Political party

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party

 

A political party is an organized group of people who have the same ideology, or who otherwise have the same political positions, and who field candidates for elections, in an attempt to get them elected and thereby implement the party's agenda.

While there is some international commonality in the way political parties are recognized and in how they operate, there are often many differences, and some are significant. Most of political parties have an ideological core, but some do not, and many represent ideologies very different from their ideology at the time the party was founded. Many countries, such as Germany and India, have several significant political parties, and some nations have one-party systems, such as China and Cuba. The United States is in practice a two-party system but with many smaller parties also participating and a high degree of autonomy for individual candidates.

Historical development

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,^[1] 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 the Hippodrome of Constantinople. However, modern political parties are considered to have emerged around the end of the 18th or early 19th centuries, appearing first in Europe and the United States. What distinguishes political parties from factions and interest groups is that political parties use an explicit label to identify their members as having shared electoral and legislative goals. The transformation from loose factions into organised modern political parties is considered to have first occurred in either the United Kingdom or the United States, with the United Kingdom's Conservative Party and the Democratic Party of the United States both frequently called the world's first modern political party.

Emergence in Britain

The party system that emerged in early modern Britain is considered to be one of the world's first, with origins in the factions that emerged from the Exclusion Crisis and Glorious Revolution of the late 17th century. The Whig faction originally organised itself around support for protestant constitutional monarchy as opposed to absolute rule, whereas the conservative Tory faction (originally the Royalist or Cavalier faction of the English Civil War) supported a strong monarchy. These two groups structured disputes in the politics of the United Kingdom throughout the 18th century. Throughout the next several centuries, these loose factions began to adopt more coherent political tendencies and ideologies: the liberal political ideas of John Locke and the notion of universal rights espoused by theorists like Algernon Sidney and later John Stuart Mill were major influences on the Whigs, whereas the Tories eventually came to be identified with conservative philosophers like Edmund Burke.

The period between the advent of factionalism around the Glorious Revolution and the accession of George III in 1760 was characterised by Whig supremacy, during which the Whigs remained the most powerful bloc and consistently championed constitutional monarchy with strict limits on the monarch's power, opposed the accession of a Catholic king, and believed in extending toleration to nonconformist Protestants and dissenters. Although the Tories were out of office for half a century, they largely remained a united opposition to the Whigs. 

When they lost power, the old Whig leadership dissolved into a decade of factional chaos with distinct Grenvillite, Bedfordite, Rockinghamite, and Chathamite factions successively in power, and all referring to themselves as "Whigs". The first distinctive political parties emerged from this chaos. The first such party was the Rockingham Whigs under the leadership of Charles Watson-Wentworth and the intellectual guidance of the political philosopher Edmund Burke. Burke laid out a philosophy that described the basic framework of the political party as "a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed". As opposed to the instability of the earlier factions, which were often tied to a particular leader and could disintegrate if removed from power, the party was centred around a set of core principles and remained out of power as a united opposition to government.

In A Block for the Wigs (1783), James Gillray caricatured Fox's return to power in a coalition with North. George III is the blockhead in the centre.

 

A coalition including the Rockingham Whigs, led by the Earl of Shelburne, took power in 1782, only to collapse after Rockingham's death. The new government, led by the radical politician Charles James Fox in coalition with Lord North, was soon brought down and replaced by William Pitt the Younger in 1783. It was now that a genuine two-party system began to emerge, with Pitt leading the new Tories against a reconstituted "Whig" party led by Fox. The modern Conservative Party was created out of these Pittite Tories. In 1859 under Lord Palmerston, the Whigs, heavily influenced by the classical liberal ideas of Adam Smith, joined together with the free trade Tory followers of Robert Peel and the independent Radicals to form the Liberal Party.

Emergence in the United States

Although the framers of the 1787 United States Constitution did not anticipate that American political disputes would be primarily organised around political parties, political controversies in the early 1790s over the extent of federal government powers saw the emergence of two proto-political parties: the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party, which were championed by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, respectively. However, a consensus reached on these issues ended party politics in 1816 for nearly a decade, a period commonly known as the Era of Good Feelings.

The splintering of the Democratic-Republican Party in the aftermath of the contentious 1824 presidential election led to the re-emergence of political parties. Two major parties would dominate the political landscape for the next quarter-century: the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, established by Henry Clay from the National Republicans and from other Anti-Jackson groups. When the Whig Party fell apart in the mid-1850s, its position as a major U.S. political party was filled by the Republican Party.

Worldwide spread

Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party

 

Another candidate for the first modern party system to emerge is that of Sweden. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, the party model of politics was adopted across Europe. In Germany, France, Austria and elsewhere, the 1848 Revolutions sparked a wave of liberal sentiment and the formation of representative bodies and political parties. The end of the century saw the formation of large socialist parties in Europe, some conforming to the philosophy of Karl Marx, others adapting social democracy through the use of reformist and gradualist methods.

At the same time, the Home Rule League Party, campaigning for Home Rule for Ireland in the British Parliament, was fundamentally changed by the Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell in the 1880s. In 1882, he changed his party's name to the Irish Parliamentary Party and created a well-organized grassroots structure, introducing membership to replace ad hoc informal groupings. He created a new selection procedure to ensure the professional selection of party candidates committed to taking their seats, and in 1884 he imposed a firm 'party pledge' which obliged MPs to vote as a bloc in parliament on all occasions. The creation of a strict party whip and a formal party structure was unique at the time. His party's efficient structure and control contrasted with the loose rules and flexible informality found in the main British parties, and represented the development of new forms of party organisation.

