DIMENSIÓN: TRABAJO EN EQUIPO

Having highlighted the variety in origins and development trajectories of political parties around the world, the next important step is to see what functions parties perform in different contexts. Related to this is the nature of party organization and the different types of parties that can be distinguished on the basis of organizational structure and other important criteria.

Party Functions

Political parties perform a number of functions. Some theorists have clustered the main functions per arena in which parties operate while others have provided a more general overview of functions represented by parties across the world.70 In general, parties play a crucial role in articulating, aggregating and representing

70 _{Randall and Svåsand, for example, distinguish between functions of parties oriented towards}

the electorate, functions of parties that link the electorate to the government or state and parties’ functions related to government. According to Gunther and Diamond, universal party functions include candidate selection, mobilization of supporters, issue structuring, group representation, aggregation of interests, government formation and political participation. Randall and Svåsand, “Introduction: The Contribution of Parties to Democracy and Democratic Consolidation”, p. 4; and Gunther and Diamond, “Types and Functions of Parties”, pp. 7-8.

the demands and interests of individual voters. They also recruit and train candidates for public office. And they hold the government accountable for its policies and actions. All of these functions are considered crucial for the maintenance of a democratic political system and are therefore core tasks of political parties in new and established democracies. This means that political parties are indispensable in a democratic political system. For many, “political parties created democracy and (…) modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties”.71

However, in many emerging democracies, including most post-war countries, there is as yet no established democracy to be maintained. There, a democratic political system first needs to be created and the functions of parties might not be the same therefore. Moreover, it is likely that in these settings there are other functions that are more important in the short term. This has been reflected in studies that emphasized the role of political parties in fostering political stability, national integration, and/or nation- and state-building.72 Of special interest is the analysis of authors that have highlighted the conflict management role of parties. Reilly, for instance, indicates that “because they channel, aggregate, and express political demands, political parties play an important role in the management of conflict in societies divided along cultural, linguistic, religious, regional or other lines”.73 In a similar fashion, Burnell says that “in divided societies seeking to establish democracy out of the ruins of

71 _{Schattschneider,}

Party Government in the United States, p.1.

72 _Huntington,

Political Order in Changing Societies; Coleman and Rosberg, Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa; and LaPalombara and Weiner, Political Parties and Political Development.

violent conflict, interest aggregation is one of the most vital public goods that can easily be undersupplied”.74

Suffice to say here that different authors have identified different functions of parties, as summarized in table 2.1 below. The relevance of each function in a particular context depends on the overarching aim (democratization, nation- building, conflict management) that parties are trying to achieve –or should be aiming at. However, it may also depend on the perspective that analysts are trying to impose on the analysis. In some cases, parties or their leaders may not be motivated by any grand public service objectives, but are simply trying to achieve power. Attributing certain functions to parties might then be more a question of what the analyst reads into them than reflecting parties’ actual function(s).

Table 2.1 Functions of Political Parties

Type of function Main proponents

- representation of popular demands - integration of voters into political system - aggregation of interests

- recruitment and training of political leaders - making government accountable

- organizing opposition

Key (1964), Diamond (1999), Dalton and Wattenberg (2000), Gunther and Diamond (2001), Randall and Svåsand (2002)

- nomination of candidates

- mobilization of electoral supporters - structuring societal and policy issues

Gunther and Diamond (2001)

- state- and/or nation-building - creation of political stability

Huntington (1968); Coleman and Rosberg (1966); LaPalombara and Weiner (1966) - political communication between people and government

- providing benefits in exchange for electoral support

Tordoff (2002)

- mediation of conflicting interests

- unite social groups and contributing to societal cohesion

Tordoff (2002), Reilly (2006), Burnell (2006)

- democratization of global governance Scholte (2006)

Party Organization

In order to perform its various functions a political party needs a structure as well as human and financial resources. This is normally referred to as the party organization and includes the various organizational organs of a party, its rules

and regulations, its financial resources, its cadre, supporters, members and activists, and its linkages with other institutions. The study of organizational aspects of parties has a long history and is usually associated with the work of four authors.

The first is Mosei Ostrogorski whose work dates from the beginning of the twentieth century. Ostrogorski highlighted the growing influence of ‘party machines’ and caucuses of senior party leaders as organizational mechanisms for collective interest representation, particularly in the United States and Britain.75 This was followed by the work of Roberto Michels, who after analyzing the organizational structure of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany concluded that the specialist knowledge and interests of party leaders ensures their domination over rank-and-file supporters. According to Michels any type of organization will eventually controlled by a small elite (‘iron law of oligarchy’).76

A few decades later, Michel Duverger made the first typology of parties based on their organizational structures. Distinguishing between parties that are unitary (direct structures) and parties that are an amalgamation of different organizations (indirect structures), he identifies four basic organizational

75 _Ostrogorski,

Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties.

