Former parties
130-481: Former parties Former parties A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism . The term " communist party" was popularized by the title of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As a vanguard party , the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As
260-546: A liberal - conservative divide, or around religious disputes. The spread of the party model of politics was accelerated by the 1848 Revolutions around Europe. The strength of political parties in the United States waned during the Era of Good Feelings , but shifted and strengthened again by the second half of the 19th century. This was not the only country in which the strength of political parties had substantially increased by
390-456: A party chair , who may be different people from the party leader. These executive organizations may serve to constrain the party leader, especially if that leader is an autocrat. It is common for political parties to conduct major leadership decisions, like selecting a party executive and setting their policy goals, during regular party conferences . Much as party leaders who are not in power are usually at least nominally competing to become
520-463: A single-member district electoral system tend to have very few parties, whereas countries that use proportional representation tend to have more. The number of parties in a country can also be accurately estimated based on the magnitude of a country's electoral districts and the number of seats in its legislature. An informative way to classify the party systems of the world is by how many parties they include. Because some party systems include
650-559: A Red Sport International and elected a governing Executive Committee, consisting of representatives from Soviet Russia, Germany, Czechoslovakia , France, Sweden, Italy, and Alsace-Lorraine . Podvoisky was elected President of the new organization. The establishment of an international sports organization in Soviet Russia in 1921 was not without its utopian elements, since no official Soviet sport organizations existed in famine stricken post-civil war Soviet Russia at that time. Germany, on
780-416: A candidate in one electoral district has an incentive to assist a similar candidate in a different district. Thus, political parties can be mechanisms for preventing candidates with similar goals from acting to each other's detriment when campaigning or governing. This might help explain the ubiquity of parties: if a group of candidates form a party and are harming each other less, they may perform better over
910-526: A candidate to victory in an election. Some scholars argue that the first modern political parties developed in early modern Britain in the 17th century, after the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution . The Whig faction originally organized itself around support for Protestant constitutional monarchy as opposed to absolute rule , whereas the conservative Tory faction (originally
1040-403: A community of party members. Parties in democracies usually select their party leadership in ways that are more open and competitive than parties in autocracies, where the selection of a new party leader is likely to be tightly controlled. In countries with large sub-national regions, particularly federalist countries, there may be regional party leaders and regional party members in addition to
1170-532: A country with multiple competitive parties is not necessarily democratic, and the politics of many autocratic countries are organized around one dominant political party. The ubiquity and strength of political parties in nearly every modern country has led researchers to remark that the existence of political parties is almost a law of politics, and to ask why parties appear to be such an essential part of modern states. Political scientists have therefore come up with several explanations for why political parties are
1300-595: A deeper connection to the electorate. The idea of people forming large groups or factions to advocate for their shared interests is ancient. Plato mentions the political factions of Classical Athens in the Republic , and Aristotle discusses the tendency of different types of government to produce factions in the Politics . Certain ancient disputes were also factional, like the Nika riots between two chariot racing factions at
1430-413: A democracy will often affiliate with a specific political party. Party membership may include paying dues, an agreement not to affiliate with multiple parties at the same time, and sometimes a statement of agreement with the party's policies and platform. In democratic countries, members of political parties often are allowed to participate in elections to choose the party leadership. Party members may form
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#17328377159141560-451: A democracy. There have been periods of government exclusively or entirely by one party in some countries that are often considered to have been democratic, and which had no official legal barriers to the inclusion of other parties in the government; this includes recent periods in Botswana , Japan , Mexico , Senegal , and South Africa . It can also occur that one political party dominates
1690-661: A few cases where the original sections of the Communist International have retained those names. But throughout the twentieth century, many parties changed their names. For example, following their ascension to power, the Bolshevik Party changed their name to the All-Russian Communist Party. Causes for these shifts in naming were either moves to avoid state repression or as measures to generate greater acceptance by local populations. An important example of
1820-519: A joint "Workers' Olympiad" — a proposal which was narrowly defeated, despite indications that a majority of individual members of the socialist organization favored joint participation. In October 1924 the Red Sport International held its 3rd Congress in Moscow. At this time the organization decided to enlarge its governing Executive Committee to include four members of the executive committee of
1950-426: A large membership base. Further, mass parties prioritize the mobilization of voters and are more centralized than elite parties. The term "catch-all party" was developed by German-American political scientist Otto Kirchheimer to describe the parties that developed in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of changes within the mass parties. The term "big tent party" may be used interchangeably. Kirchheimer characterized
2080-485: A large number of parties that have a very low probability of winning elections, it is often useful to think about the effective number of parties (the number of parties weighted by the strength of those parties) rather than the literal number of registered parties. In a non-partisan system, no political parties exist, or political parties are not a major part of the political system. There are very few countries without political parties . In some non-partisan countries,
2210-401: A large number of political parties around the world, not all political parties have an organizing ideology, or exist to promote ideological policies. For example, some political parties may be clientelistic or patronage -based organizations, which are largely concerned with distributing goods. Other political parties may be created as tools for the advancement of an individual politician. It
