Wither the party cartel? Resilient electoral markets and collusion between political parties and powerful interests.

Thirty years on from the advent of the party cartelisation thesis what evidence might substantiate cartel parties as a real as opposed to theoretical feature of party systems? We re-visit the core concept of the cartel party and consider the necessary and sufficient conditions for stable cartel parties to exist. We show that there are two distinct formulations of the cartel party thesis: the original formulation by Otto Kirchheimer in the 1950’s and a reformulation by Richard Katz and Peter Mair four decades later. We pose a number of core questions about the identity of cartels and cartel parties, questions we suggest that have been neglected in evaluations of the cartel party to date. For a party system to be described as cartelised, we argue, it must through collusion be effective in controlling important electoral market outcomes in favour of cartel members. Some evidence such as that showing collusive intent by parties and parties exhibiting the defining characteristics of cartel parties, may well be widespread. Taken together the evidence is not sufficient to establish the presence of cartelisation in the democracies of Western Europe. We find instead that there is almost no evidence of successful and stable cartelisation by mainstream political parties in Western Europe. Once dominant mainstream parties of the centre-left and centre-right, in both majoritarian and proportional political systems, have been unsuccessful in controlling outcomes of the electoral market to the extent that these markets can be characterised as cartelised. Rather they have lost market share and been compelled to share the spoils of office with a wide range of new challengers. Effectively competitive electoral markets have successfully prevented the emergence of cartelised party systems. We conclude by suggesting that the notion of party collusion with powerful economic interests may offer insights on the direction of representative democracy in Western Europe.