Political parties are the outcome of the modern world. They are generally associated with the functioning of democratic polities. They enable democracies to work successfully. Unlike the direct democracies of the yesteryears, parties are the sine qua non of the modern indirect democracies, usually referred as representative democracies.
As ârepresentative democracies,â modern democracies seek to forge vital links between people at the peripheral level and government at the central level. The success of such democracies is dependent on the strength of political parties. They attempt to link the state with the civil society. Besides working as political catalyst for transforming peopleâs aspirations into democratic goals, political parties also act as watchdogs for preserving and procuring representative democracy.
While the twentieth century came to be described as the century of the parties, political parties are facing new challenges in terms of finding their vitality and space in the contemporary socio-political set up. Candidates have appeared to take preeminence against parties at the center stage of political governance. Parties are getting increasingly replaced by the voluntary organizations within the ambit of the civil society. With the voting becoming less ideological-oriented and more sectarian and âmarketizedâ, civil society appears to mark its edge on the parties in the present century.
The first part of the book seeks to explore the theoretical underpinnings of political parties in the writings of Moisei Ostrogorski, Robert Michels, Michael Duverger, Myron Weiner, Seymour Martin Lipset, Steve Rokkan, Geovanni Sartori and others while linking them to the Israeli and Indian parties and party systems. Tracing the historicity and theoretical understanding of political parties in the writings of old and contemporary scholars, an attempt is also made in the subsequent chapter of the part to locate the parties and party systems within the democratic framework of Israel and India.
As soon as a party, even if created for the noblest object, perpetuates itself, it tends to degeneration
Moisei Ostrogorski
Parties are group of people that come together in their pursuit of political power. Edmund Burke defines party as âa body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreedâ. Parties thus act as instruments of articulation and mobilization of the masses. They mobilize people not merely for electoral politics by winning the legislative seats, but, more importantly, for building awareness and enthusing people for ânation-building, state-building and democratic identity-buildingâ.
Parties are the actual linchpin that connects the grassroots activity with the superstructural polity. They carry expectations and aspirations upward, from citizens to state, and take policies and programs downward, from state to citizens. Hence, they can prove to be instrumental in changing the very nature of the government on the one hand and democratizing the state on the other. In this way, they establish and maintain direct linkages between the state, the government and the people.
In a representative democratic system, parties often operate as autonomous units in the domain of political action. Their role is no less significant in the presidential system. However, they can play a far more influential role in the parliamentary democratic system by bringing political stability to the system of governance. Even the Communist and the totalitarian regimes function on the effective strength of the parties to keep the masses intact with the state system. Hence, the role of the parties keeps varying from parliamentary to totalitarian system, thrusting more challenge to them to act as real catalysts for the people.
As autonomous units in the democratic framework of government, political parties try to operate within the context of political institutions and structures. Paul Pennings and Jan-Erik Lane define party systems as âstructures of party competition and cooperationâ (Pennings and Lane 1998: 5). Over the years, party systems have been showing considerable changes in terms of their âvolatility, polarization, strength and size, electoral disproportionality, and cleavage structuresâ (Ibid.: 5). These factors significantly change the structures of both competition and cooperation, leading to the respective stability and change in the party systems across the world.
Interpreting the Parties
Parties are complex, multifaceted and intermediary organizations between the state and the citizens. They are organized bodies and are primarily concerned with the acquisition, consolidation and expansion of power. When parties try to compete among themselves to acquire power, they constitute the party system. Party systems are thus the structures of party competition and cooperation.
There are different bases in the formation of political parties across the world. One could highlight two prime movers of this formation, which may be characterized as âlocus and focusââthe former refers to âlocationâ and the latter to âorientationâ. Based on the location and orientation of parties, one could see different types and variants of parties. Generally speaking, there are four important bases on which parties are found to be formed. They may be described as âI
4â
âideology, interests, issues and individuals (Choudhary,
2017) (see Fig.
1.1).