2340-552: A leading historian on the topic, "it is safe to assume that this group represented a minority of the whole membership of each section." The Czechoslovakian federation, thought to include the largest Communist Party contingent from outside the USSR, is believed to have included something in the range of 20 to 30% who were members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia . The fact that members of other parties or no parties participated in
2470-491: A major upheaval in their politics and have not yet returned to a stable system of political parties. For example, the United States began as a non-partisan democracy, and it evolved a stable system of political parties over the course of many decades. A country's party system may also dissolve and take time to re-form, leaving a period of minimal or no party system, such as in Peru following the regime of Alberto Fujimori . However, it
2600-399: A nearly universal political phenomenon. One of the core explanations for the existence of political parties is that they arise from pre-existing divisions among people: society is divided in a certain way, and a party is formed to organize that division into the electoral competition. By the 1950s, economists and political scientists had shown that party organizations could take advantage of
2730-400: A new competitive orientation beginning to take the place of individualistic club activities. The international social democratic movement also experienced a rebirth after its connections had been severed by war. In 1920 the social democrats established an International Association for Sports and Physical Culture, echoing its efforts in the pre-war period. This organization was rechristened as
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#17328377159142860-511: A number of countries, particularly longstanding European democracies. Political scientists have distinguished between different types of political parties that have evolved throughout history. These include elite parties, mass parties, catch-all parties and cartel parties. Elite parties were political elites that were concerned with contesting elections and restricted the influence of outsiders, who were only required to assist in election campaigns. Mass parties tried to recruit new members who were
2990-417: A phenonmenon observable among European Green parties during their transformation from radical environmentalist movements to mainstream centre-left parties. An Entrepreneurial party is a political party that is centered on a political entrepreneur , and dedicated to the advancement of that person or their policies. While some definitions of political parties state that a party is an organization that advances
3120-863: A realistic chance of competing to form government. One current example of a two-party system is the United States , where the national government has for much of the country's history exclusively been controlled by either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party . Other examples of countries which have had long periods of two-party dominance include Colombia , Uruguay , Malta , and Ghana . Two-party systems are not limited to democracies; they may be present in authoritarian regimes as well. Competition between two parties has occurred in historical autocratic regimes in countries including Brazil and Venezuela . A democracy's political institutions can shape
3250-504: A rival Red Sport International (RSI) was the inspiration of Nikolai Podvoisky , who at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern in the summer of 1920 discussed with a number of delegates from around the world the idea of establishing an organization to coordinate the physical training of youth. Podvoisky, a military specialist in charge of Soviet Russia's military training organization, believed systematic physical training to be beneficial for
3380-584: A ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat . Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when the socialist movement in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction ("of the majority") and the Menshevik faction ("of the minority"). To be politically effective, Lenin proposed
3510-595: A significant shortcoming. The RSI was a large and growing organization in this interval, with some 2 million affiliated members in the Soviet Union, joined by others sections in Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Norway, Italy, Finland, Switzerland, the United States, Estonia , Bulgaria, and Uruguay . As the size of the organization grew, so, too, did pressure to bring the organization's ideological character under tighter centralized Communist Party control. Nikolai Podvoisky
3640-412: A single best policy choice without some institution constraining their options. Another prominent explanation for why political parties exist is psychological: parties may be necessary for many individuals to participate in politics because they provide a massively simplifying heuristic , which allows people to make informed choices with much less mental effort than if voters had to consciously evaluate
3770-461: A small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed the centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries . Once a policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy. In contrast, the Menshevik faction, which initially included Leon Trotsky , emphasized that the party should not neglect
3900-548: A smaller group can be a feature of party leadership transitions in more autocratic countries, where the existence of political parties may be severely constrained to only one legal political party, or only one competitive party. Some of these parties, like the Chinese Communist Party , have rigid methods for selecting the next party leader, which involves selection by other party members. A small number of single-party states have hereditary succession, where party leadership
4030-405: A source of party income and were often expected to spread party ideology as well as assist in elections. In the United States, where both major parties were elite parties, the introduction of primaries and other reforms has transformed them so that power is held by activists who compete over influence and nomination of candidates. An elite party is a type of political party that was dominant in
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4160-479: A specific set of ideological or policy goals, many political parties are not primarily motivated by ideology or policy, and instead exist to advance the career of a specific political entrepreneur . Political ideologies are one of the major organizing features of political parties, and parties often officially align themselves with specific ideologies. Parties adopt ideologies for a number of reasons. Ideological affiliations for political parties send signals about
4290-460: A sub-national region of a democratic country that has a competitive national party system; one example is the southern United States during much of the 19th and 20th centuries, where the Democratic Party had almost complete control, with the Southern states being functionally one-party regimes, though opposition parties were never prohibited. In several countries, there are only two parties that have
