36 Facts About Political party

Political 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.

Autocracies often have a single party that governs the country, and some political scientists consider competition between two or more parties to be an essential part of democracy.

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

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

The formation of the Indian National Congress, which developed in the early 20th century as a pro-independence faction in British India and immediately became a major political party after Indian independence, foreshadowed the dynamic in many newly independent countries; for example, the Uganda National Congress was a pro-independence party and the first political party in Uganda, and its name was chosen as an homage to the Indian National Congress.

Political party parties are a nearly ubiquitous feature of modern countries.

Political party scientists have therefore come up with several explanations for why political parties are a nearly universal political phenomenon.

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.

Political party parties are often structured in similar ways across countries.

In both democratic and non-democratic countries, the Political party leader is often the foremost member of a larger Political party leadership.

Since at least the 1980s, membership in large traditional Political party organizations has been steadily declining across a number of countries, particularly longstanding European democracies.

Political party scientists have distinguished between different types of political parties that have evolved throughout history.

Cadre party, or elite party, is a type of political party that was dominant in the nineteenth century before the introduction of universal suffrage.

Mass party is a type of political party that developed around cleavages in society and mobilized the ordinary citizens or 'masses' in the political process.

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.

An Entrepreneurial party is a political party that is centered on a political entrepreneur, and dedicated to the advancement of that person or their policies.

Political party ideologies are one of the major organizing features of political parties, and parties often officially align themselves with specific ideologies.

Common ideologies that can form a central part of the identity of a political party include liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism, feminism, environmentalism, nationalism, fundamentalism, Islamism, and multiculturalism.

Political party 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.

Some basic features of a Political party system are the number of parties and what sorts of parties are the most successful.

When only one powerful party is legally permitted to exist, its membership can grow to contain a very large portion of society and it can play substantial roles in civil society that are not necessarily directly related to political governance; one example of this is the Chinese Communist Party.

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For example, in North Korea, more than one Political party is officially permitted to exist and even to seat members in the legislature, but laws ensure that the Workers' Party of Korea retains control.

One canonical two-Political party democracy is the United States, where the national government has for much of the country's history exclusively controlled by either the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

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

Many of the largest democracies in the world have had long periods of multi-Political party competition, including India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil.

Multi-Political party systems encourage characteristically different types of governance than smaller Political party systems, for example by often encouraging the formation of coalition governments.

However, the question of whether multi-Political party systems are more democratic than two-Political party systems, or if they enjoy better policy outcomes, is a subject of substantial disagreement among scholars as well as among the public.

Multi-Political party systems are often viewed as fairer or more representative than one- or two-Political party systems, but they have downsides, like the likelihood that in a system with plurality voting the winner of a race with many options will only have minority support.

Such Political party systems have been called "two-Political party-plus" systems, which refers to the two dominant parties, plus other parties that exist but rarely or never hold power in the government.

One way of categorizing the sources of Political party funding is between public funding and private funding.

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

Once a Political party has crossed a particular spending threshold, additional expenditures might not increase their chance of success.