While some parties are formed on the basis of ideology, others may get constituted on the basis of interests. Some others find issues as their key focus and locus, whereas for others, individuals remain the key players. The ideology-driven parties could be seen as Republican and Democratic Parties of the USA, Labor and Conservative Parties of UK, Mapai and Labor Party in Israel and Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India. Generally, ideology-based parties used to be called umbrella parties for representing divergent interests of the society as well as accommodating varying sections of communities. Contemporary trends witness transformation of umbrella parties into pan parties in view of their being the lead parties, both in coalition building and government formations.
In some countries, interests like caste, class, clan and community constitute important locus and focus of parties. For example, the Communist Parties in former Soviet Union, China and India, African National Congress in South Africa, Polish United Workersâ Party in Chile, Solidarity in Poland and Shas in Israel could be characterized as interest-oriented parties. Most of the parties in Africa are clan-based parties. Bahujan Samaj Party in India may be called as the party broadly representing the interests of the downtrodden strata of society.
Among the issue-based parties, one could cite the examples of Green Parties in Germany and other parts of Europe, and the Asom Gana Parishad and Aam Aadmi Party in India. And, finally, the individual-centric parties could be Nazi and Fascist parties formed by Hitler and Mussolini, respectively. Examples of individual-driven parties are Forza Italia Party , which was formed by the media tycoon Berlusconi, who later became the prime minister of Italy, and the Citizen Power of Bangladesh, founded by the noble laureate Muhammad Yunus in February 2007.
Kadima and Yesh Atid in Israel could also be brought under the individual-dominated parties, as both of them were creations of Ariel Sharon and Yair Lapid , respectively. In India, Lok Jan Shakti Party set up by Ram Vilas Paswan and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena formed by Raj Thackeray are some of the examples of the individual-centric parties.
It may be true that some of the parties may claim to represent all the three components like interests, issues and individuals in their ideology; the centrality of the locus and focus would broadly characterize and determine the nature of the parties across the world.
Parties and Party Systems: Historical Perspective
Political parties did get their significant reflections in the earlier writings of Bolingbroke, David Hume and Edmund Burke. While Bolingbroke and Hume failed to differentiate categorically between parties and factions, Burke, despite conceiving the modern idea of party for the first time, could not theorize on the parties.
Later writers such as J. S. Mill, Walter Bagehot and James Bryce largely contributed to general theories of âparliamentarianismâ rather than parties. Though parties in terms of factions did have their bearing on the academic literature in the eighteenth century, systematic work on the parties and party system did not occur until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Evolution and Growth of Parties
Based on the research on parties as undertaken by Howard L Reiter (2006), evolution and growth of the parties and party systems could broadly be classified under three salient phases: pre-behavioral era, behavioral era and post-behavioral era.
First Phase: Pre-behavioral Era [1906â1949]
The first phase of parties and party systems dominated the first five decades of the twentieth century. Applying the holistic approach, the first phase studied parties on the basis of organizations. Three important works of this period could be associated with Alexis de Tocqueville, Moisei Ostrogorski and Robert Michels.
The earlier references on the parties generally focused on the mass nature of parties. In this context, the ideas of Alexis de Tocqueville on parties also deserved special attention. Tocqueville stressed the importance of mass political parties and associations being the key institutions of civil society. His description of parties constituted two main formsâthe big parties emphasizing ideology and the smaller ones adhering to interests. The small parties, according to him, have no ideological base as âtheir moving impulses are mainly interest and ambition, and which are concerned with day-to-day issues or at worst with the scramble for powerâ (Lively 1965: 139).
The first extensive analysis of the parties was provided by Moisei Ostrogorski. Ostrogorski was the first to recognize that political parties were becoming significant in the new era of democratic politics. Parties, according to him, focus on âthe political feelings and the active wills of the citizensâ (Ostrogorski 1964: 1xxix). They âtend to become simple aggregates, drawn together, by the attractive force of a leader, for the conquest or preservation of powerâ (Ibid.: 331).
Ostrogorskiâs work is considered to be original and classical study of the history of Anglo-American party systems. By focusing on the caucus in British and American politics, Ostrogorski attempted to discover the general attributes of political parties within the context of universal suffrage. His work in this way entailed a detailed historical account of the rise and changes in the party system and sought to analyze the consequences of the democratic suffrage on the British and the American polities.
After Ostrogo...