Origin of political parties

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 a country with multiple competitive parties is not necessarily democratic, and the politics of many autocratic countries are organised around one dominant political party. There are many explanations for how and why political parties are such a crucial part of modern states. 

Social cleavages

One of the core explanations for why political parties exist is that they arise from existing divisions among people. Building on Harold Hotelling's work on the aggregation of preferences and Duncan Black's development of social choice theory, Anthony Downs showed how an underlying distribution of preferences in an electorate can produce regular results in the aggregate, such as the median voter theorem. This abstract model shows that parties can arise from variations within an electorate, and can adjust themselves to the patterns in the electorate. However, Downs assumed that some distribution of preferences exists, rather than attributing any meaning to that distribution. 

Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan made the idea of differences within an electorate more concrete by arguing that several major party systems of the 1960s were the result of social cleavages that had already existed in the 1920s. They identify four lasting cleavages in the countries they examine: a Center-Periphery cleavage regarding religion and language, a State-Church cleavage centered on control of mass education, a Land-Industry cleavage regarding freedom of industry and agricultural policies, and an Owner-Worker cleavage which includes a conflict between nationalism and internationalism. Subsequent authors have expanded on or modified these cleavages, particularly when examining parties in other parts of the world.

The argument that parties are produced by social cleavages has drawn several criticisms. Some authors have challenged the theory on empirical grounds, either finding no evidence for the claim that parties emerge from existing cleavages or arguing that this 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 the theory has not identified what causes parties unless it also explains where social cleavages come from; one response to this objection, along the lines of Charles Tilly's bellicist theory of state-building, is that social cleavages are formed by historical conflicts.

Individual and group incentives

An alternative explanation for why parties are ubiquitous across the world is that the formation of parties provides compatible incentives for candidates and legislators. One explanation for the existence of parties, advanced by John Aldrich, is that the existence of political parties means that a candidate in one electoral district has an incentive to assist a candidate in a different district, when those two candidates have a similar ideology.

One reason that this incentive exists is that parties can solve certain legislative challenges that a legislature of unaffiliated members might face. Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins argue that the development of many institutions can be explained by their power to constrain the incentives of individuals; a powerful institution can prohibit individuals from acting in ways that harm the community. This suggests that political parties might be mechanisms for preventing candidates with similar ideologies from acting to each other's detriment. One specific advantage that candidates might obtain from helping similar candidates in other districts is that the existence of a party apparatus can help coalitions of electors to agree on ideal policy choices, which is in general not possible. This could be true even in contexts where it is only slightly beneficial to be part of a party; models of how individuals coordinate on joining a group or participating in an event show how even a weak preference to be part of a group can provoke mass participation.

Parties as heuristics

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 a much lower cognitive cost. Without political parties, electors would have to evaluate every individual candidate in every single election they are eligible to vote in. Instead, parties enable electors to make judgments about a few groups instead of a much larger number of individuals. Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes argued in The American Voter that identification with a political party is a crucial determinant of whether and how an individual will vote. Because it is much easier to become informed about a few parties' platforms than about many candidates' personal positions, parties reduce the cognitive burden for people to cast informed votes. However, 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.

Structure

A political party is typically led by a party leader (the most powerful member and spokesperson representing the party), a party secretary (who maintains the daily work and records of party meetings), party treasurer (who is responsible for membership dues) and party chair (who forms strategies for recruiting and retaining party members, and also chairs party meetings). Most of the above positions are also members of the party executive, the leading organization which sets policy for the entire party at the national level. The structure is far more decentralized in the United States because of the separation of powers, federalism and the multiplicity of economic interests and religious sects. Even state parties are decentralized as county and other local committees are largely independent of state central committees. The national party leader in the U.S. will be the president, if the party holds that office, or a prominent member of Congress in opposition (although a big-state governor may aspire to that role). Officially, each party has a chairman for its national committee who is a prominent spokesman, organizer and fund-raiser, but without the status of prominent elected office holders. 

In parliamentary democracies, on a regular, periodic basis, party conferences are held to elect party officers, although snap leadership elections can be called if enough members opt for such. Party conferences are also held in order to affirm party values for members in the coming year. American parties also meet regularly and, again, are more subordinate to elected political leaders.

Depending on the demographic spread of the party membership, party members form local or regional party committees in order to help candidates run for local or regional offices in government. These local party branches reflect the officer positions at the national level.

It is also customary for political party members to form wings for current or prospective party members, most of which fall into the following two categories:

• identity-based: including youth wings and/or armed wings
• position-based: including wings for candidates, mayors, governors, professionals, students, etc. The formation of these wings may have become routine but their existence is more of an indication of differences of opinion, intra-party rivalry, the influence of interest groups, or attempts to wield influence for one's state or region.

These are useful for party outreach, training and employment. Many young aspiring politicians seek these roles and jobs as stepping stones to their political careers in legislative or executive offices. 

The internal structure of political parties has to be democratic in some countries. In Germany Art. 21 Abs. 1 Satz 3 GG establishes a command of inner-party democracy.

Parliamentary parties

When the party is represented by members in the lower house of parliament, the party leader simultaneously serves as the leader of the parliamentary group of that full party representation; depending on a minimum number of seats held, Westminster-based parties typically allow for leaders to form frontbench teams of senior fellow members of the parliamentary group to serve as critics of aspects of government policy. When a party becomes the largest party not part of the Government, the party's parliamentary group forms the Official Opposition, with Official Opposition frontbench team members often forming the Official Opposition Shadow cabinet. When a party achieves enough seats in an election to form a majority, the party's frontbench becomes the Cabinet of government ministers. They are all elected members. There are members who attend party without promotion.

