Parties and Party Systems

Why Study Parties in Comparative Politics?

• Parties are the product of democracy and mass franchise.

• They are the storehouses of power and help deepening democracy by
democratizing polity and spreading democratic values among citizens.
The political parties democratize polity by organizing, coordinating and
collocating political actors and issues.
• The parties present in a polity are responsible for maintaining a
responsible executive and accountability of the elected members to the
people.
• They play an important role in connecting the ‘political society’ with
the State: The actors in the political society find space within parties to
manipulate the government to act in their favour.
 Defining Party

Definition of party can be clubbed into the following three categories.

1. Normative: Burke provides the normative definition for whom ‘Party is
a body of man united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the
national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all
agreed’ (Burke 1948).
2. Motivational behaviour: The motivational aspect has been dealt by
Anthony Downs who defines the party in terms of specific objectives
and differentiates between ‘vote seeking’, ‘office seeking’ and ‘policy-
seeking’ parties. The vote-seeking approach defines party as ‘a team of
men seeking to control the government apparatus by gaining office in a
duly constituted election’ (Downs 1957, 25).
3. Operational: This definition examines the party’s internal functioning
as the key area to understand party behaviour and goals. Important
writers in this genre are Katz and Mair (1995), and Maor (1992). They
define parties as institutions. Differences between parties are
established in terms of patterns of internal management of parties and
the way party managers run the party.
 Development of Party Systems

There are mainly two theories on development of party systems: Social cleavage theory
(Lipset and Rokkan 1967) and sociological law theory (Duverger 1963).
Lipset and Rokkan
Following the Parsonian social stratification model with conceptual AGIL paradigm—
where A stands for Adaptation, G stands for Goal, I stands for Integration and L stands for
Latency in social system theory—Lipset and Rokkan have developed the inventory of
social and political cleavages in society leading to the formation of party systems.
They explain the social bases where the parties drew their strength from. Their three-
fold theory analyses state that nation-building when penetrates into the local level finds
territorial resistance. The local resistances produce ‘a variety of alliances’ among and
across the ‘communities of the nation’ (Lipset and Rokkan 1967, 9). In the third phase,
these resistances get channelized into the formation of parties. The crystalization of
parties led to the formation of party system depending on the alliances among forces.
Duverger
This law has been famously called Duverger’s Law. Duverger proposes one law and
another hypothesis. Duverger’s law states, ‘The simple majority single-ballot system
favors the two-party systems. Of all the hypotheses … in this book, this approaches most
nearly perhaps to a true sociological law’ ( Duverger 1963, 217). The hypothesis is ‘the
single-majority system with second ballot and proportional representation favours multi-
partyism’ (Duverger 1963, 239).
 Party Systems and Characteristics of

• The ‘pattern of relationship’ that is present among different parties constitutes a

system only if it is characterized by stability and a ‘degree of orderliness’. Based on
the orderliness we can have the following party systems: One party, one party
dominant, two party and multiparty systems.
• One-party systems:
o There exists other parties but a single party has ‘monopoly’ over power at the
expense of other parties.
o It excludes all other parties from power. In this sense it is a party system: Parties
are present but do not match the monopolistic power of the single party.
Differences between one-party system and one-party state:
• One-party system is different from the ‘one-party state’. One-party states have a
single party that represents the whole of society. It assumes that only one social
interest is supreme in politics and is the unified will of the people.
• If party system is an interaction between different units, then single-party system
is a system where the citizens, party and state machinery become a single body.
The party’s interest gets entrenched in the state machinery by virtue of
controlling the electorate through various means. The states where one-party
rules by capturing state machinery is called a ‘one- party state’ and their units are
seen as ‘fused “party-state” apparatus’.
 One-Party Dominant System

