Political party explained


Regulation of political parties


Furthermore, in the case of far-right, far-left and regionalist parties in the national parliaments of much of the European Union, mainstream political parties may form an informal cordon sanitaire which applies a policy of non-cooperation towards those "Outsider Parties" present in the legislature which are viewed as 'anti-system' or otherwise unacceptable for government. Cordon Sanitaires, however, have been increasingly abandoned over the past two decades in multi-party democracies as the pressure to construct broad coalitions in order to win elections - along with the increased willingness of outsider parties themselves to participate in government - has led to many such parties entering electoral and government coalitions.[2]


Voting systems


Partisan style

Partisan style varies from government to government, depending on how many parties there are, and how much influence each individual party has.


In a nonpartisan system, no official political parties exist, sometimes reflecting legal restrictions on political parties. In nonpartisan elections, each candidate is eligible for office on his or her own merits. In nonpartisan legislatures, there are no typically formal party alignments within the legislature. The administration of George Washington and the first few sessions of the United States Congress were nonpartisan. Washington also warned against political parties during his Farewell Address.[3] In the United States, the unicameral legislature of Nebraska is nonpartisan. In Canada, the territorial legislatures of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are nonpartisan. In New Zealand, Tokelau has a nonpartisan parliament. Many city and county governments are nonpartisan. Nonpartisan elections and modes of governance are common outside of state institutions.[4] Unless there are legal prohibitions against political parties, factions within nonpartisan systems often evolve into political parties.

Single dominant party



Two political parties


The United States is widely considered a two-party system. Since the birth of the republic a conservative (such as the Republican Party) and liberal (such as the Democratic Party) party have usually been the status quo within American politics, with some exception. Third parties often receive little support and are not often the victors in many races. Despite this, there have been several examples of third parties siphoning votes from major parties that were expected to win (such as Theodore Roosevelt in the election of 1912 and Ross Perot in the election of 1992).


Multiple political parties


Australia, Canada, Pakistan, India, Ireland, United Kingdom and Norway are examples of countries with two strong parties and additional smaller parties that have also obtained representation. The smaller or "third" parties may form a part of a coalition government together with one of the larger parties or act independently from the other dominant parties.


Party funding

Political parties are funded by contributions from

Political parties, still called factions by some, especially those in government, are lobbied vigorously by organizations, businesses and special interest groups such as trades unions. Money and gifts-in-kind to a party, or its leading members, may be offered as incentives. Such donations are the traditional source of funding for all right-of-centre cadre parties. Starting in the late 19th century these parties were opposed by the new founded left-of-centre workers' parties. They started a new party type, the mass membership party, and a new source of political fundraising, membership dues.

From the second half of the 20th century on parties which continued to rely on donations ran into mounting problems. Along with the increased scrutiny of donations there has been a long term contraction in party memberships in most western democracies which itself places more strains on funding. For example in the United Kingdom and Australia membership of the two main parties in 2006 is less than an 1/8 of what it was in 1950, despite significant increases in population over that period.

In some parties, such as the post-communist parties of France and Italy or the Sinn Féin party and the Socialist Party (Ireland), elected representatives of take only the average industrial wage from their salary as a representative or their entire earnings, while the rest goes into party coffers. Although these examples may be rare nowadays, "rent-seeking" continues to be a feature of many political parties around the world.[8]

In the United Kingdom, it has been alleged that peerages have been awarded to contributors to party funds, the benefactors becoming members of the Upper House of Parliament and thus being in a position to participate in the legislative process. Famously, Lloyd George was found to have been selling peerages. To prevent such corruption in the future, Parliament passed the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 into law. Thus the outright sale of peerages and similar honours became a criminal act. However, some benefactors are alleged to have attempted to circumvent this by cloaking their contributions as loans, giving rise to the 'Cash for Peerages' scandal.


