People's party (party type)

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As People's Party is known in German politics science a party that all social strata, generations and different world views, in principle, is open to voters and members. This distinguishes it from other party types such as the class or interest party and the dignitary party . The term People's Party was first used in this sense by the political scientist Dolf Sternberger .

According to Dieter Nohlen , People's Party is “a self-designation of major parties such as the SPD, CDU and CSU, which strive for as many votes as possible for strategic majorities by expanding their electoral base. Their political rhetoric and advertising self-portrayal are based on the claim to take in broad strata of the electorate across all classes and to unite ideologically and to want to represent their diversity of interests in a balanced way. "

The term People's Party for this type of party is only used in Germany. In Austria and Switzerland, the term is used because there are significant parties that have the People's Party in their name ( Austrian People's Party , Swiss People's Party , Christian Democratic People's Party ). In Austria, the ÖVP and social democrats are traditionally called large parties , in Switzerland the term Bundesratspartei is used for parties that are represented in the state government ; these are also the larger parties.

Related, but not completely identical, are the English terms catch-all party ( Otto Kirchheimer also used the German term “Allerweltspartei”) or big tent party .

Emergence

In some Western democracies , so-called people's parties emerged in the course of the 20th century, when existing parties opened up to a broader range of voters and members, as well as the merger of smaller political groups. Examples of this in Germany are the CDU / CSU , which saw itself from the beginning as a non-denominational people's party (in contrast to the Catholic center ), as well as the SPD , which changed from the interest party of the workers to a people's party through the Godesberg program . B. for the first time expressly addressed Christians and small business owners. The Socialist Party in France can be seen as an example of the formation of a people's party through the amalgamation of several smaller parties (with simultaneous opening to a broader electorate) .

As a rule, the impetus for developing into a people's party was the aim of improving the prospects in the political competition between the parties and, in particular, of tapping into a greater potential for votes in elections.

Originated within Germany

There are two different approaches that explain the development from a mass party , as it emerged at the time of industrialization , to a people's party.

Positive consensus

The positive consensus according to Otto Kirchheimer is based on the assumption that after the end of the Second World War in the Federal Republic of Germany the social basis of the parties ceased to exist due to a change in values ​​and a change in the social structure. The basis of the mass integration parties SPD and the center consisted almost exclusively of workers and Catholics and was therefore relatively sharply defined. Working families only voted for the SPD because it was the only party that could and wanted to represent their interests. The bond with the party was therefore extremely strong and the consequence was that voters always remained loyal to “their” party for traditional reasons alone.

This changed after Kirchheimer because the working class itself changed with the advent of the social market economy . The class-specific form of the worker in the large factory continued to decrease in numbers and was replaced by more civil servants, employees and skilled workers with good qualifications. They are less and less willing to commit themselves to a particular party. Rather, what counts are the expected competence of a party and values ​​such as the credibility of the candidates.

These socio-structural changes weakened the lines of conflict ( cleavages ) that made the ideological class struggle of the 19th and early 20th centuries possible. The social market economy represents the positive consensus that connects all strata of the population. The common goal is economic prosperity and consumption for everyone and everyone agrees that there can only be one legitimate means of the social market economy for this. The weakening of the lines of conflict led to the loss of the base of the mass parties and finally to the concept of the People's Party.

Kirchheimer argues that there are also other conditions for developing into a people's party.

  • First, only large parties that also operate in large democracies can develop into people's parties.
  • In addition, there is the need for transformation. A party that, in spite of a character that does not correspond to the People's Party, can permanently record electoral successes and does not change anything at its base, will see no reason to change its approach. According to Kirchheimer, parties act rationally.
  • In addition, a party system with many parties, all of which represent specific key points, makes it difficult to develop into a people's party. These many smaller parties cover their particular key demands without having to go into other positions. Success for a people's party becomes more difficult because it is hardly possible to pull out regular voters from these parties.