Regulation

The freedom to form, declare membership in, or campaign for candidates from a political party is considered a measurement of a state's adherence to liberal democracy as a political value. Regulation of parties may run from a crackdown on or repression of all opposition parties, a norm for authoritarian governments, to the repression of certain parties which hold or promote ideals which run counter to the general ideology of the state's incumbents (or possess membership by-laws which are legally unenforceable). 

Furthermore, in the case of far-right, far-left and regionalism parties in the national parliaments of much of the European Union, mainstream political parties may form an informal cordon sanitaire which applies a policy of non-cooperation towards those "Outsider Parties" present in the legislature which are viewed as 'anti-system' or otherwise unacceptable for government. Cordons sanitaire, however, have been increasingly abandoned over the past two decades in multi-party democracies as the pressure to construct broad coalitions in order to win elections – along with the increased willingness of outsider parties themselves to participate in government – has led to many such parties entering electoral and government coalitions.

Starting in the second half of the 20th century, modern democracies have introduced rules for the flow of funds through party coffers, e.g. the Canada Election Act 1976, the PPRA in the U.K. or the FECA in the U.S. Such political finance regimes stipulate a variety of regulations for the transparency of fundraising and expenditure, limit or ban specific kinds of activity and provide public subsidies for party activity, including campaigning. 

Partisan style

Partisan style varies according to each jurisdiction, depending on how many parties there are, and how much influence each individual party has. 

Nonpartisan systems

In a nonpartisan system, no official political parties exist, sometimes reflecting legal restrictions on political parties. In nonpartisan elections, each candidate is eligible for office on his or her own merits. In nonpartisan legislatures, there are no typically formal party alignments within the legislature. The administration of George Washington and the first few sessions of the United States Congress were nonpartisan. Washington also warned against political parties during his Farewell Address. In the United States, the unicameral legislature of Nebraska is nonpartisan but is elected and often votes on informal party lines. In Canada, the territorial legislatures of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are nonpartisan. In New Zealand, Tokelau has a nonpartisan parliament. Many city and county governments in the United States and Canada are nonpartisan. Nonpartisan elections and modes of governance are common outside of state institutions. Unless there are legal prohibitions against political parties, factions within nonpartisan systems often evolve into political parties.

Uni-party systems

In one-party systems, one political party is legally allowed to hold effective power. Although minor parties may sometimes be allowed, they are legally required to accept the leadership of the dominant party. This party may not always be identical to the government, although sometimes positions within the party may in fact be more important than positions within the government. North Korea and China are examples; others can be found in Fascist states, such as Nazi Germany between 1934 and 1945. The one-party system is thus often equated with dictatorships and tyranny.

In dominant-party systems, opposition parties are allowed, and there may be even a deeply established democratic tradition, but other parties are widely considered to have no real chance of gaining power. Sometimes, political, social and economic circumstances, and public opinion are the reason for others parties' failure. Sometimes, typically in countries with less of an established democratic tradition, it is possible the dominant party will remain in power by using patronage and sometimes by voting fraud. In the latter case, the definition between dominant and one-party system becomes rather blurred. Examples of dominant party systems include the People's Action Party in Singapore, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Cambodian People's Party in Cambodia, the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, and the National Liberation Front in Algeria. One-party dominant system also existed in Mexico with the Institutional Revolutionary Party until the 1990s, in the southern United States with the Democratic Party from the late 19th century until the 1970s, in Indonesia with the Golkar from the early 1970s until 1998. 

Bi-party systems

Two-party systems are states such as Honduras, Jamaica, Malta, Ghana and the United States in which there are two political parties dominant to such an extent that electoral success under the banner of any other party is almost impossible. One right wing coalition party and one left wing coalition party is the most common ideological breakdown in such a system but in two-party states political parties are traditionally catch all parties which are ideologically broad and inclusive.

The United States has gone through several party systems, each of which has been essentially two-party in nature. The divide has typically been between a conservative and liberal party; presently, the Republican Party and Democratic Party serve these roles. Third parties have seen extremely little electoral success, and successful third party runs typically lead to vote splitting due to the first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all systems used in most US elections. There have been several examples of third parties siphoning votes from major parties, such as Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and George Wallace in 1968, resulting in the victory of the opposing major party. In presidential elections, the Electoral College system has prevented third party candidates from being competitive, even when they have significant support (such as in 1992). More generally, parties with a broad base of support across regions or among economic and other interest groups have a greater chance of winning the necessary plurality in the U.S.'s largely single-member district, winner-take-all elections.

The UK political system, while technically a multi-party system, has functioned generally as a two-party (sometimes called a "two-and-a-half party") system; since the 1920s the two largest political parties have been the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. Before the Labour Party rose in British politics the Liberal Party was the other major political party along with the Conservatives. Though coalition and minority governments have been an occasional feature of parliamentary politics, the first-past-the-post electoral system used for general elections tends to maintain the dominance of these two parties, though each has in the past century relied upon a third party to deliver a working majority in Parliament. (A plurality voting system usually leads to a two-party system, a relationship described by Maurice Duverger and known as Duverger's Law.) There are also numerous other parties that hold or have held a number of seats in Parliament.

Multi-party systems

A poster for the European Parliament election 2004 in Italy, showing party lists

 

Multi-party systems are systems in which more than two parties are represented and elected to public office. 

