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Political party: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Political party
The first modern political party to retain a coherent label and motivating principles while out of power was the Rockingham Whigs, emerging in the 18th century to challenge the absolute rule of the monarchy. Before this organizational shift, elections were dominated by individual networks and cliques that could independently propel a candidate to victory without any broader ideological structure. The Rockingham Whigs, however, structured disputes in the politics of the United Kingdom throughout the 18th century by organizing around support for Protestant constitutional monarchy, creating a blueprint for future political organizations. This development marked a transition from ancient factions, such as the Populares and Optimates of the late Roman Republic, to the structured entities that now govern almost every country on Earth. The idea of people forming large groups to advocate for shared interests dates back to Plato and Aristotle, but the modern party system did not truly take root until the 1700s when these groups began to function as stable institutions rather than temporary alliances. The United States also developed a party system during this era, known as the First Party System, which emerged from political controversies in the early 1790s over the extent of federal government powers. The Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party were the proto-political parties that arose from these disputes, even though the framers of the 1787 United States Constitution did not anticipate that American political disputes would be primarily organized around political parties. The Conservative Party in the United Kingdom and the Democratic Party in the United States are frequently called the world's oldest continuous political parties, yet their origins lie in the specific historical contexts of the 18th century where the need for organized competition became undeniable.
The Social Cleavage Engine
Political parties often arise from pre-existing divisions among people, transforming social cleavages into electoral competition. By the 1950s, economists and political scientists had shown that party organizations could take advantage of the distribution of voters' preferences over political issues, adjusting themselves in response to what voters believe in order to become more competitive. The theory that parties are produced by social cleavages suggests that society is divided in a certain way, and a party is formed to organize that division into the electoral competition. For example, the German Social Democratic Party was formed to represent German workers, articulating the interests of different groups in society that had not previously been represented in political processes. In Europe, the introduction of universal suffrage resulted in the creation of worker's parties that later evolved into mass parties, which relied on and maintained a large membership base. The spread of the party model of politics was accelerated by the 1848 Revolutions around Europe, which saw political parties organize around a liberal-conservative divide or around religious disputes. The strength of political parties in the United States waned during the Era of Good Feelings, but shifted and strengthened again by the second half of the 19th century. During this time, the Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell implemented several methods and structures like party discipline that would come to be associated with strong grassroots political parties. The existence of political parties is almost a law of politics, and researchers have remarked that their ubiquity and strength in nearly every modern country has led to the question of why parties appear to be such an essential part of modern states. While some authors have challenged the claim that parties emerge from existing cleavages on empirical grounds, the theory remains a core explanation for the existence of political parties, even if it obscures the opposite effect that political parties also cause changes in the underlying social cleavages.
Common questions
What was the first modern political party to retain a coherent label and motivating principles while out of power?
The Rockingham Whigs were the first modern political party to retain a coherent label and motivating principles while out of power. This group emerged in the 18th century to challenge the absolute rule of the monarchy and structured disputes in the politics of the United Kingdom throughout that century.
When did the modern political party system take root in the United States?
The modern political party system in the United States took root during the 1700s when groups began to function as stable institutions rather than temporary alliances. The First Party System emerged from political controversies in the early 1790s over the extent of federal government powers.
Who developed the theory that political parties are produced by social cleavages?
Economists and political scientists had shown by the 1950s that party organizations could take advantage of the distribution of voters' preferences over political issues. The theory that parties are produced by social cleavages suggests that society is divided in a certain way and a party is formed to organize that division into the electoral competition.
What are the main types of political parties distinguished by political scientists?
Political scientists have distinguished between elite parties, mass parties, catch-all parties, cartel parties, and niche parties. Elite parties were political elites that were concerned with contesting elections and restricted the influence of outsiders, while mass parties are funded by their members and rely on and maintain a large membership base.
How do political parties acquire and allocate funds to achieve political goals?
Political parties acquire funds through dues-paying party members, advocacy groups and lobbying organizations, corporations, trade unions, and candidates who may self-fund activities. Governments also provide some level of funding for political parties, and nearly all of the 180 countries examined by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance have some form of public funding for political parties.
Why do political parties associate themselves with specific colours and symbols?
Nearly all political parties associate themselves with specific colours and symbols primarily to aid voters in identifying, recognizing, and remembering the party. This branding is particularly important in polities where much of the population may be illiterate, so that someone who cannot read a party's name on a ballot can instead identify that party by colour or logo.