Kenneth J. Green has provided a working definition of the one-party dominant system as
‘hybrids that combine meaningful electoral competition with continuous executive and
legislative rule by a single party’ (Green 2007, 12).
• Pempel (1990) has mentioned four characteristics of a one-party dominant system:
1. In a dominant party system, the dominant party may have the lowest share of
votes in comparison to other parties but has the largest number of seat share in
comparison to plurality of parties present in a given political system.
2. The opposition parties may have the largest vote share but cannot form the
government because of the strategic position that the dominant party enjoys in
the polity. Sometimes, the opposition parties find it difficult to form government
without the help of the dominant party.
3. The dominance of one party continues for a long period.
4. The party has a vision of a ‘historical project’ and a political agenda for its
achievement (Pempel 1990, 3–4).
One-party dominant system is different from the authoritarian form of government in that
the one-party dominant system strives within what Green calls ‘meaningful electoral
competition’ (Greene 2007, 12ff, cited in Haren 2010, 3), whereas the authoritarian
regimes, especially the ‘closed authoritarian regimes’, neither have meaningful election
where other parties contest nor do they have opposition parties of any kind (Haren 2010,
3). For them, election is just a procedure to maintain the tag of democracy.
 Two-Party System

• There are a number of small parties present, but only two parties enjoy
enough ‘electoral and legislative strength’ to have the real prospect for
winning the election and forming government.
• The largest party basically on the basis of legislature strength rules and
the other party forms the opposition.
• Power alternates between the two parties as both retain the capacity
to be elected alternately or what is termed as ‘government in the
wings’ (Heywood 2013, 236).
 Multiparty System

• There are a number of small parties present, but only two parties enjoy
enough ‘electoral and legislative strength’ to have the real prospect for
winning the election and forming government.
• The largest party basically on the basis of legislature strength rules and
the other party forms the opposition.
• Power alternates between two parties as both retain the capacity to be
elected alternately or what is termed as ‘government in the wings’
(Heywood 2013, 236).
• Within the two-party systems there are variations. In Britain the two-
party system was present between 1945 and 1964. Thereafter came a
big lull to the two-party systems. As Hicks (1933) suggests, in America,
the two-party systems have the following tenets, first, is ‘the tenet of
originality’ that is two-party system is inscribed into the electoral
system of America. Second is the ‘tenet of immutability’ (Hicks 1933,
cited in Disch, 2007, 5), that is, it is the bedrock of democracy that is
‘unmoved by partisan contest.... immune to politics it is timeless and
unchanging (Disch 2007, 5)’.
 Multiparty Systems

Multiparty system polity is:

 characterized by the presence of more than two parties.
 The small parties can coexist along with the big parties through
coalitions and electoral arrangements.
 There are small parties within the coalition that restricts the bigger
party to come to power.
 The empirical evidence does not support the nomenclature of what
constitutes multiparty system.
In Germany, for example, it can be called as two-and half- party system as
CDU and SDP have equal strength but they are forced to work with small
democratic parties as coalition partners (Heywood 2013, 264).
 Types of Political Parties

• Classification of parties is based on a wide variety of criteria and it is

difficult to accommodate all parties in the world following a definitive
classificatory framework.
• Basis of classification is always a heuristic device. According to
Duverger, parties can be divided on the basis of structural
organizational set-up.
• Depending on the party’s behaviour and preferences one can
distinguish among policy-seeking, vote-seeking and office-seeking
parties.
• Many a time the typologies ignore the parties in the Third World and
pack all of them within the prevailing classificatory schema. For
instance, there is hardly any answer to the question on how one is
supposed to categorize the Islamic parties those have come up recently
in many Islamic countries?
• Nevertheless, literature on classification have divided parties into the
types as follows.
 Mass-based Parties

a. Openness based on political achievements: The appeal to the masses

and opening up for the people with their achievement rather than
ascription.
b. The capacity for abstraction for stable identification: The masses
identify the party as an abstract image that outlives the concrete
individual and leaders of the party. It binds people and leaders on its
‘own logic of inertia’.
c. Extensive organization to manage the masses: The mass parties are
‘organizational parties’. It has sizable permanent and bureaucratic
staffing and extensive organizational structure to manage people of
various shades.
d. A relatively large following: The label ‘mass party’ definitely involves a
quantitative element in that it has thousands of followers. It brings
along with it not only the influential people and those who represent
special interest but also any citizen who is ready to join the party. The
mass parties can derive direct as well as indirect membership.
 Cadre-based Parties