4420-432: A top-down hierarchical structure, ideological rigidity , and strict party discipline . In contrast, other studies have emphasized the differences among communist parties. Multi-party studies, such as those by Robert C. Tucker and A. James McAdams, have emphasized the differences in both these parties' organizational structure and their use of Marxist and Leninist ideas to justify their policies. Another important question
4550-470: A very large portion of society and it can play substantial roles in civil society that are not necessarily directly related to political governance; one example of this is the Chinese Communist Party . Bans on competing parties can also ensure that only one party can ever realistically hold power, even without completely outlawing all other political parties. For example, in North Korea , more than one party
4680-714: A view to increasing participation among Western European workers' sports organizations. The maneuver proved successful in helping to build the organization, triggering a split of the French Workers Sports Federation later that year and the affiliation of 80% of its membership with the Red Sport International. The RSI's increased place in the public eye motivated the governing body of the rival international socialist sports authority, meeting in Zurich in August 1923, to discuss issuing an invitation to Sportintern to help organize
4810-617: A way that does not conform to the dominant economic left-right divide in politics, in turn emphasising issues that do not attain prominence within the other parties. Further, niche parties do not respond to changes in public opinion to the extent that mainstream parties do. Examples of niche parties include Green parties and extreme nationalist parties, such as the National Rally in France. However, over time these parties may grow in size and shed some of their niche qualities as they become larger,
4940-521: Is also common, in countries with important social cleavages along ethnic or racial lines, to represent the interests of one ethnic group or another. This may involve a non-ideological attachment to the interests of that group, or may be a commitment based on an ideology like identity politics . While any of these types of parties may be ideological, there are political parties that do not have any organizing ideology. Political parties are ubiquitous across both democratic and autocratic countries, and there
5070-423: Is also possible – albeit rare – for countries with no bans on political parties, and which have not experienced a major disruption, to nevertheless have no political parties: there are a small number of pacific island democracies, such as Palau , where political parties are permitted to exist and yet parties are not an important part of national politics. In a one-party system , power
5200-405: Is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections . It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics , and parties may promote specific ideological or policy goals. Political parties have become a major part of the politics of almost every country, as modern party organizations developed and spread around the world over
5330-510: Is common for democratic elections to feature competitions between liberal , conservative , and socialist parties; other common ideologies of very large political parties include communism , populism , nationalism , and Islamism . Political parties in different countries will often adopt similar colours and symbols to identify themselves with a particular ideology. However, many political parties have no ideological affiliation, and may instead be primarily engaged in patronage , clientelism ,
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5460-508: Is held entirely by one political party. When only one political party exists, it may be the result of a ban on the formation of any competing political parties, which is a common feature in authoritarian states. For example, the Communist Party of Cuba is the only permitted political party in Cuba , and is the only party that can hold seats in the legislature. When only one powerful party is legally permitted to exist, its membership can grow to contain
5590-407: Is inherited by the child of an outgoing party leader. Autocratic parties use more restrictive selection methods to avoid having major shifts in the regime as a result of successions. In both democratic and non-democratic countries, the party leader is often the foremost member of a larger party leadership. A party executive will commonly include administrative positions, like a party secretary and
5720-408: Is largely insignificant as parties use the resources of the state to maintain their position within the political system. Niche parties are a type of political party that developed on the basis of the emergence of new cleavages and issues in politics, such as immigration and the environment. In contrast to mainstream or catch-all parties, niche parties articulate an often limited set of interests in
5850-521: Is officially permitted to exist and even to seat members in the legislature, but laws ensure that the Workers' Party of Korea retains control. It is also possible for countries with free elections to have only one party that holds power. These cases are sometimes called dominant-party systems or particracies . Scholars have debated whether or not a country that has never experienced a transfer of power from one party to another can nevertheless be considered
5980-399: Is often very little change in which political parties have a chance of holding power in a country from one election to the next. This makes it possible to think about the political parties in a country as collectively forming one of the country's central political institutions , called a party system. Some basic features of a party system are the number of parties and what sorts of parties are
6110-442: Is reduced as catch-all parties are financed in part by the state or by donations. In Europe, the shift of Christian Democratic parties that were organized around religion into broader centre-right parties epitomizes this type. Cartel parties are a type of political party that emerged post-1970s and are characterized by heavy state financing and the diminished role of ideology as an organizing principle. The cartel party thesis
6240-432: Is the ideology that is most closely connected to the history of democracies and is often considered to be the dominant or default ideology of governing parties in much of the contemporary world. Many of the traditional competitors to liberal parties are conservative parties. Socialist, communist, feminist, anarchist, fascist, and nationalist parties are more recent developments, largely entering political competitions only in
6370-494: Is why communist parties were able to rule for as long as they did. Some scholars have depicted these parties as fatally flawed from their inception and argue they only remained in power because their leaders were willing to use their monopoly of power and the state monopoly to crush all forms of opposition . In contrast, other studies have emphasized these parties' ability to adapt their policies to changing times and circumstances. Political party A political party
