Political Science 8.2 — Transcript

An in-depth exploration of political parties, their types, functions, and roles within democratic systems and party systems.

Key Takeaways

Political parties are essential for democratic functioning and represent organized political ideologies.
Different party types (cader, mass, catch-all) reflect their origins, membership, and strategies.
Parties serve multiple democratic functions including voter education, mobilization, and government coordination.
Party systems encompass the dynamic interactions among parties, shaping political competition and governance.
Understanding party typologies and functions helps explain their roles in various political contexts worldwide.

Summary

Political parties are core institutions of democracy formed around shared ideologies to elect members to government.
Historical perspectives highlight the evolving importance of parties in Britain, the US, and globally.
Edmund Burke defined parties as united groups promoting national interest, while Anson Morse emphasized parties' pursuit of their own group interests.
Maurice Duverger categorized parties into cader (elite) and mass parties, with distinct origins and organizational styles.
Mass parties grew from social groups and emphasized large memberships and political socialization, unlike cader parties.
Catch-all parties evolved from cader and mass parties, focusing on broad electoral support and national governance.
Political parties perform key functions including uniting members, recruiting voters, educating the public, and selecting candidates.
Parties aggregate interests, brand political options, mobilize citizens, recruit leaders, and provide coherence to government.
Party systems refer to the interactions and overall patterns formed by multiple parties, distinct from individual parties themselves.
The video discusses the conceptualization and typologies of parties post-World War II and their influence on modern politics.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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Political parties have been described as the core institutions of democracy and necessary for its flourishing. So, how do political parties work? Political parties are groups that organize around a shared political ideology with the primary goal of electing party members

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to positions in government. It would be hard to imagine political systems functioning without political parties.

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And yet, their history is far shorter than most people might imagine. The 19th-century Russian-born political thinker May Astraorski was one of the first to recognize their growing importance in modern politics.

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His study of parties in Britain and the United States was less interested, as he said, in political forms than in political forces.

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Wherever the life of party is developed, he argued, it focuses the political feelings and the active wills of its citizens.

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His conclusions were fully justified. In Western Europe, mass parties were founded to battle for the votes of enlarged electorates. In communist and party seats, ruling parties monopolized power in an attempt to reconstruct society. In the developing world, nationalist parties became the vehicle

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for driving colonial rulers back to their imperial homeland. One of the oldest and most famous definitions of party is that of Edmund Burke. Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular

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principle in which they are all agreed. Work importantly assumes that parties strive for the same goals and only differ on the political policies to achieve this.

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Taking this one step further, Anson Moors argues that a party advances the interests and realization of the ideals not of the people as a whole but of the particular group which it represents.

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Hence, contrary to Burke, Morse claims that parties pursue their own objectives. These objectives are first distinguishing themselves from their competitors and second gaining a large share of the popular vote. The well-known critics of parties from Ma Straorski and Robert Mels give another

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twist to this debate on general versus specific interests. Both authors focus in particular on how parties operate as organizations and with what effects.

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After World War II, the discussion on the nature of parties reemerged, but it was more oriented toward conceptualization, especially the necessary features to speak of a party. This led to various typologies of parties and party models.

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One of the first typologies of political parties was devised by French political scientist Maurice Diver who developed two categories: mass and cader parties.

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Cader parties had their origins in legislators, and mass parties were created to win legislative representation for a particular social group such as the working class.

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Cader, or in other words elite parties, were formed by members with a legislature joining together around common concerns and fighting campaigns in an enlarged electorate.

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The earliest 19th-century parties were of this type. They include the conservative parties of Britain, Canada, and Scandinavia and the first American parties. Cader parties are sometimes known as caucus parties. The caucus denoting a closed meeting of the members

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of a party in a legislature. By contrast, mass parties, which emerged later, originated outside legislators in social groups seeking representation as a way of achieving their policy objectives.

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The working-class socialist parties that spread across Western Europe around the turn of the 20th century epitomize externally created parties.

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Mass socialist parties exerted tremendous influence on European party systems in the 20th century, stimulating many cader parties to copy their extra-parliamentary organization.

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Mass parties acquired an enormous membership organized in local branches and, unlike cader parties, tried to keep their representatives on a tight rein.

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They played an important role in education and political socialization, funding education, organizing workshops, and running party newspapers, all designed to tie their members closer to their party.

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As cader and mass parties matured, so they tended to evolve into catch-all parties.

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Thus, they respond to a mobilized political system in which electoral communication takes place through mass media, bypassing the membership.

