Political Party Reforms for A Stronger Democracy.
Political Science fraternity all over the world has been discussing innumerable aspects of party systems and related issues for the last several years. But, one hardly comes across any staunch supporter of the concept of organisationally strong political parties. Generally speaking there appears to be some kind of a lurking, unarticulated fear of strong and organisationally sound political parties, with its origin, probably in the Nazi experience of Germany in the first half of this century. However reprehensible that experience may be, it would be absolutely incorrect to assume that any strong, organisationally sound political party will necessarily go the Nazi way. In fact it is entirely the opposite. When one advocates the concept of stronger and organisationally sound political parties, it can only be in favour of parties with perfect internal democracy and functional transparency, with no place for authoritarianism. In this paper, it is advocated that for Democracy to deliver, well-organized political parties are a must.
In the 1998 edition the volume "Political Parties of the World" the editors have come out with a largely acceptable definition of a political party. It says that a political party means "the organisation seeking to obtain or retain direct political power over the process of government at some level, usually through the ballot box". The definition of a political party by Chambers is as follows, "A relatively durable social formation, which seeks offices or power in govt. exhibits a structure or organization, which links leaders at the centres of govt. to a significant popular following in the political arena and its local enclaves and generates in-group perspectives or at least symbols of identification or loyalty (1975:5)".
This volume also brings about the important features of the worldwide party scene. These features are as follows:.
