10 concepts for analyzing political parties

1/ Institutionalization – process by which parties become established and acquire value and stability. As a property party institutionalization can be defined as the extent to which party is reified in the public mind so that it exists as a social organization apart from its momentary leaders.

2/ Issue orientation – parties' positions on issues with cross-national significance. Many such issues are subsumed under the concept of ideology, most of them however remain independent policy areas.

3/ Social support – parties exist to secure social interests

[Lipset/Rokkan 1967: parties as political expressions of social cleavages]

[Rose, Urwin 1975: social differences structure party loyalties: * region, * religion, *ethnic, *urban-rural, *class]

4/ Organizational complexity and power – structure, functions and mechanisms governing party's conduct. Concept of " organizational encapsulation" = elaboration of party sub-units to envelop as many of the day-to-day life activities of the membership as possible.

5/ Centralization of power – it is about the real focus of power. (a) centralization influences the quality of party cohesion (see point 7) and is derived from leftist ideology; (b) organization and centralization of power depends on its origin: intra- or extra-parliamentary.

6/ Autonomy – structural independence of party from other institutions and organizations, national and international/foreign; the most important aspect of the autonomy is financial.

a. sources of finance – market or public domain? if public, then: (i) bigger party leaders' autonomy vis a vis its rank and file activists; (ii) bigger party bureaucracy; (iii) bigger centralization – regional units' subordination.

b. source of members –

" direct" => voluntary individual membership;

" indirect" => consequence of membership in another social organization;

'membership' is very unreliable statistics world-wide; much more important is PID (party identification) and electoral support

c. recruitment of leaders – the mechanisms of... (underscrutinized topic)

d. relations with domestic parties – three types of aliances: (i) electoral, (ii) parliamentary,

(iii) governmental [linear independence loss increase]

e. relations with foreign organizations

7/ Coherence – " degree of congruence in the attitudes and behavior of party members" [Janda]

a. cohesion = extent to which parties vote together in legislative bodies (the higher the bigger=> party centralization, => the more leftist, => the more ideologically extreme

b. factionalism = any intra-party combination, clique or grouping whose members share a sense of the common identity and common purpose and are organized to act collectively – as a distinct bloc within the party – to achieve their goals

8/ Involvement – " intensity of psychological identification with the party and commitment to furthering its objectives by participating in party activities"; important elements: (a) membership, (b) incentives (material-> material gains; purposive -> party policies implementation; social -> affiliation

9/ Strategy and tactics (cooperation vs competition)

a. strategies of competition [Downs: 1. policy formulation, 2. winning elections]

[Riker: " minimal winning coalitions" – parties aim at winning but not maximizing votes]

b. tactics of competition – tactics is means of accomplishing strategies

10/ Governmental status – parties' political strength and importance; indicators:

[a] percentage of seats won; [b] length of incumbency status

Party system = the system of interactions resulting from inter-party competition (... ) system bears on the relatedness of parties to each other, and how each party is a function (in the mathematical sense) of the other parties and reacts, competitively or otherwise, to the other parties. [Sartori 1976: 44]

1. PS – not a simple sum of parties = it is interactive new quality

2. It is composed of elements and their interactions

3. Competitiveness is the essence of the system (electoral -> parliamentary arena)

4. Two competing views (paradigms):

(a) Structural determinism – parties and PS result from socio-economic factors: Parties are the dependent variable

(b) Social indeterminism: Parties as autonomous entities able to create social reality;

P = independent variable

1. Main concepts :

a/ relevant party (1. coalition potential; 2. blackmail potential)

b/ small parties

c/ anti-system or radical parties

2. Party system typologies

1. one-party system, 2. two-party system, 3. multiparty system

[Sartori]

1 - one-party

2 - hegemonic party

3 - predominant party

4 - two-party system

5 - moderate pluralism

6 - polarized pluralism

7 - atomized