Editing Political party (section)

==Causes of political parties==
Political parties are a nearly ubiquitous feature of modern countries.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1146/annurev-polisci-041916-020727| doi-access=free|title=The Political Theory of Parties and Partisanship: Catching up|year=2020|last1=Muirhead|first1=Russell|last2=Rosenblum|first2=Nancy L.|journal=Annual Review of Political Science|volume=23|pages=95–110}}</ref> Nearly all democratic countries have strong political parties, and many political scientists consider countries with fewer than two parties to necessarily be [[autocracy|autocratic]].<ref name = "Przeworski00">{{cite book | last1=Przeworski | first1=Adam | last2=Alvarez | first2 =Michael E. | last3 = Cheibub | first3 = Jose Antonio | last4 = Limongi | first4 = Fernando | title = Democracy and development: Political institutions and well-being in the world, 1950–1990 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2000 | page = 20 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Boix | first1 = Carles | last2 = Miller | first2 = Michael | last3 = Rosato | first3 = Sebastian | s2cid = 45833659 | title = A complete data set of political regimes, 1800–2007 | journal = Comparative Political Studies | volume = 46 | issue = 12 | pages = 1523–1554 | year = 2013| doi = 10.1177/0010414012463905 }}</ref><ref name = "Svolik08">{{cite journal | last = Svolik | first = Milan | title = Authoritarian reversals and democratic consolidation | journal = American Political Science Review | volume = 102 | issue = 2 | pages = 153–168 | year = 2008| doi = 10.1017/S0003055408080143 | s2cid = 34430604 }}</ref> However, these sources allow that a country with multiple competitive parties is not necessarily democratic, and the politics of many autocratic countries are organized around one dominant political party.<ref name = "Svolik08" /><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Knutsen | first1 = Carl Henrik | last2 = Nygård | first2 = Håvard Mokleiv | last3 = Wig | first3 = Tore | title = Autocratic elections: Stabilizing tool or force for change? | journal = World Politics | volume = 69 | issue = 1 | pages = 98–143 | year = 2017| doi = 10.1017/S0043887116000149 | doi-access = free | hdl = 10852/59622 | hdl-access = free }}</ref> The ubiquity and strength of political parties in nearly every modern country has led researchers to remark that the existence of political parties is almost a [[Law (principle)|law]] of politics, and to ask why parties appear to be such an essential part of modern states.<ref name=boix09/>{{rp|510}}<ref name = "Aldrich95"/> Political scientists have therefore come up with several explanations for why political parties are a nearly universal political phenomenon.<ref name = "Chhibber04"/>{{rp|11}}

===Social cleavages===
{{Main|Cleavage (politics)}}
[[File:IICCR G005 May 1st rally in Bucharest.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Political parties like the [[Romanian Communist Party]] can arise out of, or be closely connected to, existing segments of society, such as organizations of workers.]]
One of the core explanations for the existence of political parties is that they arise from pre-existing divisions among people: society is divided in a certain way, and a party is formed to organize that division into the electoral competition. By the 1950s, economists and political scientists had shown that party organizations could take advantage of the distribution of voters' preferences over political issues, adjusting themselves in response to what voters believe in order to become more competitive.<ref name = "Downs57">{{cite book | last=Downs | first=Anthony | title = An economic theory of democracy | url=https://archive.org/details/economictheoryof0000down |pages=114–142 | url-access=registration | publisher = Harper Collins | year = 1957 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=James |last=Adams |title=Review of Voting for Policy, Not Parties: How Voters Compensate for Power Sharing, by [[Orit Kedar]] |journal=Perspectives on Politics |volume=8 |issue=4 |date=December 2010 |pages=1257–1258 |doi=10.1017/S153759271000280X|s2cid=147390789 }}</ref> Beginning in the 1960s, academics began identifying the social cleavages in different countries that might have given rise to specific parties, such as religious cleavages in specific countries that may have produced religious parties there.<ref name = "Lipset67">{{cite book | last1=Lipset | first1=Seymour Martin | last2=Rokkan | first2 =Stein | title = Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments: Cross-national perspectives | publisher = New York Free Press | year = 1967 | page = 50 }}</ref><ref name = "Ware95">{{cite book | last=Ware | first=Alan | title = Political parties and party systems | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 1995 | page = 22}}</ref>

