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.
A prominent perspective 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 social classes and strata on which it is based, leads the process of policy-making and implementation within the government, and is accountable to voters for the results in the next election. European political parties organized and mobilized voters by leveraging various socio-economic divisions 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, aiming for 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 maintain strict discipline among politicians within the government—served as the representative party model supporting the theory of responsible party government.
Following the emergence of mass parties, political parties developed three key functions: the “party within the government,” which controls parliamentary policy-making and checks the executive branch’s policy implementation; the “party within the electorate,” which aggregates and articulates the interests of its supporters; and the “party as an organization,” which expands its membership and cultivates 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 relying solely on the support of specific classes or groups; consequently, they began striving to secure support from a broader base of voters. As a result, the party system took on the form of “catch-all parties” that appealed to the entire electorate, transcending specific social classes to gather votes. When the goal of winning elections became even more paramount, some parties transitioned to a system of “professional election parties,” where party leadership was composed primarily of external election experts. In this process, the traditional organizational lines that had represented social classes and occupational groups were gradually pushed to the periphery of the party structure.
Meanwhile, with the advent of a post-industrial society, post-materialist values—such as the pursuit of a better quality of life through environmental protection, human rights, and education—gained prominence, increasing pressure for the emergence of new political parties. This posed a threat to parties that had maintained their existing privileges. In response, these parties established a cartel party system to preserve their privileges by monopolizing public political resources, thereby making 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 instance, in terms of electoral systems, the first-past-the-post system—unlike proportional representation—often operates in a way that promotes party cartelization by structuring the ratio of seats to votes in a manner that favors large parties.
As 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 membership numbers declined, causing political parties to lose their ties with their support bases and constituencies.
With the development of new media, the political party system faced yet another challenge as the number of so-called “cognitively engaged citizens”—those with high political interest but who maintain a certain distance from political parties—increased. Traditional political mobilization, led by party organizations and members, was replaced by self-organized citizen participation based on social networks. Furthermore, phenomena of direct democracy bypassing political parties began to emerge. In response, some parties sought to address this crisis by adopting a “post-cartel party” strategy—maintaining 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 recruitment of electors and candidates from outside the party weakened the functions of the party in the classical sense.
Of course, even in this context, it has been argued that the party system since the mid-20th century still embodies a certain degree of responsible party politics. 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 recognize 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 a certain degree of responsible politics. While parties can take various forms—from catch-all parties to network parties—the explanation is that they maintain a virtuous cycle of representative relations between voters’ interests and government accountability through the mediation of 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 argue that political parties must still systematically represent classes and social strata, and therefore, the traditional functions and roles of political parties must be restored to strengthen responsible party politics.
