisations, including the nomination of candidates for representative bodies, the executive office and the bureaucracy. In some countries, the party is almost a monopoly in the implementation of this function. For example, the majority of leading UK politicians owe their position to party career.
Parties fulfil an important function of political socialisation. In some countries, in obedience to the family tradition and upbringing, people need an emotional commitment to one or another party. Parties here are the agents of socialisation, forming a particular set of political values and attitudes of the citizens. But, of course, the main function of the parties is the conquest of political power.
However, none of these features is unique to the political parties. The group interests can be expressed by the interest groups; their accumulation can be taken over by the Parliament; many other institutions, such as the education system are engaged in the recruitment of elite; the values and orientations are formed under the influence of the media, the family, etc.
The parties in the modern sense emerged relatively lately. Since its inception, the party has undergone a significant evolution – the nature of the operation, the role and place in the political process changed. One of the causes of the political parties emergence (as well as any other public institution) is the formation of specific functional needs of the political system in their existence. Historically, the emergence of parties in Western Europe was due to the modernization process, the emergence of the nation-state, as well as the allocation and development of civil society. In domestic literature, the birth of a party is more often associated with the emergence of new social classes, as well as institutions for representative government and universal suffrage. An important role is also played by the increasing heterogeneity within the civil society. This initially consisted of only a limited range of the inhabitants of a country. This differentiation led to the formation of various clubs and associations as a means of articulation of group interests. These organisations became a supplement to the institutions designed to represent the interests of the whole civil society as an equal actor.
Political parties and interest groups arose immediately after the establishment of a republican form of government and formed gradually. Although the appearance of protoparty formations is chronologically associated with the periods of bourgeois revolutions, they did not play a functional role in the political process, which modern political parties started to perform later. Interestingly, at first, the attitude towards them was negative. The idea of the functional utility of political parties and interest groups emerged only at the end of the XVIII-XIX century. The need for political parties and associations for the democratic government was recognised by Alexis de Tocqueville, who considered the existence of these organisations as a way to ensure pluralism of interests and prevent the usurpation of power.
At the initial stage of its development, the party almost did not perform the function of a political representation of the interests of social groups, being a political instrument of the enterprise, ensuring competition of elite groups in the struggle for power.
With the introduction of universal suffrage that opened the access to legitimate participation in the political life for the general public, there began to emerge fundamentally different political organisations with mass membership and a more developed administrative apparatus. There are created parties, which originated from the extra-parliamentary organisation structures that were used to break through into the representative bodies. So were almost all social democratic and labour parties. For example, the British Labour Party. The emergence of parties with mass membership says that they acquire a mass social base, the specifics of which, as well as the position of the parties on key issues of social and political life, reflects the major social and political divisions in society. The acquisition of the social base of the parties with all the consequences corresponds to the industrial stage of social development.
The transformation of the party into the institute of political representation of the interests of social groups was accompanied by strengthening the ideological component of their activities. This resulted in the emergence of party programs and the gradual transformation of parties into instruments of legitimation of policies, not just the position of elite groups. A party became necessary and was recognised by citizens as an instrument of legitimising power. This party model prevailed in the XX century, corresponding to the era of mass politics.
8.2 Structure and Types of Political Parties
Political parties can be classified in a number of formal features. The basis for most classifications served a variety of internal structures of these organisations. The authorship of the most renowned classical typology belongs to the French researcher Duverger. It allocates human and mass parties, which differ in the number of members, organisational features, the main areas of activity and leadership principles.
Cadre parties are relatively few organisations with a free membership, based primarily on the social and financial elite, capable of providing support for the party and influence. Cadre parties operate mainly in the period of the election campaign, and in the intervals between their activity stops. As a rule, they tend to lack an official reception into the party.
Mass parties differ primarily in a large number of its members. From a financial point of view, it relies heavily on membership fees. Mass parties maintain a close and continuing relationship of their members, and their activities have an educational or ideological orientation. The leadership in a mass party belongs to professional politicians, the centre of power is in the party organisation itself. The emergence of mass parties coincides with the introduction of universal suffrage.
Along with the Duverger classification, there is also widely used the typology of Z. Neumann, who distinguished the parties of individual representation, whose functions are reduced only to the articulation of the interests of certain groups and patronage, and mass integration party applying for the role of group integration, socialisation and mobilisation agents.
The classification of the parties by the nature of their ideological doctrines is fairly common in contemporary political science. In this case, we speak of liberal, conservative, socialist, social democratic, nationalist, fascist and other parties.