Australia, Canada, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Ireland, United Kingdom and Norway are examples of countries with two strong parties and additional smaller parties that have also obtained representation. The smaller or "third" parties may hold the balance of power in a parliamentary system, and thus may be invited to form a part of a coalition government together with one of the larger parties, or may provide a supply and confidence agreement to the government; or may instead act independently from the dominant parties. 

More commonly, in cases where there are three or more parties, no one party is likely to gain power alone, and parties have to work with each other to form coalition governments. This is almost always the case in Germany on national and state level, and in most constituencies at the communal level. Furthermore, since the forming of the Republic of Iceland there has never been a government not led by a coalition, usually involving the Independence Party or the Progressive Party. A similar situation exists in the Republic of Ireland, where no one party has held power on its own since 1989. Since then, numerous coalition governments have been formed. These coalitions have been led exclusively by either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. 

Political change is often easier with a coalition government than in one-party or two-party dominant systems. If factions in a two-party system are in fundamental disagreement on policy goals, or even principles, they can be slow to make policy changes, which appears to be the case now in the U.S. with power split between Democrats and Republicans. Still coalition governments struggle, sometimes for years, to change policy and often fail altogether, post World War II France and Italy being prime examples. When one party in a two-party system controls all elective branches, however, policy changes can be both swift and significant. Democrats Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson were beneficiaries of such fortuitous circumstances, as were Republicans as far removed in time as Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama briefly had such an advantage between 2009 and 2011.

Funding

Political parties are funded by contributions from

• party members and other individuals,
• organizations, which share their political ideas (e.g. trade union affiliation fees) or which could benefit from their activities (e.g. corporate donations) or
• governmental or public funding.

Political parties, still called factions by some, especially those in the governmental apparatus, are lobbied vigorously by organizations, businesses and special interest groups such as trade unions. Money and gifts-in-kind to a party, or its leading members, may be offered as incentives. Such donations are the traditional source of funding for all right-of-centre cadre parties. Starting in the late 19th century these parties were opposed by the newly founded left-of-centre workers' parties. They started a new party type, the mass membership party, and a new source of political fundraising, membership dues. 

From the second half of the 20th century on parties which continued to rely on donations or membership subscriptions ran into mounting problems. Along with the increased scrutiny of donations there has been a long-term decline in party memberships in most western democracies which itself places more strains on funding. For example, in the United Kingdom and Australia membership of the two main parties in 2006 is less than an 1/8 of what it was in 1950, despite significant increases in population over that period. 

In some parties, such as the post-communist parties of France and Italy or the Sinn Féin party and the Socialist Party, elected representatives (i.e. incumbents) take only the average industrial wage from their salary as a representative, while the rest goes into party coffers. Although these examples may be rare nowadays, "rent-seeking" continues to be a feature of many political parties around the world.

In the United Kingdom, it has been alleged that peerages have been awarded to contributors to party funds, the benefactors becoming members of the House of Lords and thus being in a position to participate in legislating. Famously, Lloyd George was found to have been selling peerages. To prevent such corruption in the future, Parliament passed the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 into law. Thus the outright sale of peerages and similar honours became a criminal act. However, some benefactors are alleged to have attempted to circumvent this by cloaking their contributions as loans, giving rise to the 'Cash for Peerages' scandal.

Such activities as well as assumed "influence peddling" have given rise to demands that the scale of donations should be capped. As the costs of electioneering escalate, so the demands made on party funds increase. In the UK some politicians are advocating that parties should be funded by the state; a proposition that promises to give rise to interesting debate in a country that was the first to regulate campaign expenses (in 1883).

In many other democracies such subsidies for party activity (in general or just for campaign purposes) have been introduced decades ago. Public financing for parties and/ or candidates (during election times and beyond) has several permutations and is increasingly common. Germany, Sweden, Israel, Canada, Australia, Austria and Spain are cases in point. More recently among others France, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands and Poland have followed suit.

There are two broad categories of public funding, direct, which entails a monetary transfer to a party, and indirect, which includes broadcasting time on state media, use of the mail service or supplies. According to the Comparative Data from the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, out of a sample of over 180 nations, 25% of nations provide no direct or indirect public funding, 58% provide direct public funding and 60% of nations provide indirect public funding. Some countries provide both direct and indirect public funding to political parties. Funding may be equal for all parties or depend on the results of previous elections or the number of candidates participating in an election. Frequently parties rely on a mix of private and public funding and are required to disclose their finances to the Election management body.

In fledgling democracies funding can also be provided by foreign aid. International donors provide financing to political parties in developing countries as a means to promote democracy and good governance. Support can be purely financial or otherwise. Frequently it is provided as capacity development activities including the development of party manifestos, party constitutions and campaigning skills. Developing links between ideologically linked parties is another common feature of international support for a party. Sometimes this can be perceived as directly supporting the political aims of a political party, such as the support of the US government to the Georgian party behind the Rose Revolution. Other donors work on a more neutral basis, where multiple donors provide grants in countries accessible by all parties for various aims defined by the recipients. There have been calls by leading development think-tanks, such as the Overseas Development Institute, to increase support to political parties as part of developing the capacity to deal with the demands of interest-driven donors to improve governance.

Colors and emblems

Generally speaking, over the world, political parties associate themselves with colors, primarily for identification, especially for voter recognition during elections. 

• Blue generally denotes conservatism.

• Yellow is often used for liberalism or libertarianism.

• Red often signifies social democratic, socialist or communist parties.

• Green is often associated with green politics, Islamism, agrarianism and Irish republicanism.

