Party Systems in Africa

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the political parties and party system in Korea and provide a basic analysis for comparative study among the Asian countries. First, I would explain the distinguishing characteristics of the political parties and party system in Korea. I will then show how this system evolved by using the concept of the cartel party and cartelized party system. Finally, the kind of measures that have been introduced to improve democracy and party politics will be discussed. Whether these efforts are working or not will be addressed from the perspectives of the two different party models.The nature of the political system in Korea can be gleaned by examining three main aspects of the cartelized party system, namely, national subsidies, electoral system, and entry barriers against new or minor parties. After an examination of some of the institutions of the cartelized party system in Korea, the Korean party system may be deemed, by and large, to be moving towards a plural competitive system, one that is more accommodating of new or minor parties.

This chapter discusses political parties and party systems, which form a crucial aspect of a modern representative democracy. The origins and natures of political parties, including their functions and organizations, are explained. Party systems govern the dynamics between parties and are considered as the mechanism to represent divergent interests in the society. How are social cleavages related to political parties? A measure of party system, the Effective Number of Political Parties, is introduced. Figures for Hong Kong are provided for comparative research. Finally, this chapter ends with an account on the decline on the importance and role of parties in the current era, accompanied by a discussion on this idea’s relevance to Hong Kong.

Formulation of the problem. The urgency of a comprehensive study of the institute of political parties is conditioned by several illustrative circumstances. The past election campaign in the Ukrainian parliament in 2019 was marked by the fact that it was held under the old "rules of the game." It is known that the parliamentary election campaigns of 1998, 2002, 2007, 2012 also used a mixed system of elections, in which 50% of parliamentarians were elected in majority constituencies and 50% of people’s deputies were elected on a proportional basis for party lists. According to the current rules of elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, candidates for the People’s Deputies will be nominated by a political party, which were registered in accordance with the established procedure no later than one year before the elections. Despite the fact that the institute of self-nomination of candidates for the People’s Deputies remains, political parties have become the main political players, the only active actors in the electoral process of Ukraine and have received a strong impetus for their development. The purpose of this article is to reveal the history of political party formation in order to gain a better understanding of the essential nature of these important political entities and to identify promising moments in the development of parties in Ukraine. Analysis of recent research and publications. In the world and Ukrainian partology, it should be noted that well-known foreign experts J. Sartori, M. Duverge, A. Leiphart, S. Avineri, G. Almond, E. Wind, S. Lipset, S. Rokkan, S. Neumann in characterization the current state and prospects of the development of parties as political institutions indicate a direct connection and mutual influence between the party and electoral systems. Particular attention of domestic partologists M. Primus, N. Goncharuk, A. Pakharev, I. Kresina, O. Erzhov, V. Lytvyn, G. Malkin, Y. Shvedy focuses on the problem of the influence of the electoral process on the formation of the party system in Ukraine. Recently, in connection with the growing role of parties in the political life of our country, studies of new aspects of their activity have appeared: L. Gonyukova considers political parties as an institute of state policy and governance, O. Sakiri concentrates attention on the principles of constructing the image of a political party, O.Nikogosyan considers the peculiarities of the development of political parties and party systems in the post-communist space, A. Tetyanich explores the constitutional and legal principles of state control over the activities of political parties, etc. The article deals with the history of the formation and development of political parties as socio-political institutions, from the time of antiquity to the emergence of mass parties in the second half of the nineteenth century. The latest trends in the evolution of the institution of political parties as subjects of democratic politics in polyarchy systems are analyzed. It is noted that political parties have become the main political players, the only active actors in the electoral process of Ukraine and have received a strong impetus for their development. Modern political parties emerge as institutions of democratic politics, they "grow" from the bottom, are created by politically active citizens for the protection of their own interests, and therefore represent first and foremost an important segment of civil society, which unites it with public authorities. For a long time, the division of the parties into the left was adopted (the Communists, the Social Democrats were referred to here), the centrists (those who tried to defend the interests of the majority), the right (who stood for an elitist understanding of politics). However, as most political parties shifted to the middle class in the 20th century, only two of them became right-wing: center-right and center-left. At the same time, the ranking scale itself remained the same. At the end of the twentieth century. significant changes occurred in the political sphere of society. Political parties began to lose their traditional class character and appeal not so much to certain social strata as to all groups of the population. American political scientist J. Lapalambara called this type of political party a "grab all party" and then a "voter party". This trend is also confirmed in modern Ukraine (Party of Servants). Parties have stopped offering ways to develop society, politicians are only interested in voter votes, not ideological issues. It is concluded that modern Ukrainian parties need to go a long way in their development to meet all the criteria of a democratic political party. Ukrainian parties must undergo a transformation from political additions of oligarchic holdings to truly mass popular structures based on the principle of modernization, and then there will be a significant increase in real support. A promising direction for further research is to consider the organizational foundations of the functioning of political parties in polyarchies and under hybrid political regimes. Remarks are made about the prospects of party building in contemporary Ukraine.

