The Cartel Party
The Cartel Party
In terms of an analogy to economic markets, the political market for parties has nearly always been an oligopoly. In recent decades, that oligopoly has transformed into a cartel, in which the parties share rather than compete over resources, and effectively conspire to protect their collective interests. The capacity of their leaders to maintain this cartel of parties depends, however, on their ability to control their own parties, giving rise to a new form of party organization, the cartel party. As with all ideal types, there are never any fully fledged cartel parties, just as there were never any fully fledged mass parties or catch-all parties, but the realities of modern politics are better understood as approaches to the cartel party ideal type than as perversions of the catch-all party.
Keywords: effective number of parties, mass party, catch-all party, cartel party, collective interests
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