Reconceptualising Electoral Reform

Three ways of development in the study of electoral reform

• The systematic description and consequences of electoral systems
  Majoritarian vs proportional
  Outline of the consequences of the choice of either system for parties and party systems
  Attributes beyond the electoral formula, district magnitude and ballot structure
• The analysis of major reform and its political consequences
  The relationships between electoral systems and other aspects of politics suc as governability, representation, accountability and participation
  The result of representation systems were the cause of the results of multiparty systems
  Impact of voting system choice and the handling of social conflicts
  Research wheter proportional systems guaranteed inclusiveness and induced more consensus orientated politics, or were the result of the existing relationship between ethnic  linguistic, religious and regional cleavages. When it comes to accountability , studies focused on whether majority systems were neccesary to assure it, or wheter proportional systems with low magnitude multi-member districts or mixed electoral systems preserved the relationship between the candidate and the voter
• More comprehensive approach to the study of electoral reform
  Assumptionthat once an electoral sytem is implemented it should be seen asset in stone, and that change is possible only when it is accompanied by ruptures in historical and political developments, or systematic transtion
  Eastern European countries and their almsot constant reform

Two goals

• To shift attention away from the political consequences of electoral change and what takes place before the passage of reform
• Analyse the determinants of electoral reform. Elaborate an agenda for future research in electoral change, and they do so by discussing both the reconceptualisation and the methodology of electoral reform research. Look back at what underlies the study of electoral reform

Two categories on electoral systems literature

1. Studies that treat electoral systems as an independent variable, as explanans
2. Studies that view electoral systems as a dependent variable as the explanandum

What is Electoral Reform?

It is necessary adopt a more expansive view of electoral reform and a systematic approach toward conceptualizing different types of reform.

It should be study other attributes affection involving electoral systems, and the changes in these arrangements. Include the study of minor reforms: changes in intra-party processes such as candidate selection procedures and or changes  in party finance structures. Any change  in the electoral rules that leads to a change in the operation of the electoral system.

Why does Electoral Reform occur?

Dominant rational choice theory: electoral reform is due to the strategic calculations of elites who choose electoral rules that suit their own ends of maximizing gains and/or missing losses. It is necessary moving away from a single primary motivation, or a single approach toward a more comprehensive framework for analysis based on a synthesis of determinants

In the era world, there will be a high level of uncertainty in terms of its effects, since reforms affect several dimensions of political life.  Other aspects that adds to the uncertainty and makes both politicians and reluctant to change is the impact that the act of reform and the act itself. Other theoretical approaches, such as behaviouralist institutionalist are useful in analyzing the determinants of electoral reform. It is also not taken account, the relevance of diffusion and contagion as a possible source of electoral reform.  The institutionalist approach is also often used to explain non reform,or when proposed reforms are vetoed. The veto player theory foe electoral reform focuses on the procedures to adapt constitutions or to change electoral legislation.

Who indicates electoral reform?
Increasing awareness of other actors and or sources as initiators of or catalyst for reform, such as public opinion, pressure groups, the courts and referenda. Politicians and parties are not the only initiators of reform. Voters, pressure groups, courts, citizens' assemblies and experts can be as well. The use of single case studies is one of the consequences of restricting the object of study to major reforms, since this kind of reform does not occur often, and only in a few countries. If one takes a more expansive view of electoral reform that includes changes inc certain aspects of the electoral system then many more cases can be found. Nevertheless  quantitative studies remain the exception rather than the rule in the field of electoral reform.


Where does electoral reform happen?
The study of electoral reform can be advanced by the inclusion of countries other than established democracies. It is necessary to expand our academic analysis to cover the persistent electoral reforms outside the established democracies, in order to build better concepts and theories.

Reconceptualising Electoral Reform

Shifting towards a combination of qualitative and quantitative approach, based on cross national survey data.

We need to reassess what electoral reform encompasses. At the very least research should move past major reform and beyond the national level.  Adopt a more comprehensive definition  Such a definition would give us the advantage of more diversity in terms of the type of research.  Changing the unit of analysis may lead to a different understanding of the reform processes, but it will also certainly affect the number of cases to be studied and consequently the methodology adopted. 

Methodology

Future researchers of electoral reform should be more open in their methodological approach. If we wish to learn from both Newton and Heraclitus, we will perceive stability and change as the two sides of any political institution. Only then will we learn not only which determinants serve as catalysts for reform, but also what the conditions for maintaining stability are.

Reconceptualising Electoral Reform
Monique Leyenaar and Reuven Y.Hazan
West European Politics,
Vol. 34, No. 3, 437-455. May 2011

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Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy: The Difficult Combination

The combination of a multiparty system and presidentialism is especially inimical to stable democracy.
Multiparty presidentialism is especially likely to produce immobilizing executive/legislative deadlock, and such deadlock can destabilize democracy.

Multipartism is more likely than bipartism to produce ideological polorization, thereby complicating problems often associated with presidentialism. The combination of presidentialism and multipartism  is complicated by the difficulties of interpaty coalition building in presidential democracies, with deleterious consequences for democratic stability.

The choice regarding institutions are important, none is more important than the system of government.

Subcategory of presidential systems: those in multiparty democracies

Weakness: the rigidity associated with the fixed tem, executive/legislative deadlock, and a greater likelihood that the head of government will have limited administrative and party experience. It do not have mechanism intended to ensure legislative majorities (the president's party often has majority, or close to it, in two-party system, but rarely does so with multipartism).

There are just 4 democracies between 31 stable democracies with this institutional configuration.

Multiparty presidentialism is more likely to produce immobilizing executive/legislative deadlock than either parliamentary systems or two party presidentialism.

Two-party systems presidentialism is more likely. High -entry barriers keep radical actors out of the party system, and the need to win votes from the center encourages moderation, and the abscence of extremist parties and the centripetal nature of party competition favoring democratic stability by assuring actors that electoral and policy losses will not have catastrophic consequences.

Presidentialism and multipartism is complicated. Difficulties of interparty-coalition building in presidential democracies.

Multiparty coalitions in parliamentary system, the parties choose the cabinet and prime ministers, and they remain responsible for providing support for the government. In presidential systems, presidents put together their own cabinets, and the parties are less firmly committed to supporting the government. In presidential systems legislators of parties with cabinet portfolios do not support the government. Incentives for parties to break coalitions are generally stronger in presidential systems.

Democracy criteria 

1. Democracies must have open competitive elections that determine who governs.
2. Election results cannot be determined by fraud, coercion or major proscriptions.
3. Legislative and executive office must be decided on the basis of elections.
4. Elections must be afford the opportunity of alternation in power.
5. Universal adult suffrage.
6. Guarantees of traditional civil liberties.
   

Presidential democracy (The chief executive is elected by the legislature and term office is fixed)

1. The head of government is essentially popularly elected.
2. Legislative elections and post-election negotiations do not determine executive power.
3. The Head of government is selected by the legislature.
4. President must be the head of government (except semi-presidential systems). 
5. The president is elected for a fixed time of period (president can not be forced to resign because of a no-confidence vote).

Parliamentary democracy

1. Executive branch exists separately from the legislature.
2. No post-election negotiations.
3. Fixed term for head of government
4. The head of government is selected by the legislature and subsequently depends upon the ongoing confidence of the legislature for remaining in office. 

Presidentialism and stable democracy

Democratic longevity. Most of the unstable democracies since 1945 are presidential systems or parliamentary multiparty systems.