The last decade of the twentieth century was characterised by a resurgence of multipartism in Africa. The return of political parties produced a discontinuity not only in the continent's political life, but also in the study of African politics. A number of new researches were carried out that were largely based on existing theories and concepts in political science. These new works thus contributed to an increased integration of the study of politics south of the Sahara with mainstream political science. The present article provides an overview of the insights and advances that these studies have produced, focusing on the key issues raised by the return of party pluralism in Africa and on the utility of existing models, theories and approaches for its understanding. There is little doubt that recent research efforts have advanced our knowledge of the changing politics of the continent. However, neither the elaboration of theoretical frameworks nor the detail of empirical knowledge has achieved adequate levels of development as yet.

The main goal of this article is to highlight the Lithuanian political party system of legal regulation of formation of traditions and the disclosure of the legal framework in 1919–1940. This article discusses examination of the development of Lithuanian party system and identifies common patterns.The research is focused on the analysis of the legal regulation of the system of Lithuanian political party. The author discusses legal and historical issues and takes no notice of the issue of political considerations. The author also discusses the historical and political circumstances, which prompted the current legal framework, examines the influence of party system evolution of the statehood of Lithuania and the development of constitutionalism.There are a few authors, who made some researches on a few legal issues, e.g., in the monograph by Professor M. Romeris (“Lietuvos konstitucinės teisės paskaitos”, 1937), the development of political regime and its influence on the political party system was discussed. His monograph “Reprezentacija ir mandatas” (1926) studied the legal regulation of election and its influence of representation of citizenships in the government of the country. One of the most relevant to the subject of the research studies was conducted by E. Šileikis (“Politinių partijų instucionalizavimas”, 1997), where he presented the historical development of regulation of political parties in Lithuania and outlined the significance of modern political parties more extensively. In J. Bulavas’ monograph (“Rinkimai ir ‘tautos atstovavimas’ buržuazinėje Lietuvoje”, 1956), the legal status of political parties, military and emergency and high-security conditions in Lithuania during the interwar period were analyzed. His monograph „Klasės ir politinės partijos Lietuvoje 1919-1926 metais“ (1978) studied the legal regulation of the political parties in the independent Lithuania.This article analyzes the normative legal acts of the independence period of Lithuania, which have regulated the formation of political parties, the legal framework of their activities and meetings. These normative legal acts’ influence on the formation of the political party system of Lithuania is discussed. The research is made on the legalization process of illegal organizations and political parties. It pays attention to the changes of legal regulation of political parties and its dependence on the regime. Moreover, the article compares legal regulation in different periods of development of the regime of the Republic of Lithuania in 1918–1940. Furthermore, the comparison of the changes of legal regulation within the periods of 1918–1926 (the period of the democratic regime) and 1926–1940 (the period of the undemocratic regime) is made.

