Aleksieiev V.S.

Oles’ Honchar Dnirpopetrovsk National University (Ukraine)

POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE MODERN WORLD

A political party is a political organization that seeks to attain and to maintain political power within government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns.

Parties are creations of the modem age. They appeared in the nineteenth century in Europe and North America. The political development of society led to forming groups of interests. These groups often transformed into political parties and civil organizations.

The first generation of parties were ‘internally created’. This means they were formed by cliques within an assembly joining together to defend common objectives. The Conservative parties of Scandinavia and Britain are examples. These parties represent traditional elites such as the court of aristocracy. Originally organized on an informal basis, they had to reach out to a larger electorate if they were to survive the transition to universal suffrage. They succeeded - and none more triumphantly than Britain’s Conservative Party, which governed Britain (alone or in coalition) for sixty years between 1900 and 1990.

Most subsequent parties were ‘externally created’. They were based on demands for legislative representation by excluded, or at least unrepresented, groups. The working-class socialist parties which spread across Europe at the turn of the twentieth century are the main examples here. But these are not the only illustrations. Later in the century, communist parties and nationalist parties emerged in different countries. They demanded not merely reform but also a complete transformation of society. More recently, green parties have emerged from a growing concern with the environment, particularly among well-educated citizens.

It is necessary to consider the main functions of political parties.

1. Perhaps most important, the political party provides a link between rulers and ruled. The party is a channel of expression, both upward and downward, which is 

crucial to the political management of complex societies. In competitive systems the upward flow of communication from the ruled to the rulers is relatively strong. Even in such systems, however, the party also functions as a vehicle for informing, educating and influencing public opinion. Where there is a single ruling party, the flow of political communication is mainly downwards. In an extreme instance, such as Stalin’s USSR in the 1930s, the ‘democratic’ expression of opinion from the grass roots of the Communist Party was negligible compared with the ‘centralist’ flow of directives from the top.

2. Parties also serve as important agent of interest aggregation. This means they transform a multitude of specific demands into more manageable packages of proposals. When interest groups articulate interests, political parties select, reduce and combine them. They are political department stores, deciding which interests should be displayed, which should be left in storeroom - and which should not be purchased at all. Indeed, in communist party states, many demands were repressed altogether.

3. When in government, party leaders are centrally involved in implementing collective goals for society. Parties have been the prime movers in the revolutionary upheavals of the modern age. In the second world, the enormous transformations of Russian and Chinese societies in the twentieth century were led by Communist parties. In the third world, nationalist parties played a critical role in winning independence and in the subsequent attempt to weld new nations out of traditional societies. In the first world, parties contributed to the creation of welfare states in the third quarter of the twentieth century - and to the shift towards more competitive economies in the final quarter. In short, parties give direction to government. A government without a party to energize it runs the risk of becoming totally becalmed.

4. Parties also function as agents of elite recruitment and socialization. They serve as a major mechanism through which candidates for public office are prepared and selected at all levels, and in particular by which national political leadership is chosen. Party is an essential stepping stone on the long journey to high office. If you want to lead your country, you must first persuade a party to adopt you as its

candidate. Thus political parties act as gatekeepers, controlling the flow of personnel

into government just as they control the flow of ideas.

5. Political parties are often the object of powerful emotional attachment or antagonism, exerting an important influence upon the opinions and behavior of their supporters. In a complicated world, they act as points of reference for their followers. This was most obviously true of ruling communist parties, which made considerable demands of their members. But many electors in liberal democracies vote for ‘their’ party or candidate.

6. Political parties also integrate people who share the same ideological principles. This is the integrative function of political party. But each party in a democratic society must abstain from destructive or separatist actions in order not to ruin the integrity of the political system.

Modem political parties appeared in the nineteenth century. The Democratic and the Republican parties in the USA, the Conservative and the Liberal parties in the UK have expressed the interests of large social groups. We can not imagine a democratic regime without different political parties and civil organizations.

In the USSR the Communist Party was in power for 73 years, but the Soviet regime was not democratic because this party had no real opposition. Today we can find states without parties at all: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. In many states parties have no real rights and functions and serve for the ruling military regimes.

The prominent French political scientist Maurice Duverger separates four types of political parties.

1. Caucus parties. Loose association of notables able to call upon localized personal followings. Weak organization is also a feature of this type. Conservative and Liberal parties can be considered as the examples of this type.

2. Branch parties. Large-scale recruitment and socialization of individual members is a key objective. Extensive territorial network of branches is seen. These parties are relatively centralized, with professional leadership and strong party discipline in the legislature. The first socialist parties were branch parties. 

3. Cell parties. Members organized into small cells, based on the workplace, with no emphasis on vertical communication from leaders to members. There is little horizontal communication between cells. Members of such parties are expected to be active. This is a highly centralized organization. The examples of this type are communist parties.

4. Militia parties. There is a development from the cell structure to the use of the party as, in effect, a privately controlled fighting force, reproducing the disciplined character and structure of a professional army. The Nazi Party in Germany was a militia party.