Parliamentary systems have mechanism that may lead to relatively frequent changes in cabinets and governments, but this flexibility in changing governments may help preserve regime stability.  On the hooter hand, the fixed electoral timetable of presidential regimes apparently ensures stability in the head of government but introduces a rigidity inimical to regime stability. We need to distinguish between cabinet stability and regime stability. The fixed term also force the president to leave the charge even if the general population, political elites and parties, and other major actors continue to support them.

A greater likelihood of executive legislative deadlock. Presidential systems are more prone to immobility than parliamentary systems. They are more apt have executives whose program is consistently blocked by the legislature, and they are less capable of dealing this problem.

The downside of direct popular elections is that political outsiders with little experience in handling congress can get elected. 

Presidentialism, multipartism, and stable democracy
Of the 31 presidential democracies, 15 had multiparty systems, 10 two-party systems, 5 dominant-party systems, and 1 two-and-one-half party system. Only 1 of the 15 multiparty presidential demcoraciesendured for at least 25 years.

Remember two-party system use to constrict the breadth of opinion represented, and hinder the building of coalition governments, making it difficult to establish consolidation forms of democracy. Two-party systems become less functional and less viable as the spread of opinion becomes greater.

Why presidentialism and multipartism make a difficult combination?


In presidential systems, multipartism increases the likelihood of executive/legislative deadlock and immbobilism. It also increase the likelihood of ideological polarization. Multipartism, presidents need to build interpaty coalitions to get measures through the legislature, but interpaty coalition building in presidential systems is more difficult and less stable than in pariamentary systems.

Because of the separation of powers presidential systems lack means of ensuring that the president will enjoy the support of a majority in congress. Presidents can govern without a majority. Legislatures can block presidential action. In most presidential democracies, the president is largely responsible for policy and legislation. The role is marked by ambivalence and ambiguity.

Most presidential systems presidential role is marked by ambivalence and ambiguity. They can not implement their agenda, if their legislative don't support it.

Exceptions

1. President's party enjoys a majority in the legislature and regularly backs the president.
2. Coalition of parties provides a majority and regularly supports the president.
3. President does not enjoy a stable majority in congress, but is able to govern by creating shifting coalitions.

Parliamentary systems are generally better providing stable support for governments and handle lack of legislative support.
In Presidential systems there is a dissociation between party affiliations of cabinet members and party coalitions. 

The true minority parliamentary governments lasted an average of only 14 months. Presidential governments in which executive/legislative deadlock arises. The parliamentary mechanism of a no-confidence vote is not available.  President lack tools for pushing policy through during period of executive/legislative deadlock. 

If their congressional support dissipates, president become a sitting duck. Presidents use to try constitutional amends. 

Immobilism in presidential democracies has often been a major ingredient in coups. Presidents got enormous responsibilities, they need administer huge, complex, state bureaucracies. 

Presidentialism, multipartism and ideological polarization

Two or two and one half party systems are more likely to be compatible with presidential democracy because ideological polarization is unlikely. These systems have drawbacks, but they are based on the democratic theory of willingness of political actors to accept electoral and policy defeats.  (Intense ideological divisions increase the stakes of the political game, serve as an incentive to polarization and consequently, are less favorable to stable democracy.

1. Party support for the government tends to be more secure in parliamentary systems because of the way executive power is formed and dissolved. In presidential systems the president has the responsibility of putting together a cabinet. Change in cabinets are usually the president's decision and are not brought about by party decisions. 
2. In parliamentary systems, party coalitions generally take place after the election and are binding in presidential systems. In presidential systems, they often take place before the election and are not binding passt election day. Executive power is nor formed through post-election agreements among parties and is not derived among several parties that are coresponsible for governing.  In Parliamentary systems, the same coalition formed government is responsible to govern. An agreement among parties may pertain only to congressional matters, with no binging implication for relations between the parties and the president. 
3. In presidential systems, the commitment of individual legislators to support an agreement negotiated by the party leadership is often less secure.  There is a lack of party discipline. 
4. Incentives for parties to break coalitions are stronger in providentially system. As new presidential elctions appear on the horizon, party leaders generally feel a need to distance themselves from the president in office.

Conclusion

Combination of presidential government and multiparty system is problematic. It is not accident that most stable presidential democracies have had limited party system fragmentation. It raises the possibility that the liabilities of presidentialism pertain mostly to situations of multipartism. Multipartism acerbate some conflicts.
On the other hand, this doesn't happen with parliamentary regimes that have more coalition building mechanism that facilitate multiparty democracy. 

Institutional combination facilitate and others obstruct the management of social, economic, and political problems.

In most presidential democracies  legislative elections are based on proportional representation with district magnitudes sufficiently large to facilitate representation of several parties, making more like that the opposition control a solid majority in congress.

What can be done in terms of constitutional/institutional reform in multiparty presidential democracies?

1. Switching from a presidential system to a semi presidential or a parliamentary system.
2. Taking measures to reduce party system fragmentation. Limiting party system fragmentation, introducing a higher threshold  reducing district magnitude in proportional system, having concurrent congressional and presidential elections.

Efforts to restructure a multiparty system into two-partism would adversely affect legitimacy, especially in party systems with significant ethnic, regional or religious parties that would dissapear under different electoral rules or a wide ideological distance.  The advantages of bipartism thus diminish where there are sharp social or political cleaves.

A change to parliamentary government would need to simultaneously establish mechanism to enhance party discipline. 

Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy: The Difficult Combination

Scott Mainwaring
Comparative Political Studies 1993 26: 198

The Quantity and the Quality of Party System

Introduction

Research typically counts the quantity of parties (many research examines the merits of a two-party system vs a multiparty system and links the number of parties to the representation of social cleavages in voting behavior, turnout in elections, representation, and levels of poltiical conflict) . The more property is the quality of party competition - the polarization of political parties within a party system.

Why polarization is important to study?

A new measurement of party system polarization based on voter perceptions of party positions in the Comparative Study of ELectoral Sytems.

Comparation of party polarization and party fractionalization as influences on cleavage-based and ideological voting asn as predictors of turnout levels.

Instead of counting the quantity of parties, a moreimportant property is the quality of party system.

Party System polarization reflexts the degree of ideological differentiation among political parties in a system. The polarization of a party system is a property that can be independent of the number of parties. Party system polarization has strong effects than party fractionalization. 


The Literature on Party Polarization

Downs: concept of the spatial modeling of party systems, in which political parties and voters are aligned along a Left and Right continuum. Framework for party competition.  Two party system would converge to the center, multiparty systems would be spread along the dimension. Voters in multiparty systems are given a wide range of ideological choice. Regarding ideologies is more rational in multiparty system.

Sartori: high levels of party system polarization can intensify ideological debates, weaken the legitimacy of the regime and destabilize the political system.

The spatial models converge on a common framework for studing party systems.

Measuring Party System Characteristics
Two different methods to count the number of parties to give weight to the relative size of parties and not jsut their absolute numbers: party fractionalization (satistics), and the perceptions of the electorate in the nation. (questionnaire).

This last method implies consider the Left and Right scale (ask people where they situate themselves in the scale and where they stituate the main parties).

Party systems with a large number of parties also tend to be more polarized.  The polarizzation of  a party system reflects the dispersion of citizens along the ideological dimension.

