Political Parties and the State

Abstract

Throughout this text, politics and political organization have been treated in their broadest sense, as the ways in which people exercise power over each other in the pursuit of the good life, and the organizational means by which they collectively articulate their desires for freedom and social change on a broad scale. In more formal terms, however, political organization tends to refer specifically to political parties; and politics, to the realm of the state and the various institutions—lobbies, courts, and parties—that comprise its immediate domain. In this regard, the involvement of political parties in the AGM and WSF extends questions regarding social change and agency into the realm of formal politics, including those regarding the role of states in the fight against neoliberalism.