Politics & International Relations
Political Parties
Political parties are organized groups of people with similar political aims and opinions. They play a crucial role in representative democracies by nominating candidates for public office and mobilizing voters. Political parties also develop and promote policy proposals, serving as a link between the government and the public.
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eBook - ePubCampaigns and Elections
Players and Processes
- Stephen K. Medvic(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
4 Political PartiesDOI: 10.4324/9781003125099-4A EMERICANS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN deeply suspicious of Political Parties. George Washington warned “in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party” in his “Farewell Address” in 1796.1 People blame parties for a variety of sins, including partisan bickering that leads to polarization instead of solutions to problems. And yet most political scientists believe, along with E. E. Schattschneider, that “modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of Political Parties.”2 Why are parties so disliked if they are essential to democracy? What makes them essential in the first place? This chapter addresses those questions as it explores the role of Political Parties in campaigns and elections in the United States.What Is a Political Party?
Before discussing the history and activity of American parties, it might be a good idea to offer a definition of political party. As one scholar famously defined the term, a political party is “a team seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining office in a duly constituted election.”3 In other words, it is an organization that seeks to gain power by running candidates for office. A crucial element in the definition of a political party is that parties nominate candidates and provide a banner under which those candidates compete for office. This attribute clearly distinguishes a party from an interest group. Although interest groups may endorse and support candidates, candidates do not stand for them, and the organizations’ names do not appear on ballots.The preceding definition relies heavily on the organizational aspect of Political Parties, and with good reason: when we think of the term political party, we probably have an organization in mind. Parties have employees, organizational goals, and internal cultures. And, of course, they are visible actors in elections, with candidates who align with them. But parties are more than that. They are also entities with which most voters (and many nonvoters) identify, and they help structure the operation of government. V. O. Key, Jr. developed this tripartite conceptualization—party organization, party in the electorate, and party in government—in the middle of the 20th century, and although there are newer ways to conceptualize parties (as we’ll see toward the end of this chapter), it is still a useful way to think about parties.4
eBook - ePub- Laura Chaqués-Bonafont, Jacint Jordana, Chaqués-Bonafont, Laura, Jordana, Jacint, Laura Chaqués-Bonafont, Jacint Jordana(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Policy Press(Publisher)
In liberal democracies organised around party government, Political Parties play a key role in the governance of political institutions due to their ability to build parliamentary majorities, recruit staff to executives, and draft electoral programmes that are expected to guide public action (Blondel and Cotta, 1996, 2000). Despite their currently changing role as mediators between civil society and the democratic state, parties have tended to be characterised by the recruitment of political personnel as well as by the articulation, aggregation, and mobilisation of social interests (Hershey, 2006). However, these actors’ capacities and contributions to policy analysis are far from being clear and direct, inasmuch as this is gradually ceasing to be one of the central duties that Political Parties carry out in contemporary political systems. On the other hand, Political Parties might still have a role in policy-making processes through other alternative strategies to policy analysis: for instance, clientelism and patronage (Hopkin, 2006). The development of policy analysis within Political Parties depends substantially on where it is developed. Following Katz and Mair (1993), Political Parties are institutions comprising at least three very different faces: the party on the ground, made up of its members and regional structure; the party central office, that is, its organisation and the power relations at the top of that organisation; and the party in public office, which deals with the presence of party members in parliament or government. Each of these faces implies different ways of involving parties in the policy-making process and in policy analysis
No longer available |Learn more- Curt Lader(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Barrons Educational Services(Publisher)
The nature of the party system in America can be viewed as competitive. Since the development of our first parties—the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans—different philosophies and approaches to the development and implementation of public policy have determined which party and which leaders control the government. Our system has been one of the few two-party systems existing in democracies; however, the influence of third-party candidates cannot be underestimated. Parliamentary democracies have multiparty systems.Because the aim of a political party is to influence public policy, in order to succeed, parties must draw enough of the electorate into their organization and ultimately must get enough votes to elect candidates to public office. You can, therefore, look at a political party in three ways:as an organization,its relationship with the electorate, andits role in government.In order to achieve their goals, all Political Parties have the following common functions:nominating candidates who can develop public policy,running successful campaigns,developing a positive image,raising money,articulating these issues during the campaign so that the electorate will identify with a particular party or candidate,coordinating, in the governing process, the implementation of the policies they supported, andmaintaining a watchdog function if they do not succeed in electing their candidates.The completion of each of these tasks depends on how effective the party’s organization is, the extent the party establishes its relationship with the electorate, and how it controls the institutions of government. A complete discussion of these components and functions will take place in other parts of the chapter.How Political Parties are OrganizedPolitical Parties exist on both the national and local levels. Their organization is hierarchical. Grass-roots politics on the local level involves door-to-door campaigns to get signatures on petitions, campaigns run through precinct and ward organizations, county committees, and state committees headed by a state chairman. Local party bullies like William “Boss” Tweed or Democratic party machines like Tweed’s Tammany machine in nineteenth-century New York City or the Daley machine in twentieth-century Chicago have diminished in influence. The national political scene is dominated by the outcome of national conventions, which give direction to the national chairperson, the spokesperson of the party, and the person who heads the national committee. The party machine exists on the local level and uses patronage (rewarding loyal party members with jobs) as the means to keep party members in line.