6500-625: The Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party . By the early 19th century, a number of countries had developed stable modern party systems. The party system that developed in Sweden has been called the world's first party system, on the basis that previous party systems were not fully stable or institutionalized. In many European countries, including Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and France, political parties organized around
6630-633: The Hippodrome of Constantinople . A few instances of recorded political groups or factions in history included the late Roman Republic's Populares and Optimates factions as well as the Dutch Republic's Orangists and the Staatsgezinde . However, modern political parties are considered to have emerged around the end of the 18th century; they are usually considered to have first appeared in Europe and
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#17328377159146760-537: The International Olympic Committee before being dissolved in 1937. The notion of a separate working class national athletic federation emerged first in Germany during the decade of the 1890s, when a Workers Gymnastics Association was established by activists in the socialist movement in opposition to the nationalist German Gymnastics Society (Turnen). Other "proletarian" sports organizations emerged soon thereafter in that country, including
6890-564: The Royalist or Cavalier faction of the English Civil War ) supported a strong monarchy, and these two groups structured disputes in the politics of the United Kingdom throughout the 18th century The Rockingham Whigs have been identified as the first modern political party, because they retained a coherent party label and motivating principles even while out of power. At the end of
7020-616: The Socialist Workers' Sport International (SWSI) in 1925. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917 the international socialist movement divided into two antagonistic camps, socialist and communist — a division exacerbated with the establishment of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. Parallel political organizations sprung up in every country and a state of bitter enmity prevailed. The idea of
7150-537: The Spanish Civil War . This forced postponement of the event, which was rescheduled for the next summer in Antwerp , Belgium. The 3rd Workers' Olympiad proved to be less successful than previous endeavors, but it still managed to attract 27,000 participating athletes, and put 50,000 people in the stadium for the final day of competition. An estimated 200,000 people turned out for the traditional closing parade through
7280-535: The 107 parties with significant memberships, there were approximately 82 million communist party members worldwide. Given its worldwide representation, the communist party may be counted as the principal challenger to the influence of liberal-democratic , catch-all parties in the twentieth century. Following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc between 1989–1992, most of these parties either disappeared or were renamed and adopted different goals than their predecessors. In
7410-417: The 19th and 20th centuries. Environmentalism, multiculturalism, and certain types of fundamentalism became prominent towards the end of the 20th century. Parties can sometimes be organized according to their ideology using an economic left–right political spectrum . However, a simple left-right economic axis does not fully capture the variation in party ideologies. Other common axes that are used to compare
7540-543: The 21st century, only five ruling parties on the national level still described themselves as Marxist–Leninist parties: the Chinese Communist Party , the Communist Party of Cuba , the Communist Party of Vietnam , the Workers' Party of Korea and the Lao People's Revolutionary Party . As of 2023, the Chinese Communist Party was the world's second largest political party , having over 99 million members. Although
7670-467: The Comintern Congress and the group constituted itself a founding conference for an international sports organization. It is worthy of emphasis that the Comintern did not itself directly found the Red Sport International, the group being established through independent initiative and the Comintern being preoccupied with other affairs. The group issued a public manifesto declaring the establishment of
7800-499: The Comintern's official interpretation of Leninism was the book Foundations of Leninism (1924) by Joseph Stalin . As the membership of a communist party was to be limited to active cadres in Lenin's theory, there was a need for networks of separate organizations to mobilize mass support for the party. Typically, communist parties built up various front organizations whose membership was often open to non-communists. In many countries,
7930-449: The Communist International of Youth — an organization which saw the national affiliates of Sportintern as comprised overwhelmingly of young workers and sought to insert its influence in the organization. As the membership of Sportintern was formally "open to all proletarian elements which recognize the class struggle" it was not an explicitly communist organization, a situation which the KIM saw as
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#17328377159148060-879: The IOC. Four such events (called Spartakiads in honor of the heroic slave leader, Spartacus ) were sponsored by the RSI. Two of these were held in 1928, and one each in 1931 and 1937. While a major national workers' sport festival had already been held in Czechoslovakia in 1921, it was the socialist organization in 1925 that conducted the first pair of Workers' Olympics events — Summer Games in Frankfurt attracting 150,000 spectators and competitors from 19 country, and Winter Games in Schreiberhau (today's Szklarska Poręba , Poland), attended by athletes from 12 countries. No national flags or anthems graced
8190-442: The Moscow dominated leadership of the organization has led one scholar to conclude that the RSI was a "split organization, living in two universes," bureaucratic in political discourse but remaining well within the less intense social democratic workers' sports tradition at the individual club level. In this view politics was merely a piece of a broader participatory sports movement. The international workers' sports organizations of
8320-456: The RSI likewise gradually lost its ability to function independently as an international entity. In the words of French sports historian André Gounot: "...The RSI's dependence on the Comintern was accompanied, almost inevitably, by the Soviet section's dominance within the RSI. The interests of the Soviet Union and Soviet sport were decisive factors in the RSI's decisions and actions — even if, as
8450-789: The Solidarity Worker Cycling Club, the Friends of Nature Rambling Association, the Worker Swimming Association, the Free Sailing Association, and the Worker Track and Field Athletics Association , among others. By the time of World War I , the German proletarian sports movement included more than 350,000 participants. Following the bloodbath of World War I, the German workers' sports movement began to reemerge, with