In this paper, I first provide an idealized functional account of political parties and party systems. I argue that parties are difficult to regulate constitutionally because of their Janus-faced public-private character. The key function they perform, when functioning as they ought to function, is to facilitate a mutually responsive relationship between public policy and popular opinion by acting as an intermediary between a state and its people. They perform this intermediary function in a unique manner, because of their bi-directionality and their plenary character. When they perform this function effectively, political parties significantly reduce four key information and transaction costs which would otherwise make democratic governance impossible: political participation costs, voters’ information costs, policy packaging costs, and ally prediction costs. This idealised account helps us identify pathological parties and party-systems and ground four principles that constitutions should seek to optimise in relation to political parties. The second part of this paper outlines and defends these four principles. Here I argue that state constitutions: i. should guarantee maximum autonomy for the formation, organisation, and operation of political parties, moderated by the restrictions necessitated by their purpose of winning (a share in) state power (for fixed terms) in competitive elections by acting as intermediaries between the state and its people (the ‘purposive autonomy principle’); ii. should try to optimise the party system such that the total number of serious political parties is large enough to broadly represent every major ‘voter type’, but not so large that the information costs on judicious voters are too high (the ‘party system optimality principle’); iii. should ensure a separation of parties and the state (the ‘party-state separation principle’); and iv. should discourage the factionalization of political parties (the ‘anti-faction principle’). These political principles are drawn from the value of democracy itself. They are likely to bring real world political parties and party systems closer to their idealised form, thereby improving and deepening democratic governance. As such, they should—alongside other relevant political and constitutional norms—inform fundamental constitutional design choices.

Political Parties in Constitutional Theory

This chapter describes the foundation, evolution, organization, and societal connections of Portugal’s main political parties, and reviews the main cleavages and lines of competition of the party system. It argues that Portugal is home to an institutionalized, consolidated, and nationalized party system of moderate pluralism, and that Portuguese parties have an electoral-professional organization with relatively weak roots in society. These features make the Portuguese party system stand out when compared to other third wave democracies, where party systems are generally less stable, more fragmented, and in which political parties include organizations that are less durable and professionalized than in older democracies. Perhaps surprisingly, the Portuguese party system closely resembles party systems in other Western European countries, where democracy was consolidated much earlier than in Portugal.

This paper is a critical analysis of the model of organization of power, which intends to prove that the traditional dichotomy parliamentary - presidential system has a relative methodological value in view of the character of the contemporary organization of power models. The Macedonian organization of power model is no exception to this statement. The political system is not determined only by the constitutional framework. It is also determined by the (un)democratic tradition, the model of political culture, the electoral and party system. In this sense, the same normative model works differently in different countries or different periods of development of the same political system. This is especially evident in the relations between Parliament and Government. The dominance of the executive government is not characteristic only of the organization of power model in the Republic of Macedonia, it is a global tendency as well. In that sense, the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia shares the “fate” of the representative bodies in the contemporary parliamentary system. However, in the absence of a democratic tradition, the presence of subject political culture, strong elements of partocracy and party state, fragile and fragmented civil society and weak general public, the dominance of the executive over the legislative government acquires dramatic dimensions.

In this paper, I explore the relationship between organized crime and the features of political party systems, particularly countries that underwent economic and political transition. The paper argues that during periods retreat from authoritarian rule, when the state is weakened and when economic hardships occur, there are mutually beneficial connections made between organized crime groups and political parties – parties need voter support and money, and organized crime needs stable partners who can provide access to patronage, and protection from “legal” authorities. Further, even after “transition” these relationship leave a collaborative legacy. I suggest that this relationship will affect features of the party system particularly reducing the number of political parties. Using data from 39 post-communist and Latin American countries from 1985-2017, the results indicate that higher the level of organized crime’s penetration of political parties the fewer political parties, as expected by the theory.

