Political parties

Lecture 3
SAMPOL 107 - Political Mobilization
29.01.2025
Yvette Peters
What we do today
Parties and democracy
1. What is a political party?
2. Party systems: political conflict
3. Party systems: political system
Parties and citizens
1. Social bases of political parties
2. Partisanship
3. Party-participation
4. Who participates (campaign activity)
Change in parties
1. Organization
2. Participation
Reading scientific articles
Parties and democracy
1. What is a political party?
“Parties are the foundation of democratic politics” → they play a central role
in elections
• Provide the choice available in elections
• Largely determine the content of electoral competition

→They structure the institutional link between government and citizens

→ They offer the practical implementation of large-scale democracy

Schattschneider (1942): modern democracy is unthinkable safe in terms of

political parties
Unthinkable safe? HA! Nauru, Tuvalu, Palau, Marshall
Not all democracies have them! islands, Kiribati, FS of Micronesia –
(though virtually all do!!) no political parties!

→ Veenendaal 2016
• Size (personal connection, easier
communication, attitudinal homogeneity)
• Culture (clan structure, hierarchy)
• Archipelago geography Sources: The Independent; Britannica

POINT: While not officially present

everywhere, they are very helpful!
o Also here, they kind of are present
o Here, they might have aided democracy
Parties and democracy
1. What is a political party?
Parties are typically said to have 3 functions:
o Electoral structuration: offer menu of policies, recruiting active
members, campaigning → organization to compete
o Governing function: nominating candidates, able to form a government
and structure the legislative process → potential government actors
o Organizational function: able to aggregate interests and opinions of
group of citizens through internal processes, being a professional
association → preference aggregation
Parties and democracy
1. What is a political party?
So, parties are organizations that aggregate citizen preferences, compete
in elections, and can govern.

But parties can look so different; within a country as well as between

countries, depending on e.g.,
→Historical political conflict–cleavages
→Political system—institutions
Parties and democracy
2. Party systems: political conflict
Historic era Cleavage
National revolution Center/periphery
Church/state
Industrial revolution Land/industry
Owners/workers
Postindustrial revolution? Cultural values
(Dalton) (Conservative/liberal)
Information revolution? Green Alternative Libertarian/Traditional
(Marks & Hooghe) Authoritarian Nationalist (GAL/TAN)

Creating social group divisions → structures party system

When the political conflict changes, so does the party system (cleavage theory)
Parties and democracy
2. Party systems: political conflict
Initial resulting party families (resulting major social revolution)
▪ Regionalist
▪ Christian Democratic
▪ Liberal
▪ Socialist

Parties would capture issues that are central to people’s lives: they structure
political conflict
Parties and democracy
2. Party systems: political system
Political conflict determines what issues are picked up, and parties aim
to represent different sides. But how nuanced representation is
depends on the number of parties in the system
→Electoral system (Majoritarian, PR… electoral threshold)
→Bicameralism
→Executive-legislative relation (Presidential, parliamentary)
→Other factors
(sampol 106)
Parties and democracy
Some further variations
• National/decentralized party organization
• Importance of candidates/ideology
• Candidate selection/primaries
• Party loyalty
• Party/campaign finance
Parties and citizens
1.Social bases of political parties
Link between social groups and political parties: background matters
→Natural result of parties reflecting cleavages → ‘reasonable opinions’

• Social position can indicate political interests and beliefs (worker vs.
shopowner; religious vs. non-religious)
• Social position impacts which information/cues is received (who do
you talk to?)
• Social groups provide orientation information and shortcuts
Parties and citizens
1.Social bases of political parties
Class – workers (selling labor) vs. middle class (self-employed, own
capital)
Religion – religious vs. non-religious, as well as different religions
Gender
Age
Parties and citizens
2.Partisanship
→Party identification: long-term affective, psychological identification
with one’s preferred political party (Dalton p.184)
→It is an ultimate heuristic

Developed in early age → parents are strong influencers

Elections strengthen partisanship
Parties and citizens
2.Partisanship
▪ Creates a basis of political identity
▪ Gives cues to evaluate events/proposals/candidates
▪ Mobilizes participation
▪ Helps determine vote choice
▪ (Stabilizes voting patterns)

