2. POLITICAL PARTY
• INTRODUCTION
• DEFINITIONS
• FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS.
• CLASSIFICATION :-
• SARTORI’S CLASSIFICATION
• MAURICE DUVERGER’S CLASSIFICATION.
3. INTRODUCTION
• Political parties are voluntary associations or organized groups of individuals
who share the same political views and try to gain power through
constitutional means and who desire to work through constitutional means
and who desire to work for promoting the national interests.
ESSENTIALS OF PARTY SYSTEM
1. People should be organized.
2. There should be similarity of principles among members.
3. Aim should be to attain political power.
4. Political party should use peaceful means for attaining political power.
4. DEFINITION
THE FOLLOWING AE FEW DEFINITONS OF POLITICAL PARTY:-
• LEACOCK:- “ By a political party we mean more or less organised group of
citizens who act together as a political unity. They share or profess to share
the same opinions on public questions and by exercising their voting power
towards a common end, seek to obtain control of the government.”
• GETTELL:- “A political party consists of a group of citizens more or less
organized who act as a political unity and who by the use of their voting
power aims to control the government and carry out their general policies”
• DR. ASIRVATHAM :- “By a political party we mean an organized body of
people who stand for certain principles and policies in the political life of the
country by whose operation they seek to promote the interests of the
country as a whole.
5. FUNCTIONS OF POLITICAL PARTIES
• Political parties contest elections in order to capture the power.
• Political parties try to reform the society through various policies and
programmes.
• Political parties act as a channel of communication between the
government and the people.
• Political parties also play a role of opposition. The opposition is often seen to
criticize the policies and views of the government in case there is failure
anywhere.
• Political parties also have access to different welfare schemes and
machinery of government.
• Political parties also tend to shape the public opinion .
• Political parties create political awareness as well as socialization.
6. SARTORI’S CLASSIFICATION
• Giovanni Sartori’s established classes of party systems. He began by
breaking down the one party and multiparty “lumps.” The first consisted of a
mixed bag of one party and hegemonic party political systems, not properly
competitive, and predominant party systems in which one party regularly
winning 50% of the seats in parliament dominated smaller parties; no other
party could govern because of the predominance of the first. Multiparty
systems were grouped into two classes: limited pluralism, with 3-5 relevant
parties, and extreme pluralism, with six, seven or eight. Finally, Sartori added
a residual category, atomized party systems, which were so fragmented that
the addition of one more party made no difference to the pattern of
competition. These party systems were insufficiently structured or
consolidated to be considered.
• In short, sartori classified parties under competitive and non-competitive
groups which can be clearly shown in the following flow chart:-