• Orange is the traditional color of Christian democracy.

• Black is generally associated with fascist parties, going back to Benito Mussolini's blackshirts, but also with Anarchism. Similarly, brown is sometimes associated with Nazism, going back to the Nazi Party's tan-uniformed storm troopers. 

Color associations are useful when it is not desirable to make rigorous links to parties, particularly when coalitions and alliances are formed between political parties and other organizations, for example: "Purple" (Red-Blue) alliances, Red-green alliances, Blue-green alliances, Traffic light coalitions, Pan-green coalitions, and Pan-blue coalitions.

Political color schemes in the United States diverge from international norms. Since 2000, red has become associated with the right-wing Republican Party and blue with the left-wing Democratic Party. However, unlike political color schemes of other countries, the parties did not choose those colors; they were used in news coverage of the 2000 election results and ensuing legal battle and caught on in popular usage. Prior to the 2000 election the media typically alternated which color represented which party each presidential election cycle. The color scheme happened to get inordinate attention that year, so the cycle was stopped lest it cause confusion the following election.

Emblems

The emblem of socialist parties is often a red rose held in a fist. Communist parties often use a hammer to represent the worker, a sickle to represent the farmer, or both a hammer and a sickle to refer to both at the same time.

The emblem of Nazism, the swastika or "hakenkreuz", has been adopted as a near-universal symbol for almost any organised white supremacist group, even though it dates from more ancient times. 

International organization

During the 19th and 20th century, many national political parties organized themselves into international organizations along similar policy lines. Notable examples are The Universal Party, International Workingmen's Association (also called the First International), the Socialist International (also called the Second International), the Communist International (also called the Third International), and the Fourth International, as organizations of working class parties, or the Liberal International (yellow), Hizb ut-Tahrir, Christian Democratic International and the International Democrat Union (blue). Organized in Italy in 1945, the International Communist Party, since 1974 headquartered in Florence has sections in six countries. Worldwide green parties have recently established the Global Greens. The Universal Party, The Socialist International, the Liberal International, and the International Democrat Union are all based in London. Some administrations (e.g. Hong Kong) outlaw formal linkages between local and foreign political organizations, effectively outlawing international political parties. 

Types

French political scientist Maurice Duverger drew a distinction between "cadre" parties and "mass" parties. Cadre 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 a source of party income and were often expected to spread party ideology as well as assist in elections. Socialist parties are examples of mass parties, while the Conservative Party in the UK and the German Christian Democratic Union in Germany are examples of hybrid parties. In the United States, where both major parties were cadre 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.

Klaus von Beyme categorised European parties into nine families, which described most parties. He was able to arrange seven of them from left to right: Communist, Socialist, Green, Liberal, Christian democratic, Conservative and Libertarian. The position of two other types, Agrarian and Regional/Ethnic parties varied.

Political machine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine

 

In this 1889 Udo Keppler cartoon from Puck, all of New York City politics revolves around boss Richard Croker.

 

A political machine is a political group in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses (usually campaign workers), who receive rewards for their efforts. The machine's power is based on the ability of the boss or group to get out the vote for their candidates on election day.

Although these elements are common to most political parties and organizations, they are essential to political machines, which rely on hierarchy and rewards for political power, often enforced by a strong party whip structure. Machines sometimes have a political boss, often rely on patronage, the spoils system, "behind-the-scenes" control, and longstanding political ties within the structure of a representative democracy. Machines typically are organized on a permanent basis instead of a single election or event. The term may have a pejorative sense referring to corrupt political machines.

The term "political machine" dates back to the 20th century in the United States, where such organizations have existed in some municipalities and states since the 18th century. Similar machines have been described in Latin America, where the system has been called clientelism or political clientelism (after the similar Clientela relationship in the Roman Republic), especially in rural areas, and also in some African states and other emerging democracies, like postcommunist Eastern European countries. The Swedish Social Democrats have also been referred, to a certain extent, as a "political machine", thanks to its strong presence in "popular houses".

Definition

The Encyclopædia Britannica defines "political machine" as, "in U.S. politics, a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state". William Safire, in his Safire's Political Dictionary, defines "machine politics" as "the election of officials and the passage of legislation through the power of an organization created for political action". He notes that the term is generally considered pejorative, often implying corruption. 

Hierarchy and discipline are hallmarks of political machines. "It generally means strict organization", according to Safire. Quoting Edward Flynn, a Bronx County Democratic leader who ran the borough from 1922 until his death in 1953, he wrote "[...] the so-called 'independent' voter is foolish to assume that a political machine is run solely on good will, or patronage. For it is not only a machine; it is an army. And in any organization as in any army, there must be discipline."

Political patronage, while often associated with political machines, is not essential to the definition for either Safire or Britannica. 

Function

A political machine is a party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives—money, political jobs—and that is characterized by a high degree of leadership control over member activity.

Political machines started as grass roots organizations to gain the patronage needed to win the modern election. Having strong patronage, these "clubs" were the main driving force in gaining and getting out the "straight party vote" in the election districts.

In the United States

1869 tobacco label featuring William M. Tweed, 19th-century political boss of New York City

 

In the late 19th century, large cities in the United States—Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis—were accused of using political machines. During this time "cities experienced rapid growth under inefficient government". Each city's machine lived under a hierarchical system with a "boss" who held the allegiance of local business leaders, elected officials and their appointees, and who knew the proverbial buttons to push to get things done. Benefits and problems both resulted from the rule of political machines.