Party polarization often reflects the itnernal dynamics of electoral competition in a nation. Parties and their leaders make strategic or ideological choices when they begin a campaign, and other parties respond to these choices.

The Correlates of Polarization

Polarization has important consequences. A highly polarized system presumably produces clearer party choices, stimulates participation, affects representation, and has more intense partisan competition. The ideological gap between winners and losers is greater and the policy implications of government control are more substantial. A centrist party system should reflect greater consensus within the electoral process and less interparty conflict and less political responsiveness.

The Polarization of Voter Preferences

If parties offer limited chocies to voters, then it is not likely tha t the voters blocs will differ sharply across parties. ''Voters in multiparty systems are more likely to be swayed by doctrinal considerations than are voters in two party systems''. (Use of surveys) - more ideological diversity of choice more clearly voters translate their Left-Right orientations.

The Party System and Voting Turnout
With few choices, voters have limtied opportunities to find a party that represents their views and thus may choose to abstain from voting. However as the number of chocies icnreases voters sould more easily find a party they agree with which justifies the effort to cast a ballot.

The nature of the choises available to voters is strongly related to the level of turnout in elections. The number of parties is less important than the diversity of chocies that the parties offer.

Polarization and Democratic Politics
Counting the number of parties is often a surogate for a richer characteristic of a party system that is more difficult to measure.

Polarization and fractionalization can vary almost independently of one another. (Public eprcetions of party positions).

Clear empirical differences in the correlates of polarization and fractionalization. The polarization of a party system is related to stronger correlations between class and the Left-Right relationship with party preferences. To the extent that poltiical parties are supposed to be channels of expression that allow citizens to vote their preferences, then party system polarization substantially strenghens this process- but party fractionalization has little impact on these relationships. Voting turnout appears more strongly related to party system polarization than fracitonalization. 

Quality should count more than quantity

The Quantity and the Quality of Party Systems: Pary System Polarization, Its Measurement, and Its Consequences
Russell J. Dalton
Comparative Political Studies 2008 41:899

Cartel Parties in Western Europe?

Introduction

Three analytical dimensions of the cartel thesis:

• Organizational change
• Functional change 
• Change of party competition.

Denmkar and Germany partty cartels have developed in different ways.The favourable and unfavourable conditions facilitating or hindering the development of party cartels have to be clarified.
Western European parties have increasingly lost their capacity and their eagerness to fulfil their representative functions in society, whereas they have become more strongly involved in executing governmental functions. Professional party leaders are more concerned with policy making in the parliamentary arena than with interpreting party manifestos or discussing politics at party congresses. New source of financing and staffind their organizations. Weak involvement of party members and historically related interest groups in party activities on the one hand, and by emphasis on governmental functions and state resources on the other.

The organizational dimension

1. Balance of power inside the parties. The mechanics of internal decision-making are determined by the structural and material resources of the various faces within the organization. Cartel parties are characterized by the ascendancy of the party in public office: public office-holders dominate party executive organs and internal decision-making procedures. Party activists have only marginal influence, and election campaigns are organized by professional experts.

2. Vertical stratarchy of different party levels. Whereas the national party elite tries to free itself from the demands of regional and local party leaders as far as political and strategic questions on the national level are concerned, the lower strata insist on autonomy in their own domains, for example the selection of candidates or local politics.

Proffesional party leaders are more concerned with policy-making in the parliamentary area. Parties open up a new source for financing and staffing their organizations.

Turning to the level of party competition, the mutually shared need for securing the flow of state resources has changed the relationship of the political opponents towards each other. The party actors have realized that there are common interests among the political class. The process of cartel formation has two facets:

1.Cartelization aims at reducing the consquences of electoral competition (granting the opposition parties a certain share of state subventions) or patronage appointments).

2. Exclusion aims at securing the position of the established parties against newly mobilized challengers. The co-optation of new aprties that are willing to play according to the established rules can strengthen the viability of a party cartel


Weak involvement of party members and historically related itnerest groups governmental functions and state recourses on the other

Katz and Mair: the formation of these partys poses a fundamental problem for Western European party democracies, it denies voters the possibility of choosing a real political alternative and gives ammunition to the rhetoric of neo-populist parties on the political right. (Deslegitimize political decisions). Cartelization will widen the gulf between voters and politicians and make it increasingly difficult to legitimize political decisions.

Increased vulnerability causes party change. Vulnerability brought about a declining capacity of parties to fulfil their representative functions which subsequently led them to ceoncentrate on their governmental functions and to collude with their estbalished opponents in order to secure the requires resources for organizational sustenance. The freedom of manoeuvre which party leaders needed to do both led to itnernal party reforms. The links between the professionalized party organizations and the citizenry further eroded, which in turn instensified the trend towards the sphere of the state and to inter-party collusion.

Germany

Subsidies to the Parliamentary parties for employing research assistants and secretaries (s. 1959)
Individual MPs are able to claim an allowance for employing personal assistants (s.1969)
The party organizations receive state subventions for general political activities (1959-1966)
Campaign reimbursements and substantial subsidies for their political foundations (s.1967)

The introduction and expansion of public subsidies coincided with a massive expansion of the membership organizations and with a process of defragmentation in the party system in the 1960-1970.

Denmark
Subsidies to the parliamentary parties (s.1965), expanded in 1980.
Public subsidies to the party organizations (s.1986), quadrupled in 1995.

United Kingdom

There is no direct public subsidies to party organizations. Only modest payments to the parliamentary parties.
British parties are in control of the political decision-making process.
The Westminster system gives strong leeway to the governmental party in terms of political competence and patronage potential.  The major parties choose to rely on non-state sources of finance.
Instead of mutually securing their respective organizational maintenance as envisaged i the cartel party model, the Conservative government violated vital interests of their opponents, while the Labour Party ended the implicit consensus on the institutional rules of the game.
Agreement on common organizational interests is a sine qua non for forming a party cartel.


Switzerland

Widespread consensus among the established parties about state funding.
Reformincluding better infrastructure for MPs was rejected in a referendum in 1992 showing the reclutance of Swiss citizens to accept the professionalization of politics.
The Swiss institutional setting, with federalism, direct democracy and corporatism represent alternative political channels to the parliamentary arena.


The three dimensions

• The Organizational Dimension
  
  Ideal-type cartel parties are characterized by the ascendancy of the party in public office and by stratarchy.
  National parliamentarians and cabinet members control the most important power positions within their party organizations at the national level.
  There is autonomy between the different territorial party strata.
  Regional party leaders lack influence on national party politics.
  Federalization rather than stratarchy characterizes the internal power distribution of the parties.
  In all parties, public office-holders constitute the majority within national executive commites (no the Labour Party, trade unions).
  The leading party bodies have developed into multi.-level organs, bringing together the most important politicans of the national and subnational levels and representatives of the European level.
  Party-specific features, such as electoral fortunes or the traditions of specific party families, are more important than cartel tendencies.
  
