Forms%20of%20Party%20Organization

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Forms of Party Organization

• Party Types
• Why do parties organize in the ways that they do?

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Why do parties organize in the ways that they do?

• How much organization do they need?
• Do they need
• thick organization with large of members?
• to be organized at all times or only when
  elections are called?
• professionals rather than amateurs?
• Organization at all levels of government?

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Party types a composite typology

• Cadre parties
• Mass parties (or parties of mass integration)
• Catch-all parties and/or
• Electoral-Professional parties
• Cartel parties

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Where this comes from

• Maurice Duverger
• Sigmund Neumann
• Otto Kirchheimer
• Angelo Panebianco
• Richard Katz and Peter Mair

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Duvergers theory of party organization

• Degree of organization reflects parties
  electoral needs
• First parties were internally created
• Took the form of loose cadre parties
• Made of local notables
• Minimal organization outside of parliament
• Minimal organization between elections

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Duverger contd

• The mass party
• Mass parties externally created
• Extensive organization
• Outside of parliament
• In between elections
• The mass party is
• A superior form of party organization
• The wave of the future

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Sigmund Neumann

• Parties of individual representation
• Parties of mass integration
• Party not only organizes electorally,
• but also provides services and spiritual home for
  its citizens of the masses (Otto Kirchheimer,
  1966)
• Parties of total integration

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Epsteins critique

• Contagion from the left vs. contagion from the
  right
• Leon Epstein (Political Parties in Western
  Democracies, 1967) argues that the mass party is
  not the wave of the future
• Parties are not dependent on numbers or mass
  organization
• They can rely on the media instead

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Catchall and electoral professional parties

• Problem
• How do parties change over time?
• What are they like in middle age?

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Otto Kirchheimer and the catch-all party

• Parties of mass integration adapt to a more
  affluent and consumer oriented society by
• Abandoning attempts at the intellectual and
  moral encadrement of the masses
• Bidding for the support of interest groups
• Emphasizing the qualities of their leaders
• Scuttling excess ideological baggage
• Moving to the centre
• The success of one catch-all party forces others
  to imitate it, transforming the party system

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Panebiancos Political Parties

• Parties reflect genetic types
• Parties forced to transform themselves into
  electoral-professional parties

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The cartel party

• Katz and Mair 1995
• Parties share power with each other
• Parties have become part of the state
• Parties draw on state resources e.g. state
  finance
• Party members are involved, but only at a distance

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Problems

• How appropriate are these types?
• Do they encompass all political parties?
• Do they describe contemporary parties?
• Do they fit political parties in Canada or the
  United States?
• How accurately do they characterize them?
• What about parties in other parts of the world?

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Reminders

• Preliminary bibliography statement of topic due
  Friday, October 11th