Also refer Zoya Hassan – Political Parties (Oxford Companion to Politics in India)

POLITICAL PARTY

A political party is a group of people that is organised for the purpose of winning government
*power, by electoral or other means. Parties are often confused with *pressure groups or
*social movements. Four characteristics usually distinguish parties from other groups. First,
parties aim to exercise government power by winning office (although small parties may use
*elections more to gain a platform than to win power). Second, parties are organised bodies
with a formal ‘card-carrying’ membership. This distinguishes them from broader and more
diffuse social movements. Third, parties typically adopt a broad issue focus, addressing each
of the major issues of government policy (small parties, however, may have a single-issue
focus, thus resembling pressure groups). Fourth, to varying degrees, parties are united by
shared political preferences and a general ideological identity.

However, political parties can be classified as mass and cadre parties, as representative and
integrative parties, and as constitutional and revolutionary parties. A mass party places a heavy
emphasis upon broadening membership and constructing a wide electoral base, the earliest
examples being European socialist parties which aimed to mobilise working-class support,
such as the UK Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Such parties
typically place heavier stress upon recruitment and organisation than on *ideology and political
conviction. Kirchheimer (1966) classified most modern parties as ‘catch-all parties’,
emphasising that they have dramatically reduced their ideological baggage in order to appeal
to the largest number of voters. A cadre party, on the other hand, is dominated by trained and
professional party members who are expected to exhibit a high level of political commitment
and doctrinal discipline, as in the case of communist and fascist parties.

Neumann (1956) offered the alternative distinction between representative parties, which adopt
a catch-all strategy and place pragmatism before principle, and integrative parties, which are
proactive rather than reactive, and attempt to mobilise, educate and inspire the masses, instead
of merely responding to their concerns. Occasionally, mass parties may exhibit mobilising or
integrative tendencies, as in the case of the UK Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in the
1980s. Finally, parties can be classified as constitutional parties when they operate within a
framework of constraints imposed by the existence of other parties, the rules of electoral
competition and, crucially, a distinction between the party in power (the government of the
day) and state institutions (the *bureaucracy, *judiciary, police and so on). Revolutionary
parties, by contrast, adopt an anti-system or anti-constitutional stance, and when such parties
win power they invariably become ‘ruling’ or regime parties, suppressing rival parties and
establishing a permanent relationship with the state machinery.
Significance
The political party is the major organising principle of modern politics. As political machines
organised to win (by elections or otherwise), and wield government power, parties are virtually
ubiquitous. The only parts of the world in which they do not exist are those where they are
suppressed by *dictatorship or military rule. Political parties are a vital link between the *state
and *civil society, carrying out major functions such as representation, the formation and
recruitment of political elites, the articulation and aggregation of interests and the organisation
of government. However, the role and significance of parties varies according to the party
system. In one-party systems they effectively substitute themselves for the government,
creating a fused party–state apparatus. In two-party systems the larger of the major parties
typically wields government power, while the other major party constitutes the opposition and
operates as a ‘government in waiting’. In a multiparty system the parties tend to act as brokers
representing a narrower range of interests, and exert influence through the construction of more
or less enduring electoral alliances or formal *coalitions.

Criticisms of political parties have either stemmed from an early liberal fear that parties would
promote conflict and destroy the underlying unity of society, and make the politics of individual
conscience impossible, or that they are inherently elitist and bureaucratic bodies. The latter
view was most famously articulated by Robert Michels ([1911] 1962) in the form of the ‘iron
law of oligarchy’. Some modern parties, notably Green parties, style themselves as ‘anti-party
parties’, in that they set out to subvert traditional party politics by rejecting parliamentary
compromise and emphasising popular mobilisation. Amongst the strongest supporters of the
political party has been Lenin ([1902] 1968), who advocated the construction of a tightly knit
revolutionary party, organised on the basis of democratic centralism, to serve as the ‘vanguard
of the working class’. Nevertheless, the late twentieth century provided evidence of a so-called
‘crisis of party politics’, reflected in a seemingly general decline in party membership and
partisanship, and in the contrasting growth of single-issue protest groups and rise of new social
movements. This has been explained on the basis that, as bureaucratised political machines,
parties are unable to respond to the growing appetite for popular participation and activism;
that their image as instruments of government means that they are inevitably associated with
power, ambition and corruption; and that, given the growing complexity of modern societies
and the decline of class and other traditional social identities, the social forces that once gave
rise to parties have now weakened. Such factors are nevertheless more likely to lead to a
transformation in the role of political parties and in the style of party politics, than to make
them redundant.

OPPOSITION
Opposition, in its everyday sense, means hostility or antagonism. However, in its political sense
opposition usually refers to antagonism that has a formal character and operates within a
constitutional framework. This is clearest in relation to *parliamentary systems of *government
in which the *political parties outside of government are generally viewed as opposition
parties, the largest of them sometimes being designated as ‘the opposition’. In two-party
systems, parliamentary procedures often take account of formal rivalry between the two major
parties acting, respectively, as government and opposition, with the opposition sometimes
replicating the structure of government by forming a ‘shadow’ cabinet and operating as a
‘government in waiting’.

The notion of opposition is usually less formally developed in multi-party systems and in
*presidential systems of government. In multi-party systems the government-versus-
opposition dynamic is weakened by the fact that government, being a *coalition, is not a
cohesive force but contains internal sources of rivalry, and that there is rarely a single
opposition party that has the potential to form a government on its own. In presidential systems
the opposition party is technically the party that does not hold the presidency; however, this
party may nevertheless be the majority party in the legislature and thereby be able to wield
considerable policymaking influence. Opposition may, on the other hand, have an extra-
parliamentary and anti-constitutional character. In such cases it refers to political groupings,
movements or parties that reject established political procedures and challenge, sometimes
through *revolution, the principles upon which the political system is based.

Significance
Opposition is a vital feature of liberal-democratic government. It serves three major functions.
First, it helps to ensure limited government and so protect *freedom by serving as a formal
check upon the government of the day. Second, it guarantees scrutiny and oversight, improving
the quality of public *policy and making government accountable for its blunders. Third, it
strengthens democratic *accountability by creating a more informed electorate and offering a
choice between meaningful parties of government. In addition, especially in two-party systems,
parliamentary opposition ensures a smooth and immediate transfer of power because an
alternative government is always available. There are, nevertheless, concerns about the
effectiveness and value of constitutional opposition. Some argue that parliamentary opposition
is merely tokenistic, in that, behind a façade of debate and antagonism, both government and
opposition support the existing constitutional arrangements and, as long as power alternates,
both benefit from them. Much opposition is therefore a parliamentary ritual that has little
impact upon the content of public policy. An alternative concern is that opposition, particularly
in a two-party context, may result in adversary politics, a style of politics that turns political
life into an ongoing battle between major parties aimed at winning electoral support. When
oppositions oppose for the sake of opposing, political debate is reduced to what has sometimes
been called ‘ya-boo politics’.