Whilst current forms of party do not bind Those who seek office must listen to those who

have the power to grant access. The absence of party signals the absence of democracy, so
Irrespective of voter identification with a party, candidate identification provides a heuristic
which can

This is because those standing for office rely on political parties vast resources to secure
office. From campaigns to media appearances, parties prove to be powerful vehicles for
gaining exposure. But more so, parties prove incredibly flexible in accommodating the
various kinds of electoral systems and representation

ere parties enjoy exclusivity in filling a role, it may be argued that their position reflects a lack
of alternatives, or more optimistically, their effectiveness at performing that role.

The dialectical process that has produced new parties has also produced different kinds of
democracy. The mass party era ushered in what Manin calls party democracy. The current
era of the Catch-all and Cartel party are what Manin calls audience democracy.

As Manin notes, So whilst Manin sees the nature of democracy shifting into one where the
electorate is largely an audience, passively choosing what programmes politicians have
offer, it is still the case, in a democracy, that the electorate holds the remote.an audience
democracyThat the mainsteam parties joined forces and failed to influence voters also
suggests that their mani Analyses of the recent US election frequently cite the irrelevence of
mainstream parties instrumental role that mainstream media and social media played in his
election What was clear was that on policy, Trump was either vague and short on detail or
deliberately provocative. Using Katz and Mairs schema, Trumps Republican victory showed
characteristics of catch-all and cartel party models; in the former, he promised social
amelioration and policy effectiveness, albeit vague. People all over the income distribution
spectrum and surprisingly across both genders voted for Trump. He was able to aggregate
and articulate their interests and grievances effectively. Also, his positioning as an antiestablishment outsider proved appealing to a significant chunk of voters who felt
disenfranchsed and neglected. He was both a party and an anti-party candidate. To the
extent that he ran as a Republican and was nominated to contest for election, he was a party
candidate. To the extent that he positioned himself as an outsider, he was not. This complex
intertwining of conflicting and corresponding cleavages In the latter, his campaign
emphasized his business management skills and by extension, his personality as a tough
negotiator who tells it like it is. At the same time, it rejected some of the characteristics of

politics as profession; the anti-establishment appeal of his candidacy suggested that the
electorate were disillusioned with career politicians. His wealth also seemed to signal his
prospective independence from financial influences in getting elected and performing his
duty as president. The cartel party model sees the party as an agent of state but Trumps
candidacy would appear to be reversing this process and turning it back to the electorate.
Whilst the electorate no longer dictates policy and as a consequence the actions of those in
office, the reality is that parties seek to remain in power and rely on elections for that
purpose. In making appeals, parties still perform the task of aggregating and articulating the
interests of voters which helps inform the design of their policies. So whilst Manin sees the
nature of democracy shifting into one where the electorate is largely an audience, passively
choosing what programmes politicians have offer, it is still the case, in a democracy, that the
electorate holds the remote. Representation itself may take different forms, from trusteeship
to delegation.

politicians are seen to skillfully navigate media channels and seek to identify and exploit
existing or non-existent cleavages which can mobilize support.
e public, being ill-equipped to understand and analyse the content of the policies simply go
with that sounds best. In this way, media skill
There also exists the threat of being voted out of office and whilst the decoupling of
collective identity to policy has made accountability less direct, voters still pass judgement on
outcomes and in order to satisfy voters, parties must be seen
Whereas mass parties had their policy platformed predetermined by the social cleavages
which carved out the sections of the electorate they represented, catch-all parties require
that politicians interact with the electorate to find and exploit pain points which can be used
to mobilise support.

Therefore, the representation style characteristic of mass parties is no longer appropriate if a

party is to remain competitive and relevant.
As a result, the catch-all party has emerged
Parties relied on donations from their members to remain operational and membership itself
Parties reflected divisions in society Parties best performed the representative role when
elected members of public office acted as delegates of sections of civil society which found
unity in
However, theirAssessing how well they perform is further complicated by the fact that a
partys role is functional. As such it is implicated by the economic, social and governmental
frameworks within it operates. This means the external conditions As such, it will be
necessary to confine this analysis to political parties in Western representative democracies.
One way to evaluate the functions is to look at how well parties perform them in comparison
to others. Where parties face a growing challenge to their function, it may be argued that an
inadequacy of performing that role is stimulating the strength of this challenge. Conversely,
where parties enjoy exclusivity in filling a role, it may be argued that their position reflects a

lack of alternatives, or more optimistically, their effectiveness at performing that role.

Accordingly, the decline of party identification in the electorates of Western democracies
suggests that their representative role is on the decline. On the other hand, that there are no
alternative ways recruiting leaders except
This dialogue is the essence of representative government, whose aim, according to Manin,
is to subject those who govern to the verdict of those who are governed. This verdict is
subjected through elections where the governed can express their satisfaction or lack
thereof through voting. Parties can be said to facilitate this process in the instrumental roles
they play in setting the agenda and presenting voters with a choice. This is preceded by the
creation of policies, and the aggregation and articulation of voter interests which inform
them.
Sartori defines a political party as any political group that presents at elections, and is
capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office.
However, there these functions presents some difficulties because the role of political parties
exists in a mutually constitutive relationship to the type of representative government in a
particular polity. it implies that there exists a set of functions that parties are expected to
perform which can all be evaluated in relation to a standard
The latter function is more directly connected to representative government, which Manin
broadly defines as the subjection of the governors to the verdict of the governed. In this
view, parties provide a framework within which the electorate can evaluate the elected. The
challenge in identifying the role parties play in the working of representative government
liesParties have often been define

