6 Political Parties and Party Systems
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to consider the experience of Third World
countries with political parties, the most important institutions of political
mobilization in the context of mass politics. Whatever the nature of a civil-
ian regime – whether based on the principles and institutions of liberal par-
liamentary politics, monopolistic forms of political leadership, or on some
interpretation of Marxism–Leninism – political parties reflect the fact that
government is no longer the prerogative of an hereditary élite or alien oli-
garchy but rests to some degree on the support or mobilization of the
masses. Parties emerge whenever the notion of political power comes to
include the idea that ‘the mass public must participate or be controlled’
(LaPalombara and Weiner, 1966, p. 3).
A party may mobilize and control support through ideological devices or
even repression, but it has to be managed so that power can be captured and
the legitimacy of constitutional office secured. The objectives of parties
may be many and varied, seeking revolutionary change or maintaining the
status quo, but they all require the mobilization of mass support. Parties
accommodate demands for greater political participation and, in various
ways including repression and patronage, help manage the conflict that
such mass participation in politics inevitably produces. Political parties are
both a consequence of a process of political change and a cause of further
change by increasing a society’s capacity to cope with crises of integration,
participation and distribution (LaPalombara and Weiner, 1966, pp. 41–2).
Defining a political party is difficult, especially in the Third World,
because of the immense variety that is found (Apter, 1965, pp. 180–1).
A satisfactory definition is that provided by Coleman and Rosberg (and
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