  UK
  
  The national executive still be dominated by national MPs and representatives of the corporate organizations. Only since the NEC reform in 1998, there been representation of public office-holders from different poltiical levels.
  Trade unions got about 40% NEC representation.
  New policiy-making bodies introduced in the 1990s, such as the 'Joing Policy Committee' or the 'National Policy Forum' are clearly dominated by the parliamentary leadership and ahave taken over competences once exercised by the NEC.
  Reforms of the voting procedures at party conferences and the introduction of party plebiscities in the selection of candidates and party leaders reduced the political influence of trade union officials and party activists.
  Labours are still be characterized by the rowking of party commissions bringing together all sections and wings of the party.
  The delegates at party conferences still have veto rights, direct democratic procedures.
  Programatic debates tend to be slow and driven by the search of compromises.
  Until 1998, it was up to the parliamentary party leader of the British Conservatives to decide party policies. Only after the 1997 electoral fiasco the Conservatives decide to end the seapration of parliamentary and extra-parliametnary party and to give their memebers a say in the election of the party leader and to create and executive committe with formal policy-making competences.
  
  
  
• The Functional Dimension
  The ways the cartel parties fulfil their political role distinguish them from former party types. While parties increasingly lose their embeddedness in society, they compensateby making use of state resources and by focusing on their functions in parliament and government.
  
  The Labour Party has traditionally been financed primarily by the affiliation fees of trade unions. Blair leadership successfully undertook efforts to reduce this financial dependence and to expand the party budget by reversing the downward trend of individual party memebership, raising membership fees and attracting donations from the business sector.
  
  More budget = expand and professionalize party headquarters, and to employ new strategies of political marketing and capital-intensive campaigning. It also help to increase political autonomy.
  
  However, the historical alliance with the trade unions continues to matter.
  
  The Conservative Party has always been financed by donations from the business sector.
  The Party did not develop permanent organizational linkages to business interests grups.
  The leadership has always been less constrained by direct involvement of party members and interest groups than other party elites. It depends on financial and organizational resources provided by its supporters.
  
  
• The Competitive Dimension
  
  The systemic level of party competition. Party cartels are characterized by the cartelization of privileges and the exclusion of new parties. There is a high level of at least implicit interparty cooperation in securing state recources for themselves and building protective walls against new competitors.
  
  In the UK, the majoritarian voting system, the unitary state structure and the absence of public funding made it quite difficult for third parties, especially on a national platform, to break the duopoly of Labour and Conservative.
  
  -State funding is more likely to help rather than hinder new challengers to consolidate.
  Other factors such as the voting system , the cleavages, orthe nature of coalition building have to be taken into account.
  
  -There is no direct relationship between cartel formation and party system fractionalization.
  
  
  

Modifications to the cartel thesis

1. Alternative paths to a party cartel. We should allow for multiple causation when explaining cartel tendencies.
2. We restrict the cartel thesis to its core elements. 
3. Instituional parameter proveded to be important: the electoral system reinforced (Denmark) or blocked (UK), the perception of vulnerability and thereby influenced the itnesity of pressure to adapt.
   The strenght of the partys tate (Germany) furthered the capacities of parties to control their organizational development, whereas a weak partys tate (Switzerland) diminished these possibilities.
   Political traditions of accommodation facilitate cartel formation. Cooperation and mutual trust. Collective action. Consensual traditions. (In UK, Thatcherism ended the Keynesian 'post-war consensus', the ideological cleavages bteween the opponents were reinforced).
   Political professionalization facilitates cartel formation. Politicians of different parties not only work together in coalitions and aprlaimentary committees, they also sahre common interests concerning their individual (income, re-election, career ambitions) and organizational (state subsidies, patronage) self-maintenance, and they are prepared to participate in institutional inter-party cooperation.
   
   In contrast, Westminster MPs, especially Conservative members, continued to remain part-time parliamentarians well into the 1970s. This contributes to the rather different perception of self-interests on both sides of parliament. 

Cartel Parties in Western Europe?
Klaus Detterbeck
Party Politics 2005 11:173

Party Competition and Strategy in Central Europe since 1989

Context

Collapse of communism in 1989
Four Central European States - Unexpected Party System Stability
Two-bloc competition with a relatively stable centre-left and consolidated right in Hungary and Czech R
Exception in Poland and Slovakia (populist parties)
Hungary is the most stable case. Stability in terms of party organizatons.
Czech Republic, four of the five parliamentary parties were estbalished by 1991, two smaller parties cooperating in the Coalition occupy the centre-right.
Slovakia is the least stable of the four systems: 1. Party fissions and a steady flow of new populist parties. The old regime party has failed to acquire a central role in the party system. Recent electoral results suggest a stabilization  of two-bloc competition.

Why?

Post-communist society was not an atomized and decapitated mass of ex-clients of state socialism
Development of party systemd did not start from scratch
Electoral systems regulate party competition and help restrict the size of the party systems
Interaction between the parties, a stable party system also include stable patterns of interaction
This include interaction between government and oposition


What parties?

Successor of communist parties
Emerged form the opposition movements
Revived historical parties
New party organisations

Party and Party System Stability in Central Europe

Stability in temrs of the number of parliamentary parties was achieved in all Central European countries around the second or third election.
Stability achieve in Hungary and Czech Republic in the latter half of the 1990s.
Electoral volatility is a red herring as far as party system stability is concerned
The clues to the differences within Central Europe are found in the strategic choices made by key parties during the firs decade of multiparty competition.

Institutions

Early institutional compromsies as well as later changes reflect the balance of power between the main parties at the time. Once in place, institutions helps shape subsequent poltiical contests.
Thresholds restrict competition, force elites and voters to concentrate on parties that are large enough to win seats, declining electoral fragmentation and a lower share of wasted votes suggest it works.
D'Hondt method helped stabilize the number of parties (Poland)

Post-Communist Parties and the New Centre-Left
Their degree of success has depended on a combination of reform and electoral appeal combined with organizational strenght and elite skills, as well as coalitiong strategies.
In Poland SLD and in Hungary MSzP, they repersent the clearest cases of successful transformation to modern catch-all social democrats. The Czech communist party was the only communist party to retain an orthodox platform and survive as a politically relevant.

The 'Right' parties
The competition to characterize who represent the right still be present in Poland.  In Czech, the ODS is the leading centre-right force. In Hungary, there is a stabilization of a two-bloc party system, with the former liberal parties divided into the centre-left and centre-right.
In mid-1990s, in msot of the countries the contests was conclusively stabilized.
The pre-1989 opposition in Slovakia was more fragmented than the Czech (social and ideological composition was different), after the independence, the Slovak party system was unipolar (HZDS); the breakpoint is the 2002 election and the founding of SDKU in 2000. The key to the differences between Czech and the Slovak case is the composition of the opposition forces in combination with the cleavage structure and party strategies.
Slovakia did not have a stable ex-communist anchoring party on the left (Unlike Poland and Hungary).

'Third' and Protest parties

These parties played a limited role in the development of Central European party system stability.
They have generally aligned along the left-right dimension.
Instability of populist parties in POland and Slovakia is inherent in their nature as ideologically diffuse parties, based on populist appeal, often associated with a single individual, and lacking a firm organizational structure.
The PiS in Poland has become a permanent feature of the party system.

Conclusion

Comparative analysis revelas that these different patters of stabilization have been driven largely by strategic choices made by parties, in terms of what their goals are and how these are best pursued.
The hugher number of parties in Poland and Slovakia at an early state prompted more proportional electoral system = reinforces fragmentation.
ODS and Fidesz established as the anchors of one side of the party system. They got strong leaders that are capable of taking advantage of their non-socialist competitors.
Party strategy matters, it shapes the trajectories of variations in and degrees of party system stabilization

Patterns of Stability: Party Competition and Strategy in Central Europe since 1989
Elisabeth Bakke and Nick Sitter

Party Politics 2005 11:243

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Cleavages Research: A Critical Appraisal

Cleavage research - Empirical evidence

US scholars - individual is determinant, rational choice tradition of electoral research
European scholars - individuals are subject to impersonal forces often associated with life chances established at birth. (Contextual determinant).