In many other democracies such subsidies for party activity (in general or just for campaign purposes) have been introduced decades ago. Public financing for parties and candidates (during election timess and beyond) has several permutations and is increasingly common. Germany, Sweden, Israel, Canada, Austria and Spain are cases in point, although Canada has removed its public funding for political parties as of 2010. More recently among others France, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands and Poland have followed suit.[9]

There are two broad categories of funding, direct, which entails a montetary transfer to a party, and indirect, which includes broadcast time on state media, use of the mail service or supplies. According to the Comparative Data from the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, out of a sample of over 180 nations, 25% of nations provide no direct or indirect public funding, 58% provide direct public funding and 60% of nations provide indirect public funding.[10] Some countries provide both direct and indirect public funding to political parties. Funding may be equal for all parties or depend on the results of previous campaigns or the number of candidates participating in an election.[11] Frequently parties rely on a mix of private and public funding and are required to disclose their finances to the Election management body.[12]

Funding can also be provided by foreign aid. International donors provide financing to political parties in developing countries as a means to promote democracy and good governance.[8] Support can be purely financial or otherwise frequently is provided as capacity development activities including the development of party manifestos, party constitutions and campaigning skills.[8] Developing links between ideologically linked parties is another common feature of international support for a party.[8] Sometimes this can be perceived as directly supporting the political aims of political party, such as the support of the US government to the Georgian party behind the Rose Revolution. Other donors work on a more neutral basis, where multiple donors provide grants in countries accessible by all parties for various aims defined by the recipients.[8] There have been calls by leading development think-tanks, such as the Overseas Development Institute, to increase support to political parties as part of developing the capacity to deal with the demands of donors to improve governance.[8]

Colours and emblems for parties

Main article: see Political colour and List of political party symbols

Generally speaking, over the world, political parties associate themselves with colors, primarily for identification, especially for voter recognition during elections. Conservative parties generally use blue or black.Pink sometimes signifies moderate socialist. Yellow is often used for libertarianism or classical liberalism, due to yellow being the color of gold, which signifies the gold standard.Red usually signifies communist or socialist parties, except for the conservative Republican Party in the United States and the "Partido Colorado" (red party) in Uruguay. In these cases, the use of the color red comes from the origins of the party.Green is the color for green parties, Islamist parties and Irish republican parties. Orange is sometimes a color of nationalism, such as in the Netherlands, in Israel with the Orange Camp or with Ulster Loyalists in Northern Ireland; it is also a color of reform such as in Ukraine. In the past, Purple was considered the color of royalty (like white), but today it is sometimes used for feminist parties. White also is associated with nationalism. "Purple Party" is also used as an academic hypothetical of an undefined party, as a centralist party in the United States (because purple is created from mixing the main parties' colours of red and blue) and as a highly idealistic "peace and love" party http://www.purpleparty.com-- in a similar vein to a Green Party, perhaps. Black is generally associated with fascist parties, going back to Benito Mussolini's blackshirts, but also with Anarchism. Similarly, brown is sometimes associated with Nazism, going back to the Nazi Party's tan-uniformed storm troopers.






International organizations of political parties


Types of political parties


Klaus von Beyme categorized European parties into nine families, which described most parties. He was able to arrange seven of them from left to right: communist, socialist, green, liberal, Christian democratic, conservative and libertarian. The position of two other types, agrarian and regional/ethnic parties varied.[14] Another category he failed to mention are Islamic political parties, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir.

See also


External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Mc Donald, Neil. The Study of Political Parties. 1963. New York.
  2. McDonnell and Newell (2011) 'Outsider Parties'.
  3. Redding 2004
  4. Abizadeh 2005.
  5. News: General Election results through time, 1945–2001. BBC News. 2006-05-19.
  6. Duverger 1954
  7. See Heard, Alexander, 'Political financing'. In: Sills, David I. (ed.) International Emcyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 12. New York, NY: Free Press - Macmillan, 1968, pp. 235–241; Paltiel, Khayyam Z., 'Campaign finance - contrasting practices and reforms'. In: Butler, David et al. (eds.), Democracy at the polls - a comparative study of competitive national elections. Washington, DC: AEI, 1981, pp. 138-172; Paltiel, Khayyam Z., 'Political finance'. In: Bogdanor, Vernon (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Institutions. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1987, pp. 454–456; 'Party finance', in: Kurian, George T. et al. (eds.) The encyclopedia of political science. vol 4, Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2011, pp. 1187-1189.
  13. Ware, Political parties, pp. 65-67
  14. Ware, Political parties, p. 22