In this blog post, we will examine the historical and social context behind the shift of political parties from mass parties to cartel parties, and explore the key factors driving this change and its impact on representative democracy.
One of the leading perspectives explaining the role of political parties in representative democracy is the theory of responsible party government. According to this theory, each political party participating in politics represents the classes and social strata on which it is based, leads the policy-making and implementation processes within the government, and is accountable to voters for the results in the next election. European political parties organized and mobilized voters by capitalizing on various socio-economic divides, centered on the conflict between labor and capital that emerged during the industrialization era. In this process, political parties took on the character of mass parties, which prioritize a member-centered operational structure. Mass parties—which determine party policies and candidates primarily through their members, recruit political elites through internal training programs, and ensure that politicians maintain strict discipline within the government—served as the quintessential party model supporting the theory of responsible party government.
Following the emergence of mass parties, political parties gradually developed three functions: the “party within the government,” which controls policy-making in parliament and checks the executive branch’s policy implementation; the “party among voters,” which aggregates and articulates the interests of its supporters; and the “party as an organization,” which expands its membership and trains and educates political elites. However, various social changes since the mid-20th century have led to significant shifts in these functions.
As industrial and class structures diversified, political parties found it difficult to gain power based solely on the support of specific classes or groups; consequently, they sought to secure support from a broader base of voters. As a result, the party system took on the form of “inclusive parties” that appealed to the entire electorate, transcending specific social classes to garner votes. When the goal of winning elections took on greater importance, some parties shifted to a system of “expert-led parties,” in which party leadership was composed primarily of external election specialists. In this process, the traditional organizational structures that had represented social classes and occupational groups were gradually pushed to the periphery of party organizations.
Meanwhile, with the advent of a post-industrial society and the rise of post-materialist values—such as the pursuit of a better quality of life in areas like the environment, human rights, and education—pressure for the emergence of new political parties also intensified. This posed a threat to the parties that had maintained their established privileges. In response, some parties established a “cartel party system” to preserve their privileges; by monopolizing public political resources, they made it difficult for new or minor parties to enter the National Assembly and engage in political activities. Various political relations laws were utilized as key tools to maintain this system. For example, in terms of the electoral system, the majority-vote system—compared to the proportional representation system—sometimes operates in a way that promotes party cartelization by structuring the ratio of seats to the percentage of votes cast in a manner that favors major parties.
As political parties underwent these changes, the autonomy of political elites increased, and the power of party leadership was strengthened, leading to greater control over politicians from their own party within the government. Conversely, however, the influence of rank-and-file members weakened and party membership declined, causing political parties to lose their ties with their support bases and constituencies.
With the development of new media, the party system faced yet another challenge as the number of so-called “cognitively engaged citizens”—who are politically interested but maintain a certain distance from political parties—increased. Traditional political mobilization, once led by party organizations and members, was replaced by self-organized citizen participation based on social networks. Furthermore, phenomena of direct democracy that bypassed political parties began to emerge. In response, some parties sought to address the crisis by adopting a “post-cartel party” strategy—which maintains a cartel structure while opening the authority to select candidates for public office to the general public—or by implementing a “network party” strategy to strengthen ties with “cognitive citizens” in online spaces, even if they could not recruit them as members. However, this series of reform measures did not signify a return to the mass party model. Rather, as party membership declined, the functions of political parties in the classical sense were weakened by recruiting voters and candidates from outside the party.
Of course, even in this context, it has been argued that the party system since the mid-20th century has continued to embody responsible party politics to a certain extent. Cross-national comparative studies have shown that while modern parties do not organize or mobilize specific class or social groups, they have strengthened their role in representing voters in the political arena through general ideologies. The argument is that voters perceive a party’s political stance through left- and right-wing ideologies, express their political interests to parties ideologically close to them, and that parties, once in power, take these interests into account to realize accountable politics to a certain extent. While parties can take various forms—ranging from catch-all parties to network parties—the explanation is that they maintain a virtuous cycle of representative democracy between voters’ interests and government accountability through ideology.
In response to such views that positively evaluate the ideological representativeness of political parties, some scholars and politicians raise counterarguments based on the theory of mass parties. They contend that political parties must still systematically represent classes and social strata, and therefore argue that the traditional functions and roles of political parties should be restored to strengthen responsible party politics.