Sociologist - social processes

Political scientist - political outcomes

Mistakes of scholars

1. Stretch the theoretical underpinnings of the social group basis of political life
2. Slide from one argument to another by suggestive use of words
3. Employ words with multiple meanings
4. Engage in questionable methodological practiques in order to suggest stronger linkages than the empirical findings warrant.

Therefore, it is a subfield chracterises by: 

1. Weak theorising
2. Loose logic
3. Shaky methodology

Social cleavage requirements (Lipset and Rokkan) - Weak theorising

1. Political consequences
2. Objective distinction between the itnerests of those on different sides of a cleave divide
3. Recognition of the importance of this dsitinction by those affected
4. Political expression for the different itnerests concerned (Votes for different parties ebcause theya re dedicated to defending the interests of different groups

Other weak theorising occurs in regard to teh manner in which cleavages are supposed to ahve lost tehir power to structure partisanship

Loose logic -. It is no necessary retain the same meaning for cleavage politics as the meaning employed by Lipset and Rokkan and other scholars. Cleavage concept can be employed for identifying distinctions of a more long-standing nature. If the political differences are long-standing for sociological reasons then we need to know what those reasons are.  It is not possible to have things both ways between different scholars, not different theoretical explanations. For example, due to learned behaviour a person can keep having some political ideas about one topic, when this topic already ceased, but still have these ideas. This is not a cleavage politic, it comes for a different mechanism, well udnerstood in political science. If cleavages give issues longevity in a different way than paty identification does, this would be important to know.

Shaky methodology, those who failt to employ cutting-edge research methods lose the opportunity to elaborate their theorising in ways that could be enormously fruitful. We would not be dealing with an effect unless it was relevant and ifnores the fact that we might be concerned with changes in relevance over time. There are relevant differences about the way in which we can expect cleavages of any kind to manifest themselves and serves as test variables to help distinguish between different explanations for the same phenomenon, or to explain away apparent differences in the effects of some phenomenon in different countries.



                       

Cleavage Research: A critical Appraisal

Mark N. Franklin

West European Politics

33:3, 648-658

The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single-Party Dominance

Authoritarian dominant party systems: meaningful elections where one party maintains the ability to determine social choice through government policy for at least 20 consecutive years or four consecutive elections.

Three elements to difference single party dominance thorugh elections of authoritarian:

1. Single-party dominance implies a power threshold.
Dominance: the ability to determine social choice through policy and legislation.

2. Longevity treshold
30-50 years, permanent or semi permanent governance
If the country hasn't arrived this treshold, it will be consider as proto-dominant party systems.

3. Electoral competition msut be meaningful:

a)The chief executive and a legislature that cannot be dismissed by the executive are chosen through regualr  popular elections.
b)Opposition forces are allowed to form independent parties and compete in elections.
c)The incumbent does not engage in outcome-changing electoral fraud without which dominant party rule would have ended.

Examples: Malaysia (UMNO), Mexico (PRI), Senegal (PS), Singapore (PAP), Taiwan (KMT), Gambia (PPP).

Dominant parties endure despite poor economic performance, voter demand for new parties, and sifficiently permissive electoral isntitutions. Dominant parties continue to win then they can politicize public resources, and they fail when privatizations put the state's fiscal power out of their reach.

The political economy of single-party dominance consits of a large state and a politically quiescent public bureaucracy.  Dominant parties can transform public resources intro patronage goods and illicit funds for partisan compaigning that allow them to buy votes, outspend the opposition at every turn, and make otherwise meaningful elections unfair.  Uncovering the link between the macroeconomic role of the state and the degree of party competition has three main implications:

1. Dominant parties cannot long survive without access to a steady stream of resources, and the msot realible stream comes from transforming the state from a neutral actor into the party's piggy bank.

2. Given that incumbents will no doubt try to use the state's fiscal power for partisan advantage, domestic and international actors interested in creating fair elections should focus on transparent accounting and third party audits of the public sector as well as professionalizing public bureaucracies to make them into neutral defenders of the public through.  Altough there are some dominant parties in  countries such as Malaysia where they can resist the pressure to privatize or find alternative revenue streams, they will need to compete on a more level playing field.

3. Two avenues for future research:

-Studying dominant party systems shows the effect of politicized public resources on partisan competition in extreme instances of the incumbency advantage.

-Identify how incumbents use the state's fiscal power in a range of systems.


Dominant party decline over time

-There are some elements can't explain this fact: social cleavages, higher electoral district magnitude, increased number of competitive parties,  Other variables do a poor job: economic performance, GDP per capita, trade openness or the proportion of democracies in a given region.

There is some evidence that higher ethno-linguistic fragmentation makes dominant parties more vulnerable. Same electoral district magnitude.

Dominant parties persist or fail based primarily on the their ability to politicize public resources.

Dominant parties are threatened when the incumbent's access to public resources declines and opposition parties have more equal opportunities to compete for votes.

The fiscal power of the state is used to distort partisan competition. One particular element of economic liberalization  - the privatization of state-owned enterprises, breaks these monopolies and promotes transitions to fully competitive democracy.

Method: association between resource advantages derived from the public budget and dominant party persitence in power.


Resource Asymmeteries and Single-Party Dominance

Dominant parties - resources advantages from the public budget
                           a large public sector allows the incumbent
                           state encourages domestic businesses 'to play to play'
                           transform public agencies into campaign headquarters
                           public bureaucracy is politically controled through non merit based hiring
                           increase the costs of support opposition parties*
                           it can also deploy the repressive apparatus of the state
                           use their advantages strategically to generate the most votes for the lowest cost
                           his power rise with the size of the public sector


*Forgoing patronage goods that one might receive by choosing the dominant party
Risk of physical coercion

The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single-Party Dominance

Kenneth F. Greene

Comparative Political Studies 2010 43:807 

The New Cultural Divide and the Two-Dimensional Political Space in Western Europe

Emergence of a conflict opposing libertarian-universalistic and traditionalist-communitarian values.


A new value conflict



An opposition between culturally libertarian and traditionalist

or authoritarian values, 

on differing conceptions of community.

A two-dimensional competitive space.


A growing diffusion of universalistic outlooks that citizens with more traditionalist values and conceptions of community are likely to see as threatening.


The educational revolution interacts with processes of denationalisation or globalisation to create ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of the modernisation processes of recent decades.

• Globalisation
• Certain social groups 
• have lost in terms of life-chances or privileges, while others feel threatened in
• their identity by the policies enacting universalistic values and by European 
• integration.
  Cultural conflicts
• Ideologies
• Collective identities
• Value and life style
• Populist right parties
  
  These parties have gained substantial voter shares by politicising the new cultural conflict, and by placing renewed emphasis on economic policy making or other political issues they would only play into the hands of their mainstream competitors.
  
  On the other hand, the established right is free to back off from its harsh anti-inmigrant stances. Cultural conflicts therefore centre on liberarian-universalistic values and manifest themselves in tempered form in the mid 2000s.
• New issues

New line of conclict: libertarian-universalistic vs. traditionalist-communitarian

There are who want we preserve our distinctive traditions while other defence the democratic majority decisions over abstract normative principle.

