Parties, Party Systems, and Party Competition

Parties, Party Systems, and Party Competition

Defining Political Parties

• A political party is a group comprising individuals who hold office and those who support their acquisition and maintenance of power.

Purposes of Political Parties

• Political parties serve four primary functions:
  1. Structuring the political world.
  2. Recruiting and socializing political elites.
  3. Mobilizing the masses.
  4. Linking rulers and the ruled.

Party Systems

• Different types of party systems exist:
  • Nonpartisan democracy: No official political parties.
  • Single-party system: Only one party is legally allowed to hold power.
  • One-party dominant system: Multiple parties are legal, but only one has a realistic chance of gaining power.
  • Two-party system: Only two major parties have a realistic chance of holding power.
  • Multiparty system: More than two parties have a realistic chance of holding power.

Effective Number of Parties

• The effective number of parties measures both the number and size of parties, weighting larger parties more heavily.
• Effective number of electoral parties is measured by: ${1 \over \sum v<em>i^2}$, where $v</em>i$ is the vote share of party i.
• Effective number of legislative parties is measured by: ${1 \over \sum s<em>i^2}$, where $s</em>i$ is the seat share of party i.

Origins of Political Parties

• Two views on party formation:
  • Primordial (bottom-up): Parties naturally represent people with common interests, reflecting natural divisions or social cleavages.
  • Instrumental (top-down): Parties are teams of office seekers created by political elites or entrepreneurs who identify and represent previously unrepresented interests.

Social Cleavages and Party Representation

• Parties often represent social cleavages, including:
  • Urban-rural.
  • Confessional.
  • Secular-clerical.
  • Class.
  • Post-materialist.
  • Ethnic and linguistic.
  • Regional.

Populism

• Populism consists of three components:
  1. People-centrism.
  2. Anti-pluralism.
  3. Moralized politics.
• Populism is a discursive wrapper attached to various ideologies (e.g., nationalism, environmentalism) to give it policy content.
• When combined with nationalism, populism becomes right-wing and exclusionary, targeting immigrants and minorities.
• When combined with socialism or environmentalism, populism becomes left-wing and inclusionary, targeting economic elites and capitalism.
• Populism can be adopted by parties on the left, center, and right as a strategic tool.

Politicized Cleavages

• Individuals possess attributes (e.g., religion, language, class) that make them eligible for membership in an identity category.
• An attribute is a self-evident characteristic qualifying an individual for an identity category.
• An identity category is a socially constructed social group an individual can place themselves in.

Attributes and Identity Categories

• Potential identity categories are latent until activated or politicized.
• The relationship between attributes and identity categories depends on the distribution and correlation of attributes.
• Uncorrelated attributes lead to cross-cutting cleavages, while correlated attributes lead to reinforcing cleavages.

Cross-Cutting vs. Reinforcing Attributes

• Cross-cutting attributes: Different cleavages that don't align (e.g., someone can be rich and Catholic, or poor and Protestant).
• Reinforcing attributes: Cleavages that align (e.g., rich Protestants and poor Catholics).

Electoral Rules and Politicized Cleavages

• Electoral rules influence which cleavages become politicized.
• Example: In a hypothetical country, regional divisions may be reinforced if gaining national office requires 50% of the vote, incentivizing regional coalitions.
• If gaining national office requires 60% of the vote, linguistic cleavages may be more relevant.

Case Study: Chewas and Tumbukas in Zambia and Malawi

• Chewas and Tumbukas are political allies in Zambia but adversaries in Malawi.
• Cultural differences exist between the groups (language, dances, marriage customs).
• Zambia:
  • Chewas (7%) and Tumbukas (4%).
  • Politicians had to work together if they hoped to win political power.
  • The division was between the Easterners (Chewas and Tumbukas), Northerners, Westerners, and Southerners.
• Malawi:
  • Chewas (57%) and Tumbukas (12%).
  • Given their size and electoral system, it made sense to politicize the Chewa-Tumbuka division.

Duverger's Theory

• Social divisions drive party formation.
• Electoral institutions influence the translation of social divisions into political parties.
• The more social cleavages there are and the more that they’re cross-cutting, the greater the demand for distinctive representation and the greater the demand for political parties.
• Electoral institutions matter; majoritarian systems act as a brake on the tendency for social cleavages to be translated into new parties.

Electoral Institutions: Mechanical and Strategic Effects

• Electoral institutions influence party system size through:
  1. Mechanical effect: How votes are translated into seats; disproportional systems punish small parties and reward large parties.
  2. Strategic effect: How the translation of votes into seats influences the behavior of voters and political elites.
     • Strategic voting: Voting for the most preferred candidate or party with a realistic chance of winning.
     • Strategic entry: Political elites choosing to enter politics under the label of a party with a realistic chance of winning.

Party Systems: Integrating Social Cleavages and Electoral Institutions

• Duverger’s theory shows that latent social cleavages and electoral institutions together determine the number of parties.
• A heterogeneous society and a permissive electoral system are needed to end up with many parties.

Nationalization of Party Systems

• Duverger’s theory holds at the district level, but party systems can be nationalized if local and national party systems are similar in size.
• Factors affecting nationalization of party systems:
  • Fiscal centralization.
  • Political centralization.
  • Concurrent presidential elections.
  • National cleavage patterns.

Party Competition

• Parties compete by offering different policy packages and moving in the policy space to attract voters.
• Spatial models assume proximity voting, where voters choose the party closest to their position.
• In two-party systems, the median voter theorem predicts convergence on the median voter's position.
• As the number of parties increases, parties are expected to disperse out in the policy space.

Issue Competition

• Parties compete by strategically shaping how much voters care about different issues, influencing issue salience.
• Parties emphasize high yield issues (united party position, broad electoral support) rather than low yield issues.
• Issue ownership theory: Parties emphasize issues they 'own' (voters perceive them as competent). Parties won’t engage in head-to-head policy contests by focusing their campaigns on different issues.
• Issue entrepreneurship: Challenger parties appeal to voters by emphasizing new issues.

Valence Competition

• Voters care about non-policy characteristics (valence issues) like competence, integrity, trustworthiness, leader quality, and experience.
• Parties invest resources to improve their valence among voters, especially when they hold similar policy positions.

Programmatic vs. Nonprogrammatic Politics

• Policy competition, issue competition, and valence competition all fall under programmatic politics.
• Programmatic politics involves ideologically consistent platforms, policy implementation, formalized rules, nonpartisan bureaucracy, and no contingency on political support for receiving goods/services.
• Nonprogrammatic politics:
  • Involves discretionary delivery of goods/services without formalized rules.
  • Parties compete using their discretion to provide goods and services to groups/individuals.

Clientelistic Politics

• A form of nonprogrammatic politics where the distribution of goods/services is conditional on political favors.
• Clientelistic benefits targeted at voters are often referred to as vote buying or turnout buying.
• Brokers are employed to gather fine-grained information and target party resources to their followers in local communities.
• Parties face a principal-agent problem with brokers and a credible commitment problem with voters.

Strategies in Clientelistic Politics

• The introduction of the secret ballot incentivized a shift away from vote buying towards turnout buying.
• Parties use the nature of clientelistic benefits to align voter interests (e.g., providing public sector jobs).

Efficiency of Programmatic vs. Nonprogrammatic Politics

• Programmatic and nonprogrammatic politics are alternative strategies for parties to gain support, both with inefficiencies.
• Programmatic politics becomes relatively more efficient as countries develop.