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