SCHOLAR: POLITICAL PARTIES

According to Sartori factions are have a negative connotation. Factions are anti establishment. Parties are pro establishment. Parties according to this author are for accomplishing things in society. According to Downs. Parties form coalitions in order to gain support. They cooperate with their members and other parties. They also make compromises. As for Madison, she specifies that factions are parties. These are essentially different explanations of what political parties are. Parties are a group of individuals who seek to control the government through election and public office. Factions on the other hand, are really associated with political turmoil. They are a clique of people who have self serving interests.

Parties perform many tasks. They organize votes, prepare their platform, campaign, they aggregate interest, they elect leaders, implement policy and persuade the government to their interests. They are contrasted against interest groups in this way. Interest groups are a group of individuals who influence the political process. They are usually single issued whereas political parties deal with multiple issues. Ideology plays a major part in political parties.

Ideology can be defined as a set of ideas or beliefs which dictate how a society ought to be. Ideology are important to political parties because they provide frameworks I which the government can run. The ideologies are separated through the political spectrum, left or right. On the left is communism and on the right is fascism.

There are a variety of political systems. They are classified as single party system, the dominant party system, the two party system and the multi party system. We will first explain the single party system. This system is where there is only one legal party who controls the government. In the dominant party system a single party regularly wins elections and other parties play a minor role. In the two party system, two parties often vie for power and often exchange positions, other parties are also allowed to function in this system. The multi party system is a system where parties often form coalitions in order to be in power. According to Lapombara parties can be divided as competitive or non- competitive party systems. We will first explore the competitive systems. In this category we have the one party dominant system, two party system and the multi party system. Much like in the first classification the one party dominant system regularly wins elections and others are allowed to function. The two party system allows for two parties who exchange power frequently. Lastly in the multi party system we have multiple parties who share power. This can be further divided to multi party dominant wherein, one party receives more than 40% of the votes and multi party loose where not any of the parties achieve 40%. The non competitive systems according to Lapombra are regime based. They operate through a hegemonic basis. This means they use force in order to coerce rather than consent the government to their position. There are three types the one party authoritarian system, the one party pluralist system and the one party totalitarian system. The one party authoritarian system sees competitors as threats and they immediately attempt to dissolve these. The one party pluralist system operates with pragmatism and they value ideology as a basis for their cause. The one party totalitarian system seeks to enforce social and economic structures which they maintain.

Duverger further classifies political parties as elite based political parties or mass based parties. Elite bases parties seek influential, powerful and wealthy members. They are very flexible and lack structure. They receive funds from single wealthy supporters rather than many people. Mass based parties operate within a hierarchy. They have a strong structure. They use ideology in order to operate. Their funding comes from many people rather than the odd wealthy supporter.

The origin of political parties is very interesting. In the UK the popish plot enticed the development of these parties. The parliament was dissolved by King Charles II where they banned Catholics from being members of parliament because they supposedly had intentions to kill the king. In the USA the forefathers of America needed to control factions. This was done through political parties. There was a conflict between centralization and individualism. Lastly in Canada the conservatives and the liberals have roots in preconfederation. The liberals had massive Catholic support while the conservatives were supported by the Protestants.