1. Forms of Party Organization
Party Types:
Why do parties organize in the ways that they do?

2. Why do parties organize in the ways that they do?
How much organization do they need?
Do they need
‘thick’ organization with large # of members?
to be organized at all times or only when elections are called?
professionals rather than amateurs?
Organization at all levels of government?

3. Party types: a composite typology
Cadre parties
Mass parties (or parties of mass integration)
Catch-all parties and/or
Electoral-Professional parties
Cartel parties

4. Where this comes from: Maurice Duverger Sigmund Neumann
Otto Kirchheimer
Angelo Panebianco
Richard Katz and Peter Mair

5. Duverger’s ‘theory’ of party organization
Degree of organization reflects parties ‘electoral needs
First parties were internally created &
Took the form of loose cadre parties:
Made of ‘local notables’
Minimal organization outside of parliament
Minimal organization between elections

6. Duverger cont’d The mass party Mass parties externally created
Extensive organization
Outside of parliament &
In between elections
The mass party is
A superior form of party organization
The wave of the future

7. Sigmund Neumann Parties of individual representation
Parties of mass integration
Party not only organizes electorally,
but also provides services and spiritual home for its citizens of the masses” (Otto Kirchheimer, 1966)
Parties of total integration

8. Epstein’s critique:
Contagion from the left vs. contagion from the right:
Leon Epstein (Political Parties in Western Democracies, 1967) argues that the mass party is not the wave of the future
Parties are not dependent on numbers or mass organization;
They can rely on the media instead

9. Catchall and electoral professional parties:
Problem:
How do parties change over time?
What are they like in middle age?

10. Otto Kirchheimer and the catch-all party:
Parties of mass integration adapt to a more affluent and consumer oriented society by
Abandoning attempts at “the intellectual and moral encadrement of the masses”
Bidding for the support of interest groups
Emphasizing the qualities of their leaders
Scuttling “‘excess ideological baggage”
Moving to the centre
The success of one catch-all party forces others to imitate it, transforming the party system

11. Panebianco’s Political Parties
Parties reflect genetic types
Parties forced to transform themselves into electoral-professional parties

12. The cartel party Katz and Mair 1995
Parties share power with each other
Parties have become part of the state
Parties draw on state resources – e.g. state finance
Party members are involved, but only at a distance

13. Problems: How appropriate are these types?
Do they encompass all political parties?
Do they describe contemporary parties?
Do they fit political parties in Canada or the United States?
How accurately do they characterize them?
What about parties in other parts of the world?

14. Reminders:
Preliminary bibliography & statement of topic due Friday, October 11th