→ Recent decline of partisanship

Parties and citizens
3.Party-participation
• Membership Campaign activity MODE
❑ High pressure/low-high information
• Internal participation
❑ Partisan conflict
• Party campaign ❑ Some effort required
• Convincing other people ❑ Some/much cooperation with
• Ways of promoting the party others required

Contacting also related to parties→

different mode
Parties and citizens
4.Who participates?
Civic voluntarism model (a main explanatory model)

People generally participate if they can, want to, and/or are asked to do
so:
✓Personal resources (money, time, skills)
✓Political attitudes (motivation: belief about ‘citizen’, pol. efficacy,
partisanship, ideology)
✓Connections to others who may ask them (involvement in
organizations, voluntary organizations)
Parties and citizens
4.Who participates?
Campaign activity is higher among
• High efficacy
• Group membership
• Education
• Male
Parties and citizens
Norway

Heidar 2015
Parties and citizens
Norway (2009 survey)
Reasons for joining Social background
• Ideology, • Men
• ‘Identity’/social group (process), • Older
• Passive support • Higher educated
• Higher income
• More from the west
• Public sector
Generally, many fairly
active members – even if • Less ‘regular’ employed
there are few
Heidar 2015
Change in parties
Organization
Mass parties (end-19th century)
Parties as THE link between citizens and the state; parties embody well-defined
social groups; programs are coherent and logically connected, build from
within/below → party unity and discipline normatively legitimate. Party=civil
society
Catch-all parties (latter half of 20th century)
Weakening of collective identities; less distinct economic interests; mass media
→ more focus on election leaders than programs; programs less bottom-up;
more retrospective accountability. Party= between civil society and the state
Cartel parties (from 1970s/1980s)
Cutting increasingly loose from civil society; increased funding from the
state;Politics as a profession; focus of efficiency; still competition for policies,
but not to survive: parties form a cartel. Party=the state
Change in parties
Organization
→Declining party membership seems quite consequential in this type of
description, indicating a loss of connection from the citizens
→NOTE: issues with measurement, also (see Heidar 2015)
→Loss of representation because of a disconnect between citizens and
parties? Both substantively and descriptively
→A diverse people with regular lives and jobs vs. a professionalized elite
→Is the emergence of new parties, or the revival of some of the older
ones, a reaction to this disconnect?
Change in parties
2.Participation
Class voting is decreasing
- Now also including white-collar workers
- Class differences have narrowed and vary (mobility)
- More fragmented social groups; base is smaller
- Parties changed positions
- Salience of cultural issues
→ Less stable outcomes, more volatility
Change in parties
2.Participation
Decline in partisanship
Decline in party involvement (not when it comes to convincing others)
Van Biezen and Poguntke show a clear overall decline in membership
→Some exceptions (Spain), and fluctuations
→Significant because alternative ways of learning about what people
want have little structural exchange
→Important for representation!
→Not compensated for by collateral organizations (e.g., trade union, or
churches)
Reading scientific articles
The challenge
oLanguage is often more complex and dense
oAuthors rarely expand on definitions
oAim is to add some evidence or test to a wider literature
o Adds something new(ish)
o Has often a narrower scope
oOften includes more technical matters
Reading scientific articles
What can we learn, what do we focus on?
o Discussion of previous literature: what does the author discuss as
relevant for this field?
o Do they point at a ‘gap’ in the literature? Something which we do not
yet know, or too little?
o What is the main aim of the article? To show that something affects
something else? To discuss a phenomenon?
o What is the main conclusion?
 Reading scientific
articles

Sometimes, we need to look something up..!

We need to make a choice of where to focus more:
Most: introduction, literature review, theory,
main results/conclusion
Not as much: the data, method, technical results

The abstract helps to navigate! As does the introduction

Reading scientific articles
Reading scientific articles
Reading scientific articles
What we did today
Parties and democracy
1. What is a political party?
2. Party systems: political conflict
3. Party systems: political system
Parties and citizens
1. Social bases of political parties
2. Partisanship
3. Party-participation
4. Who participates (campaign and contacting)
Change in parties
1. Organization
2. Participation
Reading scientific articles
Questions/comments?

Thanks for listening!