eBook - ePubThe Handy American Government Answer Book
How Washington, Politics and Elections Work
- Gina Misiroglu(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Visible Ink Press(Publisher)
Political Parties FUNCTIONS OF Political Parties IN THE U.S. What is a political party?A political party is a group of political officeholders, candidates, activists, and voters who identify with a group name and platform and seek to elect to office those who share their identity. Although party members are diverse and not always of one mind, a party shares the common goal of coming together to get its candidates elected to office.What are the major responsibilities of Political Parties?While Political Parties perform a variety of functions, they are mainly involved in nominations and elections. Their major responsibilities include recruiting candidates for local, state, and national office; nominating candidates through caucuses, conventions, and primary elections; “getting out the vote” for their candidates and providing voters with information about candidates and their parties; and facilitating mass electoral choice—that is, helping voters recognize their options and encouraging electoral competition. In addition, they influence the institutions of national government and the policy-making process. For example, Congress is organized around the two-party system, and the Speaker of the House is a party office. Parties determine the makeup of congressional committees, including who will chair committees, where positions are no longer based solely on seniority.How are Political Parties organized?Political Parties are organized on national, state, and local levels. At the national level, the national committee is directly in charge of the national party; for example, the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee are the committees that run the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. The national party chair is the committee’s top official, formally elected by the national committee but selected by the presidential candidate. Chairs play a major role in running the national campaign and planning the presidential nominating convention and after the election serve as a liaison between the party and the White House. As the primary spokesperson for the committee, the chair tries to manage party factionalism, negotiate disputes between candidates, raise money, and prepare for the next presidential election. The national committee usually elects a new chair after every electoral defeat. While winning the White House is the major goal of the national party committee, winning congressional elections is the goal of the congressional and senatorial campaign committees, which are composed of senators and representatives chosen for two-year terms by their fellow party members in the Senate and House. The party leadership appoints the chairs of these committees.
eBook - ePubCitizenship and Democracy
A Case for Proportional Representation
- Nick Leonen(Author)
- 1997(Publication Date)
- Dundurn Press(Publisher)
CHAPTER FOURPolitical PartiesIf we are going to keep representative government, the most important improvement in participation is to find a way to force parties to be more concerned with policy. How do we do that? I can see only one way of getting adequate change. This is to change the electoral system.1P olitical parties are the gatekeepers to our system of government. No one can attain political office without entering through the party gates. The reins of democracy are held in party hands. Parties structure the ballot by selecting the candidates the public will vote on. That initial selection process eliminates from further participation many diverse views, opinions, and interests. Such potential candidates, screened out by the party, never become accessible to the voting public.Anyone led into the party gate becomes party property. All members are bound by a duty of loyalty, candidates most of all, because of the party’s investment in them. Parties structure the parliamentary groupings. As noted in the last chapter, party discipline for persons elected to office is severe. The power and influence of parties is difficult to overestimate. But for all that, their power is hollow.Parties have a formal function, but lack the enthusiastic support of citizens. The rate of participation is abysmally low. The percentage of citizens who carry a political party membership hovers between 1 and 2 percent, and only a fraction of those are active in making the important decisions. Between elections membership dwindles; parties are dormant. Membership is fleeting and shifting. Increasingly, parties are funded from the public purse by means of generous tax deductions for political donations. Parties perform a function for the state, and may be more accurately defined as agents of the state than as representatives of society and citizens. Parties have not captured the imagination and loyalty of citizens. Citizens do not see parties as the road to self-rule, or as an influence on government. The power of parties is illegitimate. It is not an expression of the consent of the people.