The more party positions on the two dimensions diverge, on the other hand, the more strongly twodimensional the resulting political space will be. 

12 broader categories

1. Economic Issues
   Welfare
   Budget
   Economic liberalism
   
2. Cultural issues
   Cultural liberalism
   European integration
   Culture
   Inmigration
   Army
   Security
3. Residual categories
   Environment
   Institutional reform
   Infraestructure

Conclusion

1. The rising diffusionof universalistic values since the 1960s, resulting in societal changes that have triggered a first redrawing of political space

2.These transformations carry the imprint of a – delayed – traditionalist-communitarian counter-reaction against this development. The New Left and the extreme populist right, the two party families that are both the driving forces and the product of this two-fold transformation of political space, lie at

opposing poles of the new cultural divide opposing libertarian-universalistic and traditionalist-communitarian values. With the state–market divide retaining much of its power, the space of West European politics is clearly two-dimensional.


Economic issues have proven more important in structuring recent party divisions. Politics will continue to evolve in a path-dependent manner in the two contexts.


     

The New Cultural Divide and the Two-Dimensional Political Space in Western Europe

Simon Bornschier

West European Politics

Volume 33, Issue 3, 2010

Special Issue: The Structure of Political Competition in Western Europe

Duverger's law and the meaning of canadian exceptionalism

Durveger's law: plurality rule elections result in two-party competition, structured within single-member districts tend to favor two party system. In political science, Duverger's law is a principle which asserts that a plurality ruleelection system tends to favor a two-party system. This is one of two hypotheses proposed by Duverger, the second stating that “the double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to multipartism.

Duverger suggests two reasons why single-member district plurality voting systems favor a two party system. One is the result of the "fusion" (or an alliance very like fusion) of the weak parties, and the other is the "elimination" of weak parties by the voters, by which he means that the voters gradually desert the weak parties on the grounds that they have no chance of winning.


“The simple-majority single-ballot system favours the two-party system” and also that “both the simple-majority system with second ballot and proportional representation favour multipartism”


The plurality-duality connection is normally thought to originate in a tendency for voters to abandon preferred parties that seem certain not to do well, in favor of parties they like less but that appear to have at least some chance of victory.



WHY DOES CANADA OVERPRODUCE CANDIDATES?



Canadian voters (and/or politicians) are unusually illogical or irrational. There are also candidate explanations for Canadian (riding) multipartyism that follow the Duvergerian spirit by focusing on electoral law, and I first consider one such parsimonious alternative.


VARIATIONS IN ELECTORAL LAW



Given federalism, party systems can be hybrids in which Duverger’s two laws are in competition, especially if the fates of parties at different levels are not independent or if voters tend to form attitudes about parties without distinguishing between their different branches


Regionalism, ethnic heterogeneity and issues


The mere existence of candidates from several parties could follow from (a) small, regional-issue parties being popular and (b) larger, national parties fielding full slates of candidates throughout the country, without regard to local prospects. The major parties might run candidates even where they had little chance of winning out of a belief that having representatives in every corner of the nation is a sign of seriousness, strength, a commitment to the nation, or some such thing.


Federalism

Federalism as a proxy for “social

diversity of the sort that can support separate parties.

“Federal institutions . . . may encourage party elites to maintain smaller

regional parties rather than fuse with others as Duverger expected”.

Canadian voters appear to inhabit two different, unconnected “political worlds,” so that inferring voter strategy from correlated trends in the aggregate results at the two levels is inherently mistaken.


The law applies to districts, not national aggregates. Some of Canada’s multipartyism is attributable to the effects of voters in three provinces having been subjected to multiple electoral law.

Election results in federal systems are subject not only to the usual influences—institutional and otherwise—at work in the given electoral arena but also to “contamination” from the electoral world of the other governmental level.

Duverger's law and the meaning of Canadian exceptionalism
Brian J. Gaines
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Comparative Political Studies, Vol.32 No.7, October 1999

Is there an ''Asian Model'' of Democracy?

Convergence on an identifiable ''Asian model'' of electoral democracy.

Context: Transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy 80s, 90s.


Instituional reforms to elections, parliaments, and parteis via deliberate ''political engineering''
This turn towards majoritarian democracy. Increasingly majoritarian electoral systems, laws favoring the development of aggregative parties and constraints on the enfranchisement of ethnic or ergional minorities.

Efficient instititutions that deliver clear parliamentary majorities and distinct policy alternatives. Reforme in side of efficiency over representation. An attempt to engineer political stability through the desing of democratic institutions.


JAPAN

MMM in 1994
Three fifths of all seats chosen from single-member districts

SOUTH KOREA

MMM in 1963. Not proportional until 2004
273 seats, 243 are elected from single-member constituencies by a plurality formula
56 are chosen from national constituency

PHILIPINES

MMM in 2004
80% of the 250 House of Representatives seats elected from single member districts - plurally formula
20% from national list

TAIWAN
MMM in 1992
2/3 Parliament elected by plurality rules and the remainder form a national list

THAILAND
MMM in 1997
80% Parliament's 500 seats from local constituencies and 20% from a national party list


Promote the development of a two-party system responsive to the itnerest of the median voter.
Seeks encourage voters and candidates to focus more on party politcy positions regardin national issues. Develop coordinated party-centres electoral strategies, parties began to differentiate themselves in terms of their policy platforms.

Southeast Asia
Semidemocracies, the electoral system remain largely unchanged since independence.
Malaysa got a Westmister system with plurality elections but constituency boundaries are gerrymandered to favor the Malay community, the electoral commission is a compliant servant of the government. Government has won every election since independence  Government party controle the majoritys required to amend the constitution. Similar situation in Singapore.

Disproportional rates after electoral reforms had been introduced were considerably higher than previous levels.


Political parties
Three strategies of such 'party engineering':

-Those that try to promote the development of a national party systems and hamper the growth of regional, local or secessionist parties
-Those that attempt to control, influence or restrict the number of parties
-Those that seek to strengthen party organizations by building stable party systems from the top down.

In Indonesia national parties are promoting while separatist parties are resisted. 141 applied to contest the 1999 elections, only 48 were approved to run. Need 5% of votes or 3% of seats. All parties were requried to demosntrate that they had a national support base as precondition, it is also require each party to establish branches in at least one third of Indonesia's 27 provinces and in more than half the districts or municipalities within these provinces. (Regional parties were ven banned from competing in elections to the regional assemblies, only national level parties were permitted).

In Thailand ambititous 1997 constitutional reforms, promoting political aggregation and reducing party fragmentation. Parties need to show they have at least 5000 members within 6 months of being registered.

It is not permited stand as independent in Indonesia and Thailand. Systemic and educative role of parties is emphasidez in the new legislation governing party registration and party leaders are given significant power in terms of candidate selection and replacement.

New party primaries in Korea.

Strengthen parties internal control over their members to maintain greater organziational chesiveness and stability and restrict the capacity of parliamentarians to change parties. Politicians who switch parties to help bring down a government usually cannot legally contest the forthcoming election.

Technical electoral barriers such as vote thresholds.(Effective parties dramatically decline almost 50% in Thailand).

In these countries build a consolidate party system is seen as an essential step in building a consolidate democracy. But restrictions on party fragmentation become restrictions on democracy-


Conclusion

Asian system is based on hegemonic, one-party rule underpinned by communal values of family solidarity and personal discipline.

