Cartel Party Research Articles

Hollow parties and their movement-ization: The populist conundrum

This article focuses on the relationship between social movements and political parties in the context of populist challenges to constitutional democracy. There are many reasons for the current plight of democracy but I focus here on one aspect: the decline of mainstream political parties, the emergence of new forms of populist movement parties and the general crisis of political representation in long consolidated Western democracies. This article analyses the specific political logic and dynamics of social movements – the logic of influence, and distinguishes it from that of political parties – the logic of power. It addresses transformations in movements, parties and their relationships. It looks at the shifts in movement and party types that constitute the political opportunity structure for the emergence of new populist movement party forms and relationships, focusing on the hollowing out and movement-ization of political parties. Contemporary populist movement parties are not the cause of the hollowing out or movement-ization of political parties. Rather they are a response to the crisis of political representation exemplified by hollow parties and cartel parties. But it is my thesis that thanks to its specific logic, populism fosters the worst version of movement party relationships, undermining the democratic functions of both.

The neglected variable. The coevolution of public administration and political parties in the UK and Italy (1950–2010)

AbstractThe relationships between the State and political parties have often been analysed in dual terms. Yet, as Katz and Mair already noticed in their well-known (and criticized) article on the emergence of the cartel party, a clear separation between parties and public institutions has never been completely achieved, in the evolution of liberal democracies. In contrast, while parties act as agencies of institutionalization, public institutions recognize (de jure or de facto) parties as the legitimate actors of political representation. From this perspective, it is worth considering party change as a process intertwined also with institutional change. To date, however, the analysis of such a relationship has been neglected by political scientists, who have privileged explanations of party change based on other factors, whether at systemic or at a micro level. By avoiding a priori assumptions about causality, our main research question is the following: is it possible to identify patterns of co-evolution between State institutions – more specifically, public administration – and party organizations? Building on a new institutional approach to organization theory, the aim of this article is to investigate to what extent the evolution in the size of party organizations and in the size of public administration has followed similar trajectories. Our study focuses on the United Kingdom and Italy, from 1950 to 2010. Our findings confirm that parties' external face expands when public spending and the number of public employees increase, and vice-versa. The same holds for parties' internal face, at least in the Italian case.

Electoral parties: the ideological positioning of parliamentary parties in Ukraine

The article defines the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of the concept of «electoral party», investigates how this political institution evolved and which subspecies can be distinguished. Revealed that the electoral political party is a modern type of political party, characterized by erosion of the boundaries of the social base, professionalization and personalization of politics, de-ideologization of the party program, and recognition of the leading role of the electoral function. The main sub-types of electoral parties include: electoral-professional parties, cartel parties, strataghia, modern personnel parties, program parties, business-party parties, and «big tents».The ideological component of parliamentary parties in Ukraine according to the results of the last elections in 2014 has been analyzed. The methodology of content analysis of party programs by the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, the Narodnyj Front, Samopomisch, the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, the Radical Party and the Opposition Bloc, using the formula of Chi Min Kim and Richard Fording, determined the ideological positioning each of them. Revealed that parliamentary parties in Ukraine have weak ideological articulation, the vast majority of parliamentary parties tend to centralism.According to a number of formal signs, determined that modern parliamentary parties in Ukraine are electoral in their essence - with blurred ideological positions, the main purpose of which is to reach the widest possible electorate and gain maximum representation in parliament. Determined that Ukrainian political parties are «parties for all» with a blurred social base and de-ideologization. Analyzing the programs of Ukrainian parliamentary parties, was found common to all parties, namely, the abuse of populism and attempts to take a centrist stand.

PRESIDENTIALIZATION AND PROCEDURAL RULES CHANGE: THE CASE OF THE SOUTH KOREAN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

AbstractThe common assumption of legislative politics is that the majority party structures procedural rules to suit its interests. In a presidentialized context, however, presidential electoral incentives prevail over majority party's incentives when voting on procedural rules changes and the threat of punishing majority-party defectors is not credible when those defectors vote with the presidential candidate. To test these claims, I analyze the case of the procedural reform in the South Korean National Assembly. The case study reveals that 1) the leading presidential candidate of the ruling majority Saenuri Party compromised on the procedural reform bill that imposes restrictions on the majority party's cartel arrangement due to presidential electoral incentives; 2) a significant number of Saenuri Party members defected from the majority of their co-partisans to vote with the presidential candidate; and 3) career advancement ratio and re-nomination ratios demonstrate that those defectors were not punished afterwards.