4 Political Forces and Political ParticipationThe survival of democratic pluralism may depend as much on provisions for effective channels of opposition and protest within the private associations and the corporate bodies as on the chances for a regular alternation of governments at the top.—Stein RokkanThe Political Parties are the traditional instruments of mobilization and citizen influence in Norwegian politics. Operating in the “numerical channel” of electoral politics—where the number of votes count—the parties present candidates for elections and issue programs for public policies. The parties originated as products of civil society but have increasingly been acknowledged and supported by the state. In the constitution the parties are today mentioned in two paragraphs, although in fairly immaterial ways, dealing with the election of representatives to parliament.1 The parties are central, however, in the Election Act, and the parties receive substantial public subsidies.There are other actors that seek to support or oppose the parties at the input side of the political system. Private interest organizations work in support of everything from the protection of the environment to the protection of chemical industries. These actors attempt to influence the departments through the “corporate channel”—where general social importance and material resources count—and lobby the politicians in government and in the representative assemblies.The third set of actors working to influence public decisionmaking are the political action committees (PACs). Although these are not always easy to separate from parties or organizations, they direct their activities toward the “media channel,” trying to raise debate about an issue. Their strategy is to put political pressure on politicians and bureaucrats. Organizationally, they are by and large also less stable. The PAC’s major weapon is the ability to swing mass opinion—which of course is not foreign to party activists or to the secretariats of the interest organizations.
eBook - ePubPolitical Parties and the Concept of Power
A Theoretical Famework
- D. Rye(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
1
Power and the Analysis of Political Parties
Despite question marks over their continuing role as a linkage mechanism between the public and institutions of government (van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke 2012; Webb 2009, 272), Political Parties remain important subjects of political analysis because they still perform vital functions in a relatively efficient way (Dalton, Farrell and McAllister 2011, 216). They are still the main means by which governments are formed, preferences are articulated and political activity is mobilised (Kitschelt 2000; White and Ypi 2010). Indeed, most studies of Political Parties have focused on these functional roles: articulating and aggregating interests (Ware 1996), mobilising and integrating populations (Duverger 1959), facilitating popular choice and control (Webb 2009) and recruiting candidates and elites, not to mention organising both government and opposition (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000).However, perhaps surprisingly what has for the most part been missing from research is an explicit analysis of the relationship between Political Parties and power. Overall, I would argue the treatment of power in party contexts has been left wanting. Given the purpose of this book is to argue for a more sophisticated framework for analysing power in political organisations, this conclusion will not be a surprise to the reader. However, this is not to say that power has been entirely absent from such studies. Rather, it is present but often inferred rather than directly addressed. The approaches to power that can be elicited from the key influential literature have tacitly provided the frames within which relations of power are implicitly understood. Therefore, in arguing that there is a need for a more explicitly theorised approach to power in these contexts, it is essential to draw these underlying ideas out into the open and make some assessment of what has informed analysis up to now.
