Political Parties, History of

Abstract

The search for a definition of the term ‘political parties’ has been part of their history—political parties' were conceived as interest groups; ideology, doctrine, and political attitude transmitters; fashioners of policy; mediators between the citizens and the government; etc.—mostly definitions were settled after inductive generalization of empirical field or case studies. Political parties are a modern phenomenon. This article studies the itinerary of political parties in the Western tradition, the results obtained by the political sciences in the analysis and the theory of political parties, and the perspectives for the future ofpolitical parties at the turn of the twenty-first century from the perspective of the historical evolution and consolidation of political parties such as they exist nowadays.