It is a system of grand irony, moving closer to the Anglo-American model of two party democracy.

The main exceptions are Indonesia and the Philippines where parties has increased. We have to consider the high levels of social diversity combined with the fact that both have only recently emerged frome extended authoritarian rule in which the composition and number of parties were controlled from above.

Why is the asian system like this?

-Asian values: harmonious,bance, stable...
-Political changes that have taken place across the region are an all-too-familiar case of self interested politicians seeking to ensure their electoral prospects by rejigging political rules in their favor.
-Asia's distinctive democratic development heralds a genuinely new form of political architecture in the region (compromise between mass constituents and elite politicans).  Outcome of successive trafe-offs between demands for reform from below with the perennial interests of incumbents from above.


Convergent patterns of political reform across the region have seen the development of what appears to be an identigiable Asian approach to the desing of democratic institutions, making the outcomes of democratization in the Asia-Pacific region quite distinctive by world standars. The increasing shift towarrd distinctively majoritarian mixed-member electoral systems and embryonic two-party systems in what were previously either one-party autocracies or unstable multiparty democracies is perhaps the most compelling evidence for this emerging Asian model of electoral democracy.

Democratization and Electoral Reform in the Asia-Pacific Region
Is there an ''Asian Model'' of Democracy?
Benjamin Reilly
Australian National University, Canberra
Comparative Political Studies
Volume 40 Number 11
November 2007

Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party by Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair

Is the Duverger/socialist mass party model the only model for parties?  The mass-party model is only one, temporally limited and contingent model, and that it is necessary to differentiate notions of adaptation and change from notions of decline or failure. A new model of party, the cartel party, in
which colluding parties become agents of the state and employ the  resources of the state (the party state) to ensure their own collective survival.



The mass-party model is tied to a conception of democracy and now dated, ideal of social structure, neither of which is characteristic of postindustrial societies.  There has been a tendency in recent years towards an ever closer symbiosis between parties and the state, and that this then sets the stage for the emergence of a new party type, which we identify as 'the cartel party'.


The mass-party model


Politics is primarily about the competition, conflict and cooperation of these groups, and political parties are the agencies through which these groups, and thus their members, participate in politics, make demands on the state, and ultimately attempt to capture control of the state by placing their own representatives in key offices. Each of these groups has an interest, which is articulated in the programme of 'its' party. This programme is not just a bundle of policies, however, but a coherent and logically connected whole.


Party unity and discipline are not only practically advantageous, but are also normatively legitimate. This legitimacy depends, in turn, on direct popular involvement in the formulation of the party programme and, from an  organizational perspective, this implies the need for an extensive membership
organization of branches or cells in order to provide avenues for mass input into the party's policy-making process, as well as for the supremacy of the extra-parliamentary party, particularly as embodied in the party congress.


Individual electoral choice is constrained by the encapsulation of the mass of the electorate into one of the subcultural groups that the parties represent, Differential rates of mobilization.

The socialist/mass-party model provides for prospective popular control over 

policy.

Parties provide the essential linkage between citizens and the state. 

Organizational expediency: Since electoral

competition is primarily about mobilization rather than conversion, the key 

requirement for a successful party is to increase the level of commitment of 

those who are already predisposed to offer it support - that is, the members 

of its 'natural' social constituency.

The catch-all party

In the fi rst place, the beginnings of an erosion of traditional 

social boundaries in the late 1950s and 1960s implied a weakening of 

formerly highly distinctive collective identities, making it less easy to identify 

separate sectors of the electorate and to assume shared long-term interests.

Second, the economic growth and the increased importance of the welfare state 

facilitated the elaboration of programmes that were no longer so necessarily 

divisive nor partisan.

Third, with the development of the mass media, party leaders 

began to enjoy a capacity to appeal to the electorate at large, an electorate 

made up of voters who were learning to behave more like consumers than 

active participants. 

Elections were now seen to revolve around the choice of leaders rather than the choice of policies or programmes, while the formation of those policies or programmes became the prerogative of the party leadership rather than of the party membership.

Popular control and accountability were no longer to be ensured prospectively, on the basis of clearly defined alternatives, but rather retrospectively, on the basis of experience and record.

Electoral behaviour based on choice.


The mobilization: voters were believed to have become free floating and uncommitted, available
to, and also susceptible to, any and all of the competing parties.

Party continued to be evaluated primarily in terms of the linkage between party and civil society, and it was precisely this linkage that was being undermined.


Relation between the classic mass-party system and catch-all party systemThe classic mass party is a party of civil society, emanating from sectors of the electorate, with the intention of breaking into the state and modifying public policy in the long-term interests of the

constituency to which it is accountable. The catch-all party, while not emerging as a party of civil society, but as one that stands between civil society and the state, also seeks to influence the state from outside, seeking temporary custody of public policy in order to satisfy the short-term demands
of its pragmatic consumers.

Despite their obviously contrasting relations with civil society, both parties lie outside the state, which remains, in principle, a neutral, party-free arena.


Stages of party development

1. Liberal régime censitaire of the late 19th and early 20th century.
   Single national interest
   Groups of men in pursuit of the public interest, parties were committees of those people who jointly constituted the state and the civil society
   Resources required to election were find in the local level
   Caucus type
2. Mass party 1880-1960
   Industrialization and urbanization, more people able to meet the suffrage requirements
   Working class organise and take action in the political and industrial spheres
   Organized membership, formal structures and meetings
   Newly elements of civil society trying to gain a voice in politics and control over the ruling structures of the state
   New party rely in quantity of supporters, collective action and organized numbers
   Strenght lay in formal organization. Party cohesion and discipline
   The political party was the forum where the political interest of the social group was represented
   Universal suffrage
   Elections become choice of delegates, representative government
3. Catch-all model 1945-
   Leaders of the traditional parties tend to establish organizations that look like mass parties in form but which in practique continue to emphasize the role of the mass organization as supporters of the parliamentary party. The can't accept the idea that parties exist to represent well-defined segments of society.
   Welfare state and educational services  (Amelioration of social conditions)
   Party accepts member wherever it finds them, recruits members on the basis of policy agreement (They want continue winning)
   Offensive strategy. Seeks a wider audience and more inmediate electoral sucess
   Importance of mass comunication
   Parties are less the agents of civil society, they are brokers between civil society and the state with the party in the government
   Pluralist view
   Each party open to every interest
   Elections are properly choices between teams of leaders
   Party oligarchy
   Parties got interests distinct from those of their clients
   Appeal the electorate and ability to manipulate the state (own interests)
   Parties become part of the state apparatus itself
   
   
   
   (Decline in the levels of participation and involvement in party activity, citizens prefer invest their efforts elsewhere in groups where they can play a more active role)
   
   (Parties look elsewhere for their resources. They pursue the provision and regulation of state subventions to political parties)
   
   (Growth of state subvention to parties and control of media supposed barriers to the growth of new parties)
   
   (The State is invaded by the parties. Parties use state resources to help ensure their own survival and their capacity to resist challenges, they become semi-state agencies)
   
