Political Parties Quiz

Political Parties: Coordinating Policy Priorities and Candidates for Government Positions

• Political parties coordinate candidates to compete in a particular country's elections and promote specific ideological or policy goals.

• They have become a major part of the politics of almost every country, and it's extremely rare for a country to have no political parties.

• Parties can develop from existing divisions in society and streamline the process of making political decisions by encouraging their members to cooperate.

• Parties usually include a party leader, party executives, and party members, and there are many different ways in which political parties can be structured and interact with the electorate.

• Many political parties are motivated by ideological goals, and common ideologies of large political parties include liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, populism, nationalism, and Islamism.

• Political parties are collective entities that organize competitions for political offices and are distinguished from other political groups and clubs by their focus on electing candidates.

• Modern political parties are considered to have emerged around the end of the 18th century in Europe and the United States of America.

• By the early 19th century, a number of countries had developed stable modern party systems, and political parties expanded dramatically in the 20th century.

• Political parties are a nearly ubiquitous feature of modern countries, and their existence is almost a law of politics.

• Political parties arise from pre-existing divisions among people, and the formation of parties provides compatible incentives for candidates and legislators.

• Parties may be necessary for many individuals to participate in politics because they provide a massively simplifying heuristic, which allows people to make informed choices with much less mental effort than if voters had to consciously evaluate the merits of every candidate individually.

• Political parties are often structured in similar ways across countries, with a single party leader, a group of party executives, and a community of party members.Overview of Political Parties

• Political parties are a central institution in democratic and autocratic countries, and can be classified into different types based on their organizational structure, goals, and ideologies.

• Party membership is a way for citizens to affiliate with a specific political party and participate in party leadership and campaigns.

• Different types of political parties include cadre parties, mass parties, catch-all parties, cartel parties, niche parties, and entrepreneurial parties.

• Political parties adopt ideologies to differentiate themselves from one another and signal their policy goals to voters.

• Common ideologies include liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism, feminism, environmentalism, nationalism, fundamentalism, Islamism, and multiculturalism.

• Non-ideological parties may focus on clientelism, patronage, or representational politics.

• A country's party system is its collection of political parties and can be characterized by the number and types of parties that have a chance of holding power.

• Non-partisan systems have no political parties or do not rely heavily on political parties.

• One-party systems have only one political party that holds power, either through a ban on other parties or through dominance in free elections.

• Two-party systems have only two parties that have a realistic chance of competing to form government, and may be shaped by a country's political institutions.

• The number of parties in a country can be estimated based on the effective number of parties, which factors in the strength of each party.Overview of Political Parties and Systems

• Two-party systems have been criticized for limiting the choices of electors and for being associated with restrictive political institutions.

• Multi-party systems are systems in which more than two parties have a realistic chance of holding power and influencing policy.

• Many of the largest democracies in the world have had long periods of multi-party competition, including India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil.

• The presence of many competing political parties is usually associated with a greater level of democracy.

• Funding involved in political parties can be very substantial, with contemporary elections in the largest democracies typically costing billions or even tens of billions of dollars.

• Common sources of party funding across countries include dues-paying party members, advocacy groups and lobbying organizations, corporations, trade unions, and candidates who may self-fund activities.

• Nearly all of the 180 countries examined by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance have some form of public funding for political parties, and about a third have regular payments of government funds that go beyond campaign reimbursements.

• Parties often spend money to train activists, recruit volunteers, create and deploy advertisements, conduct research, and support their leadership in between elections, and promote their policy agenda.

• Fundraising and expenditures by political parties are typically regulated by governments, with many countries' regulations focusing on who can contribute money to parties, how parties' money can be spent, and how much of it can pass through the hands of a political party.

• Nearly all political parties associate themselves with specific colours and symbols, primarily to aid voters in identifying, recognizing, and remembering the party.

• However, associations between colour and ideology can also be inconsistent: parties of the same ideology in different countries often use different colours, and sometimes competing parties in a country may even adopt the same colours.

• These associations also have major exceptions. For example, in the United States, red is associated with the more conservative Republican Party while blue is associated with the more left-leaning Democratic Party.