Political parties

Single-party, two-party, and multi-party governments

In single-party states, only one political party is legally allowed to hold effective power. Although minor parties may sometimes be allowed, they are legally required to accept the leadership of the dominant party. This party may not always be, however, identical to the government, although sometimes positions within the party may be in fact more important than positions within the government.

In one party dominant states, opposition parties are allowed, but are widely considered to have no real chance of gaining power. Often, the dominant party will remain in power by using patronage and sometimes by voting fraud. Examples of one party dominant states include the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, the People's Action Party in Singapore. Also, one party dominant systems existed in Mexico with the Institutional Revolutionary Party until the 1990's, and in the southern United States with the Democratic Party from the 1800's until the 1970's.

Two-party systems are states, such as the United States, in which there are two dominant political parties, with extreme difficulty for anybody to achieve electoral success under the banner of any other party. The relationship between the voting system used and the two-party system was described by Maurice Duverger and is known as Duverger's Law.

Multi-party systems are systems in which there are multiple parties. In many cases, no one party has a chance of gaining power, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments.

Parties and directions

Colors and emblems for parties

There are notable exceptions and variations:

• In Canada, the official colour for the New Democratic Party is orange, while the Liberal Party of Canada uses red.
• In Belgium, the Liberal Democrats (VLD/MR) are blue and the Christian Democrats are orange. In the Netherlands, conservative Liberals (VVD) are blue, Liberal Democrats (D66) use green as well as the Christian Democrats.
• In Northern Ireland, the Protestant parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly are called the "orange block" and the Catholic parties are the "green block".
• In Taiwan, the New Party uses yellow as its party color though its policies are conservative; Democratic Progressive Party uses green though its international alignment is with the Liberal International and not the Green parties.
• In the United States, the (currently) conservative Republican Party is red, and the (currently) liberal Democratic Party is blue, stemming from southern Texas ballots helping illiterate voters in late 19th century and early 20th century thus colored [1]. Quite confusingly, however, electoral maps for Presidential elections are produced by the U.S. government with these colors reversed. For example, see U.S. presidential election, 1992. Nevertheless, the news media tends to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats.

Color associations are useful for mnemonics when voter illiteracy is significant. Another use case is when it is not desirable to make rigorous links to parties, particularly when coalitions and alliances are formed between political parties and other organizations, for example: Red Tory, "Purple" (Red-Blue) alliances, Red-Green Alliances, Blue-Green Alliances, Pan-green coalitions, and Pan-blue coalitions.

The emblem of Socialist Parties is often a red rose held in a fist.

International organizations of political parties

During the 20th century, many national political parties organized themselves into international organizations along similar policy lines. Notable examples are the International Workingmen's Association, the Socialist International (both red), the Liberal International (yellow), the International Democrat Union (blue), and the Worldwide green parties (green). The Socialist International, the Liberal International, and the International Democrat Union are all based in London.

See also

• List of political parties

External links

• Political parties around the world
• Political resources on the net

Referenced By