The division of political parties is also possible on the basis of their relationship to the nature of political altercation. There are allocated conservative parties (aiming for the preservation of the existing institutions of the political system, the established order and tradition), liberal parties (the reformist, pro-evolutionary changes in the political system of the society) and the revolutionary parties (radical extremists, advocating radical change in the existing order).
By the place in the political system, we can speak of ruling parties (won the elections, formed the parliamentary majority) and the opposition parties (deprived of the opportunity to participate directly in the implementation of the decisions related to the use of political power).
According to the legal status, there are distinguished legal parties (operating under existing legislation) and illegal (forbidden by law, conceding the possibility of using illegal, violent methods in the political struggle – terrorism, sabotage, and so on.).
According to the methods and modus operandi, as well as the nature of inner-party relations there are distinguished centralised parties (which are characterised by fierce intra-party discipline, no fractions, autocratic nature of power) and decentralised parties (with internal party factionalism and the freedom of the vote).
By the position in the spectrum of political parties they are divided on the left, which include the communist, socialist and social-democratic parties, centrist – liberal, liberal-democratic parties, and the right – nationalist, conservative parties.
8.3 Current trends in the development of political parties
In recent decades, the impact of the traditional institutions of political representation, including political parties has reduced. This manifests itself in reducing the confidence in the political parties and the weakening of identification with them. At the level of the political behaviour, the instability of electoral preferences is growing and occurs a reduction in the number of political parties’ members.
The quality of the parties’ composition changed. Firstly, the share of older people has increased. Second, the motivation of young people to join the party became career motivated.
There have been major changes at the level of party systems: it is the crisis of many seemingly stable party systems; serious evolution of others and the emergence of new parties, which play a significant role in the political life.
Many of the mentioned trends have led to the conclusion, reached by a number of analysts and researchers, of the ongoing crisis of party activism and party politics.
The causes of the crisis of political parties can be grouped into the following groups:
1) Changes in the socio-cultural sphere, associated with the transition to the post-industrial stage of society development. Due to these changes, the social and ideological differences that have led to the formation of political parties began to lose their former sharpness in the 1960–1970ies.
In 1960–1970ies there were significant changes in the social structure, which altered the interaction between the parties and the voters. The most significant impact was provided by:
– the reduction and collapse of traditional social groups (the working class, the traditional middle class, the peasantry, and others);
– further social differentiation on the basis of new criteria of social stratification such as education and occupation;
– the emergence of the new middle social strata (the new middle class);
– improved living standards, an increase in wages, better working conditions, lifestyle changes based on production and consumption more individualized than in the heyday of mass society;
– an increase in geographic mobility and the collapse of traditional local communities;
– crisis of traditional social identification and individualization of social protest.
The political events of the last decades of the XX century demonstrated false hopes, related to implementation of major social change projects. The development of the welfare state, which led to the convergence of the level of life and objectives of many citizens, individualization of consciousness helped to reduce the attractiveness of traditional ideologies, such as communist, and a drop in confidence in the major projects of social transformation.
2) Another important group of factors of the traditional political parties crisis includes various phenomena associated with changes in communication channels.
The technological advances of the modern information society formed a new situation in the political dialogue. Previously, a citizen was forced to take fairly active steps to orient in the political space, for example attending party meetings or rallies, buying the party press. In connection with the development of audio-visual and electronic media the situation has changed radically. The rapid development of the media has expanded the audience, resulting in the loss of the monopoly of parties in shaping public opinion; it has made contact with party leaders mediated. Media development teaches citizens to be a consumer more than a party member.
3) The next group of reasons is in fact political factors. Among them there are distinguished the reasons associated with the logic of the development of parties as a political representative institutions struggling for power. Factors of that group – changing relations between the parties, the state and society. The crisis of party activism and change in the very nature of political competition implies costly advertising campaigns, resulted in a commitment of parties to seek additional resources, including public funding. This has resulted in strengthening of the ties between the parties and the state. To maintain their position, the parties are forced to adapt to new conditions, revising personnel policies, ideology and program style activities, and relationships with voters, partners and opponents, etc.
4) In recent decades, new types of political parties have emerged. The emergence of the new types of political parties shows the transformation of the model of democracy. There are observed other trends in the development of the party life: there are new, alternative forms of political organization, such as mass movement, the “new wave” parties, the right-wing populist parties. The extinction of mass parties noted by many researchers is a natural phenomenon. However, it cannot be regarded as evidence of the disappearance of the parties as a political representative institution. Such a conclusion would be warranted if the location of a mass party in modern politics remained vacant. But it’s just not there. Whatever the prospects of cartel parties, new wave or right-wing populist parties, and it is clear that their appearance marks not only the extinction of the party organization as its development in the new conditions.
