Peter Mair

Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Party

Many recent discussions of the decline of party are predicated on the assumption that the Duverger/socialist mass-party model is the only model for parties. We contend that this assumption is misconceived, that the mass-party model is only one, temporally limited and contingent model, and that it is necessary to differentiate notions of adaptation and change from notions of decline or failure. Following an analysis of how various models of party can be located in terms of the relationship between civil society and the state, we contend that the recent period has witnessed the emergence of a new model of party, the cartel party, in which colluding parties become agents of the state and employ the resources of the state (the party state) to ensure their own collective survival. Finally, we suggest that the recent challenge to party is in fact a challenge to the cartel that the established parties have created for themselves.

Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980-2000

This article reports a comprehensive overview of new data on the levels of individual membership of political parties in twenty contemporary European democracies. Among the patterns noted in the data is the contrast between large and small democracies, as well as that between new and older democracies. However, the most striking feature to be noted is the sheer extent and consistency of membership decline through to the end of the 1990s. Not only have levels of party membership continued to decline as a proportion of the electorate, a trend which was already apparent at the end of the 1980s, there is now also compelling evidence of a major decline in the absolute numbers of party members across all the long-established European democracies. As these data clearly reveal, parties in contemporary Europe are rapidly losing their capacity to engage citizens.

The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement

We restate and clarify the idea of the “cartel party,” a concept that has found considerable traction in studies of parties throughout the democratic world, including those far from the original research site and data on which the cartel model was based. The cartel party thesis holds that political parties increasingly function like cartels, employing the resources of the state to limit political competition and ensure their own electoral success. The thesis has been subject to varied empirical testing and to substantial theoretical evaluation and criticism. Against this background, we look again at the cartel party thesis in order to clarify ambiguities in and misinterpretations of the original argument. We also suggest further refinements, specifications and extensions of the argument. Following a background review of the original thesis, we break it down into its core components, and then clarify the terms in which it makes sense to speak of cartelization and collusion. We then go on to explore some of the implications of the thesis for our understanding of contemporary democracies and patterns of party organization and party competition and we identify a possible agenda for future research in party scholarship.

The Challenge to Party Government

At a time when the literature on political parties is brimming with health and vitality, the parties themselves seem to be experiencing potentially severe legitimacy problems and to be suffering from a quite massive withdrawal of popular support and affection. This article addresses one key aspect of the problems facing contemporary parties in Europe, which is the challenge to party government. I begin by reviewing the changing pattern of party competition, in which I discuss the decline of partisanship in policy-making and the convergence of parties into a mainstream consensus. I then look again at the familiar ‘parties-do-matter’ thesis and at the evidence for declining partisanship within the electorate. In the third section of the paper I explore the various attempts to specify the conditions for party government, before going on in the final section to argue that these conditions have been undermined in such a way that it is now almost impossible to imagine party government in contemporary Europe either functioning effectively or sustaining complete legitimacy.

Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy

In their introduction to this volume, Yves Meny and Yves Surel draw a distinction between ‘popular democracy’ and ‘constitutional democracy’, the two pillars on which the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic regimes rest. The popular democracy pillar is identified with an emphasis on the role of the demos that is, the free association of citizens, the maintenance of free elections, and the freedom of political expression. Popular democracy entails government by the people. The constitutional pillar, on the other hand, is identified with an emphasis on the institutional requirements for good governance—the establishment of rules and constraints limiting executive autonomy, the guaranteeing of individual and collective rights, and the maintenance of a system of checks and balances intended to prevent the abuse of power. The constitutional pillar may be associated with the defence of the public good, entailing government for the people. For Meny and Surel, an ideal democracy should aim to establish an equilibrium between both pillars.

