Why political parties are important

By taking part in an election, parties hope to get as many of their members as possible into a representative body, like parliament or a municipal council. At the same time they try to hold as many posts as possible in the government , or in the municipal or provincial executive.

Political parties have various functions. One is promoting the interests of their voters. They also draw up party programmes. Citizens can join political parties, enabling them to help shape the party programme. By this criterion, a democracy may be considered to be consolidated if a party that takes power in an election at the time of transition to a democracy loses a subsequent election not necessarily immediately following the first election , and if the subsequent ruling party then loses a later election.

On the other hand, even under authoritarian regimes, in many countries political parties exist and elections are held. In many cases, such countries established parliamentary governments directly after gaining independence from colonial powers or after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Subsequently, although the civilian government was replaced by dictatorships or by military rule after a coup-d'etat, the political institutions including electoral and parliamentary systems, in most cases, were not removed, because elimination of such institutions would significantly damage the legitimacy of the current political administration.

Those in power utilize the political party as a vehicle to propagate the regime's ideology among the citizenry and to create a base of political support Binder In addition, it is not unusual for the ruling powers to "produce" elections to "demonstrate" that they were chosen by the people, allowing the participation of other political parties under limitations.

This also has the effect of dividing moderate and hard-line opposition groups, thereby weakening the entire opposition to the regime Lust-Okar However, such illegitimate elections can also trigger mass protests that may even result in regime change, as seen in the cases of the Philippines, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. How, then, do political parties and elections of democracies in developing regions differ from those in the United States and Europe?

Political parties want as many people involved as possible. Most members take a fairly passive role, simply voting for their party's candidates at election time. Some become more active and work as officials in the party or volunteer to persuade people to vote. The most ambitious members may decide to run for office themselves.

The people represented by elected officials are called constituents. Whether Republican or Democrat, constituents make their concerns known to their representatives. In turn, elected officials must not only reflect the concerns of their own political party but must also try to attract support from people in their districts or states who belong to the other party.

They can attract this support by supporting bipartisan issues matters of concern that cross party lines and nonpartisan issues matters that have nothing to do with party allegiance. Political parties represent groups as well as individuals. These interest groups have special concerns.