If, however, a people's party emerges on the basis of the aforementioned positive consensus and the associated de-ideologization of the party and records these electoral successes, other parties will imitate the transformation in order to achieve greater electoral success. Quoted from Kirchheimer:

“The transformation into everyday parties is a phenomenon of competition. A party tends to adapt to the successful style of its opponent because it hopes to do well on election day or because it is afraid of losing voters. "

Negative consensus

The negative consensus according to Gordon Smith is based on the experiences of the Weimar Republic and the divided post-war Germany to explain the development of the people's parties. Accordingly, it is argued that after the failure of democracy in Weimar and the subsequent Second World War, a consensus was formed in Germany that rejects ideologies.

The cause for the end of Weimar democracy is seen in the anti-democratic ideologies of the right and left. The ideological struggle against the threatening communism after the war and the division of Germany further intensified reservations about left ideologies. For these reasons, the largely ideology-free people's parties, which politically tend towards the center, prevailed in the Federal Republic. This indirectly argues that popular parties are a purely German phenomenon.

Development since 1990 in Germany

In the last few years the major popular parties have become increasingly weak. This can be seen in the declining number of members. This decline in membership is greatest in the SPD. From 1990 to December 2010 it had to accept a loss of almost 47 percent in membership. In addition, the framework conditions for popular parties have changed. There is an erosion of party ties and loyalties. The social milieus of the West German party system - they hardly existed in East Germany - that conveyed party identification , have been disintegrating for decades. As a result of changes in employment structures, educational expansion and changes in values, these have been reduced to their core in recent years. Even if 60 percent of workers with trade union affiliations voted for the SPD and 75 percent of Catholics with church affiliations voted for the CDU / CSU in the 2005 Bundestag election , these core milieus make up only a little more than ten percent of the total electorate of both parties. In addition, the change in values ​​has intensified the trend towards the individualization of society. Parties as collective organizations that programmatically aim at the overall benefit stand in the way of individual benefit maximization.

In the 2013 Bundestag election, however, there was again a significant increase in the voting shares of both German people's parties (from 56.8% in 2009 to 67.2% in 2013). In the 2017 Bundestag election , when the Alternative for Germany (AfD) also entered the Bundestag for the first time, the election result for the mainstream parties fell back to an all-time low of just 53.4%. The subsequent grand coalition, which was unpopular with voters and political parties alike, again reduced the share of votes held by the Union and the SPD in the European elections in May 2019, to just 44.7%.

Functional characteristics

An essential feature of so-called people's parties is regular participation in elections with the aim of filling political offices with party members and obtaining legitimacy for the exercise of political rule. People's parties are thus at the same time the carriers and beneficiaries of the democratic-representative system.

Also with regard to the membership structure, popular parties strive for the broadest possible membership base, in which as many social strata of the population as possible are represented.

In order to be eligible for as large a section of the electorate as possible, popular parties neither pursue a specific interest policy for a certain stratum or class of the population nor the claim to the implementation of a clearly formulated political ideology . In this way, they avoid appearing to be ineligible from the outset for voters with different interests or norms. In any case, a certain basic ideological orientation is no longer the only, but at most a possible basis for political decisions. The key is the balancing of sometimes conflicting interests on often complex topics in the context of finding a consensus.

Due to the given heterogeneous electorate and membership as well as the strategic orientation towards the vast majority of the population, the politics of the people's parties is usually a politics of balance that seeks a compromise between the various social interests. Due to the competition, differences in program or ideology between several people's parties in a country are sometimes small; the main goal in each case is to obtain a government majority in the elections .

Structural features

The structure of the popular parties is characterized by a strong party leadership, which is largely independent of members and supporters, and by the low influence of the individual party member, who has little contact with the party leadership due to an organization that is differentiated into many levels. This, as well as the low level of political interest and ideological orientation, means that the identification and loyalty of the supporters to the party is rather low compared to other party types. It is true that popular parties are generally the parties with the largest number of members; However, this is offset by a high number of party changes and withdrawals.

