Translated from Latin, "pars" - "genus", and "partis" - "part". "Partio" - "share, share." It turns out that the party is an association of people who are separated from others by common interests and the maintenance of any ideas, teachings, ideology.
A political party is a special system that expresses the interests of the public, its class or strata, unites those representatives who are ready for active work, and directs them to achieve the goal. There is such a thing as pressure groups. A pressure group and a political party are not the same thing. For the purposes of political parties - the achievement of power and the implementation of their own program. A political party is a well-organized entity with a clear structure, leaders and hierarchy.
Thus, the signs of a political party are, first of all, the expression of the interests and ideals of social groups, the struggle for power and the embodiment of their own programs into reality
s, the presence of a certain structure (core, leaders, hierarchy, discipline, etc.), the existence of ideology (party philosophy, program, ideological attitudes), which determines the strategy and tactics of the party.
In society, a political party is a twofold entity, which, on the one hand, is a public organization, part of civil society, which is capable of exerting pressure on the authorities from below. But at the same time, parliamentary factions and party leaders are part of the political structures. We can say that political parties connect the state and civil society. Due to their existence, individual citizens can have an impact on politics in the country.
At different times, different types of political parties were distinguished. So, they are usually divided into government (members of the parliamentary majority, forming a government in a coalition or individually) and opposition (opposing the government, criticize the current political course).
Maurice Duverger singled out intra-formed and externally formed parties. According to the organizational structure, he divided the parties into personnel and mass.
Stephen Cohen divided the parties according to their functional purpose. Parties of the parliamentary type, or European, are parties in the traditional sense, with a constant structure, organization, membership and discipline. Parties for participation in an election campaign or parties of the American type are parties that are created specifically for elections. Parties as a political vanguard or parties of a communist type are the type of parties that have remained today in Cuba, China, North Korea. Extra-parliamentary parties. They have more similarities with public organizations, but they also have a hidden struggle for influence.
By the nature of the programmatic attitudes and strategies, political parties are divided into right, centrist and left. They differ in their attitude to private property, the form of state power and ideology, and the political course.
In the process of struggle for power, political parties unite in blocks and coalitions, create parliamentary associations. The totality of all parties, associations that participate in political life and in interactions in the struggle for power, is determined as a party system.