Three Worlds of Representation: A Linkage-Based Typology of Parties in Western and Eastern Europe

This article is part of the special cluster titled Parties and Democratic Linkage in Post-Communist Europe, guest edited by Lori Thorlakson, and will be published in the August 2018 issue of EEPS Have Eastern European democracies developed patterns of accountability similar to those existent in their established counterparts? While most accounts of convergence are confined to the world of programmatic reasoning and policy representation, we use a unique data set to cover the wealth of instrumental and emotional modes of linkage building. We apply advanced techniques of model-based cluster analysis to establish a linkage-based typology of political parties. In the East, the contrast of programmatic and clientelistic parties is most essential in the absence of strong regional subdivisions. In the West, the structure of linkage building is characterized by an all-encompassing divide that separates mainstream and challenger parties. Parties in Southern Europe form a distinct Mediterranean type of “machine politics.” The results for affluent post-industrial societies both support and contradict premises of the cartel party hypothesis. For third-wave democracies in the East, our results suggest the persistence of legacies of pre-communist and communist rule against the weight of cumulative democratic experience. In sum, patterns of accountability remained markedly different in the two regions on the eve of the economic crisis in 2008–2009.

The cartel party, consensus democracy and democracy without politics

Although the age of the mass party as an organizational form is long in the past, the mass party remains a widely accepted normative ideal, closely connected to the idea of party government and to a voters-as-principals-parties-as-agents understanding of democracy. In evolving from mass party, to catch-all party, to cartel party European democracies have also been evolving towards an ‘anti-political’ view of government, along with models of consensus democracy and the regulatory state. This evolution helps to explain the decline in popular connection to political parties. Ironically, the associated causes of this decline are generally regarded as good, notwithstanding that the decline itself is often identified as a crisis. Moreover, analysis of this decline suggests as striking similarity between the consensus model of democracy and the cartel party model of democracy, notwithstanding that the first is often seen as a goal to which democracies should be moving while the second is seen as a threat to democracy itself.

Follow the money: Public subsidies and the changing intra-party balance of power between different faces of the party organisation—the case of Sweden

Does the allocation of public funding for parties support the assumptions of cartel party theory about a change in the internal balance of power within Swedish parties? By answering this question, the study tests some of Katz and Mair’s theory about changing party financing that are linked to the changed balance of power within cartel parties. Using data on public party subsidiaries 1966–2011 in Sweden, the result supports these assumptions made by the cartel party theory.

The Cartel Party Thesis by Mair and Katz- an Analysis of the Theoretical Concept with Reference to Comparative Case Studies of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party

The parliamentary democracy of Japan is highly experienced in ruling under a continuous political party compared with other democracies of Europe or Asia. It may be presumed that the political, economic, and social systems that Japan has developed since the 1868 Meiji Restoration are more akin to Western Europe than to Japan's Asian neighbors. Also calling it a one-party state, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP or Jūminshyutō) has held the leading executive role in the country's policy for over more than five decades. This paper examines political cartels in recent Japanese politics under the Cartel Party Thesis by Mair and Katz (1995). Following research question are going to be specifically worked on: Does Japan’s most powerful political party LDP show any evidence that is stated in the ‘Cartel Party Thesis’ by Mair and Katz? If the results are divergent to the theory’s statement, then to what extent does Japan sets a paradigm for its own kind of cartelized politics?

Trade Unions and Political Parties in Italy (1946–2014): Ideological Positions and Critical Junctures

The paper investigates party-union relationships in Italy (1946–2014) by hand-coding parties’ parliamentary speeches and trade unions’ congress motions. In line with the cartel party thesis, a time series analysis shows that the ideological closeness between the left-wing Italian General Confederation of Labour and left-wing parties deteriorated when the Italian Socialist Party (1980) and the heirs of the Italian Communist Party (1998) converged toward the centre of the ideological spectrum. Conversely, the closeness between the Catholic-inspired Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions and the heirs of Christian Democracy increased after 1994, when the former party’s leftist factions became the major part of the Italian Popular Party.