Normative content of the term "People's Party"

In addition to using the term for a specific type of political party, the term people's party also touches on normative aspects.

The use of the term by parties themselves implies the claim to be a party for the whole people or to represent the interests of the whole people. In the Federal Republic of Germany the term was also used in the political debate, e.g. B. with the extra-parliamentary opposition and in its initial phase also with the Greens , "the established parties [...] as an instrument of legitimation and demarcation from political forces that opposed the basic consensus of Bonn democracy". The use of the term People's Party for (self-) legitimation can also explain discussions about the question of whether a party (e.g. Die Linke in East Germany ) has the status of a People's Party or not, with the characterization of a party as People's Party is to be granted or denied this legitimacy at the same time.

From a party-critical perspective (see Guggenberger), the term stands for arbitrary content and political action in the representative system that is only aimed at acquiring and maintaining power for its own sake, precisely because of the effort to potentially address the entire electorate.

Criticism and problems

The general problem with popular parties is that they lose their profile through opening up to a very wide range of views and, on the other hand, through fixation on (supposedly) majority and popular topics and solutions. The latter has an impact above all in the dominant role of two people's parties (as is usually found). By attempting to address the largest possible number of voters (especially in the political center) (see also median voter model ), the programmatic differences between the two mainstream parties are becoming increasingly blurred.

This often has the consequence that many traditional voters, who are on the outer fringes of the spectrum of the respective People's Party, no longer see themselves represented by it and turn to other parties that represent or can represent the respective program more clearly because they cannot have the claim of a people's party. Therefore the rule of larger popular parties always harbors the risk of fragmentation of the party landscape.

Furthermore, people's parties are hardly suitable for integrating minorities into the political system who have fundamentally different interests and / or values ​​compared to the majority of the electorate. This can lead to the alienation of parts of the citizenry from the existing political system, but also to the emergence of new parties that, at least temporarily, pursue less the goal of broad approval than the goal of a clear articulation of the supporters. Exemplary for the associated criticism of the (people's) party system is the emergence of the Greens in the old Federal Republic and the alternative for Germany in more recent times.

A criticism that has been expressed in some cases is that opening it up to all electoral groups contrasts with a gain in influence of individual interest groups on the party. As an example, u. a. indicated that the SPD (and increasingly also the SPÖ) turned to business-oriented and neoliberal positions.

Germany

Before 1945 there were no popular parties in Germany; Each party saw itself as a party for a demarcated group of voters: the SPD was a class party of the workers , the center was religiously bound (to the Catholic Church ), the German People's Party a party of the Protestant upper middle class and big industry. The NSDAP is attributed due to the heterogeneous social composition of the electorate, which was composed of almost all social groups, including the working class, the character of a people's party. The political scientist Jürgen W. Falter calls it a “people's party of protest”.

Today's German people's parties, the SPD and CDU , have deviated from their historical-programmatic tradition. Since the Godesberg program, the SPD no longer sees itself exclusively as a workers' party. As a partial successor to the Catholic Center, the CDU has only limited Catholic or Christian influence in its actions . However, this does not apply to its Bavarian sister party CSU, which is located more deeply in Christianity, especially in Catholicism, and is more strongly influenced by conservatism in its program.

With regard to Die Linke , it is discussed whether this or the predecessor party PDS (limited to East Germany) is a people's party. This is supported by the relative strength of their electorate and supporters compared to the SPD and CDU, at least at the regional level. However, this can be countered by the much stronger ideological character and focus on group interests. The left sees itself as the "party of the common people".

The historian Paul Nolte said in an interview that a five-party system does not represent the end of the popular parties, but their increase. For both the Left Party and the Greens, “the integrative moment represents a very strong tendency. In their milieu and because of one Strongly morally tinged popularity, they have for a long time succeeded in integrating high-earning and non-wage earners, leftists and conservative bourgeoisie ”. For Ulrich von Alemann , the Greens are not yet a people's party, but they are on the way there. This designation is controversial within the party itself: Winfried Kretschmann called the party that, Jürgen Trittin is against such a designation.

