Week 10 (Parties) Flashcards
What are parties?
- Groups of citizens who collaborate with the intention of gaining representation in public office.
- Mediators between citizens and the state.
- Parties contest elections and also form governments.
According to Herbert Kitschelt, what are the three main types of linkages between citizens and parties?
Charismatic linkages
* Based on personal appeal of one/a few leaders
* Vague promises; ‘all things to all people’
* Short-term voter allegiances
* Lack of clear policy -> lack of accountability
Clientelistic linkages
* Private benefits in exchange for votes
* Party institutionalisation high, with ‘party machines’
* Little programmatic coherence; policies less important than benefits
* Accountable, but only to their supporters
Programmatic linkages
* Based on clear policies
* Voters choose party closest to their policy preferences
* Party institutionalisation high (parties need to know voters’ preferences, so build structures to enable this)
* High levels of programmatic coherence -> high levels of accountability -> durable, long-term voter allegiances
What do political cleavages include?
- Social cleavages, grounded in history and a social reality
- Clear sense of collective identity
- Political organisation
What are cross-cutting and reinforcing cleavages?
- Cross-cutting cleavages occur when cleavages overlap and ‘cut across’ each other.
- Reinforcing cleavages occur when two or more cleavages reinforce one another and there is no overlap across cleavages.
Eg: if a country has both working-class and middle-class Protestants, and both working-class and middle-class Catholics, religion and class would be cross-cutting cleavages. A Protestant and a Catholic party would have overlap on welfare policy.
(However, if a country had, for example, a primarily poorer Muslim population and a primarily richer Christian population - as is the case to some extent in Ethiopia - class and religion could be considered reinforcing cleavages.
How do cleavages relate to parties?
- Parties can exploit cleavages for political gain.
- Parties often claim to represent one side of a cleavage. Parties often combine many cleavages into one (worker/owner, rural/urban, unionist/nationalist).
- Partisanship can lead multiple cleavages to collapse into just a few highly polarised cleavages.
What are parties of internal origin?
Parties that began as factions within legislative assemblies, often representing the establishment.
Eg. Conservative Party
What are parties of external origin?
Parties that began outside the legislature as groups demanding the widening of political rights, often representing lower classes and the marginalised.
Eg. Labour Party
What are the five main types of political party?
- Cadre/elite parties
- Mass parties
- Catch-all parties
- Cartel parties
- Niche parties
What are cadre/elite parties?
- The first parties were cadre/elite parties
- Dominated by parliamentary parties
- Weak grassroots support
What are mass parties?
- Extra-parliamentary origins
- Created by small group of leaders
- Aim to represent a subset of the population (eg. working class), not the whole population
- Large membership
- Donations make up most of funding
What are catch-all parties?
- As a response to the rise of mass parties, cadre parties had to broaden their appeal, so formed catch-all parties. (In response to this, many mass parties have also become catch-all parties.)
- Aim to appeal to a broad spectrum of opinions.
- Weak membership, subordinate to party in public office
What are cartel parties?
- Decreasing popularity of mainstream parties leads them to form a cartel, shielding themselves from electoral risks and seeking state funding.
- Cartel parties emphasise their role of governing over their role of representation.
- They represent the state, rather than mediating between it and its citizens.
- The rise of cartel parties has led in turn to a growth in populist anti-cartel parties.
What are niche parties?
- Focus on one specific issue or social group.
- Maintain a narrow appeal, trying to ‘monopolise’ that group/issue.
- Can often play role of kingmakers and thereby extract concessions from major parties.
How do parties function in the US (in comparison to Europe)?
- US parties are institutionalised, but organisation is weak.
- Power dispersed between state and federal levels, as well as between House and Senate caucuses.
- Membership is loose and less well-defined in US; members’ main role is candidate selection via primaries.
Why have many countries brought in laws to regulate parties?
Parties are seen as central to democracy; therefore, they require both special privileges and special oversight.
What are some common party-regulation laws?
- There are often restrictions on the amount that any individual can donate to a political campaign.
- There are also often restrictions on party advertising on broadcast media.
- Legislators must define what counts as campaign activity, as well as the official length of the campaign.
- Parties often receive funding or privileges from the state. For instance, in the UK, parties can get free broadcasting time and free use of public halls for rallies.