76 _Michels,

Political Parties. See also Scarrow, “The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Modern

‘elements’ from which parties are formed: the caucus, the branch, the cell and the militia. Duverger concludes that, despite the large variety in existing party organizations, there has been a general transformation from elite parties based on restricted caucuses to mass parties with a more open branch structure.77

The most recent and most comprehensive examination of party organization is that of Angelo Panebianco. In contrast to Duverger and others who argued that the structure and form of party organizations is determined by the competition for votes, Panebianco traces the organizational structure to the origins of the party and its early development. According to his ‘genetic model’ of party organization, the formation of a ‘dominant coalition’ (party elite) and the degree of internal cohesion are influenced by the way in which a party grows –from the centre to the local level, vice versa or a combination of the two. Moreover, he argues that the presence or absence of an ‘external sponsor institution’ and charismatic leadership are important variables in early party development.78 In the subsequent control for power within the organization, selective and collective incentives are said to play a key role. Selective incentives are ‘private goods’ that consist of jobs, money, patronage, prestige, which aim to recruit and retain party

77 _{Duverger referred to this organizational transformation as “contagion from the left”. See}

Duverger, Political Parties, p. xxvii and pp. 4-40; and Ware, Political Parties and Party Systems,

pp. 94-97.

78 _{Panebianco distinguishes between a situation wherein the central organization creates local and}

intermediate party associations (‘territorial penetration’) and a situation wherein local elites and small associations integrate into a national organization (‘territorial diffusion’). In his view, parties that develop through territorial penetration have a cohesive centre of relatively few party leaders with strong and centralized control over the wider party organization. Party organizations developing through territorial diffusion are generally more decentralized with a larger, less cohesive group of party leaders that is divided by a constant struggle for power and control. Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power, pp.51-53.

leaders and party activists. Collective incentives, on the other hand, are ‘public goods’ such as appeals to identity, solidarity, ideology, and even fear.79

By underscoring the importance of the formative phase for a party’s current functioning, organization and power configuration, Panebianco’s analysis of party organization is strongly path-dependent. In his words: “the crucial political choices made by its founding fathers, the first struggles for organizational control, and the way in which the organization was formed, will leave an indelible mark”. His analysis is particularly interesting from a political studies point of view because of his emphasis on “explaining the functioning and activities of organizations [as well as the changes they undergo] above all in terms of alliances and struggles for power amongst the different actors that comprise them”.80 _{Together with the origins and historical development of} parties (the ‘genetic model’), the intra-party dynamics between followers and party elites not only determine the type of party organization, but also influence the degree of party institutionalization according to Panebianco (see below).

Despite his focus on Western European parties, Panebianco’s genetic model and power analysis is highly relevant for studies that aim to investigate the relationship between the origins of parties, their subsequent organization and functioning. Considering the explicit aim of this thesis to relate post-war party organization to historical periods of conflict, Panebianco’s operationalization will therefore gratefully be used in this thesis.

Party Types

79 _Panebianco,

Political Parties, pp.9-10.

80 _Panebianco,

In order to study the main characteristics of political parties, political scientists have developed numerous party typologies or party models. In this connection, the elite party, the mass party, and the catch-all (electoralist) party are most commonly used models in the literature.81

The elite (or cadre) party is characterized by its loose organizational

structure with local autonomous party associations and no real central party office. Its core consists of a closed caucus of prominent individuals representing the party in public office. This is the party model associated with the early parliamentary parties that operated in late nineteenth century Britain, United States and some other West-European countries.82

The expansion of the franchise in the early twentieth century in most Western countries stimulated the emergence of another type of political party, the

mass party. This party type is characterized by a more structured organization

with a professionalized central office and local branches with dues-paying members. Moreover, political parties described by the mass party model were generally more ideologically oriented and had stronger links with ‘extra- parliamentary’ institutions, such as professional associations, trade unions or church groups.83

81 _{More recent party types distinguished in the literature include the ‘cartel party’ and the}

‘business-firm party’. See Katz and Mair, “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party”; and Krouwel, “Party Models”, p.252.

82 _Duverger,

Political Parties, pp.17-23; Katz and Mair, “The Ascendancy of the Party in Public

Office: Party Organizational Change in Twentieth-Century Democracies”, p.114-116; Krouwel, “Party Models”, pp. 253-254.

83 _{Katz and Mair, “The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office”, p.116-120; Krouwel, “Party}

The third model, the catch-all party, represents those parties that “originate

from mass parties that have professionalized their party organization and downgraded their ideological profile in order to appeal to a wider electorate than their original class or religious social base”. The strong focus of these parties on winning votes across broad segments of the population on less strictly ideological and more interest-based political platforms, has led some scholars to define them as ‘electoralist catch-all’ or ‘electoral-professional parties’.84 _Catch- all parties have emerged in many Western countries since the mid-twentieth century, handily making use of new technologies for mass communication such as radio and television. Nowadays, many if not most parties in established democracies are of the catch-all type, and characteristically they are arguably more interested in vote maximization than interest representation. They are also a common phenomenon in emerging democracies in non-Western countries.