The Parameters of Party Systems

Despite the scepticism that increasingly surrounds their role and standing in contemporary democracies, scholarly interest in political parties continues unabated. But this interest is also proving uneven, with relatively little attention now being given to the study of party systems. More specifically, the level of theoretical interest in party systems remains limited, with almost no substantial innovations being made since the publication of Sartoris classic work of 1976. In this article, we seek to redress some of this neglect by identifying the relevant parameters that can be used in the definition of party systems and, possibly, in the explanation of party system change. We then go on to look at the minimum defining characteristics of a system of parties (as opposed to a set of parties) before finally arguing that party systems are best understood as multidimensional phenomena in which we identify and discuss the implications of three types of division — vertical, horizontal and functional.

Political Parties and Party Systems

Within the varied literature that has addressed the relationship between European integration, on the one hand, and the character and development of parties and party systems, on the other, three related concerns have been prominent. In the first place, and often reflecting the earliest tradition of research in this area, scholars have sought to trace the origins and development of transnational — and specifically trans-European — party federations, seeing in these nascent organizations the potential for the emergence of genuine political parties at the European level. The pioneering work in this regard was carried out by Pridham (1975) and Pridham and Pridham (1981) in the period surrounding the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament, and was subsequently further developed by scholars such as Bardi (e.g., 1994) and Hix (e.g., 1995). Second, reflecting a more recent phase of research, scholars have been concerned to analyze the shape and dynamic of the parties and the party systems as they function within the European Parliament. This remains a key and quite dominant strand of contemporary research, with the focus being constantly expanded and reconstituted on the basis of new data derived from roll-call analysis, patterns of alignment, and the shifting memberships of federations and parliamentary fractions. The literature here is also enormous, with pioneering work being carried out by Bardi (1989) and Attina (1990), and with the more sophisticated recent work being well represented in the collection of papers edited by Marks and Steenbergen (2004).

Political Representation and Government in the European Union

This paper addresses two particular aspects of the much debated democratic deficit in European Union (EU) governance – the absence of a system of party government at the European level, whereby parties in the Parliament lack the capacity to effectively control the governing bodies of the EU, and the apparent failings in the capacity of parties at the European level to represent the will of the citizens of Europe. We question the self-evidence of the recommendation that the Union adapt to conventional party government models at the national level and argue that since many of the conditions facilitating the effective fusion of the functions of representation and of control of the government no longer pertain, it may actually prove unwise to seek to replicate this process at the European level. We go on to take issue with the traditional view that the European process of political representation fails mainly because political parties do not compete on so-called European issues. Despite a poor process of political representation at the European level, European elections and political parties appear to serve quite effectively as instruments of political representation. We conclude by suggesting that the effectiveness of political representation at the European level owes much to the absence of party government, such that, paradoxically, one of the most commonly cited aspects of the democratic deficit thereby appears to alleviate the other.

Political parties, popular legitimacy and public privilege

The challenge facing the established party democracies and the apparent growth in popular disenchantment with parties is not a function of party decline as such. Rather, it can be associated with a contradictory development in which parties at one and the same time become less relevant as representative agencies (in terms of both their purposive role and their position on the ground) while achieving more status and privileges in their role as public‐office holders.

The Autonomy of the Political: The Development of the Irish Party System

It is generally accepted that Irish party politics represent a rather incongruous strain within the relatively clear-cut patterns which exist throughout the rest of Western Europe. While some recent research demonstrates a certain limited scope for usefully including Ireland in cross-national comparative frameworks,1 the ultimate uniqueness of the Irish party system in relation to other Western European countries has not been substantially disputed. Much of the difficulty encountered in trying to situate the development of Irish parties within a comparative perspective lies in the problem of definition, in that the two largest parties, Fianna Fdil and Fine Gael, seem incapable of other than sui generis classification, their initial momentum deriving from the positions they adopted in, or as a result of, the civil war.2 The only other major party in Ireland is the Labour party, and while it is classifiable within the cross-national social-democratic tradition, its relative weakness vis-a-vis its larger opponents, and its inability as yet to develop a level of voting support equivalent to most of its European counterparts, simply seem to confirm Irelands anomalous position.