Political scientists have distinguished between different types of political parties that have evolved throughout history, including elite parties, mass parties, catch-all parties, and cartel parties. Elite parties were political elites that were concerned with contesting elections and restricted the influence of outsiders, who were only required to assist in election campaigns. The earliest political parties, such as the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists, are classified as elite parties, characterized by minimal and loose organization, and financed by fewer larger monetary contributions typically originating from outside the party. Mass parties, in contrast, are funded by their members, and rely on and maintain a large membership base. Further, mass parties prioritize the mobilization of voters and are more centralized than elite parties. The term catch-all party was developed by German-American political scientist Otto Kirchheimer to describe the parties that developed in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of changes within the mass parties. Kirchheimer characterized the shift from the traditional mass parties to catch-all parties as a set of developments including the drastic reduction of the party's ideological baggage and the downgrading of the role of the individual party member. By broadening their central ideologies into more open-ended ones, catch-all parties seek to secure the support of a wider section of the population. The cartel party thesis was developed by Richard Katz and Peter Mair, who wrote that political parties have turned into semi-state agencies, acting on behalf of the state rather than groups in society. The term cartel refers to the way in which prominent parties in government make it difficult for new parties to enter, as such forming a cartel of established parties. As with catch-all parties, the role of members in cartel parties is largely insignificant as parties use the resources of the state to maintain their position within the political system. Niche parties are a type
The Architecture of Power
of party that developed on the basis of the emergence of new cleavages and issues in politics, such as immigration and the environment, articulating an often limited set of interests in a way that does not conform to the dominant economic left-right divide in politics.
Many of the activities of political parties involve the acquisition and allocation of funds in order to achieve political goals, with contemporary elections in the largest democracies typically costing billions or even tens of billions of dollars. Common sources of party funding across countries include dues-paying party members, advocacy groups and lobbying organizations, corporations, trade unions, and candidates who may self-fund activities. In most countries, the government also provides some level of funding for political parties. Nearly all of the 180 countries examined by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance have some form of public funding for political parties, and about a third have regular payments of government funds that goes beyond campaign reimbursements. Parties often spend money to train activists, recruit volunteers, create and deploy advertisements, conduct research and support for their leadership in between elections, and promote their policy agenda. Many political parties and candidates engage in a practice called clientelism, in which they distribute material rewards to people in exchange for political support; in many countries this is illegal, though even where it is illegal it may nevertheless be widespread in practice. Some parties engage directly in vote buying, in which a party gives money to a person in exchange for their vote. Fundraising and expenditures by political parties are typically regulated by governments, with many countries' regulations focusing on who can contribute money to parties, how parties' money can be spent, and how much of it can pass through the hands of a political party. Two main ways in which regulations affect parties are by intervening in their sources of income and by mandating that they maintain some level of transparency about their funding. One common type of restriction on
The Evolution of Organization
how parties acquire money is to limit who can donate money to political parties; for example, people who are not citizens of a country may not be allowed to make contributions to that country's political parties, in order to prevent foreign interference. It is also common to limit how much money an individual can give to a political party each election. Similarly, many governments cap the total amount of money that can be spent by each party in an election. Transparency regulations may require parties to disclose detailed financial information to the government, and in many countries transparency laws require those disclosures to be available to the public, as a safeguard against potential corruption. Creating, implementing, and amending laws regarding party expenses can be extremely difficult, since governments may be controlled by the very parties that these regulations restrict.
Nearly all political parties associate themselves with specific colours and symbols, primarily to aid voters in identifying, recognizing, and remembering the party. This branding is particularly important in polities where much of the population may be illiterate, so that someone who cannot read a party's name on a ballot can instead identify that party by colour or logo. Parties of similar ideologies will often use the same colours across different countries, such as red for socialism and communism, or blue for liberalism and conservatism. However, associations between colour and ideology can also be inconsistent: parties of the same ideology in different countries often use different colours, and sometimes competing parties in a country may even adopt the same colours. For example, in the United States, red is associated with the more conservative Republican Party while blue is associated with the more left-leaning Democratic Party, a reversal of the traditional European color coding. These associations are useful as a short-hand for referring to and representing parties in graphical media, and can also be used to refer to coalitions and alliances between political parties and other organizations, such as purple alliances, red, green alliances, traffic light coalitions, pan-green coalitions, and pan-blue coalitions. Political ideologies are one of the major organizing features of political parties, and parties
The Currency of Influence
often officially align themselves with specific ideologies. Common ideologies that can form a central part of the identity of a political party include liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism, feminism, environmentalism, nationalism, fundamentalism, Islamism, and multiculturalism. Liberalism is the ideology that is most closely connected to the history of democracies and is often considered to be the dominant or default ideology of governing parties in much of the contemporary world. Many of the traditional competitors to liberal parties are conservative parties. Socialist, communist, feminist, anarchist, fascist, and nationalist parties are more recent developments, largely entering political competitions only in the 19th and 20th centuries. Environmentalism, multiculturalism, and certain types of fundamentalism became prominent towards the end of the 20th century. Parties can sometimes be organized according to their ideology using an economic left, right political spectrum, but a simple left-right economic axis does not fully capture the variation in party ideologies. Other common axes that are used to compare the ideologies of political parties include ranges from liberal to authoritarian, from pro-establishment to anti-establishment, and from tolerant and pluralistic to anti-system.