Sartori defines a political party as any political group that presents at elections, and is
capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office.
A major challenge in assessing how well parties perform their functions in representative
governments lies in defining exactly what a political party is. This is because parties have
changed
The role of democracy/democratization
they have long operated as the key mechanism for political
representation, the organization of government, and the maintenance
of democratic accountability. Even when it is argued that many of the
parties in these
Parties have played a major role as makers of governments and makers
of democratic government
does not deny their importance for the longterm
development and stabilization of these democracies. Hence,
unplanned. Parties became

The role they play has over time changed. Viewed in phases, a particular type of party has
emerged (in response to?) we contend that the development of parties in western
democracies has been reflective of a dialectical process in which each new party type
generates a reaction that stimulates further development, thus leading to yet
another new party type, and to another set of reactions, and so on. From this perspective,
the mass party is simply one stage in a continuing process. We also argue that the factors
facilitating this dialectic do not derive solely from changes in civil society, but also from
changes in the relations between parties and the state. In particular, we argue that there has
been a tendency in recent years towards an ever closer symbiosis between parties and the
state, and that this then sets the stage for the emergence of a new party type, which we
identify as 'the cartel party' (`katz and mair)

The aim of representative government, as Manin says, is to subject those who govern to the
verdict of those who are governed. By providing a channel of communication between the
governors and the governed, political parties, and thus, the role that political parties play in
this process will be the principal focus of this essay.
means of expression along with the process of democratisation of politics

Parties typically seen as performing a range of functions which can be divided into 2
spheres; institutional and representative. These include the integration and
mobilization of the citizenry; the articulation and aggregation of
interests; the formulation of public policy; and the recruitment of
political leaders. To these can also be added the function of organizing
parliament and government, since this is an especially important role
for parties in parliamentary democracies in particular
Second, it might be argued that the role and importance of parties
in all democracies will tend to reflect the prevailingand also
increasingly standardizedsocial, economic, and governmental
circumstances in which these parties compete. These common circumstances
include the availability of technological and other resources
and the impact of globalization, individualization, and mass communication.
In this view, we can expect to find substantial similarities
among parties competing in contemporary democracies regardless of
their location or stage of democratization. Echoes of this perspective
may be seen in the emphasis placed by Michael Coppedge on the
dynamics of political Darwinism in Latin America

Although parties and party systems can be compared and contrasted

along a variety of different dimensions, as Hans Daalder emphasizes in
chapter 2, a concern with party roles and importance inevitably requires
a particular focus on the functions that parties perform, or that they may
be expected to perform
According
to Giovanni Sartoris minimal definition, for example, a party is any
political group that presents at elections, and is capable of placing
through elections, candidates for public office.5
It follows, therefore,
that to define a party is not necessarily to specify its various functions,
and to identify the functions that parties perform is not necessarily to
specify the character of these parties. These are two quite separate
inquiries, and it is perfectly reasonable to conceive of a set of actors, all
of which merit being defined as parties, yet each of which in practice
performs very different functions in their respective polities. Indeed,
According to Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond
in chapter 1, for example, parties may be categorized as elite parties,
mass-based parties, ethnicity-based parties, or electoral parties.
In the Latin American case, for example, as in Italy and Turkey,
we see the coexistence of a variety of different party categories, and
hence, we must assume, the coexistence also of different party functions.
increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to find any
parties whatsoever. Part of the difficulty here is that the functions
classically ascribed to political parties (which we detail later in this
chapter) are in fact those that were most readily associated with a
particular type of partythe classic mass party, as described by Maurice
Duverger, Sigmund Neumann, and Otto Kirchheimer.6 And given that
the age of the mass party has now passed within the established
democracies, and (as many of the earlier chapters testify) that there is
very little evidence that genuine mass parties can or have emerged in
more newly democratized polities, we then risk being left with a situation
in which no party remains that properly fulfills our expectations
It might also be argued that in assessing the role and importance of
parties in a given polity, we should not be so concerned with whether a
particular function is performed by parties as such, but rather with the
extent to which that function remains a monopoly of parties, as opposed
to being shared with other nonparty organizations or agencies. In other
words, what matters is the extent to which parties enjoy more or less
exclusive control with respect to certain functions, and the extent to
which their role is now challenged or supplanted.

On the one hand, parties may be seen to perform a variety of

representative functions, including interest articulation, aggregation,
and policy formulation. On the other hand, they also perform a variety
of procedural or institutional functions, including the recruitment of
political leaders and the organization of parliament and government.8

Historical contingency has seen diff types of party emerge, each performing both roles to
varying degrees.
Problem with evaluating how well they perform the role; assumes implicitly a normative
conception of the roles parties ought to perform within democratic institutions. It is left
without scope for accommodating changes - rather it understands any shifts negatively, as
evidence of decline, as opposed to evolution or adaptation. Linked with literature citing
decline of party. Since the role parties play have shifted over time vs being static, their role
today can only be understood in relation to their function in contemporary western
democratic governments. Confine analysis to contemporary Western democracies
Representative institutions aimed to subject those who govern to the verdict of those who
are governed (Manin).
Party and democracy