Abstract
This study provides an explanation for what constitutes an authoritarian party structure, which is a highly undertheorized phenomenon in party politics. An authoritarian party structure or intraparty authoritarianism can be understood as the symmetrical opposition of internal party democracy, a concept that has an important history in political science, grounded in the original work of Robert Michels.1 Yet, because of the complex relationship between the party in public office, party in central office, and party on the ground,2 as well as the multifaceted dimensions of internal decision-making systems such as policy determination, candidate selection, and leadership selection processes, what exactly defines an internally democratic party has not reached any consensus so far. Some important measures for intraparty democracy have been the degree of inclusiveness of the decision-making processes; decentralization and institutionalization of party structures.3 Even though each of these three measures has its own weakness regarding to what degree it can identify internal party democracy; the bottom line in each is that in internally democratic parties, the party on the ground—comprising party members and activists—has certain power over the internal decision-making processes. Authoritarian party structures, then, can be understood as structures in which the members and activists lack any means of such power and are subordinate to the decisions of the party leaders.
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Notes
Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracies (New York: Dover Publications, 1959).
Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, “The Evolution of Party Organizations in Europe: The Three Faces of Party Organization,” American Review of Politics 14 (1993): 593–617.
For the inclusiveness dimension, see Gideon Rahat and Reuven Y. Hazan, “Candidate Selection Methods: An Analytical Framework,” Party Politics 7 (2001): 297–322;
Paul Pennings and Reuven Y. Hazan, “Democratizing Candidate Selection: Causes and Consequences,” Party Politics 7 (2001): 273.
For decentralization within parties, see Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970);
and Vaclav Havel, “Anti-political Parties,” in Democracy and Civil Society, ed. John Keane (London: Verso, 1988), 391–398.
For a brief overview of all three dimensions, see Susan Scarrow, Implementing Intra-party Democracy. New York: NDI, 2005), 6.
Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (London: Methuen, 1963).
Some examples for these studies are Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy,” Party Politics 1 (1995): 5–28;
Ruud Koole, “Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Comment on the Notion of the Cartel Party,” Party Politics 2 (1996): 507–524;
Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, “The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office: Party Organizational Change in Twentieth-Century Democracies,” in Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges, ed. Richard Gunther et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 113–135;
Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen, “Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980–2000,” Party Politics 7 (2001): 5–21;
Philippe Schmitter, “Parties Are Not What They Once Were,” in Political Parties and Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond et al. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 67–89.
Peter Mair, “Party Organizations: From Civil Society to the State,” in How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies, ed. Richard Katz et al. (London: Sage Publications, 1994), 1–23.
Peter Mair, “Continuity, Change and the Vulnerability of Party,” West European Politics 12 (1989): 169–187;
Hermann Schmitt and Soren Holmberg, “Political Parties in Decline?” in Citizens and the State, ed. Hans-Dieter Klingemann et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 95–133.
Examples for such counterarguments can be found in Herbert Kitschelt, “Citizens, Politicians, and Party Cartelization: Political Representation and State Failure in Post-Industrial Democracies,” European Journal of Political Research 37 (2000): 149–79;
Susan Scarrow, “Parties and the Expansion of Direct Democracy. Who Benefits?” Party Politics 5, no. 3 (1999): 341–362;
Susan Scarrow, “Parties without Members? Party Organization in a Changing Electoral Environment,” in Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, ed. Russell Dalton et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 79–101;
Patrick Seyd, “New Parties / New Politics: A Case Study of the British Labour Party,” Party Politics 5 (1999): 383–407.
Ingrid van Biezen, Political Parties in New Democracies: Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003);
Zsolt Enyedi, “Party Politics in Post-Communist Transition,” in Handbook of Political Parties, ed. Richard Katz et al. (London: Sage Publications, 2006), 228–238;
Petr Kopecky, “Developing Party Organizations in East-Central Europe: What Type of Party is Likely to Emerge?” Party Politics 1 (1995): 515–534;
Paul G. Lewis, “Party Funding in Post-communist East-Central Europe,” in Funding Democratization, ed. Peter Burnell et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 137–157;
Gabor Toka, “Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in East Central Europe,” in Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Themes and Perspectives, ed. by Larry Diamond et al. (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 93–134;
Aleks Szczerbiak, Poles Together? The Emergence and Development of Political Parties in Post-Communist Poland (Budapest: Central European University, 2001).
Alan Ware, Political Parties and Party Systems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 139;
Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, “Species of Political Parties: A New Typology.” Party Politics 9 (2003): 173.
Dankwart Rustow, “The Development of Parties in Turkey,” in Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph La Palombara et al. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966), 107–136.
Teorell, Jan, “A Deliberative Defence,” Ergun Özbudun, Siyasal Partiler (Ankara: Sosyal Bilimler Derneği, 1974).
Kay Lawson, “When Linkage Fails,” in When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations, ed. Kay Lawson et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 16.
APSA (American Political Science Association) Committee on Political Parties, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System (New York: Rinehart, 1950);
C.B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Teorell, “A Deliberative Defence.”
Alan Ware, The Logic of Party Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1979).
Elmer E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942);
Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957); Duverger, Political Parties.
Adoption of the direct primary method in the United States was a means to give the power of selection to large number of voters and prevent the rise of oligarchy or authoritarianism, but it rather facilitated the growth of personal attachments rather than party loyalty. See Leon D. Epstein, Political Parties in Western Democracies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1982)
and V.O. Jr. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (New York: Crowell, 1964).
For power as a relational phenomenon, see David Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies,” World Politics 31 (1979): 176;
Peter M. Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964), 118–125;
and Richard M. Emerson, “Power-Dependence Relations,” American Sociological Review 27 (1962): 31–40.
Therefore, this study should be distinguished from case-oriented comparative studies, which introduce evidence for a comprehensive examination of historical phenomena. For a comparison of case-oriented and variable-oriented studies, see Charles Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), Chapters 3–4.
“Controlled comparison method” is a term used by Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 153. Lijphart calls the same term as “comparable-cases method.”
See Arend Lijphart, “The Comparable-Cases Strategy in Comparative Research,” Comparative Political Studies 8 (1975): 158–177.
Harry Eckstein, “Case Study and Theory in Political Science,” in Handbook of Political Science, ed. Fred I. Greenstein et al. (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1975).
Ergun Özbudun, “From Political Islam to Conservative Democracy: The Case of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey,” South European Society and Politics 11 (2006): 550.
Sabri Sayarı, “Aspects of Party Organization in Turkey,” The Middle East Journal 30 (1976): 199.
Examples include Mustafa Albayrak, Türk Siyasi Tarihinde Demokrat Parti (Ankara: Phoenix Yayınları, 2004);
Ayşe Güneş Ayata, CHP Örgüt ve İdeoloji (Ankara: Gündoğan Yayınları, 1992);
Cem Eroğul, Demokrat Parti (Ankara: SBF Yayınları, 1970);
Suna Kili, 1960–1975 Dönemi CHP’de Gelişmeler, Siyasal Bilimler Açısından Bir İnceleme (İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 1976).
These exceptions are Mehmet Kabasakal, Türkiye’de Siyasal Parti Örgütlenmesi 1908–1960 (İstanbul: Tekin Yayınevi, 1991);
Arsev Bektaş, Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Liderler Oligarşisi: CHP ve AP (1961–1981) (İstanbul: Bağlam Yayıncılık, 1993).
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© 2011 Pelin Ayan Musil
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Musil, P.A. (2011). Introduction. In: Authoritarian Party Structures and Democratic Political Setting in Turkey. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137015853_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137015853_1
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