The purpose of the article consists of complex research political and administrative aspects of the influence of the political system and activity of political parties on the forming of democratic principles of community development. During research uses on the complex of logical methods, in particular, comparatively-political, abstractly logical, and also scientific approaches: comparatively and bibliographic. In the article, complex research is presented politiсal-administrative aspects of the influence of the political system and activity of political parties on forming of democratic principles of community development. It is noticed that the determining line of the functioning of any political system is its interconnectedness with other subsystems of society, that is why national features have a degree of its democratizes and becoming a problem, and a method of functioning of power is the determining criterion of typologies of the political systems. Therefore at the research of influence of the political system on forming of democratic principles of community development, in particular, it is necessary to examine the aggregate of political institutes, relations and political and legal relations, which public relations are regulated by, viability and efficiency of functioning of that or other are provided as a system influence of which on development of the indicated principles is provided an implementation of its functions (normatively regulatory, informatively communicative et al). Is it set that becoming of the democratic system of public management in Ukraine remains foreground job of nowadays and factors which brake indicated becoming are at the same time selected, among which, in particular, disunity national elite, weakness of political institutes, political corruption. It allowed to come to the conclusion, that success of decision of this task on the domestic walks of life substantially depends on the combination of advantages of conservative and democratic types of acceptance and realization political-administrative decisions, which are examined as the quintessence of satisfaction of political requirements of individuals, task forces, and others like that in the process of adjusting of social relations. Taking into account its attention is accented on importance of prevailing foremost of state character in the activity of political parties, as main subjects of forming of political space, institutes of the state and optimization, politicaladministrative processes, what in Ukraine is not observed, that is the main factor of low efficiency of mechanism of responsibility of political power before electors. The scientific novelty of the article consists of execution complex research politiсal-administrative aspects of the influence of the political system and activity of political parties on forming democratic principles of community development. Practical meaningfulness of the article is related to the possibility of the subsequent use of its materials in an educational process and research secret services at research political-administrative aspects of the influence of the political system and activity of political parties on becoming of the modern system of democratic governance in Ukraine in the context of found out factors which generate considerable difficulties in relation to becoming of the indicated system on the domestic walks of life.

This is the third of three chapters on political party systems and structures of competition, and presents an overall review. In the first section, Approaches to the Classification of Party Systems: A Review it looks at the principal existing approaches to the classification of party systems, pointing to both their limits and possibilities when applied within comparative analysis. It then goes on in the second section, Party Systems and the Competition for Government, to underline the importance of understanding the structure of competition in any given party system, since in many ways the whole notion of a party system is centred on the assumption that there exists a stable structure of competition. Structures of competition can be seen to be either closed (and predictable) or open (and unpredictable), depending on the patterns of alternation in government, the degree of innovation or persistence in processes of government formation, and the range of parties gaining access to government. The emphasis in the third section, Party Systems and Electoral Outcomes, is on the need to distinguish between processes of electoral change on the one hand, and changes in party systems and the structures of competition on the other, a distinction which also allows the possibility of situations in which electoral change is the consequence rather than the cause of party system change.

This chapter sets out to analyse political parties in Central America within the context of the multiple, rapid and as yet inconclusive transitions affecting the region in the 1990s.1 Due emphasis is placed on the particularities and differences which have characterised the development of each country (historical, cultural, political and economic) as well as their external relations. By recognising these differences, the significant continuities and similarities between the party systems in each country can be identified. Lastly, a critical comparison of the current state of political parties in Central America is provided.KeywordsPolitical PartyPolitical SystemElectoral ProcessParty SystemArmed GroupThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This chapter examines characteristics and causal factors related to the Philippine party system. Using Mainwaring and Scully’s institutionalization framework as a point of departure the chapter first demonstrates that the Philippines is indeed under-institutionalized (inchoate) and discusses changes in the degree of institutionalization over time. It then presents an explanation for why the party system has developed as it has in the Philippines, an explanation which also accounts for the changes we observe over time. Specifically, the chapter argues that the development of the Philippine party system is tied to the manner in which democracy unfolded in the Philippines. Early decisions by colonial administrators and Philippine elite had the unintended consequence of entrenching a particular style of political party which has dominated the Philippines polity ever since. In the decades since, when the question of institutional reform has arisen the Philippines elite has consistently and sometimes strategically opted for outcomes that were inimical to greater party institutionalization.

En este trabajo sobre el sistema electoral y el sistema de partidos políticos en México, exploramos las consecuencias que han tenido la fórmula electoral y el umbral efectivo, la magnitud de las circunscripciones y el tamaño del Congreso legislativo, en los niveles de desproporcionalidad existente en el poder legislativo desde las elecciones federales de 1994. Así mismo, como extensión de ese esfuerzo, mediante diversos índices politológicos profundizamos en los efectos que ha tenido en el sistema de partidos. En particular, interesa estudiar los niveles de concentración y competitividad, la fragmentación y número efectivo de partidos, la polarización y volatilidad del voto. En suma, pretendemos determinar cuál es el impacto institucional del llamado «periodo de reformas» en la conformación de un nuevo sistema de partidos políticos mexicanos.