This system of political control—known as "bossism"—emerged particularly in the Gilded Age. A single powerful figure (the boss) was at the center and was bound together to a complex organization of lesser figures (the political machine) by reciprocity in promoting financial and social self-interest. One of the most infamous of these political machines was Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine that played a major role in controlling New York City and New York politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. From 1872, Tammany had an Irish "boss". However, Tammany Hall also served as an engine for graft and political corruption, perhaps most notoriously under William M. "Boss" Tweed in the mid-19th century. Other historians note that Tammany Hall, although widely known, was probably not the most wicked, instead referring to the Republican party machine in Philadelphia.

Lord Bryce describes these political bosses saying:

An army led by a council seldom conquers: It must have a commander-in-chief, who settles disputes, decides in emergencies, inspires fear or attachment. The head of the Ring is such a commander. He dispenses places, rewards the loyal, punishes the mutinous, concocts schemes, negotiates treaties. He generally avoids publicity, preferring the substance to the pomp of power, and is all the more dangerous because he sits, like a spider, hidden in the midst of his web. He is a Boss.

When asked if he was a boss, James Pendergast said simply,

I've been called a boss. All there is to it is having friends, doing things for people, and then later on they'll do things for you... You can't coerce people into doing things for you—you can't make them vote for you. I never coerced anybody in my life. Wherever you see a man bulldozing anybody he don't last long.

Theodore Roosevelt, before he became president in 1901, was deeply involved in New York City politics. He explains how the machine worked:

The organization of a party in our city is really much like that of an army. There is one great central boss, assisted by some trusted and able lieutenants; these communicate with the different district bosses, whom they alternately bully and assist. The district boss in turn has a number of half-subordinates, half-allies, under him; these latter choose the captains of the election districts, etc., and come into contact with the common heelers.

Voting strategy

Many machines formed in cities to serve immigrants to the U.S. in the late 19th century who viewed machines as a vehicle for political enfranchisement. Machine workers helped win elections by turning out large numbers of voters on election day. It was in the machine's interests to only maintain a minimally winning amount of support. Once they were in the majority and could count on a win, there was less need to recruit new members, as this only meant a thinner spread of the patronage rewards to be spread among the party members. As such, later-arriving immigrants, such as Jews, Italians, and other immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe between the 1880s and 1910s, saw fewer rewards from the machine system than the well-established Irish. At the same time, the machines' staunchest opponents were members of the middle class, who were shocked at the malfeasance and did not need the financial help.

The corruption of urban politics in the United States was denounced by private citizens. They achieved national and state civil-service reform and worked to replace local patronage systems with civil service. By Theodore Roosevelt's time, the Progressive Era mobilized millions of private citizens to vote against the machines.

In the 1930s, James A. Farley was the chief dispenser of the Democratic Party's patronage system through the Post Office and the Works Progress Administration which eventually nationalized many of the job benefits machines provided. The New Deal allowed machines to recruit for the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps, making Farley's machine the most powerful. All patronage was screened through Farley, including presidential appointments. The New Deal machine fell apart after he left the administration over the third term in 1940. Those agencies were abolished in 1943 and the machines suddenly lost much of their patronage. The formerly poor immigrants who had benefited under Farley's national machine had become assimilated and prosperous and no longer needed the informal or extralegal aides provided by machines. In the 1940s most of the big city machines collapsed, with the exception of Chicago. A local political machine in Tennessee was forcibly removed in what was known as the 1946 Battle of Athens. 

Smaller communities such as Parma, Ohio, in the post–Cold War Era under Prosecutor Bill Mason's "Good Old Boys" and especially communities in the Deep South, where small-town machine politics are relatively common, also feature what might be classified as political machines, although these organizations do not have the power and influence of the larger boss networks listed in this article. For example, the "Cracker Party" was a Democratic Party political machine that dominated city politics in Augusta, Georgia, for over half of the 20th century. Political machines also thrive on Native American reservations, where the veil of sovereignty is used as a shield against federal and state laws against the practice.

Evaluation

The phrase is considered derogatory "because it suggests that the interest of the organization are placed before those of the general public", according to Safire. Machines are criticized as undemocratic and inevitably encouraging corruption.

Since the 1960s, some historians have reevaluated political machines, considering them corrupt but efficient. Machines were undemocratic but responsive. They were also able to contain the spending demands of special interests. In Mayors and Money, a comparison of municipal government in Chicago and New York, Ester R. Fuchs credited the Cook County Democratic Organization with giving Mayor Richard J. Daley the political power to deny labor union contracts that the city could not afford and to make the state government assume burdensome costs like welfare and courts. Describing New York, Fuchs wrote, "New York got reform, but it never got good government." At the same time, as Dennis R. Judd and Todd Swanstrom suggest in City Politics that this view accompanied the common belief that there were no viable alternatives. They go on to point out that this is a falsehood, since there are certainly examples of reform oriented, anti-machine leaders during this time.

In his mid-2016 article "How American Politics Went Insane" in The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch argued that the political machines of the past had flaws but provided better governance than the alternatives. He wrote that political machines created positive incentives for politicians to work together and compromise – as opposed to pursuing "naked self-interest" the whole time.

Japan

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party is often cited as another political machine, maintaining power in suburban and rural areas through its control of farm bureaus and road construction agencies. In Japan, the word jiban (literally "base" or "foundation") is the word used for political machines.