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Such parties seek to govern in the national interest rather than as representatives of a social group. Catch-all parties seek electoral support wherever they can find it. Their purpose being to govern rather than to represent. The broadening of the

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Christian Democratic parties in Europe from religious defense organizations to broader parties of the central right is the classic case of the transition to catch-all status. The subsequent transformation of several mass socialist parties into leader-dominated social democratic parties, as in Spain and the

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United Kingdom, is another example. While most major parties are now of the catch-all type, their origins inside or beyond legislators continue to influence party style, the autonomy of their leaders, and the standing of ordinary members.

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In the study of political parties, there are many classifications of the functions of parties by the scientists.

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For instance, Morse distinguishes two main functions of political parties: the education and organization of public opinion and the administration of government. His contemporary Lord Bryce distinguishes five functions. All parties share four of these functions.

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Union, it's keeping the party together. Recruitment, it's bringing in new voters. Enthusiasm, exciting and rousing voters. And instruction, informing and educating voters.

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Interestingly, Bryce argues that the fifth function, the selection of party candidates, is rather unimportant for European parties, while it is central to American parties. Shhat Schneider and other defenders of parties tend to note four major services this organization renders to democratic

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representation. First is aggregating interests. Political parties try to understand what voters care about most. Government officials themselves often don't have time to figure this out directly because they are focused on running the country and making decisions. That's why parties

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act as a bridge between the people and the government. They find out what different groups in society want and then choose representatives who will speak for those interests. Next is packaging and branding voters' options.

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Political parties help simplify politics by creating a clear brand, a set of ideas, symbols, and policy goals that show what they stand for. Since voters don't always know what they want or may feel overwhelmed by too many issues, party

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brands help make choices easier. This process works from the top down, guiding voters by organizing political debate into more understandable topics. Next is mobilizing citizens and recruiting leaders. To do well in electoral competition, parties pro citizens to vote, develop political views, and get

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off the couch. In general, just as important, they serve as a major pathway for recruiting and training successive generations of leaders for political office.

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And the last one by Shot Schneider is giving directions and coherence to government. Once a party comes to power, it helps keep government leaders working together by uniting them around shared goals. Parties make sure that leaders follow the same plan and cooperate even

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though many people in the government have different roles and opinions. This helps the government stay organized and avoid confusion.

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Now let's look at what party systems are. Party systems are not the same as parties. Parties are organizations aimed at winning elections. Party systems are the interactions of parties with each other. Just as the international system is more than the states that comprise

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it, so a party system is more than its individual parties. The term describes the overall pattern formed by the component parties, the interactions between them a

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innovations in organization. Fundrising and campaigning across the system by focusing on the relationships between parties. Party systems means more than just the parties themselves and helps us understand how they interact with one another and the impact of that

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interactions on the countries they govern. There are also close links between the structure of elections and the party systems that result if we accept the findings of the political scientist Maurice Diver.

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As a result of research undertaken during the 1940s, he developed two principles published in his book political parties. first that single member plurality elections tend to produce two-party systems and second that two round and proportional representation elections tend to produce

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multi-party systems. Others notice the same effects which eventually came uh to be known respectively as a diver low party systems fall into one of five types. no party, single party, dominant party, two-party and the multi-party systems. In democracies, both dominant

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and two-party systems are in decline. Meaning that multi-party systems have become the most con the most common configurations in the democratic world.

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No party systems. There are small number of authoritarian states mainly in the Middle East that either do not allow political parties to form and operate or where no parties have been formed. In the cases of Oman and Saudi Arabia,

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there is no legislature and the formation of parties is banned. Single party or one party state. A country where a single political party controls the government either by law or in practice. Examples of one party systems include North Korea, China and

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Cuba. For much of the 20th century, many of one party states were communistr run including the Soviet Union and its Eastern European countries. In communist countries, the party uh is the ideological engine. Marxist doctrine calls for the dictatorship of the

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proletariat to be in charge as society transitions from the capitalism to poor s socialism.

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In the 1930s and through World War II, there were also one party states run by fascists such as Nazi Germany, Italy, and Spain. Although the party didn't play the same dominant ideological role in those countries that the party does

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in communistr run countries. Two party systems. In a two-party system, two major parties of comparable size compete for electoral support, providing the framework for political competition, while the other parties exert little, if any, influence on the formation and policies of governments.

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The two major parties alternate in power with one or the other always enjoying a majority. The United States is the clearest example in the world of a party system with only two large contenders.

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One is seen as representing the left. The United States is one of the last holdouts dominated since 1816 by the Democrats and the Republicans.

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This two parties have been able to hold their positions in part because of their electoral systems.

