T407016 // Autumn 2026 // Université de Genève
Comparative
Politics
Session 07. Parties and representation.
Quiz first
Sessions 05 and 06. Linz 1990, Cheibub and Limongi 2002, Lijphart 2012, and Carey and Hix 2011.
Ten questions worth 2 points each. Six single choice and four select all that apply.
Closed book. Phones and laptops away. Write your name and student number at the top of the sheet.
Your best three of the five quizzes count. Pens down when time is called.
Last week, this week
- Lijphart on how electoral systems turn votes into seats
- Carey and Hix on small districts that serve representation and accountability at once
- Katz and Mair on how party organization changed, from the mass party to the cartel party
- What the cartel means for democracy, and who challenges it
- One group exercise
Last week's rules decided how many parties win seats. This week asks what those parties have become and whom they answer to.
Think of the parties in your own country
What is a political party for?
Whose interests does it speak for?
Who pays its bills?
What does it lose when it loses an election?
Decline, or a new kind of party?
Parties judged by their roots
Since Ostrogorski, parties have been classified by their ties to civil society, with the mass party as the standard. Falling membership and weaker loyalties then read as decline.
Parties judged by their ties to the state too
Each party type provokes a reaction that produces the next. The mass party was tied to a conception of democracy and an ideal of social structure that no longer fit postindustrial societies.
"The mass party is simply one stage in a continuing process."
They treat party development as a dialectic with no end point. The newest stage grows out of an ever closer symbiosis between parties and the state.
From civil society to the state
Elite party
Committees of the few who ran both the state and civil society. Trustees.
Mass party
Rooted in civil society and bridging to the state. Delegates of one segment.
Catch-all party
Brokers standing between civil society and the state. Entrepreneurs.
Cartel party
Absorbed by the state and living on its resources. Agents of the state.
"Parties have now become semi-state agencies."
The first three panels follow the article's Figures 1 to 3. The fourth draws Table 1's "party becomes part of state." Each type grew out of a reaction to the one before.
Numbers against notables
| Cadre party | Mass party | |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | A few well-connected supporters | Large numbers of members |
| Money | Large individual patrons | Many small membership fees |
| Communication | Personal networks | Its own party press |
| Who leads | Notables who also run the state | The party outside parliament, through its congress |
| Representative | Trustee of a single national interest | Delegate of one segment of society |
"Elections became choices of delegates rather than trustees."
Duverger expected a "contagion from the left" that would force every party to copy the mass party. The old parties copied the form, with members, branches and a congress, and kept the parliamentary party in charge.
A victim of its own success
- The big battles for political and social rights were won, and the solidarity they had built faded.
- The welfare state took over services that the party and its network used to provide.
- Better living conditions, mobility and mass media blurred once distinct constituencies.
- Leaders who had tasted office wanted to keep winning and reached beyond their original base.
- People join because they agree with the policies, and membership becomes one affiliation among many.
- Television lets leaders appeal to every voter directly.
- In government the party is "Janus-like." It carries demands to the bureaucracy and defends the bureaucracy's policies to the public.
The party trades "effectiveness in depth for a wider audience and more immediate electoral success."
Kirchheimer's phrase. Unions now deal with whichever party governs. In the pluralist view that grew up alongside it, party oligarchy "becomes a virtue rather than a vice."
The state pays
Brokers have interests of their own. A party that can manipulate the state for its clients can also manipulate it for itself.
Parties in government set both the rules for state funding and the amounts. Access to state-regulated broadcasting works the same way.
The state "becomes an institutionalized structure of support, sustaining insiders while excluding outsiders."
The risk is dependence, since losing office could now cost a party its income. Yet all parties can survive together, and that makes the conditions ideal for a cartel.
Nobody is ever out
- Almost all substantial parties now count as governing parties, especially once regional and local government is included.
- Opposition rarely cuts a party off from state spoils, patronage, media or subsidies. Ireland and the UK even give opposition parties more subsidy.
- The cartel party combines "the interpenetration of party and state" with "a pattern of inter-party collusion."
Their estimate, pending closer study
A tradition of inter-party cooperation, generous state support and party patronage.
Adversary politics, limited state support and limited patronage.
A footnote adds that Labour, long shut out of office, has grown friendlier to PR, which would break the two-party monopoly. As in Session 06, parties choose the electoral rules.
Rivals who share
The major parties shared patronage, sometimes with the Communists, who were ostensibly in opposition.
The four main parties share the seats of the Federal Council and rotate its presidency.
The parties share appointments of mayors.
Redistricting in many states draws "incumbent protection" gerrymanders.
Parties compete knowing they share "a mutual interest in collective organizational survival."
Sometimes there is even "a positive incentive not to compete." Campaigns become capital intensive, professional and centralized, and state money pays for more of them.
Members as individuals
The line between members and supporters blurs. Leaders point to a large, formally empowered membership to legitimize their position.
The center leaves local parties a free hand on local matters. Local leaders stay out of national affairs, because the center can appeal to members directly.