The theory that parties are produced by social cleavages has drawn several criticisms. Some authors have challenged it on empirical grounds, either finding no evidence for the claim that parties emerge from existing cleavages, or arguing that the claim is not empirically testable.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Lybeck | first1 = Johan A. | title = Is the Lipset-Rokkan Hypothesis Testable? | journal = Scandinavian Political Studies | volume = 8 | issue = 1–2 | pages = 105–113 | year = 2017| doi = 10.1111/j.1467-9477.1985.tb00314.x }}</ref> Others note that while social cleavages might cause political parties to exist, this obscures the opposite effect: that political parties also cause changes in the underlying social cleavages.<ref name = "Chhibber04"/>{{rp|13}} A further objection is that, if the explanation for where parties come from is that they emerge from existing social cleavages, then the theory is an incomplete story of where political parties come from unless it also explains the origins of these social cleavages.<ref name = "Tilly90">{{cite book |page=74 | last=Tilly | first=Charles | title = Coercion, capital, and European states | publisher = Blackwell | year = 1990}}</ref>

===Individual and group incentives===
[[File:The Ideals of United Australia (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|It is easier for voters to evaluate one simple list of policies for each party, like this platform for the [[United Australia Party]], than to individually judge every single candidate.]]
An alternative explanation for why parties are ubiquitous across the world is that the formation of parties provides [[Incentive compatibility|compatible incentives]] for candidates and legislators. For example, the existence of political parties might coordinate candidates across geographic districts, so that a candidate in one electoral district has an incentive to assist a similar candidate in a different district.<ref name = "Aldrich95">{{cite book | last1=Aldrich | first1=John | title = Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America |chapter=1 | publisher = University of Chicago Press | year = 1995}}</ref> Thus, political parties can be mechanisms for preventing candidates with similar goals from acting to each other's detriment when campaigning or governing.<ref name = "Hicken09">{{cite book | last=Hicken | first=Allen | title = Building party systems in developing democracies |page=5 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2009}}</ref> This might help explain the ubiquity of parties: if a group of candidates form a party and are harming each other less, they may perform better over the long run than [[Independent politician|unaffiliated politicians]], so politicians with party affiliations will out-compete politicians without parties.<ref name="Aldrich95"/>

Parties can also align their member's incentives when those members are in a legislature.<ref name = "Cox99">{{cite book | last1=Cox | first1=Gary | last2 = Nubbins | first2 = Mathew | title = Legislative leviathan | publisher = University of California Press |page=10 | year = 1999}}</ref> The existence of a party apparatus can help coalitions of electors to agree on ideal policy choices,<ref>{{cite journal | last = Tsebelis | first = George | title = Veto players and institutional analysis | journal = Governance | volume = 13 | issue = 4 | pages = 441–474 | year = 2000| doi = 10.1111/0952-1895.00141 }}</ref> whereas a legislature of unaffiliated members might never be able to agree on a single best policy choice without some institution constraining their options.<ref>{{cite journal | last = McKelvey | first = Richard D. | title = Intransitivities in multidimensional voting bodies | journal = Journal of Economic Theory | volume = 12 | pages = 472–482 | year = 1976| doi = 10.1016/0022-0531(76)90040-5 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Schofield | first1 = Norman | title = Generic instability of majority rule | journal = Review of Economic Studies | volume = 50 | issue = 4 | pages = 695–705 | year = 1983| doi = 10.2307/2297770 | jstor = 2297770 }}</ref>

===Parties as heuristics===
{{Main|Party identification}}
Another prominent explanation for why political parties exist is psychological: parties may be necessary for many individuals to participate in politics because they provide a massively simplifying [[Heuristics in judgment and decision-making|heuristic]], which allows people to make informed choices with much less mental effort than if voters had to consciously evaluate the merits of every candidate individually.<ref name = "Campbell60">{{cite book | last1=Campbell | first1=Angus | last2 = Converse | first2 = Philip | last3 = Miller | first3 = Warren | last4 = Stokes | first4 = Donald |pages=120–146 | title = The American Voter | publisher = University of Chicago Press | year = 1960}}</ref> Without political parties, electors would have to individually evaluate every candidate in every election. Parties enable electors to make judgments about just a few groups, and then apply their judgment of the party to its entire slate of candidates. Because it is much easier to become informed about a few parties' platforms than the positions of a multitude of independent candidates, parties reduce the cognitive burden for people to cast informed votes. However, some evidence suggests that over the last several decades, the strength of party identification has been weakening, so this may be a less important function for parties to provide than it was in the past.<ref name = "Dalton02">{{cite book | last1=Dalton | first1=Russell J. | last2 = Wattenberg | first2 = Martin P. |page=3 | title = Parties without partisans: Political change in advanced industrial democracies | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2002}}</ref>