8580-573: The Sportintern and the national sports organizations affiliated to it as a useful "proletarian class instrument." It did not, however, delve into the contentious issue of in what manner and to what extent these two international bodies should be related. The governing Executive Committee of Sportintern met in Moscow in February 1923 and decided to establish a satellite bureau of the organization in Berlin, with
8710-552: The United States of America, with the United Kingdom's Conservative Party and the Democratic Party of the United States both frequently called the world's "oldest continuous political party". Before the development of mass political parties, elections typically featured a much lower level of competition, had small enough polities that direct decision-making was feasible, and held elections that were dominated by individual networks or cliques that could independently propel
8840-408: The advancement of a specific political entrepreneur , or be a " big tent ", in that they wish to attract voters who have a variety of positions on issues. Political parties are collective entities and activities that organize competitions for political offices. The members of a political party contest elections under a shared label. In a narrow definition, a political party can be thought of as just
8970-660: The aegis of a new organization, the Cominform . Historically, in countries where communist parties were struggling to attain state power, the formation of wartime alliances with non-communist parties and wartime groups was enacted (such as the National Liberation Front of Albania ). Upon attaining state power these Fronts were often transformed into nominal (and usually electoral) "National" or "Fatherland" Fronts in which non-communist parties and organizations were given token representation (a practice known as Blockpartei ),
9100-551: The appearance of charismatic revolutionary leaders and their ultimate demise during the decline and fall of communist parties worldwide have all been the subject of investigation. A uniform naming scheme for communist parties was adopted by the Communist International. All parties were required to use the name 'Communist Party of ( name of the country )', resulting in separate communist parties in some countries operating using (largely) homonymous party names (e.g. in India ). Today, there are
9230-405: The base of the volunteer activists and donors who support political parties during campaigns. The extent of participation in party organizations can be affected by a country's political institutions, with certain electoral systems and party systems encouraging higher party membership. Since at least the 1980s, membership in large traditional party organizations has been steadily declining across
9360-574: The best instruments, methods, and weapons for their class organization and struggle." At the same time the international communist movement moved to further politicize the RSI, efforts were made to make political hay over the refusal of the Socialist Workers' Sport International to conduct joint activities, such as its decision to bar the Red Sport International from participation at the July 1925 "Workers' Olympiad" held in Frankfurt under its auspices. It
9490-467: The century, the United States also developed a party system, called the First Party System . Although the framers of the 1787 United States Constitution did not all anticipate that American political disputes would be primarily organized around political parties, political controversies in the early 1790s over the extent of federal government powers saw the emergence of two proto-political parties :
9620-438: The claim that parties emerge from existing cleavages, or arguing that the claim is not empirically testable. Others note that while social cleavages might cause political parties to exist, this obscures the opposite effect: that political parties also cause changes in the underlying social cleavages. A further objection is that, if the explanation for where parties come from is that they emerge from existing social cleavages, then
9750-447: The closing or opening ceremonies, replaced instead by universal use of the red flag and singing of " The Internationale ." "Soviet and other communist athletes were excluded from these games, however, and there was therefore little actual unity of the workers' sports movement for all the universalist pageantry employed. From the middle 1930s the political line of the world communist movement changed. The so-called Popular Front against
9880-424: The cognitive burden for people to cast informed votes. However, some evidence suggests that over the last several decades, the strength of party identification has been weakening, so this may be a less important function for parties to provide than it was in the past. Political parties are often structured in similar ways across countries. They typically feature a single party leader, a group of party executives, and
10010-651: The dissolution of the Communist International. After the Second World War new international coordination bodies were created, such as the World Federation of Democratic Youth , International Union of Students , World Federation of Trade Unions , Women's International Democratic Federation and the World Peace Council . The Soviet Union unified many of the Comintern's original goals in the Eastern Bloc under
10140-575: The distribution of voters' preferences over political issues, adjusting themselves in response to what voters believe in order to become more competitive. Beginning in the 1960s, academics began identifying the social cleavages in different countries that might have given rise to specific parties, such as religious cleavages in specific countries that may have produced religious parties there. The theory that parties are produced by social cleavages has drawn several criticisms. Some authors have challenged it on empirical grounds, either finding no evidence for
10270-413: The divisions between lower and upper classes , and they streamline the process of making political decisions by encouraging their members to cooperate. Political parties usually include a party leader, who has primary responsibility for the activities of the party; party executives, who may select the leader and who perform administrative and organizational tasks; and party members, who may volunteer to help
10400-490: The end of the century; for example, around this time the Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell implemented several methods and structures like party discipline that would come to be associated with strong grassroots political parties. At the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, the liberal–conservative divide that characterized most party systems was disrupted by the emergence of socialist parties, which attracted
10530-411: The entire party, and some voters decide how to vote in elections partly based on how much they like the leaders of the different parties. The number of people involved in choosing party leaders varies widely across parties and across countries. On one extreme, party leaders might be selected from the entire electorate; on the opposite extreme, they might be selected by just one individual. Selection by
10660-418: The fact that a party is focused on electing candidates, whereas a parliamentary group is a group of political parties, a political faction is a subgroup within a political party, and an advocacy group is focused on advancing a policy agenda. This is related to other features that sometimes distinguish parties from other political organizations, including a larger membership, greater stability over time, and