Cartelization and party change in social democracies: a comparative perspective on theParti Socialiste(PS),Partido Socialista Obrero Español(PSOE), andPartito Democratico(PD)

In the last decades, the cartel party theory has been one of the most discussed topics in the academic literature on political parties. Several publications have dealt with the application of the theory at the systemic level, using a country as a unit of analysis. Less attention has been given thus far to the party level. This analysis is aimed at improving the study of the cartel party theory by focussing on the transformations of three social-democratic parties in Europe: theParti Socialistein France, thePartido Socialista Obrero Españolin Spain, and thePartito Democraticoin Italy. The main findings in this work will not confirmin totothe theoretical assumption of the cartel party, in particular as regards membership and, in part, political convergence. Albeit declining, membership has been resilient in the last two decades. Despite a clear-cut convergence in EU-related issues, political manifestos of mainstream parties have shown a certain degree of polarization. Finally, while the three parties under examination rely almost entirely on public subventions, political parties proved to be capable of reforming the public funding laws, increasing the transparency of donations and reducing the total amount of public subvention.

From cartel party to traditional membership organisation: the organisational evolution of Fianna Fáil

ABSTRACTThis paper examines patterns of intra-organisational evolution and reform of Fianna Fáil as a party organisation before and after the 2011 Dáil election, widely considered an ‘earthquake election’ that fundamentally undermined Fianna Fáil’s status as the dominant party in the Irish party system. Electoral losses had triggered reform in Fianna Fáil prior to 2011, but such reforms tended to be minor, as the party expected its opposition status to be temporary. This orientation changed after 2011, as the party’s very foundation seemed threatened, having suffered a historic decline of its electoral support and membership. We argue that the post-2011 re-orientation can be usefully characterised as a movement away from organisational characteristics associated with the ‘cartel model of party organisation’ towards characteristics echoing more ‘traditional mass party structures’, an organisational model less dependent on state resources, and more able to generate loyalty through organisational means. Whether the 2011 reforms will lead to lasting change is likely to depend on whether, and if so how quickly, Fianna Fáil can reclaim its position as the major party of government.

Political Transformation in Ireland: Boom, Bust, and Beyond*

Political Transformation in Ireland:Boom, Bust, and Beyond* Theresa Reidy (bio) and Timothy J. White (bio) Ireland's journey from the booming Celtic Tiger economy to a poor man of Europe was based primarily on a property boom and bust that made international headlines from 2008 to 2011. The country's financial collapse, while prompted by unique Irish causes and circumstances, was rooted in the global financial crisis that especially affected several European states and was linked to the U.S. financial crisis and contraction. Ireland had experienced a period of rapid economic growth in the late 1990s, based on impressive productivity gains from investment in information technology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. In the early 2000s speculation in housing led to a property bubble or a "confidence trap." Martin Wolf claims that economic theorists should be considered culpable for their inability to predict or explain financial crises like the one that came to Ireland and many other states in 2008.1 But we contend that the financial crisis was as much political as it was economic. One must appreciate the political circumstances that allowed and perhaps encouraged the kind of financial speculation that brought on the crisis. David Runciman's theory about advanced democracies suggests that these types of governments muddle from crisis to crisis, and this tendency explains the confidence that the Irish possessed as their economy boomed on the back of a property bubble in the early 2000s. Oblivious to this confidence trap, Irish government policies tended to facilitate the economic bubble rather than to heed warnings of an inevitable [End Page 101] correction in the housing market.2 The confidence trap might also explain the lack of more significant protest behavior, as Irish voters were quite ready to wait for elections to indicate their dissatisfaction with the fiscal-retrenchment policies that came in the wake of the bust.3 This article documents the economic policies that led to the boom and also addresses the policies that have been enacted by successive Irish governments to respond to the economic crisis that emerged in 2008. We contend that the economic crisis has fractured the party cartel that has governed Ireland since independence. The politics of how the Irish government created and reacted to the financial crisis can best be understood through an examination of Ireland's unusual recent economic history and of contemporary politics in both the domestic and the European Union arenas.4 While Ireland's own policies played a critical role in its economic successes and failures, the integration of national economies within the euro area created a tug and pull within Europe. This factor can most easily be seen in the difference between creditor and debtor states. Ireland joined the latter category after its financial crash. Germany, as the principal creditor state in Europe, dealt incrementally with the burgeoning debt crisis. This meant that the economic institutions created to facilitate an integration of European economies managed the economic crisis but did not solve it.5 For the Irish, their financial collapse meant a bailout by the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in late 2010. These three institutions, known as the troika, [End Page 102] defined the means by which the Irish could access the capital necessary to finance their burgeoning debt and deficit. For many in Ireland, having these institutions control Irish economic policy signified a loss of sovereignty and marked a new nadir in Irish political and economic life. A few short months after the negotiations that brought Ireland to its knees in December 2010, the Fianna Fáil government was replaced in an election in February 2011 that was the third most volatile in Western Europe since the Second World War.6 The crushing defeat of the dominant Fianna Fáil party in the 2011 general election created new dynamics in the party system.7 The coalition government of Fine Gael and Labour that came to power had the largest governing majority in the Dáil in the history of the state. After several years of higher taxes and frozen or reduced public services and spending, the Irish economy began to recover, and by 2015 it...

