Parties Chapter 12

Parties: A linking and leading mechanism in politics.

By: Krisna Mendoza

     For Americans, the two major parties are very alike. Elections often turn to the personalities of the candidates rather than the party affiliation. The political party crops up in all aspects of politics. United States was the first country to develop different political parties.

     A political party is a group of officials or would-be officials who are linked with a sizeable group of citizens into an organization. The aim is either to attain power, or to maintain in power. Interest groups and parties are different. Interest groups try to influence decision making process without actually taking power or joining the elections. Interest groups are a group of people with a common interest who band together to try by way of lobbying, campaign contribution, and other tactics to make sure that the government’s policies will be in tune with their wishes. Some examples are: American Medical Association and Friends of the Earth. A party has a formally organized structure. The US parties are known by their looseness of organization.

     Origins of the modern party have turned out to be useful for a variety of tasks that require control or communication. Before democracy, people attained offices by being born into them, by buying the office, by buying the office, by bribery or by appointment.  After democracy, many of these positions were filled by elections. The would-be official had to seek the votes of the people.

      The politicians in the new democracies realized that some sort of organization that would link them with large numbers of people would be extremely useful. Then, with expanded suffrage, many political parties emerged. The first modern electoral democracy was the United State of America, and it was here that the first parties develop. By the 1820s, there were well-organized parties, and the Democratic Party, which can trace its roots back to that time, is the oldest political party in the world.

     There are 6 functions of the parties: mobilization of the masses, political socialization, political parties as a source of political identity, aggregation of interests, integration into the political system and political parties as a channel of control. The mobilization of the masses it's getting people to vote. They use various tools such as pa Party rallies, advertising, campaigning and electoral propaganda. The stronger and more organized the parties the higher voters they would get. Weak parties lead to lower voter turnouts.

     Political socialization teach their members how to play the political game. Happens both for the leaders in the parties and for the people. Some examples for political parties are democrat, republican, and communist. Aggregation of interest is when parties aggregate separate interests into a larger organization. The smaller the groups seek representation the smaller the parties seek votes.

      Parties usually pull some groups that had been left out before into the political system. There is also a give and take relationship: votes versus representation.
political parties are a channel for controlling other political leaders. There is a party hierarchy. There are different party finances such as: Individual contributors/membership fees, interest groups, public finance, profits from business enterprise, subsidies from other countries and bribes and kickbacks. 

     There are four different political party systems.  One party system they are non-democratic, one party rules. Some examples are former communist states.  Dominant party system is a single party holds the power for a long time, but the system is democratic an example would be Mexican Party of the Institutionalized Revolution. Two-party systems: two parties receive over 90 percent of the votes. An example would be US and UK. 

     Multi-party system and it consists of more than two major parties. Coalitions and minority governments may be seen from time to time. Most democratic systems are multi-party systems. One major reason to determine the party system is the electoral system.