10790-769: The first political party in Uganda, and its name was chosen as an homage to the Indian National Congress. As broader suffrage rights and eventually universal suffrage slowly spread throughout democracies, political parties expanded dramatically, and only then did a vision develop of political parties as intermediaries between the full public and the government. Political parties are a nearly ubiquitous feature of modern countries. Nearly all democratic countries have strong political parties, and many political scientists consider countries with fewer than two parties to necessarily be autocratic . However, these sources allow that
10920-527: The fissure between the two camps of the European workers' sport movement wider than ever. Membership of the various national sections of the Red Sport International was by no means monolithic. According to the RSI's own study of the issue, members of the organizations were predominantly male, but hailed from a variety of communist, socialist, syndicalist , and anarchist tendencies, including many of whom who were members of no party. Although many of these were of
11050-485: The fledgling Sportintern in November 1922 when, in conjunction with the 4th World Congress , the governing Executive Committee of the Communist International decided to name a representative to the "independent" proletarian sport organization. The Communist International of Youth (KIM) did not take action until the meeting of its governing Bureau in Moscow in July 1923, when it issued a general recommendation of support for
11180-662: The formation of parties is explicitly banned by law. The existence of political parties may be banned in autocratic countries in order to prevent a turnover in power. For example, in Saudi Arabia , a ban on political parties has been used as a tool for protecting the monarchy. However, parties are also banned in some polities that have long democratic histories, usually in local or regional elections of countries that have strong national party systems. Political parties may also temporarily cease to exist in countries that have either only been established recently, or that have experienced
11310-413: The group of candidates who run for office under a party label. In a broader definition, political parties are the entire apparatus that supports the election of a group of candidates, including voters and volunteers who identify with a particular political party, the official party organizations that support the election of that party's candidates, and legislators in the government who are affiliated with
11440-560: The head of government, the entire party executive may be competing for various positions in the government. For example, in Westminster systems , the largest party that is out of power will form the Official Opposition in parliament, and select a shadow cabinet which (among other functions) provides a signal about which members of the party would hold which positions in the government if the party were to win an election. Citizens in
11570-464: The head of government. In both presidential democracies and parliamentary democracies , the members of a party frequently have substantial input into the selection of party leaders, for example by voting on party leadership at a party conference . Because the leader of a major party is a powerful and visible person, many party leaders are well-known career politicians. Party leaders can be sufficiently prominent that they affect voters' perceptions of
11700-437: The historical importance of communist parties is widely accepted, their activities and functions have been interpreted in different ways. One approach, sometimes known as the totalitarian school of communist studies, has implicitly treated all communist parties as the same types of organizations. Scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Francois Furet have relied upon conceptions of the party emphasizing centralized control,
11830-464: The ideologies of political parties include ranges from liberal to authoritarian, from pro-establishment to anti-establishment , and from tolerant and pluralistic (in their behavior while participating in the political arena) to anti-system. Party positions for individual political parties are assessed by different published indices, such as the V-Party Dataset . Though ideologies are central to
11960-620: The importance of mass populations in realizing a communist revolution . In the course of the revolution, the Bolshevik party which became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) assumed government power in Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. With the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919, the concept of communist party leadership was adopted by many revolutionary parties, worldwide. In an effort to standardize
12090-465: The international communist movement ideologically and maintain central control of the member parties, the Comintern required that its members use the term "communist party" in their names. Under the leadership of the CPSU, the interpretations of orthodox Marxism were applied to Russia and led to the emergence of Leninist and Marxist–Leninist political parties throughout the world. After the death of Lenin,
12220-624: The international communist movement was fragmented due to the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. Those who sided with China and Albania in their criticism of the Soviet leadership, often added words like 'Revolutionary' or ' Marxist–Leninist ' to distinguish themselves from the pro-Soviet parties. In 1985, approximately 38 percent of the world's population lived under "communist" governments (1.67 billion out of 4.4 billion). The CPSU's International Department officially recognized 95 ruling and nonruling communist parties. Overall, if one includes
12350-518: The introduction of universal suffrage resulted in the creation of worker's parties that later evolved into mass parties; an example is the German Social Democratic Party . These parties represented large groups of citizens who had not previously been represented in political processes, articulating the interests of different groups in society. In contrast to elite parties, mass parties are funded by their members, and rely on and maintain
12480-568: The last few centuries. Although some countries have no political parties , this is extremely rare. Most countries have several parties while others only have one . Parties are important in the politics of autocracies as well as democracies , though usually democracies have more political parties than autocracies. Autocracies often have a single party that governs the country, and some political scientists consider competition between two or more parties to be an essential part of democracy. Parties can develop from existing divisions in society, like
12610-491: The latter was the renaming of many East European communist parties after the Second World War, sometimes as a result of mergers with the local social democratic and democratic socialist parties. New names in the post-war era included " Socialist Party ", " Socialist Unity Party ", " People's (or Popular) Party ", " Workers' Party " and " Party of Labour ". The naming conventions of communist parties became more diverse as