eBook - ePubParty Government
American Government in Action
- E. Schattschneider(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Chapter III What Is a Political Party?The Types of Political Organizations
BROADLY , there are two fundamental types of political organizations, Political Parties and pressure groups. In the United States it is necessary to distinguish a third type, the minor party, which differs from the major party or the real party more fundamentally than in size, merely. That is, the minor party is not a smaller edition of a real party; it is not a party at all. Leaving minor parties for later examination, we shall find it necessary first to distinguish between Political Parties and pressure groups, the two principal types. The distinction between these types is fundamental, and if it is not made clear it will be impossible to understand either parties or pressure groups.Parties
What is a political party? A party may be defined in terms of its purpose and in terms of the methods used to attain its purpose. A political party is first of all an organized attempt to get power. Power is here defined as control of the government. That is the objective of party organization. The fact that the party aims at control of the government as a whole distinguishes it from pressure groups. The fact that the major party bids for power at all distinguishes it from minor parties whose interest in power is too remote to have a determinative effect on their behavior.The life of the parties revolves about the present possession of power or the bid for power, a bid made with a reasonable expectation that it will be successful at an early date. Only when an organization is in control of the government or is able to create and maintain a widespread expectation that it will take over the government soon does it become a major party or a real party. One does not whistle up a party at will, therefore, or make a party by calling something a party. Whether or not a given political organization is a real party is a question of fact. Does it in fact have control of the government or has it in fact been able to create a general belief that it will take control of the government at a date early enough to be so exciting and serious as to determine the behavior of the people who are participating in the adventure? Since control of a government is one of the most important things imaginable, it follows that a real party is one of the most significant organizations in society.
eBook - ePubGlobalising Democracy
Party Politics in Emerging Democracies
- Peter Burnell, Peter Burnell(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
2Political Parties, international party assistance and globalisationPeter BurnellThis chapter introduces the challenge facing international democracy assistance in its endeavours to support Political Parties’ contribution to democratisation, given the constraints and opportunities posed by globalisation. To understand the role that democracy assistance can occupy here, it is first necessary to identify the relationship of party politics to democratisation, before going on to distinguish the different approaches that assistance can take. The chapter explores what globalisation means for the challenge of establishing democratically effective parties and party systems in new democracies, distinguishing potentially positive and negative effects. Some implications for how assistance to party-based democracy might respond are raised in Chapter 11 .What Political Parties doFrom the perspectives of democracy and democratisation party politics is not an end in itself. Although the purveyors of party aid have the development of parties as their primary object, it is what parties do (or cannot do) for democratisation that is of more importance. Parties collectively provide public virtues for democracy, but individually the parties and the politicians who make them work have private vices – power, and the various purposes to which they want to put power, are the main motivators, and a disinterested commitment to advancing the cause of democracy may not feature high on everyone's agenda. That said, there is a distinction between parties and party systems. The latter refers to the number and distinctiveness of effective parties, and the nature and extent of their differences, such as whether highly polarised or not, their relations to one another and society. And it is the institutionalisation of the party system that may have the greater significance for the quality of democracy and its consolidation in the long run (Mainwaring, 1998).1
eBook - ePub- M. Donald Hancock, Henry Krisch(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- CQ Press(Publisher)
6Political Parties in a Democratic Polity
G erman political life has, in many ways, taken place within and through Political Parties.1 Despite recurrent bouts of public hostility toward them, they remain the main link between citizens and the larger polity.2 Alongside organized interest groups, parties serve as key instruments of political power and influence in all modern polities. Grassroots or popular movements, which are less well organized but typically promote powerful messages on behalf of the disaffected, are also important sources of policy input and potential system change.3 Political Parties, grassroots movements, and organized interest groups are all based in varying degrees in diverse occupational strata, economic self-interest, competing ideologies, religious versus secular beliefs, materialist versus postmaterialist values, and regionalism. This chapter concentrates on Political Parties—their constitutional basis, financing, socioeconomic and cultural bases, electoral appeals, and development over time. Elections and their outcomes are considered in the following chapter. Organized interest groups and their role in the contemporary German political economy are discussed in chapter 8 .Social Foundations of Political Life
Social structures diverged markedly in western and eastern Germany from the mid-1940s into the early 1990s, but reunification has yielded a national, if not yet fully integrated, community that resembles that of other advanced industrial countries. According to empirical measures of modernity, contemporary Germany is one of the most highly developed countries in the world. Its per capita income in 2004 ranked sixth among comparable nations in Europe and North America, as indicated in Figure 6.1 .Figure 6.1 Per Capita Income, 2004 (in U.S. dollars) Source: OECD Factbook 2006: Economic, Environmental, and Social Statistics (Paris: OECD, 2006). Available online at http://ocde.p4.sitinternet.com/publications/publications
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