Party Organisation in New Democracies

Abstract

“The indispensability of political parties” was the title of an article by the late Seymour Martin Lipset, in which he outlined why political parties are needed in a democracy. Nevertheless, in spite of the perceived centrality of parties for democracies, in many newly founded democratic regimes the political parties are among several key elements that are often found to be inadequately developed. Among the many ills that the parties and party systems are struggling with in such regimes are: high electoral volatility, weak organizational roots in society, lack of programmatic differentiation, excessive leadership dominance, weak separation between the state and the incumbent party and often a tendency towards dominant parties. This panel seeks to address these issues with particular focus on party organizations in newly democratized states. The term ‘new democracies’ refers to states that became democratic in the third and fourth waves of democratization, and thus include post-communist countries as well as in Latin-America, Asia and Africa. It is precisely this geographic variation which is valuable to include in the panel. Among the questions to be addressed in this panel are: How are political parties in such regimes organized, formally and in reality? Are ‘standard models’ in the party literature (mass party, catch-all party, cartel party etc.) applicable to the analysis of parties in these countries? How are the party organisation shaped by the institutional structure within which they function, such as the constitutional and legal framework for parties, the balance between presidentialism and parliamentarism, the impact of centralisation vs. decentralization, and the structure of the electoral system? To what extent are the parties primarily organized around ethnic, linguistic or religious groups? How able are parties in such regimes to function as organizations rather than being dominated politically and financially by individual leaders? Are there common characteristics of political parties across geographic areas within this group of democracies? For instance: Do incumbent parties in Africa have more in common organizationally with incumbent parties in Latin-America than with their competitors in their own countries? Is ‘party ownership’ by individual party leaders more widespread, for example, in Africa than in other regions? In addition to the lack of empirical studies of party organisations in recently democratized states, the literature also struggles with the application of concepts developed for the analysis of parties in established democracies. Examples of such problems are the relevance and meaning of the term ‘party membership’ or how well our conception of the ‘functions’ of political parties fit in political and economic contexts that are vastly different from the established democracies. The panel invites papers that link descriptions and analysis of party organizations with theoretical perspectives on party organisations in these type of regimes. Both case studies and comparative studies are welcome.

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