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Australia is an is another example of a two-party system again reinforced in reinforced by a nonproportional electoral system. Liberals and Labor have consistently been the two biggest parties since the Second World War.

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Multi-party systems. Several parties, typically at least five or six, each each win a significant block of seats in the legislature, becoming serious contenders for a place in a governing coalition. The underlying philosophy is that political parties represent specific social groups in divided

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societies. The legislator then serves as an arena of consiliation with coalitions forming and falling in response to often minor changes in the political balance.

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A good example is offered by Denmark where no party has held a majority in the unicameal fetting since 1909.

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The country's complex party system has been managed through careful consensus seeking. But this practice has come under some pressure from the rise of new parties. In an explosive election in 1973, three new parties achieved representation and since then a minimum

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of seven parties have won seats in the legislature. Next is dominant party system. is a political occurrence in which a single political party continuously dominates election results over running opposition groups or parties. Any ruling party staying in power for more than one

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consecutive term may be considered at the dominant party. Some dominant parties were called the natural governing party giving their length of time in power. In a few countries, one party manages to stay in government in election after election. The best

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example today is the African National Congress in South Africa, which regularly wins roughly 70% of votes and seats.

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Uh let's now connect the theory with the realities of the political system in Kazakhstan.

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The law of the Republic of Kazakhstan on political parties adopted on 15th July 2002 provides the fun foundational fundamental legal framework for the creation, registration and operation of political parties in the country.

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According to the original law, a political party could be founded by at least 700 citizens representing no less than twothirds of Kazakhstan's regions who must participate in the uh founding congress. The organizing committee must consist of at least 10 people. However,

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the uh the law didn't specify the total number of members required for full party registration beyond the founding congress participants.

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Subsequent legislative changes introduced more specific membership thresholds. Initially, the government required political parties to have at least 20,000 members, which created significant barriers for new parties. In response to growing demands for political reform, President Duk initiated amendments to reduce the

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thresholds. By 2021, the membership requirement was lowered and in later reforms, it was further reduced to 5,000 members, making it more feasible to register to a new political party.

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Alongside membership thresholds, electoral thresholds were also adjusted under the party list proportional system for maj elections. The minimum percentage of votes are uh votes a party needed to win seats was originally set at 7%. In May 2021, this electoral

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threshold was lowered to 5% to encourage broader political representation. Their reforms reflect reflect the government's stated goal of promoting greater political pluralism while maintaining a regulating party systems.

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As of the latest updates, there are seven officially registered political parties in Kazakhstan, all operating in accordance with the law on political parties.

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These parties have met the legal requirements uh concerning membership thresholds, territorial representation and internal structure. The dominant party is Amanat. It's formally Nuroan which has maintained control over Kazakhstan's political life since independence. Other registered parties include Ajol, a moderate pro business

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party often described as a loyal opposition. The People's Party of Kazakhstan formerly communist and now rebranded and owl which focuses on agrarian and rural development. The National Social Democratic Party is the only formally recognized opposition party through it has limited influence.

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In recent years, two new parties have been register registered by TAC, which promotes environmental issues and Republica established in 2023 by a younger generation of civic and business leaders.

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For today, the last concept is social movements. Social movements are organized efforts by a large group of people to bring about a or resist social, political or economic change.

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Unlike political parties, social movements usually operate outside formal political institutions and do not seek to gain power directly through elections. Instead, they aim to influence public opinion, raise awareness, and pressure governments or institutions to take action. Social movements often emerge in response to

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perceived injustices or unmet needs within society and can take many forms such as environmental movements, civil rights movements, feminist movements or youth movements. They rely on collective action, public demonstrations, online campaigns and grassroots organizing to achieve their goals. Social movements

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play a crucial role in a democratic societies by giving voice to marginalized groups and shaping public policy from the bottom up.

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So that's all for today. Uh thank you for your attention. Goodbye and see you next

Topics:political partiesdemocracyparty systemscader partiesmass partiescatch-all partiespolitical ideologyparty functionsMaurice DuvergerEdmund Burke

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main types of political parties described in the video?

The video describes cader (elite) parties originating from legislators, mass parties formed by social groups seeking representation, and catch-all parties that aim to govern broadly by seeking wide electoral support.

What are the key functions of political parties according to the video?

Political parties educate and organize public opinion, unite members, recruit voters, select candidates, mobilize citizens, and provide coherence and direction to government.

How do party systems differ from individual political parties?

Party systems refer to the overall patterns and interactions among multiple political parties, whereas individual parties are organizations focused on winning elections and representing specific interests.

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