8.4 Party systems and peculiarities of their development at the present stage
The totality of the political parties in a particular political system, as well as a communication system that develops between them in the struggle for political power and its implementation is called the party system. Based on the number of parties there are allocated one-party, two-party and multi-party system.
The one-party system is characterized by the absence of a real struggle for power and its monopolization by any one party. Such a system in its pure form, exists in the totalitarian political regime countries, where the ruling party (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the National Socialist Party in Germany, the Workers’ Party of North Korea, and so on) establishes the full control over the state and society, eliminating the opposition, it prohibits the existence of other parties.
Totalitarianism thus, by definition, involves a one-party system, and even if other party associations are registered in the country, they exist only formally, without taking part in the political struggle – the real power belongs to only one party. But we cannot say that the one-party system is a mandatory feature of the totalitarian political regime. For example, despite the existence of many parties for almost 50 years in Japan, the majority of seats in parliament belonged to the Liberal Democratic Party in 1946. Similar situation occurred in India in the 1950-80-ies, where in competition with Indian independence party the Indian National Congress received an overwhelming number of votes and its leader (Gandhi dynasty – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi) held the post of prime minister.
One-party systems are characterized by unconditional stability, conflict-free, predictable policy, but at the same time in the absence of competition are eventually prone to bureaucracy, conservatism, transforming the party into a closed social group, incapable of effective public administration.
The two-party system presupposes a model of political competition, in which the party of the whole spectrum of this or that political system, only two parties are included in a real fight for votes, replacing each other in power. The classic two-party systems are the US party system (Republicans and Democrats) and Great Britain (the Labour Party and the Conservatives).
The winning party shall independently determine the political course of the country, while the opposition – the party that lost the election – gets the function of implementing control over the activities of the ruling party.
A fairly common type of two-party system is a so-called 2 + 1 system, in which neither of the two largest parties can rely on their own electoral victory. In this case, the role of small parties dramatically increases, which may provide an advantage in votes in the formation of the government by parliamentary means. This situation can be seen in the modern party system in Germany.
The multi-party system is most prevalent in Western Europe (Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and so on). This system has the following characteristic features: a plurality of competition games, conflicts, the orientation of the majority of existing political parties in the system directly involved in the distribution of power through the creation of the parliamentary coalition. Italian political scientist George Sartori in his famous work “The parties and party systems” proposed an original seven-level classification of the party systems. Among the main varieties of multi-party system Sartori singled out limited pluralism (Belgium, the Netherlands), a system of extreme pluralism (Italy) and atomized system (Malaysia). Party is an attribute of civil society but not government. Currently, in political science there is a formula, according to which the number of parties in a multiparty system, one time more than the number of social cleavages in society. However, it is only true for stable democratic regimes.
In the last quarter of the XX century, Western parties have entered a new phase of development, characterized by a significant reduction in their social influence. Faced with challenges such as the decline in the numbers and aging membership base, absenteeism growth, the emergence of the anti-party minded protest groups, the rooted party associations have experienced serious difficulties, that prompted them to develop a new model of behavior. And although the changes mainly concerned the relationship of the state and inter-party cooperation, they are reflected in the internal structure of political parties. According to some researchers, the extent of these changes has been so great that it has led to the emergence of a new type of party – the cartel. Conceptualization of the parties of this type was proposed by R. Katz and P. Mayr in 1995. The process of formation of cartel groupings is still at an early stage and the degree of its development in different countries will be different. As a whole, the concept of the cartel party is still nothing more than a hypothesis, some provisions of which are confirmed in party reality, while others are not.
In recent years, fundamentally new typologies and models began to appear in the scientific literature. Taking into account the increasingly obvious medialisation and personalization of politics, many authors began to identify the so-called media parties among modern party groups. Some of the modern scientific typologies are based on economic models and use elements of the theory of rational choice.
However, new features, which are increasingly evident in the appearance of modern parties, do not always induce researchers to abandon traditional classifications.
Summarizing the aforesaid, it can be stated that the historical evolution of the parties was largely determined by the presence of a dominant party type that reflected the key trends of party development at this stage. The change in the dominant party type, as a rule, was caused by a change in the environment, which forced the parties to adapt to the new conditions by modifying their internal structure and behaviour patterns.
Control questions
Self-control questions