Other countries

In Austria, like in Germany, there is a large social democratic and a large Christian democratic people's party, the SPÖ and the ÖVP . In addition, especially since its participation in government, the right-wing populist FPÖ has increasingly developed into Austria's third people's party. South Tyrol's politics are largely shaped by the South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP) , which had an absolute majority in the state parliament from 1948 to 2013 . The SVP owes its political success above all to the profound desire of the predominantly German-speaking population of South Tyrol for autonomy vis-à-vis Italy.

In the case of the United States, the two large parties, the Democratic Party (more on the left) and the Republican Party (more on the right), can be described as people's parties.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: People's Party  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Nohlen: Small Lexicon of Politics. Beck series, Munich 2001.
  2. ^ Hans-Joachim Veen: People's parties: The most progressive form of organization of political will formation. In: Journal for Parliamentary Issues 2/1999, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 379.
  3. ^ Stephen Padgett: The German Volkspartei and the Career of the Catch-All Concept. In: German Politics 10/2001, London 2001, pp. 52–53.
  4. ↑ Otto Kirchheimer: The change in the Western European party system. In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift 1/1965, Wiesbaden 1965, pp. 29–30.
  5. ↑ Steven B. Wolinetz: Party System Change: The Catch-All Thesis Revisited. In: West European Politics 1/1991, London 1991, p. 119.
  6. ↑ Steven B. Wolinetz: Party System Change: The Catch-All Thesis Revisited. In: West European Politics 1/1991, London 1991, p. 120.
  7. ↑ Otto Kirchheimer: The change in the Western European party system. In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift 1/1965, Wiesbaden 1965, p. 30.
  8. ^ Stephen Padgett: The German Volkspartei and the Career of the Catch-All Concept. In: German Politics 10/2001, London 2001, p. 54.
  9. ^ Rudolf Wildemann: People's parties - perplexed giants? Baden-Baden 1989, p. 34.
  10. ↑ Party members in Germany: How many there are and how to become a member yourself. In: Politik-Blog Deutschland, May 13, 2011, http://politik.germanblogs.de/archive/2011/05/13/parteimitglieder-in-deutschland-wie-viele-es-gibt-und-wie-man- Become a member yourself.htm
  11. ^ Heinrich Oberreuter: Do the people's parties have a future? In: Politische Studien, 58 (2007) 414, pp. 23–26.
  12. ^ Ralf Thomas Baus: Party system in transition. In: On the future of the people's parties. In the plenary compact. Edited by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2009, p. 12.
  13. ↑ Dieter Nohlen, Rainer-Olaf Schultze, Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer (ed.): Lexicon of Politics. Volume 7: Political Terms. 1998, p. 696.
  14. ↑ See Neugebauer, 2000, p. 46.
  15. ^ Jürgen W. Falter: Hitler's voters. Beck, Munich 1991, p. 371.
  16. ↑ Neugebauer, 2000, p. 45 f .; Die Zeit , No. 36, August 30, 2007.
  17. ↑ Principles and goals of the party Die Linke in the 2008/2009 election campaigns - Decision of the party executive committee of August 25, 2007 , Section II. The 2008 elections - 9.1
  18. ↑ Between 10 and 35 percent - On the way to the people's party system n-tv.de from September 1, 2009
  19. ↑ The Greens: On the way to the People's Party . In: Causa Debattenportal . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on August 18, 2018]).
  20. ↑ Kretschmann calls the Green People's Party . In: SÜDKURIER Online . December 14, 2015 ( suedkurier.de [accessed August 18, 2018]).
  21. ^ WORLD: Trittin: The Greens are not a people's party in the federal government . In: THE WORLD . April 9, 2016 ( welt.de [accessed August 18, 2018]).
  22. ^ Ferdinand Otto: Austria Election: "There will be no authoritarian turnaround" . In: The time . October 12, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed February 26, 2018]).