Japanese political factional leaders are expected to distribute mochidai, literally snack-money, meaning funds to help subordinates win elections. For the annual end-year gift in 1989 Party Headquarters gave $200,000 to every member of the Diet. Supporters ignore wrongdoing to collect the benefits from the benefactor, such as money payments distributed by politicians to voters in weddings, funerals, New year parties among other events. Political ties are held together by marriages between the families of elite politicians. Nisei, second generation political families, have grown increasingly numerous in Japanese politics, due to a combination of name-recognition, business contacts and financial resources, and the role of personal political machines.

Taliban propaganda

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_propaganda

 

A Taliban "night letter" discouraging cooperation with foreign forces.

 

Since the 2001 fall of their national government in Afghanistan Taliban propaganda has developed into a sophisticated public relations machine that is shaping perceptions in Afghanistan and abroad. Although polls show the movement remains unpopular, the insurgents have readily exploited a sense of growing alienation fostered by years of broken government promises, official corruption, and the rising death toll among civilians from airstrikes and other military actions. "The result is weakening public support for nation-building, even though few actively support the Taliban," says a report from the International Crisis Group, a think tank that monitors conflicts. An American official in Afghanistan agrees: "We cannot afford to be passive [communicators] any longer if we're going to turn this around."

Background

A primary focus in the Taliban's media message is the history of wars between Christians and Muslims. The Taliban emphasize religious and cultural differences between the West and the East, the idea of the clash of civilizations, denounce the West as oppressive against Islam, call the War on Terror a War against Islam, and condemn the international forces as "occupiers and invaders." They portray the government of Afghanistan as its puppet, and the reconstruction works as "efforts of Christianizing Afghanistan," by using civilian casualties of air strikes and using media reports of prisoners' abuses and mistreatment in their favor.

Post-9/11

Early Taliban post-December 2001 media efforts were limited and cautious, reflecting the precarious nature of their position. The first media spokesman appointed after the collapse of the regime was Abdul Latif Hakimi. When Pakistani authorities arrested Hakimi on 4 October 2005, he was replaced by as many as three successors. One of these new spokesmen, Muhammad Hanif, was himself arrested in January 2007. The main aim of Taliban media activities during this time was to publicize, in an often exaggerated fashion, Taliban operations undertaken in Afghanistan. This was achieved mainly through contact with Pakistani or international press, usually through radio, telephone or newspapers.

Current strategy

The Taliban has become adept at portraying the West as being on the brink of defeat, at exploiting rifts between Washington and Kabul and at disparaging the administration of President Hamid Karzai as a "puppet" state with little reach outside the capital. The group is also attempting to assure Afghans that it has a strategy for governing the country again, presenting a platform of stamping out corruption and even protecting women's rights.

According to Afghan political analyst, Jelani Zwak, who has been studying Taliban propaganda for years, "they are not only talking about the occupation and civilian casualties. They are acting like an alternative to this government."

Propaganda at the village level

As the propaganda front through formal spokesmen is vital to undermine the government and reach out to the world, the propaganda campaign at the village level is important for recruiting youths and acquiring local support. Mosques are favorite places for the Taliban propagandists who always seek to convince the villagers that the international forces are fighting against Islam and it is their holy obligation to stand up for jihad. Quoting from different religious sources and fatwas (Islamic decrees), they describe the international sources as occupiers and the Karzai government as their puppet and tell the local population that providing them support at any level is an un-Islamic act, hence punishable by the 'holy warriors.' 

Effectiveness

The Taliban know how to take advantage of Western media outlets. For instance, on Aug. 18, the Taliban ambushed a French patrol about 30 miles from the Afghan capital, an attack that left 10 soldiers dead. Several weeks later, militants involved in the attack appeared in a glossy, eight-page magazine spread in Paris-Match, a leading French newsweekly, flaunting the weapons, uniforms and personal effects of the dead soldiers. Back in France, support for the war dropped to a new low. Defense Minister Herve Morin noted that the Taliban "understood that public opinion is probably the Achilles' heel" of the international community.

Structure

Along with four regional commands, the Afghan Taliban have 10 committees which address specific issues. Some of the members of the committees are also members of the Quetta Shura. One of these committees - Culture and Information - deals with Taliban propaganda. This committee is led by Amir Khan Mutaqqi.

• Maulvi Qudratullah Jamal served as the Taliban's chief of propaganda from 2002-2005. He now runs an investigative committee that deals with complaints from Afghan citizens against local Taliban personnel. Jamal also operates as a liaison to the Taliban's global supporters.
  

Spokesmen

The formal spokesmen of the Taliban insurgents are the most active and effective measure of the group's propaganda front. They are appointed by Mullah Omar through a formal decree or statement, delivered to the media by a top aide. This was not the case with Mufti Latifullah Hakimi, the first full-time Taliban spokesman, but all the later spokesmen were appointed this way. After his arrest on October 4, 2005, the number of spokesmen was increased to two: one for their activities in the southern and western provinces (Kandahar, Zabul, Oruzgan, Helmand, Herat, Nimroz, Farah, Badghis, Ghor and Sar-e-Pul) and the other for eastern, central and northern provinces (Badakhshan, Baghlan, Balkh, Bamiyan, Daykundi, Faryab, Ghazni, Jowzjan, Kabul, Kapisa, Khost, Kunar, Kunduz, Laghman, Logar, Nangrahar, Nuristan, Paktia, Paktika, Panjsher, Parwan, Samangan, Takhar, and Wardak). Currently, Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi acts as spokesman for the former provinces and Zabiullah Mujahid for the latter.

