Cartel party

This article deals with the term in its general political science meaning. For the German electoral alliance in the 1880s, see cartel parties .

Kartellpartei is an ideal term used in political science party research. The party researchers Richard S. Katz (Johns Hopkins University) and Peter Mair (University of Leiden) introduced this type of party into the discourse in the 1990s in order to describe the changes in parties in Western Europe . Your contribution is powerful both in the political -scientific discussion of decline and crisis related to the development of the parties and in the discussion about the transformation of the party democracies themselves.

starting point

The starting point is the idea that the established parties react to their increasingly declining social anchoring (lower number of members, reduced contribution assumptions, increased volatility, weakened ties to social groups and actors) by turning to the state in order to gain new resources (in particular state party funding) To be able to tap compensation. In addition, the strategic behavior of the parties across party boundaries should change in favor of cooperation with one another, so that they can cooperate out of their own self-interest and defend and expand the state resources gained against new parties. Because of this joint distribution of resources and a “merger” with the state sphere, one can speak of a party cartel.

Cartel party thesis after Katz and Mair

Katz and Mair assumed a four-phase historical development of the parties: phase (1) of the dignitary parties (or elite parties) in the 19th century was followed by (2) the mass integration parties from around 1880–1960 and (3) the Catch-all parties (or people 's parties ) since 1945. The fourth phase since the 1970s would be the (4) cartel parties. These phases result from features of the organizational structure, the political role in the democratic process and the competitive behavior of the parties. According to Katz and Mair, the transition to the fourth stage - i.e. the type of cartel party - can be explained for exogenous and endogenous reasons. The exogenous reasons include, in particular, the socio-economic and socio-cultural upheavals of recent decades: the development of industrial society towards a knowledge-based service society, increasing secularization, individualization processes that differentiate society according to lifestyles, and the strengthening of post-materialistic values. The loyalty of the voters to the parties decreased due to the weakening of the milieu and thus the “reliability” at the ballot box. In addition, the political participation behavior in society changed in the direction of topic-specific project orientation, which only harmonizes to a limited extent with traditional, committee-oriented engagement in parties. However, the authors also count endogenous reasons - i.e. reasons that are the responsibility of the parties themselves - as the causes of the transformation into the cartel party. The strategic opening of the parties in the 1950s and 1960s in favor of the broadest and most heterogeneous electorate possible, which is considered to be the basic condition for the change towards the People's Party (best-known example: Godesberg Program of the SPD ), thus deliberately forced the loosening of social ties to the parties. This strategy has been taking revenge since the mid-1970s, as confidence in politics was already scratched due to mass unemployment and low economic growth and the parties have been under pressure ever since, which they have to counter all the less due to their forced loosening of milieu ties.

Democracy-theoretical context

The authors also place the developments of the parties towards cartel parties in a context of democracy theory. In doing so, they depict a relativization of the importance of electoral defeats on three levels. On the one hand, due to the continuous and cooperative cooperation of the parties, the party cartel produces proportionality rules and routines that de facto enable government participation as "opposition parties". Significant shifts in content due to changes in government are thus also impaired. Ultimately, the material repercussions due to electoral defeats will also lose importance, since the party cartel will distribute state resources independently of these and increase them overall.

criticism

The most prominent critic of this model was probably Ruud Koole , who above all missed a clear definition and the empirical delimitation from other party types. With regard to the empirical examination of the cartel party, reference should also be made to the study by Klaus Detterbeck , who, in addition to an empirical foundation of the theoretical construct, also developed a further development and a specified definition of cartel party. This focuses on the parties' turning to the state sphere and their self-interested cooperation. This streamlining of the definition of the cartel party is based on its central empirical results. Detterbeck shows that a convergence between the established major parties is indeed discernible, but this can only be identified within the countries while maintaining international differences and differences between the various party families, i.e. national convergence with constant divergence in comparison with Western Europe. According to his results, one cannot speak of a social decoupling of the parties either: the membership principle and constant priority social ties (e.g. social democracy and trade unions) can still be established. Another key result concerns the exclusion of new parties assumed by Katz and Mair. Empirically, no exclusion of the parties can be observed, but rather an "education" of the parties in terms of behavior in accordance with the cartel. New parties are thus integrated into the cartel (access to state resources, inclusion in cooperative arrangements) and not attempted to be left outside.

literature

• Klaus Detterbeck: The Change of Political Parties in Western Europe. A comparative study of organizational structures, political role and competitive behavior of major parties in Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and Switzerland 1966–1990 . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3209-3 .
• Peter Mair, Richard S. Katz: Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy . The Emergence of the Cartel Party. In: Party Politics , Vol. 1 (1995), Issue 1, pp. 5-28.