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CHAPTER TWELVE: POLITICAL PARTIES

12.1 Parties as groups that stand at elections and which seek power. Functions: directing government, elite recruitment, interest aggregation and a brand for their supporters (p. 231).

 

12.2 The twentieth century as the century of parties, drawing the mass population into politics. But is there now a crisis of parties: thinning ideology, electoral dealignment and falling membership as leaders communicate through the media and rely on state funding? (pp. 231-3).

 

12.3 Party organization: parties as complex, multilevel entities.Importance of 'the founding moment'. Cadre, mass and catch-all parties. The relationship between party organization and the parliamentary party. Michels’s iron law (pp. 233-5).

 

12.4 Candidate selection varies with the country’s electoral system. Growing role of ordinary members. Primary elections: a mixed blessing? Leadership selection: conventions, membership ballot (increasing), parliamentary party or special committee? (pp. 235-7).

 

12.5 Declining membership, albeit from a post-war peak. Increasing dependence on the state for funds. Direct and indirect subsidies. Cartel parties (pp. 237-41).

 

12.6 The social base of Western European parties in historic cleavages. The freezing hypothesis. Protest and flash parties as a reaction against these social changes. Soft party structures in Eastern Europe (pp. 241-4).

 

12.7 Dominant party systems and their factions. Two-party systems and adversary politics. The decay of both dominant party and two party systems. Multiparty systems: consensual but how dynamic? Party families in Western Europe: from the far left to the far right (pp. 244-9).

 

12.8 Parties in authoritarian states. No-party and one-party systems. The communist model: penetration of society and democratic centralism within the party. Fascist parties as the supreme leader’s route to power. Except for communist states, parties in authoritarian regimes are generally the instrument rather than the wielder of power (pp. 250-54).

 

12.9 In illiberal democracies, too, parties are more often a device than an actor. The example of Russia: parties as creatures of those who already hold power (pp. 253-4).