Dan Pavel danestedan@yahoo.

com English Section, II Faculty of Political Science Definitions of political parties

(1)

An organized assembly of men, united for working together for the national interest, according to the particular principle they agreed upon
Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent (1770)

(2) A reunion of men professing the same political doctrine

Benjamin Constant (1816)

(3) A political party is the organization of the most conscious elements of a social class
Marxist definition

(4) le principal champ d'action du parti consiste dans l'agitation tendant enrler du nouveaux membres. Qu'est-ce, en effet, que le parti politique moderne? Une organisation mthodique des masses electorales
Robert Michels, Les parties politiques. Essai sur les tendances oligarchiques des dmocraties (1911, Deutsch edition, 1914, traduit en francais, avec l'accord de l'auteur)

(5) Political parties are voluntary groups, more or less organized, pretending, in name of a certain concept of common interest and society, to assume alone or in a coalition the functions of government
Raymond Aron

(6) a party is an associative relation, an affiliation based on free recruitment. Its goal is to ensure the power for its leaders within an institutionalized group, having as aim the realization of an ideal or obtaining material advantages for its militants
Max Weber

(7) A political party is first of all an organized attempt to get powerBurke obscured the issuebut it is equally just to say that parties are held together by the <<cohesive power of public plunder>>
E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1942), 35-37.

(8) A party is not a group of men who intend to promote public welfare <<upon some principle on which they all agreed>> A party is a group whose members propose to act in concert in the competitive struggle for political power
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), 283

(9) A party is not a community, but a collection of communities, a union of small groups dispersed throughout the country (sections, committees, local associations, etc.), and linked by co-ordonating institutions
Maurice Duverger

(10) Any group of individuals constitutes a party whenever they profess the same political views, they strive to impose them, trying in the same time to rally as many citizens as possible and to conquer power or, at least, to influence its decisions
Georges Bourdeau

(11) a team of men seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining offices in a duly constituted election
Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957)

(12) A party is any group seeking votes under a recognizable label

L. Epstein, Political Parties in Western Democracies

(13) Parties are political groups intent upon gaining and maintaining control of the instrumentalities of government (14) A party is any political group that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through election, candidates for public offices
Giovanni Sartori, Parties and party systems. A Framework for analysis (1976)

(15) the cliques, clubs, and groups of notables sought to capture and control the exercise of political power and in this sense manifested one of the salient characteristics of political parties when we speak of political parties we do not mean a loosely knit group of notables with limited and intermittent relationships to local counterparts. Our definition requires instead (a) continuity in organization that is, an organization whose expected life span is not dependent on the life span of current leaders; (b) manifest and presumably permanent organization at the local level, with regularized communications and other relationships between local and national units; (c) self-conscious determination of leaders at both national and local levels to capture and to hold decision-making power alone or in coalition with others, not simply to influence the exercise of power; and (d) a concern on the part of the organization for seeking followers at the polls or in some manner striving for popular support when we speak of a political party, we are referring to an organization that is locally articulated, that interacts with and seeks to attract the electoral support of the general public, that plays a direct and substantive

role in political recruitment, and that is committed to the capture or maintenance of power, either alone or in coalition with others
LaPalombara, Weiner, The Origin and Development of Political Parties, Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton University Press, 1966)

(16) Parties are organizations aiming mobilization of individuals in a collective action designed against others, having as goal access alone or in coalition to the exercise of power. This collective action and this pretension of ruling public affairs are justified by a particular view on general interest
Jean-Louis Seiler, Les partis politiques

(17) Political parties are the principal institutional means for translating segmental cleavages into the political realm
Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies. A Comparative Exploration (1977)

(18) a political party is an organization that sponsors candidates for political office under the organizations name
Janda, Berry, Goldman, The Challenge of Democracy. Government in America

(19) Institutions that bring people together for the purpose of exercising power within the state. They seek to represent more than just a narrow interest in the society
Internet definition

(20) a political party is an organized group that has as its fundamental aim the attainment of political power and public office for its designated leaders. A political party has a common commitment by its leaders and its membership to a set of political, social, economic and/ or cultural values (an ideology) that distinguish it from other political parties and which supposedly provide the basis for the policies the party proposes to implement and maintain through its members that obtain public office
Paul Johnson

(21) There is nothing to be gained by attempting a precise definition of the term <<party>> at this pointFor the moment it is probably most convenient to consider as <<parties>> all political organizations which regard themselves as parties and which are generally so regarded
Thomas Hodkin, African Political Parties (1961)