Cartel party theory
The term cartel party shall name an ideal type of party type of party political science research. The political scientist Richard S. Katz ( Johns Hopkins University) and Peter Mair (University of Leiden) led those type of party in the 1990s in the discourse to describe the change of parties in Western Europe. Your contribution is potently both in the related parties on the development of political science decline and crisis debate and as in the discussion of the transformation of the party democracies themselves.
Starting point
The starting point is the idea that the established parties (lower number of members decreased contribution assumptions, increased volatility, weakened ties to social groups and actors) with a turn to the state to respond to their increasingly diminishing social bases, leading to new resources (especially state party financing ) for be able to tap equalization. In addition, the strategic behavior of the parties to change across party lines in favor of cooperation among themselves, so that they cooperate in respective self-interest and defend the resources won state against new parties and be able to expand. Because of this joint distribution of resources and a "merger" with the state's sphere can be spoken by a party cartel.
Cartel party thesis according to Katz and Mair
Katz and Mair went from a four -phase historical development of the parties: In the phase ( 1 ) of the notables (or elite parties ) in the 19th century, followed by (2 ) of the mass integration parties from about 1880 to 1960, and (3 ) the catch-all parties (or political parties ) since 1945. A fourth phase since the 1970s would the (4 ) of the cartel parties follow. These phases result from characteristics of the organizational structure, the political role in the democratic process and the competitive behavior of the parties. The transition to the fourth stage - ie the type of the cartel party - can be determined by Katz and Mair from exogenous and endogenous reasons out explain. The exogenous reasons, they include in particular the socio -economic and socio - cultural changes of the last decades: development of industrial society to a knowledge-based service economy, increasing secularization, the company for various life styles ausdifferenzierende individualization processes and strengthening post- materialist values . Voters ties to the parties thus left on the weakening environment by embossing and thus the " reliability " at the ballot box. Moreover, the political participation behavior change in society towards thematic project orientation that harmonizes only partly with traditional, oriented to bodies involvement in parties. However, the authors also include endogenous - that remains the responsibility of the parties themselves - reasons to the causes of transformation in the cartel party. The strategic opening party in the 1950s and 1960s in favor of the broadest and most heterogeneous electorate, which is considered as the fundamental condition of change towards the People's Party ( the best known example: Godesberg Program of the SPD ), thus forced aware of the loosening of social ties to the parties. Since the mid- 1970s, now revenge this strategy as a result of mass unemployment and low economic growth confidence in the policy was scratched anyway and the parties since then are under pressure they have due to their accelerated relaxation of the environment binding the less oppose.
Democracy Theoretical Context
The authors organize the developments of the parties towards cartel parties further in a democratic theory context. Here they are characterized by a relativization of the importance of electoral defeats on three levels. On one hand, the party cartel produced due to the continuous and cooperative working together of the parties proportional representation rules and routines, the de facto government participation also allows as " opposition parties ". Significant substantive shifts to government changes are thus also affected. Ultimately lose the physical effects due to electoral defeats in importance, as the party cartel state resources are distributed independently of each other and this will increase overall is.
Criticism
The most prominent critic of this model was probably Ruud Koole, who missed a clear definition and the empirical delineation to other types of parties mainly. To assess the effects of the cartel party is also to refer to the study by Klaus Detterbecks, who also developed a development and a specified definition of cartel party next to an empirical grounding of the theoretical construct. This is the turning of the parties to the state sphere as well as their own interested cooperation to the center. This streamlining of the cartel party definition is rooted in its central empirical results. Detterbeck to show that a convergence between the established major parties do actually seen this but only within countries is identified in maintaining international differences and differences among the various party families, read: national convergence at the steady divergence in the Western European comparison. Also, one can not speak of a social disengagement of the parties according to its results: Members principle and consistent priority social connections (eg social democracy and trade unions) are observed as before. Another important result concerns the exclusion adopted by Katz and Mair new parties. Empirically, we can observe in the sense antitrust compliance challenge no exclusion of the parties, but an "education " of the parties. New parties are thus integrated into the cartel ( access to state resources, involvement in cooperative arrangements ) and does not try vorzulassen outside.