12740-404: The long run than unaffiliated politicians , so politicians with party affiliations will out-compete politicians without parties. Parties can also align their member's incentives when those members are in a legislature. The existence of a party apparatus can help coalitions of electors to agree on ideal policy choices, whereas a legislature of unaffiliated members might never be able to agree on
12870-448: The merits of every candidate individually. Without political parties, electors would have to individually evaluate every candidate in every election. Parties enable electors to make judgments about just a few groups, and then apply their judgment of the party to its entire slate of candidates. Because it is much easier to become informed about a few parties' platforms than the positions of a multitude of independent candidates, parties reduce
13000-592: The most popular examples of these being the National Front of East Germany (as a historical example) and the North Korean Reunification Front (as a modern-day example). Other times the formation of such Fronts was undertaken without the participation of other parties, such as the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia and the National Front of Afghanistan , though the purpose was
13130-440: The most successful. These properties are closely connected to other major features of the country's politics, such as how democratic it is, what sorts of restrictions its laws impose on political parties, and what type of electoral systems it uses. Even in countries where the number of political parties is not officially constrained by law, political institutions affect how many parties are viable. For example, democracies that use
13260-432: The national membership and leadership. Parties are typically led by a party leader , who serves as the main representative of the party and often has primary responsibility for overseeing the party's policies and strategies. The leader of the party that controls the government usually becomes the head of government , such as the president or prime minister , and the leaders of other parties explicitly compete to become
13390-405: The national sections of the Red Sport International is testimony to the limited impact that RSI programmatic rhetoric had upon grassroots participants. It was rather the fun and excitement of training and competition that bound together local groups and their national units more than ideological proclivities. The difference in perception of the organization between its rank-and-file participants and
13520-527: The needs of the Red Army for healthy and fit youth in its ranks. An international sports organization was also seen as a potential ideological counterweight to the Olympic games of the " bourgeois " International Olympic Committee as well as the activities of the rival International Association for Sports and Physical Culture of the socialists. Podvoisky gathered interested delegates who were already in Moscow for
13650-434: The nineteenth century before the introduction of universal suffrage. The French political scientist Maurice Duverger first distinguished between elite and "mass" parties, founding his distinction on the differences within the organisational structures of these two types. Elite parties are characterized by minimal and loose organisation, and are financed by fewer larger monetary contributions typically originating from outside
13780-453: The number of parties that it has. In the 1950s Maurice Duverger observed that single-member district single-vote plurality-rule elections tend to produce two-party systems, and this phenomenon came to be known as Duverger's law . Whether or not this pattern is true has been heavily debated over the last several decades. Some political scientists have broadened this idea to argue that more restrictive political institutions (of which first past
13910-555: The other hand, had a well-developed workers' sport movement at this time. Consequently, Sportintern from its outset maintained a strong German flavor and it was there in the city of Berlin that the 2nd Conference of the organization was held in July 1922. The only national "proletarian" sports organization to join the German group at that early date was the Czechoslovak Federation of Workers' Gymnastic Leagues , said to represent 100,000 athletes. The Comintern moved closer to
14040-457: The participation of less privileged national and social groups, without distinction to race or creed, in the view of the radical sports organizations. Therefore, the Red Sport International and its socialist rival, the organization emerging as the Socialist Workers' Sport International, conducted a series of their own workers' sports festivals in distinction to and competition with the Olympiads of
14170-420: The party, donate money to it, and vote for its candidates. There are many different ways in which political parties can be structured and interact with the electorate. The contributions that citizens give to political parties are often regulated by law, and parties will sometimes govern in a way that favours the people who donate time and money to them. Many political parties are motivated by ideological goals. It
14300-443: The party. In many countries, the notion of a political party is defined in law, and governments may specify requirements for an organization to legally qualify as a political party. Political parties are distinguished from other political groups or clubs, such as parliamentary groups, because only presidents have control over the political foundations of the party and also they include political factions, or advocacy groups, mostly by
14430-547: The party. Elite parties give little priority to expanding the party's membership base, and its leaders are its only members. The earliest political parties, such as the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists , are classified as elite parties. A mass party is a type of political party that developed around cleavages in society and mobilized the ordinary citizens or 'masses' in the political process. In Europe,
14560-586: The policies of Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. The formation of the Indian National Congress , which developed in the late 19th century as a pro-independence faction in British India and immediately became a major political party after Indian independence, foreshadowed the dynamic in many newly independent countries; for example, the Uganda National Congress was a pro-independence party and
14690-568: The political leadership of the party. After the fall of communist party regimes in the 1990s, mass organizations sometimes outlived their communist party founders. At the international level, the Communist International organized various international front organizations (linking national mass organizations with each other), such as the Young Communist International , Profintern , Krestintern , International Red Aid , Sportintern , etc. Many of these organizations were disbanded after
14820-474: The post is one example) tend to produce a smaller number of political parties, so that extremely small parties systems – like those with only two parties – tend to form in countries with very restrictive rules. Sportintern The International Association of Red Sports and Gymnastics Associations , commonly known as Red Sport International (RSI) or Sportintern was a Comintern -supported international sports organization established in July 1921. The RSI