The evolution of party funding in Italy: a case of inclusive cartelisation?

The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the Italian public funding regime, in the light of the assumptions of the cartel party thesis. In the mid-1990s, the debate on party and party system change was revitalised by R. Katz and P. Mair (1995), who introduced the concept of the ‘cartel party’ as a means to study the increasing influence of the state on party politics. Among the main analytical dimensions of the cartel party argument, the system-level variables have received little attention with respect to the Italian case. In what follows I try to find out empirical evidence for the hypothesised changes in the relationship between parties and the state and in the patterns of inter-party competition. I will analyse the trends of the law-making process in the domain of party funding (1948–2014), by combining these observations with data on parties’ reliance on state funds and party collusive behaviour.

Cartelization versus representation? On a misconception in contemporary party theory

According to a popular but controversial view in contemporary party research, political parties increasingly put a premium on governing within the institutions of the state rather than on representation of interests and identities in society. This critique has been phrased most uncompromisingly in Richard Katz and Peter Mair’s theory of the cartel party, according to which the cartel party governs but does not represent, and thus fails to do what we expect of parties in a modern democracy. This article is an analysis and critique of this presupposition, which has largely escaped the attention of commentators. The idea that the cartel party governs but does not represent rests on an untenable view of political representation. As I argue, the normative problem with the cartel party is not so much that this type of party does not represent, as to decide when and how it does or does not represent.

The executive on the battlefield: government amendments and cartel theory in the Chilean Congress

ABSTRACTThis article argues that cartelised coordination inside Chilean congressional committees is important for understanding the success rates of presidential initiatives. By way of an analysis of the amendment process undertaken both in the Chamber and Senate committees in the Chilean Congress during 2006–10, the authors review the approval patterns of legislative amendments. The analysis suggests two chief findings: coordination between government parties and the executive is crucial for the success of amendment; and the opposition’s success in generating legal transformations depends on the construction of inter-coalition alliances. It is hoped that the perspective offered here will contribute to the current literature on cartel party theory in Latin America.

Memberless parties

It is widely assumed that political parties need to have members in order to fulfil their functions in a representative democracy (drawing up platforms, candidate nomination and electoral mobilization) and in terms of their legitimacy. However, the theoretical literature on party models – the evolution from the mass party to the catch-all party, the electoral-professional party and/or the cartel party – suggests an increasing marginalization of members within the party organization. In the business-firm party model, members no longer have any role whatsoever. The next phase in this development seems to be a party without members. This article analyses the contextual (societal, communicational and institutional) factors favouring the rise and endurance of the memberless party as well as the strategic conditions for doing without formal membership (such as maximizing the centralization of internal decision-making, promoting party unity and enhancing electoral effectiveness). The functioning of two no-member parties – the Freedom Party in the Netherlands and the Lega dei Ticinesi in Switzerland – will be discussed in the empirical part of this article.

