Interest party

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As interest parties or - pejoratively - clientele parties (similar to Max Weber: Patronage Party ) those political organizations are designated, whose program is individual to representation - especially economic - interests limited their followers. On the one hand, the interest party can be distinguished from the People's Party , in which different social classes and professional groups are represented. On the other hand, a distinction is made between the clientele party and a program party in which the ideological orientation is identity-creating.

Interest parties played a certain role in the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany in the beginning ( Federation of Displaced Persons - BHE). In addition to the family party, there are other, so far hardly significant groups. The Gray Panthers , an interest party of pensioners , achieved some fame, but they were formally dissolved in 2008 and split into two smaller groups after years of fraud by the management of the party and subsequent repayment demands had driven them into bankruptcy. At the same time, several new interest groups of senior citizens were founded, some of which have several thousand members (e.g. the RRP ), but have so far not achieved results in the range of less than one percent in elections.

While the Union parties have been people's parties since the 1950s (from which the NPD split off in 1964 ), the SPD ( from 1890 ) developed from an interest party for workers and small employees into a people's party in the 1960s and 70s. The FDP is seen as a "distinct medium-sized interest party" or even as a "clientele party", a tendency that has intensified since the end of the social-liberal coalition. In particular, the interests of organized doctors, pharmacists and real estate agents have since been represented by the FDP. In contrast, the Greens are generally classified primarily as a theme party or - at least initially - as a program party. The Pirate Party Germany entered into 2006 as a 'soft themed party'.

In the Weimar Republic , between 1924 and 1930, the interest parties received more than 10% of the vote. They represented the interests of the middle class ( Economic Party ), those affected by inflation ( People's Rights Party ) or agriculture ( Landbund , Christian National Peasant and Rural People's Party , Bavarian Farmers' Union ). After 1930 they lost most of their voters to the NSDAP .

In electoral sociology, the interest parties of the Weimar Republic are therefore often referred to as "intermediate hosts" who were elected by many voters on the way from the bourgeois parties ( DDP , DVP , DNVP ) to the NSDAP.

Individual evidence

  1. M.-L. Recker: History of the Federal Republic of Germany, p. 26.
  2. G. Lehmbruch: Party competition in the federal state, p. 51.
  3. G. Lehmbruch: Party competition in the federal state, p. 51 f.
  4. Founding minutes of the Pirate Party Germany (pdf; 2.0 MB) accessed on July 11, 2018