These spokesmen never provide regular and exact information about their fighters' casualties nor their attack tactics, operations, commanders' whereabouts and their own identities. But they are very fast in contacting local and international media for taking responsibility of attacks, claims of successes, formal statements, rejecting government officials' and international forces' claims, and other such issues.

Within the Taliban there are other groups who have their own spokesmen. For example, the Salafi (Wahhabi) Taliban in the eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces, the Tora Bora Military Front in Nangrahar, and the Haqqani Network in the provinces bordering Waziristan (Khost, Paktia, Paktika) have their own spokesmen who contact the media on their own. Sometimes field commanders also contact the media for immediate effects of their attacks because they believe in the importance of a propaganda war. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami, which associates himself and cooperates with the Taliban because of the "common enemy," has its own spokesman and it is observed, particularly in the case of major attacks, for example, the attack on French troops in Sarobi and the attack on a new year's celebrations in Kabul, that both Taliban's and Hekmatyar's spokesman claimed to have them carried out. Though he was member of the Taliban's leadership council, Mullah Dadullah, who was killed by the coalition forces in May 2007, had his own spokesman.

Types

The Taliban continues to rely heavily on decentralized, conventional propaganda efforts, which U.S. military officials say is the crucial battleground. These include the distribution of leaflets with threats or pleas, sermons in mosques and clandestine radio stations. As the Islamist movement steps up conventional grass-roots propaganda efforts and polishes its online presence—going so as far as to provide Facebook and Twitter icons online that allow readers to disseminate press releases—the U.S.-led coalition finds itself on the defensive in the media war. Foreign troops are ill-equipped to offer counterarguments in mosques and other gatherings, forcing them to rely on Afghan officials to do so.

Internet

Internet has proved the fastest and the most useful propaganda tool for the Taliban during recent years.

• Websites: The Taliban have their own websites which are designed attractively and are full of all kinds of content such as news stories, statements, religious sermons, photos, videos, audio messages, guerrilla war guidelines and training manuals.

Since mid-2005, the militants have maintained a multilingual website that has repeatedly changed service providers to avoid being shut down. On April 9, The Washington Post reported that, for more than a year, a Houston-based firm had unwittingly hosted a site claiming to be the voice of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" (the name of Mullah Omar's regime, deposed by the 2001 U.S. invasion) before it was identified as such. It was updated with official messages and battlefield reports that were clearly and incredulous pieces of propaganda.

• Videos: Taliban spokesmen are known for exploiting captives through propaganda such as Private Bergdahl who was captured in June 2009. Three videos of the missing private have been released, including one at Christmastime. In April 2010, a seven-minute video of the POW followed.
• Email: Email is another way of effective communication for the Taliban insurgents. Through email, they communicate with reporters, news agencies, newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV channels for taking responsibility of attacks and providing official statements and other information. Email interviews are also provided. Sometimes, clarifications and statements about some issues are sent to Pashto websites through email.

DVDs

On the streets of the Afghan capital Kabul and the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar, cheap, mass-produced DVDs feature footage of coalition atrocities: mud-brick Afghan villages leveled by allied attacks and ordinary citizens allegedly killed by coalition fire. Also popular is a montage from the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, part of a running effort to portray the current foreign troops as "invaders." Other discs show Taliban executions of so-called traitors and spectacular attacks against coalition forces.

Night letters

The Taliban method for night letters usually entails a warning delivered under a gate or nailed to a door in the dead of night. During the run-up to the Afghan parliamentary elections in September 2010, the Taliban intimidated villagers in certain areas from voting. People in the villages would not vote because the Taliban left letters at night warning they will cut off the finger of anyone if they find it marked with the indelible ink used to prevent multiple voting.

Magazines

The Taliban have several Pashto, Urdu and Arabic magazines openly published and distributed in Peshawar and the adjacent areas. These colorful magazines are often printed on expensive foreign paper and distributed free. They are published by different groups within the Taliban and are full of extremist propaganda, distorted facts, photos of victims, lengthy interviews with insurgent commanders, and articles on different political and religious topics. These magazines publish only news stories and newspaper articles that back their own claims.

The latest sad news is that the Christian Crusaders (Americans) have burned a copy of the Holy Quran in Wardak province and have thus shown their enmity with Islam and the Muslims... The saddest aspect of this incident is that the American invaders have committed this heinous crime in a province (Wardak) that has been known for long as home to mujahedeen (the holy warriors). The people of this province have taken active part in past and current jihadi movements. The people of this province have always defended their country bravely and heroically. The people of this province had played a historical role in the war against British occupiers...

The quote above comes from an article published in the latest issue of Shahamat (The Bravery), a Taliban propaganda magazine in Pashto. The article is an example of how the Taliban's propaganda tactics exploit a particular incident or issue by elevating it with seemingly related background information to provoke the local people to stand up against occupation.

Counter-propaganda

To counter the Taliban advances in the propaganda war, the Pentagon has reportedly launched a broad "psychological operations" campaign in Afghanistan to take down insurgent-run web sites and to jam radio stations. The Afghan government, for its part, has opened a new $1.2 million media center with international support. Staffed by a team of Western-trained spin doctors, the facility includes a high-tech media monitoring wing and an outreach department tasked with building better working relations with journalists.

According to a U.S. intelligence official, who agreed to be quoted on the condition of anonymity, said he believes the Taliban's reference to women's rights issues in their current propaganda campaign was an attempt to mitigate the bad publicity from a recent TIME cover story containing a haunting photo and an article featuring a woman whose face was reportedly mauled by Taliban members. "That really stuck it to them," he said. "Now they're softening their tone regarding women."