• According to Koole, the following are the main characteristics of the cadre parties:
 Predominance of professional leadership: The cadre-based parties are basically
dominated by the committed set of activists who work whole time for the party.
The parties recruit them and make them permanent members who are highly
accountable to the lower rung of party leaders and workers.
 Lower level of voting member’s ratio: In contrast to the mass-based party which
has a high level of voter and member ratio, the cadre-based party has a low
member/voter ratio. The members are important for mobilizing funds for
meeting party expenditures, recruiting candidates for offices and different
bodies to help party to remain functional.
 Broad-ranging orientation to voters: The cadre-based parties have strong
orientation to the voters. Their strategy is not to become a catch-all-party nor
are they interested in ‘focusing classe gardee’, that is, specific social-class.
 Vertical organization with internal democracy: The cadre parties maintain the
structure of the mass parties by retaining vertical organizational structure but it
maintains a specific image of the party by making it internally democratic. It
relies for financial resources on a combination of donations from the members
and public (Koole 1994, cited in Wolinetz 2002, 5).
 Revolutionary Parties

These parties do not follow the constitutional path to come to power.

 They believe in underground and clandestine activities of a
revolutionary nature.
 They rely on highly motivated cadres to mobilize and recruit the local
population.
 They also have a hierarchical structure which is more centralized in
organizing their party activities.
 The core committee in the party discusses what plans would be carried
out. This is followed by the other sub-committees which are set up at
different local units.
 They use clandestine plots to destabilize the government. Sometimes
they use disruptive activities to show the powerlessness of the
government that helps to mobilize the masses and cadres.
 Their propaganda and campaign is conducted by well-organized
ideological wings and writings. The resources are mobilized through
contributions of local units present in both rural and urban areas. The
revolutionary parties such as Communist Parties of Marxist and Leninist
in India is one such example.
 Catch-all Parties

Kirchheimer (1966) has provided the following characteristics of the catch-

all parties:
 Parties do not carry much of ‘ideological baggage’.
 The strength of leadership is judged on the basis of how they
contribute to efficient functioning of the whole social system. They do
not identify goals to be achieved for the organization.
 There is the obscuring of the role of the individual party member.
 Playing down of the role of ‘the class-gardée’, that is a specific social-
class and recruiting voters from population across the territory.
 Increasing access given to various interest groups for financial support
during elections.
 Other Bases of Classification

• Gunther and Diamond (2003, 173) though classified parties into 15 varieties, they provide
three criteria for classification of parties across the world. They are:
 ‘Formal organization’
 ‘Programatic commitments’
 The strategy that the parties adopts to promote values in society and control behavior
of party members
Accordingly, they have divided parties into 15 different ‘species’. They have borrowed from
biology and defined party organization as ‘genus’, that encompasses several species of political
parties. The five genera are:
 ‘Elite-based parties’
 ‘Mass-based parties’
 ‘Ethnicity-based parties’
 ‘Electoralist-parties’
 ‘Movement-parties’
• They have categorized the Islamist party within the fundamentalist party, which for Saleem
(2014) is highly contentious. Saleem states that Islam is not a monolithic religion. There is
nothing called the ‘Islam’, rather there are many ‘Islams’. For Saleem, it is difficult to
distinguish between an Islamist party and other parties only on the basis of a pledge of
allegiance to Islam or Islamic principles or Shariah (Saleem 2014, 1). He questions the
rationale of defining political parties that could not accommodate parties of the Islamic
countries, for instance, ‘Salafis’ or Global Islamist or Muslim Brotherhood which spans
across the national boundaries of the Muslim world.
 Conclusion

• The nature of the parties and party systems is undergoing tremendous

change in the neo-liberal era. The bases of the traditional parties are
shifting as there is movement of people across the world. The stable two-
party system is giving way to multiparty system in some established
democracies because of transformed social and political situations. It
remains to be seen what shape the party system would take once
European Union witnesses the Brexit. In many postcolonial countries,
different kinds of party systems are evolving. The party system is changing
from regional to national, ethnic to regionalization, and from clientelistic to
programmatic.
• There has been a major shift in the nature of representative form of
government in established democracies recently. Some of the matured and
established democratic countries such as the United States of America,
Brazil and India, are witnessing ‘electoral authoritarianism’, where the
party leaders are being elected by manipulating the established electoral
practices and ‘illiberal democracy’, where the leaders after getting elected
are suppressing minorities of all hues (Slater 2018). In this situation, it
remains to be seen what would be the nature of the parties and party
systems in matured, established and fledgling representative democracies
across the world.