Political Parties and Popular Representation in Myanmar's Democratisation Process

The article examines the role of political parties in Myanmar's democratisation process. We argue that the substance of democratisation depends on popular representation through political parties but question their capacity to provide such representation. Examining capacity through the concept of party institutionalisation, we find that most parties have not been able to build effective organisational structures. However, we also find a degree of party institutionalisation in the form of rootedness in society. Political cleavages between those favouring authoritarian rule over democratic rule and Burman nationhood over ethnic notions of nationhood have produced divisions between state-centred parties associated with Myanmar's authoritarian legacy and society-centred pro-democracy and ethnic parties. Although being less dichotomous than in the past, we argue that these cleavages continue to provide a basis for party identity and rootedness in society. We conclude that further development of political parties and popular representation will be shaped by the relations between parties, the state, and society – where individual parties are shaped according to their tendencies towards state-centred cartel parties or society-centred mass parties.

The Electoral Costs of Party Agenda Setting: Why the Hastert Rule Leads to Defeat

This study demonstrates that unconditional blocking of bills opposed by a majority of the majority party—as implied by the party cartel model and advocated by former Speaker Dennis Hastert—can produce conditions in which the majority party loses popular support and loses elections. The theoretical analysis and empirical results imply that the use of negative agenda power to block bills is circumscribed by this risk of electoral defeat. As a result, the opportunity for effective negative agenda control is conditional on majority party issue advantage, party polarization, and the distribution of status quo locations. In particular, majority party roll rates should sometimes be nonzero, blocking increases the odds of majority party defeat in House of Representatives elections, and policy change is most likely on issues with status quo that the model suggests are the riskiest to block.

MEDIA INFLUENCE ON POLITICAL PARTIES IN ALBANIA

This article investigates the role of television on the structure and organization of political parties in the post – communist Albania. The existing literature on political parties links the structure of mass parties with the written press, and the structure of electoral- professional and cartel parties with the increasing influence of television. The mass party is based on the principle of membership. Among many tasks that members had to carry out, the dissemination of party’s declarations, statements, opinions and ideology, through the distribution of party press is one of the most important. The studies on political parties have observed the emergence of the catch-all, electoral-professional and cartel party, in which the party leaders have substituted the membership organizational network with television, and thus minimized the role of intermediate party organs. In difference from their counterparts in Western Europe, in the new established democracies of post-communist countries, political parties were born in a period characterized by a modern and developed media which was accessible to everyone. Therefore, the immediate access to modern means of communication has distanced the parties from the society since the early phases of their inceptions, without giving them the opportunity and necessity to organize territorially. This article analysed the techniques that have used the Albanian political parties to communicate with their electorate, concluding that in the moment of their creation, television could not serve to the opposition parties as a means of information. That is why they had to rely heavily on the written press and their membership. The opening of some broadcasting channels, after 2000, made possible the access on modern techniques of communication, leading to a minor role of the press and membership. As a result we could say that at the early phase of democratic process, the political parties in Albania shared features of the mass party with a strong territorial penetration, features that started to fade out when television gained a more prominent role in the organization of electoral campaigns by influencing thus a more contemporary western alike model of party organization.

Tussen partij en parlement: het profiel van de fractievoorzitter in België

The leader of the parliamentary party in Belgium occupies a very specific position, which differs from that of the politica! leader and that of the organizational leader of a party. This person acts as a crucial linking pin between 'the party in central office' and 'the party in public office'. Owing to an increase in power of 'the party in central office' in modern 'cartel parties', we expect repercussions on the profile, selection and functioning of parliamentary party leaders. In this first, exploratory analysis based on a new dataset, we sketch the profile of these leaders in terms of experience and career, and based on these characteristics, we develop a typology. We also investigate whether these va ria bles vary over time and by government status. Our results show for most of the indicators a weakening of the parliamentary party leader over time, whereas government parties appear to prefer a stronger parliamentary party leader than opposition parties.