Picture a party "that manages all of its business from a single central headquarters, and which simply subdivides its mailing list."
In the mass party, members held the elite to account from the bottom up. Cartel party members are "valued for contribution to legitimizing myth."
Four models side by side
| Elite party | Mass party | Catch-all party | Cartel party | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Period | 19th century | 1880 to 1960 | 1945 onward | 1970 onward |
| Goals of politics | Distribution of privileges | Social reformation, or opposition to it | Social amelioration | Politics as profession |
| Basis of competition | Ascribed status | Representative capacity | Policy effectiveness | Managerial skills, efficiency |
| Electoral competition | Managed | Mobilization | Competitive | Contained |
| Party work | Irrelevant | Labor intensive | Labor and capital intensive | Capital intensive |
| Main resources | Personal contacts | Members' fees and contributions | Contributions from many sources | State subventions |
| Members and elite | The elite are the members | Bottom up, elite accountable to members | Top down, members as cheerleaders | Stratarchy, mutual autonomy |
| Communication | Interpersonal networks | The party's own channels | Competes for non-party channels | Privileged access to state-regulated channels |
| Representative style | Trustee | Delegate | Entrepreneur | Agent of state |
These are polar types. Real parties approximate them, and older types live on beside newer ones. Which column fits the largest party in your country today?
Democracy as a service
| Mass party | Catch-all party | Cartel party | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voters | Pick a party's program in advance | Judge leaders on their record | Choose from "a fixed menu of political parties" |
| Parties | Agents of a social group | Brokers among organized interests | "Partnerships of professionals" |
| Elections | Hold the government accountable to the people | Choose between teams of leaders | Renew leaders peacefully and send rulers feedback |
Democracy becomes "a service provided by the state for civil society."
No major party is ever definitively out, which weakens voters' power to punish anyone. "Stability becomes more important than triumph; politics becomes a job rather than a vocation."
The cartel breeds its challengers
- Parties stop carrying demands from civil society. Interest organizations take over, and neocorporatism brings unions and employers inside the system.
- Demands the coopted groups will not voice feed new organizations, often short lived and strident.
- Barriers to newcomers, such as subsidies tied to past results or limits on ballot access, can hand the excluded a weapon.
D66 in the Netherlands, the Liberal Democrats in the UK, the Progressive Democrats in Ireland and many Green parties. Most proved willing to join the establishment they had attacked.
Vlaams Blok, the French National Front and the Austrian Freedom Party among others. They gain mileage from attacking the "cosy" deals among established parties.
"These new protesters do not represent a challenge to party; their protest is, after all, organized by party."
Perot in the United States and the Reform Party in Canada ran on a demand to "break the mould." Katz and Mair conclude that the challenge falls on cartel parties in particular.
A parliamentary commission on party finance asks your group for advice
Do the four older parties form a cartel, and should parliament pass their funding bill?
Since 1985 all four older parties have governed, in shifting coalitions at the national level and in the regions. Last year Clean Slate won 9 percent of the vote and 14 of 150 seats, campaigning to end "the cozy deal." Members are counted per 100 of each party's voters.
| Party | Origin | Members 1985 | Members now | State share of income | Leader chosen by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social Democrats | Trade unions, 1902 | 21 | 3 | 72% | Postal ballot of members |
| People's Party | Notables in parliament, 1871 | 6 | 2 | 64% | Parliamentary group |
| Christian Union | Church and farm groups, 1919 | 15 | 4 | 70% | Postal ballot of members |
| Greens | Protest movement, 1983 | 9 | 5 | 58% | Congress delegates |
| Clean Slate | A TV host, 2023 | none | 7 | 0% | Its founder, uncontested |
State funding for parties rises by a third. Only parties that won seats at each of the last two elections qualify. Airtime on public television is shared in proportion to seats.
Cut state funding in half and give every party on the ballot equal airtime.
Katz and Mair, Table 1. Rows to use · main resources · members and elite · communication · position between civil society and state · representative style
- Place the Social Democrats and the People's Party on Table 1, where each started and where it stands now. Which facts in the file place them?
- Make Katz and Mair's case that the four older parties form a cartel. Which facts fit, and what evidence is still missing?
- Predict what the bill would do to Clean Slate. Then decide as a group how you would vote on the bill and on the counter-proposal.
The country, parties and figures are invented.
Before Thursday 12 November
Week 09. Interest groups and who gets the policy they want.
Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin I. Page. 2014. "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens." Perspectives on Politics 12(3), 564-581.
Baumgartner, Frank R., Jeffrey M. Berry, Marie Hojnacki, David C. Kimball, and Beth L. Leech. 2009. Lobbying and Policy Change. University of Chicago Press, chapter 1.
- Reading week. No class.
- Week 9 class on interest groups
- Complement on hypotheses and how they are evaluatedM2170
- Quiz 4 opens the class. It covers Weeks 07 and 09.
Progress saved
Questions?
Office hours Thursdays 14:30 to 16:00 in M4328
Rate each group member's participation in today's exercise. Required before you leave the room.