Political affiliate
Political Party
Political party, a group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power. Political parties originated in their modern form in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, along with the electoral and parliamentary systems, whose development reflects the evolution of parties. The term party has since come to be applied to all organized groups seeking political power, whether by democratic elections or by revolution.
These last-mentioned European parties demonstrated an equal aptitude for functioning within multiparty democracies and as the sole political party in a dictatorship. Developing originally within the framework of liberal democracy in the 19th century, political parties have been used since the 20th century by dictatorships for entirely undemocratic purposes.
Types of political party
A fundamental distinction can be made between cadre parties and mass-based parties.
Cadre parties
Cadre parties—i.e., parties dominated by politically elite groups of activists—developed in Europe and America during the 19th century. Except in some of the states of the United States, France from 1848, and the German Empire from 1871, the suffrage was largely restricted to taxpayers and property owners, and, even when the right to vote was given to larger numbers of people, political influence was essentially limited to a very small segment of the population. The mass of people were limited to the role of spectators rather than that of active participants.
Mass-based parties
Cadre parties normally organize a relatively small number of party adherents. Mass-based parties, on the other hand, unite hundreds of thousands of followers, sometimes millions. But the number of members is not the only criterion of a mass-based party. The essential factor is that such a party attempts to base itself on an appeal to the masses. It attempts to organize not only those who are influential or well known or those who represent special interest groups but rather any citizen who is willing to join the party. If such a party succeeds in gathering only a few adherents, then it is mass-based only in potential. It remains, nevertheless, different from the cadre-type parties.
At the end of the 19th century the socialist parties of continental Europe organized themselves on a mass basis in order to educate and organize the growing population of labourers and wage earners—who were becoming more important politically because of extensions of the suffrage—and to gather the money necessary for propaganda by mobilizing in a regular fashion the resources of those who, although poor, were numerous. Membership campaigns were conducted, and each member paid party dues.
Party systems
Party systems may be broken down into three broad categories: two-party, multiparty, and single-party. Such a classification is based not merely on the number of parties operating within a particular country but on a variety of distinctive features that the three systems exhibit.
Multiparty systems
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Two-party systems
A fundamental distinction must be made between the two-party system as it is found in the United States and as it is found in Great Britain. Although two major parties dominate political life in the two countries, the system operates in quite different ways.
Single-party systems
There have been three historical forms of the single-party system: communist, fascist, and that found in less-developed countries.
In communist countries of the 20th century, the party was considered to be the spearhead of the urban working class.
Parties and political power
Whether they are conservative or revolutionary, whether they are a union of notables or an organization of the masses, whether they function in a pluralistic democracy or in a monolithic dictatorship, parties have one function in common: they all participate to some extent in the exercise of political power, whether by forming a government or by exercising the function of opposition, a function that is often of crucial importance in the determination of national policy.
The struggle for power
Participation in power
It is difficult to envisage how representative democracy could function in a large industrialized society without political parties. In order for citizens to be able to make an intelligent choice of representative or president, it is necessary for them to know the real political orientation of each candidate. Party membership provides the clearest indication of this.
Power and representation
Only the functions of parties in democratic regimes will be considered in this section. The role of the single party in a dictatorship will be analyzed separately (see below Single-party systems).Once a political party has achieved electoral victory, the question arises of how much influence the party is to have on the government.