45 Facts About Political parties

Political parties party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections.

Political parties have become a major part of the politics of almost every country, as modern party organizations developed and spread around the world over the last few centuries.

The contributions that citizens give to political parties are often regulated by law, and parties will sometimes govern in a way that favours the people who donate time and money to them.

Political parties are collective entities that organize competitions for political offices.

Political parties are distinguished from other political groups and clubs, such as political factions or interest groups, mostly by the fact that parties are focused on electing candidates, whereas interest groups are focused on advancing a policy agenda.

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However, modern political parties are considered to have emerged around the end of the 18th century; they are usually considered to have first appeared in Europe and the United States of America, with the United Kingdom's Conservative Party and the Democratic Party of the United States both frequently called the world's "oldest continuous political party".

Some scholars argue that the first modern political parties developed in early modern Britain in the 18th century, after the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution.

In many European countries, including Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and France, political parties organized around a liberal-conservative divide, or around religious disputes.

At the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, the liberal–conservative divide that characterized most party systems was disrupted by the emergence of socialist Political parties, which attracted the support of organized trade unions.

For example, a system of political parties arose out of factions in the Indian independence movement, and was strengthened and stabilized by the policies of Indira Gandhi in the 1970s.

Political parties are a nearly ubiquitous feature of modern countries.

However, these sources allow that a country with multiple competitive parties is not necessarily democratic, and the politics of many autocratic countries are organized around one dominant political party.

One of the core explanations for the existence of political parties is that they arise from pre-existing divisions among people: society is divided in a certain way, and a party is formed to organize that division into the electoral competition.

Theory that Political parties are produced by social cleavages has drawn several criticisms.

Some authors have challenged it on empirical grounds, either finding no evidence for the claim that Political parties emerge from existing cleavages, or arguing that the claim is not empirically testable.

An alternative explanation for why Political parties are ubiquitous across the world is that the formation of Political parties provides compatible incentives for candidates and legislators.

The existence of political parties might coordinate candidates across geographic districts, so that a candidate in one electoral district has an incentive to assist a similar candidate in a different district.

Political parties are often structured in similar ways across countries.

The leader of the party that controls the government usually becomes the head of government, such as the president or prime minister, and the leaders of other Political parties explicitly compete to become the head of government.

In democratic countries, members of political parties often are allowed to participate in elections to choose the party leadership.

Cadre parties were political elites that were concerned with contesting elections and restricted the influence of outsiders, who were only required to assist in election campaigns.

Mass Political parties tried to recruit new members who were a source of party income and were often expected to spread party ideology as well as assist in elections.

Cadre Political parties are characterized by minimal and loose organisation, and are financed by fewer larger monetary contributions typically originating from outside the party.

Cadre Political parties give little priority to expanding the party's membership base, and its leaders are its only members.

Term "catch-all party" was developed by German-American political scientist Otto Kirchheimer to describe the parties that developed in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of changes within the mass parties.

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In Europe, the shift of Christian Democratic Political parties that were organized around religion into broader centre-right Political parties epitomizes this type.

Cartel parties are a type of political party that emerged post-1970s and are characterized by heavy state financing and the diminished role of ideology as an organizing principle.

The cartel party thesis was developed by Richard Katz and Peter Mair, who wrote that political parties have turned into "semi-state agencies", acting on behalf of the state rather than groups in society.

Niche parties are a type of political party that developed on the basis of the emergence of new cleavages and issues in politics, such as immigration and the environment.

Further, niche Political parties do not respond to changes in public opinion to the extent that mainstream Political parties do.

Ideological affiliations for political parties send signals about the types of policies they might pursue if they were in power.

Socialist, communist, anarchist, fascist, and nationalist parties are more recent developments, largely entering political competitions only in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Political parties are ubiquitous across both democratic and autocratic countries, and there is often very little change in which political parties have a chance of holding power in a country from one election to the next.

For example, in Saudi Arabia, a ban on political parties has been used as a tool for protecting the monarchy.

However, Political parties are banned in some polities that have long democratic histories, usually in local or regional elections of countries that have strong national party systems.

Bans on competing parties can ensure that only one party can ever realistically hold power, even without completely outlawing all other political parties.

In several countries, there are only two Political parties that have a realistic chance of competing to form government.

Competition between two Political parties has occurred in historical autocratic regimes in countries including Brazil and Venezuela.

Multi-party systems are systems in which more than two Political parties have a realistic chance of holding power and influencing policy.

Presence of many competing political parties is usually associated with a greater level of democracy, and a country transitioning from having a one-party system to having a many-party system is often considered to be democratizing.

Many of the activities of political parties involve the acquisition and allocation of funds in order to achieve political goals.

Private funding for political parties can be thought of as coming from internal or external sources: this distinguishes between dues from party members or contributions by candidates, and donations from entities outside of the party like non-members, corporations, or trade unions.

Some Political parties engage directly in vote buying, in which a party gives money to a person in exchange for their vote.

Fundraising and expenditures by political parties are typically regulated by governments, with many countries' regulations focusing on who can contribute money to parties, how parties' money can be spent, and how much of it can pass through the hands of a political party.

Two main ways in which regulations affect Political parties are by intervening in their sources of income and by mandating that they maintain some level of transparency about their funding.

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