It is important to emphasize here that all of the above-mentioned party models are ‘ideal types’ that by emphasizing the defining features of each specific party type serve as analytical tools for better understanding the differences between various parties. However, because of this these models also have their problems. First, their highly abstract nature is also their main weakness.Political parties throughout the world might share some of the traits of these models, but this does not necessarily mean that their characteristics exactly ‘fit’ all the main criteria of the particular model. We should therefore be extremely careful when categorizing real world parties as belonging to certain models, and not automatically assume that these parties will behave in the same

84 _{Krouwel, “Party Models”, pp. 250-258; Kirchheimer, “The Transformation of the Western}

way or develop in the same direction as their ideal type models presume they will.85

Another problem with the distinction between elite, mass and catch-all parties is their almost exclusive focus on organizational aspects. Although the typology provides useful information on how parties belonging to a certain type normally emerge and are subsequently structured, it says little about the type of strategies used to mobilize supporters or the intra-party power struggles.

The final problem with the above mentioned typology lies in its narrow geographical basis. The three ideal types of parties were largely conceptualized in a Western-oriented analysis of party politics and therefore mainly reflect the experiences of party development in the United States and a small number of Western European countries.86 _{As described earlier, political parties in Africa,} Latin America, Asia and other parts of the world have emerged and developed in different historical, socioeconomic, and political contexts with particular impacts on their organization and functioning. As a result, they defy easy classification on the basis of the above party types. In contrast to the relatively limited variety of Western political party types, research indicates that the situation is perhaps more complex and certainly more diverse in the developing world.87 A less

85 _{See also Montero and Gunther, who argue that typologies can be useful for the identification of}

parties’ distinguishing characteristics, but that their ideal-type nature can easily lead to methodological problems, such as an assumed sequencing and evolution of party types and an oversimplification of party characteristics. Montero and Gunther, “Introduction: Reviewing and Reassessing Parties”, p.15

86 _{Krouwel, “Party Models”, p. 249. The idea that the Western (European) experience of political}

party formation can be described as a unilinear developmental trajectory from elite-to-mass-to- catch-all party has been heavily criticized in the literature. See Katz and Mair, “The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office”, p. 114.

87 _Randall,

Western-centric, more inclusive analysis therefore requires a different typology that accounts for the great variation in party formation, organization and functioning in Latin America, Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa.

One typology that is specifically designed to do this is that by Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond. In addition to focusing on the degree of formal organization, their typology also takes into account the nature of the party’s programmatic commitment as well as its strategies and behavioural norms. The outcome is a typology of five party ‘genera’, including elite-based types, mass- based types, ethnicity-based types, electoralist types, and movement party types. Each of these types can be subdivided on the basis of their organizational, programmatic and strategic criteria, resulting in fifteen different ‘species’ or subtypes (see table 2.2 below).

Table 2.2 Gunther and Diamond’s Typology of Parties88

Degree of organization Programmatic commitment Strategy / Behaviour Thick/mass Thin/elite Ideological Particularistic Pluralistic Hegemonic

Elite-based parties: 1. Traditional local notable party 2. Clientelistic party - - X X - - X X X X - - Mass-based parties: 3. Leninist party 4. Class-mass party 5. Pluralist-nationalist party 6. Ultranationalist party 7. Denominational party 8. Fundamentalist party X X X X X X X - - X - - X X X X X X - - - - - - - X X - X - X - - X - X

88 _{Table developed by author on the basis of narrative by Gunther and Diamond, “Species of}

Political Parties: A New Typology”, p. 173 and pp. 175-189. See also Gunther and Diamond, “Types and Functions of Parties”, pp. 9-11.

Ethnicity-based parties: 9. Ethnic party 10. (Ethnic) congress party X - X X - - X X - X X - Electoralist parties: 11. Personalistic party 12. Catch-all party 13. Programmatic party - - - X X X - X X X X - X X X X - - Movement / Parties: 14. Left-libertarian party 15. Post-industrial extreme right party

- - X X - X - X X - - X

Apart from recognizing and further specifying the main party types found in the established Western democracies, Gunther and Diamond’s typology also captures political parties found in non-Western countries. Parties resembling the ethnic congress party type, for example, can be found in India (Congress Party), Nigeria (People’s Democratic Party) and South Africa (African National Congress). In Africa, the (pluralist) ethnic congress party is said to be the most common type of political party.89 In contrast, parties belonging to the purely ethnic party type, which by definition is based on one ethnic group only, are much rarer. Examples include the Inkatha Freedom Party in South Africa and the (Sikh) Shiromani Akali Dal in India.90 The typology also enables the identification of personalistic parties whose “only rationale is to provide a vehicle for the leader to win an election and exercise power”.91

89 _{Erdmann and Basedau,}

Problems of Categorizing and Explaining Party Systems in Africa, p.

15.

90 _Horowitz,

Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 292; Gunther and Diamond, “Species of Political

Parties”, p. 183.

Gunther and Diamond’s typology is certainly not perfect, as they themselves honestly admit. Although it does pay attention to non-organizational criteria, their typology can, for example, not escape a bias in focus on organizational elements. In addition, their typology can be criticized for being too broad, too deterministic and still too Western-oriented.92 However, these criticisms seem slightly exaggerated. After all, only by being more comprehensive and less parsimonious can the limitations of the earlier tripartite typology be seriously addressed. Also, the use of genera of party types does assume a certain path-