Differentiated political party systems
Kitschelt offers various reasons for the above statement in several ways. By offering a historical account of political party formation in Europe from the agrarian revolution era, he outlines the differences through time. These differences have remained entrenched in the contemporary political spectrum this far. Differences presented through various countries later augment the argument he has presented throughout the paper.
The party systems analysis, as provided by Kitschelts, offers that the system is a conceived tri-unity. The three units represent an analysis based on the three analysis levels for individuals as actors in international politics. Further, the theory determines the tone of interactions amongst themselves. More importantly, it is the fact that party systems theory is driven by a particular character of focus, which is the net idiosyncrasies characterization of individual actors and modes of party decision making.
The major classifications of political parties have been the two-party and multi-party systems. Further, Sartori classified political parties as moderate and polarized. Dependent on the presence of other smaller “spoiler” parties. Both methodologies have been passed and today exists better instrumentations, for instance, fractionalization and volatility. Fractionalization considers the number of voters in favor of the party. At the same time, volatility considers the percentage differences of electoral support of the same parties received by the same party.
Party systems varieties are a representation of the various political party typologies. In the direct Enabled by the modes of democratic accountability, political party systems differ from one country to another. In the direct policy democracy, principals give their consent to the agents by casting their votes. Thus, the principals enjoy gratification for their support of the winner or otherwise suffer consequences as a result of support to the loser.
Another critical stance involves valence and positional competition. In the former setup, citizens’ important issues are compromised for the greater social benefit in terms of honest politicians, good economic management, and so forth.
Significance
The elements above characterize politics in countries and, as a result, give distinctive significance to governance in general. Divisions based on economic, social, political, and cultural diversity, otherwise called “cleavages,” are the basis for political parties’ competition. These differences lead to social variation across countries, for instance, driving on the left side of the road while on the United States’ right.
Such differences lead to the characterization of partisan politics. For instance, political parties are representing the rich and the poor based on the political parties. Religion also influences the type of governance in a country. For example, in Belgium during the 1950s, two cross-cutting political partisan divides were competitive, based on working-class socialists. The other was composed of Christian Democrats in the center and the business-oriented liberals, and a religious divide separating a secular socialist-liberal from a Catholic Christian Democratic camp.
Political parties systems in democracies thrive because of various enablers, among them the attainment of equilibria. Nevertheless, there has been a tremendous transformation of political parties in the recent past. Notable among them has been the move away from Eurocentric political cleavage. It is pronounced in most post-industrial democracies that have seen changes in social factors that realign from political parties, as summarized by Kitschelt. The trend is associated with declining voter turn-out, disjointed single-issue voting, and vanishing partisan identification.