The Rise and Decline of Parties
The Rise and Decline of Parties
When they rose to prominence in the régimes censitaires of the nineteenth century, most political parties were based primarily in parliament and had little external organization. With the advent of mass suffrage, these elite parties were challenged by a new type of organization, the mass party ostensibly rooted in particular segments of society and with extensive extraparliamentary membership organizations that were, in theory, the authoritative voice of the party. By the second half of the twentieth century, both mass parties and the remaining elite parties were evolving into catch-all parties, with the party in public office more assertive of its independence and with parties increasingly working as brokers among competing interests rather than as the agents of particular interest. None of these any longer describes the nature of contemporary party politics, however.
Keywords: mass party, catch-all party, party development, party evolution, history of politics
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