Political Parties Organization and Structure of Political Parties

Political Parties: Organization and Structure of Political Parties:

Introduction to Political Parties Organization and Structure of Political Parties

Political parties mediate the relationship between citizens and their government. In democracies with competitive party systems, political parties pressure governments to respond to the needs and interests of broad segments of the population. In more authoritarian governments, parties offer a structure for directing and conditioning the behavior of individual citizens.

Most political parties espouse democratic principles and commitments. In practice, however, a combination of factors has placed limits on parties as instruments of democratic participation. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, most parties took their message to the people through the work of committed activists. The introduction of new communications technologies has since reduced the incentive of parties to mobilize and actively engage its members. Even during the so-called “golden age” of political parties, from the middle of the 19th century until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, most effective parties developed a rigid bureaucratic structure that increasingly hampered participation of ordinary party supporters. Power instead flowed to elites at the top of the party hierarchy.

Political parties employ different strategies for recruiting supporters. “Externally mobilized” parties develop around leaders who lack power within an existing government. These leaders compensate by mobilizing and organizing a popular base of support from among disaffected groups in society. External mobilization has typically provided the origins of social-democratic, Socialist, Communist, and Fascist parties in Europe.”Internally mobilized” parties, by contrast, usually represent a defensive strategy of countermobilization on the part of influential government insiders. This strategy also involves efforts to recruit a broad base of party members and supporters. Internally mobilized parties seek to neutralize the organizational efforts of another party or to gain that party’s cooperation in the pursuit of goals, such as wars, that require a broad foundation of support and sacrifice. Conservative parties and Liberal parties in Europe have more often used a strategy of countermobilization. In the late 1930s, the Democratic Party sponsored social reform to fend off challenges from the Socialist, Communist, and Progressive parties, and from populist leaders such as Father Charles Coughlin, Francis Townsend, and Louisiana Senator Huey Long.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Political Parties Organization and Structure of Political Parties in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Political Parties Organization and Structure of Political Parties