   (A party exclude from government will also be exclude from access to resources. But all parties can survive together, the conditions become ideal for the formation of a cartel in which all the parties share in resources and in which all survive)
4. Cartel Party 1970-
   All substantial parties are regardes as governing parties, all have access to office
   Interpenetration of party and state
   Pattern of inter-party collusion
   Collusion and cooperation between ostensible competitors
   (Not  likely in UK, but yes in countries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden)
   Politics as profession
   Capital intensive
   Relatively diffused
   Mutual autonomy between parties
   Efectiveness in policy making
   Goals of politics become more self-referential
   Electoral competition, ''narrow the support market''
   Competition is contain and manage
   Campaigns are now almost exclusively capital-intensive proffesional and centralized
   Depends on the subventions and other benefits
   Membership position less privileged, allowing people to affiliate directly with the central party, no need for local organizations
   Leadership can legitimize its position inside and outside the party. Local office holders will be discouraged from intervening in national affairs by the knowledge that the national leadership can appeal directly to the individual memebers. Anyway each side is encourage to allow the other a free hand.
   The results is stratarchy
   
   
   Democracy and the Cartel Party

Ability of voters to choose from a fixed menu of political parties.
Parties are group of leaders who compete for the opportunity to occupy government offices and to take responsibility at the next election for government performance, they are paternships of professionals. They  are afraid of being thrown out of office by the voters. Full time career.
Politicians regard their opponents as fellow professionals. Stability becomes more important than tiumph.
Voters concerns with results.
Rulers control the rule.
Party programmes become similars, and campaigns are oriented towards agreed goals.
The degree to which voters can punish parties is reduced.
Participation is based on the electoral process, others channels for political activitiy are made less legitimate.

Democracy becomes a means of achieving social stability rather than social change, and elections become 'dignified' parts of the constitution.
Democracy ceases to be seen as a process by which limitations or controls are imposed on the state by civil society, becoming instead a service provided by the state for civil society.

Feedback is neccesary if rulers are to provide government that is broadly acceptable and contested elections which signal public pleasure with policy and outcomes provide that feedback.
Parties in state try to guarantee their own existence.
Lower costs of electoral defeat.
State provides this service: elections, political parties. Democracy is no longer a process by which limitations or controls are imposed on the state by civil society.
Toning down of competition.  Alternation on the office. 

Challenges to the Cartel Party

Neocoporatism: granting of a privileged and secure position to certain groups in exchange for good behaviour. Groups protecting particular interests.

Try to exclude challenges from outside the cartel can be counter-productive.
Protest taps, extreme parties.
Break the mould of established politics. Seeking support among the new middle class.

Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party
Richard S.Katz and Peter Mair
Party Politics 1995 1:5

UKIP and the Organisational Challenges Facing Right-Wing Populist APE parties (Amir Abedi and Thomas Lundberg)

Análisis de los partidos no establecidos y de sus características en contraposición con los partidos establecidos, usando de ejemplo el UKIP.

APE classification criteria

• A party that challenges the status quo in terms of major policy issues and political system issues
• A party that perceives itself as a challenger to the parties that make up the political establishment
• A party that asserts that tehre exists a fundamental divide between the political establishment and the people. It thereby implies that all establishment parties, be they in government or in opposition are esentially the same. (It captures a central element in most definitions of populism). 

UKIP challenges the status quo on one major policy issue (British membership of the EU).
UKIP promotes a change in the British Political system. It seems UKIP want to turn the clock back not only about EU, also about the devolution process in UK). Therefore, UKIP stands firmly against the status quo on major policy issues. 

UKIP members claims that the main parties are esentially the same.

Extreme right classification criteria (Muddle)

• Nationalism
• Racism
• Xenophobia
• Anti-democracy
• Strong state

UKIP is a populist APE right-wing populist party.

Organisation and life cycles

APE parties can be expected to focus on policy-seeking, intraparty democracy-seeking and vote-seeking goals. These parties are not likely to sacrifice their anti-establishment objectives. 

Three states development

1. Develop and comunicate its identity and message and secure a constituency
   Policy seeking and intraparty democracy-seeking goals
   Attract memebers and supporters
   Novice ideologuesCharismatic leader with creative abilities and rhetorical qualities
   Party decision-making bodies are non-existent or subordinate
   
   In the UKIP, the founder and first leader Alan Sked exercised a significant amount of personal control over his party. He refused to believe that anyone had skills other than his own.
2. Vote-seeking goals
   It can not be longer run as a one man show, less personalised. A change in the party leadership may occur, if the leader does not possess the organisational skills and stategic foresight necessary
   Need levels of intraparty ,factionalism
   More effective campaign management
   Require activists with more political experience and administrative skills
   
   Sked resigned the leadership in 1997
3. Party's attention shifts to office-seeking goals and its government aspiration is noticed and taken seriously by other
   Establishing and solidifying its reputation
   Tone down its criticism of competitors
   Relationships must be developed and cultivated
   Secure credibility
   Leader with the abilities of a moderator and stabiliser
   Organisational structures
   Institutionalisation become in some cases a challenge, specially for right-wing populist parties
   Organisational dimensions
   Proper balance of internal coherence and differentiation
   Firmly established division of labour among party members and bodies.

The scope of change necessary to meet systemic pressures and the requirements of eventual government participation is much greater for these groups than the pressures faced by their mainstream competitors precisely because their ‘movement’ character, peculiar leadership style and ‘unorthodox’ organisational make-up are interwoven with their core message.

Office-seeking APE parties face the dilemma of maintaining their radical opposition identity and challenger appeal while at the same time transforming their structures in order to enhance the effectiveness of their parliamentary and governmental work.

APE parties often do not have effective intraparty decision-making bodies and procedures. Hence they can easily be torn apart by internal conflict.

Furthermore, membership dues are important resources for newer and smaller parties, and government aspirations may attract a great number of new members expecting policy rewards or party and public offices for themselves. Yet a quickly growing number of members may be a double-edged sword for APE parties because they are likely to attract more ‘novice ideologues’.

Different stages in an APE party’s life cycle require a leadership with different, task-appropriate skill sets. It also shows that these parties are more likely to fail in achieving institutionalisation and securing long-term survival if they have major electoral success and become potential governing parties too quickly after their foundation, at a moment of organisational immaturity.

Inadequate leadership skills and misguided strategic orientations may result in turmoil and the premature demise of new formations under those circumstances. Thus, sustainable organisational change is more likely to occur in those office-seeking APE parties that have reached the final stage of their development before they decide to make government participation their main goal.

UKIP situation
 Despite its attempts to build upon its 2004 European Parliament electoral success, the party has failed to attract significant support. Not wishing to be seen as a single-issue party, UKIP has broadened out its policy agenda, concentrating heavily on immigration (where it seeks a major reduction), the economy (calling for less regulation, lower taxes and ‘freer’ trade policies) and devolution of power (which it opposes).  UKIP did not fare well in recent polling. UKIP has also experienced trouble in attracting donation.  Perhaps most importantly, however, on the crucial issue of whether Britain should
remain in the EU, 56 per cent of those polled by ICM in October 2007. The majority of British people appear to disagree with UKIP’s most important policy.


The party seemed to view itself as having enough of a ‘movement’. UKIP chose to remain true to its APE status and not sacrifice its populist nature.

UKIP can function almost like a pressure group, however, and possibly have some impact on Conservative Party policy. Furthermore, the presence of UKIP could act as something of a safety
valve for the Conservatives: a place for disaffected party members (and possibly even politicians) to go.
In this sense, the two parties are not necessarily enemies and can exist almost symbiotically.

Parliamentary Affairs Vol.62 No. 1, 2009, 72-87
Advance Access Publication 3 October 2008
Amir Abedi and Thomas Carl Lundberg