14950-407: The radicals as a manifestation of national chauvinism . Rather than the accentuation of national rivalry and patriotic feeling, international competition should focus on the actual athletic effort in a setting designed to build the ethic of internationalism , both the socialists and communists agreed. The IOC games also were based upon rigid entrance standards, while the international festivals of
15080-467: The same: to promote the communist party line to generally non-communist audiences and to mobilize them to carry out tasks within the country under the aegis of the Front. Recent scholarship has developed the comparative political study of global communist parties by examining similarities and differences across historical geographies. In particular, the rise of revolutionary parties, their spread internationally,
15210-403: The shift from the traditional mass parties to catch-all parties as a set of developments including the "drastic reduction of the party's ideological baggage" and the "downgrading of the role of the individual party member". By broadening their central ideologies into more open-ended ones, catch-all parties seek to secure the support of a wider section of the population. Further, the role of members
15340-565: The single most important front organization of the communist parties was its youth wing . During the time of the Communist International , the youth leagues were explicit communist organizations, using the name ' Young Communist League '. Later the youth league concept was broadened in many countries, and names like 'Democratic Youth League' were adopted. Some trade unions and students', women's, peasants', and cultural organizations have been connected to communist parties. Traditionally, these mass organizations were often politically subordinated to
15470-532: The socialist and communist movements did not necessarily object to some of the most noble goals of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but they did each share fundamental reservations about the modern Olympic games that were the inspiration of Baron Pierre de Coubertin , a hereditary French nobleman. First and foremost, the Olympics of the IOC stressed competition between nations — regarded by
15600-447: The support of organized trade unions . During the wave of decolonization in the mid-20th century, many newly sovereign countries outside of Europe and North America developed party systems that often emerged from their movements for independence. For example, a system of political parties arose out of factions in the Indian independence movement , and was strengthened and stabilized by
15730-422: The theory is an incomplete story of where political parties come from unless it also explains the origins of these social cleavages. An alternative explanation for why parties are ubiquitous across the world is that the formation of parties provides compatible incentives for candidates and legislators. For example, the existence of political parties might coordinate candidates across geographic districts, so that
15860-570: The threat of fascism rendered cooperation with socialists and others through unified workers' athletic festivals not only a possibility but the tactical order of the day. Plans were laid for a so-called 3rd Workers' Olympiad to be held in Barcelona , Catalonia , Spain in June 1936, under joint auspices of the RSI and the SWSI. The time and place proved inauspicious, however, coinciding with outbreak of hostilities in
15990-589: The types of policies they might pursue if they were in power. Ideologies also differentiate parties from one another, so that voters can select the party that advances the policies that they most prefer. A party may also seek to advance an ideology by convincing voters to adopt its belief system. Common ideologies that can form a central part of the identity of a political party include liberalism , conservatism , socialism , communism , anarchism , fascism , feminism , environmentalism , nationalism , fundamentalism , Islamism , and multiculturalism . Liberalism
16120-436: The worker athletic movement instead attempted to build mass participation through pageantry, artistic and cultural activities, and unifying political presentations. Moreover, the sort of athletes dominating the IOC games were objectionable to the radicals on the basis of social class , dominated as they were by the privileged children of the rural aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Such international competitions should be open to
16250-467: The working class, also included were white collar employees, students, and government workers. Membership records of the French section, for example, indicate that approximately 80% of participants were from the working class, with the remaining 20% members of other social groups. No details exist for the exact Communist Party membership of any national section of the RSI, although in the considered opinion of
16380-419: Was developed by Richard Katz and Peter Mair , who wrote that political parties have turned into "semi-state agencies", acting on behalf of the state rather than groups in society. The term 'cartel' refers to the way in which prominent parties in government make it difficult for new parties to enter, as such forming a cartel of established parties. As with catch-all parties, the role of members in cartel parties
16510-473: Was established in an effort to form a rival organization to already existing "bourgeois" and social democratic international sporting groups. The RSI was part of a physical culture movement in Soviet Russia linked to the physical training of young people prior to their enlistment in the military. The RSI held 3 summer games and 1 winter games called " Spartakiad " in competition with the Olympic games of
16640-456: Was frequently the case, they were incompatible with those of European worker sport." The last International Congress of the Red Sport International came in 1928 and was marked by no serious discussion of contemporary sporting issues. Instead the 1928 gathering consisted of a mechanical attempt to apply the Comintern's ultra-radical Third Period slogan of "Class versus Class" and its corollary theory of social fascism to world sport — splitting
16770-399: Was himself a voice for such an insertion of such ideological hegemony, declaring in a lengthy speech to the 5th Enlarged Plenum of the Comintern , held in the spring of 1925, that Sportintern should henceforth adopt as its motto: "Convert sport and gymnastics into a weapon of the class revolutionary struggle, concentrate the attention of workers and peasants on sport and gymnastics as one of
16900-468: Was in this period, 1924 to 1925, that the Red Sport International effectively became an auxiliary of the Communist International. This control was effected by the subordinate youth section of the Comintern, the Communist International of Youth, although the Comintern reserved for itself ultimate authority to decide issues of great importance. As the Comintern was itself in the process of being absorbed as an instrument of Soviet foreign policy in this interval,
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