The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement

Abstract

We restate and clarify the idea of the “cartel party,” a concept that has found considerable traction in studies of parties throughout the democratic world, including those far from the original research site and data on which the cartel model was based. The cartel party thesis holds that political parties increasingly function like cartels, employing the resources of the state to limit political competition and ensure their own electoral success. The thesis has been subject to varied empirical testing and to substantial theoretical evaluation and criticism. Against this background, we look again at the cartel party thesis in order to clarify ambiguities in and misinterpretations of the original argument. We also suggest further refinements, specifications and extensions of the argument. Following a background review of the original thesis, we break it down into its core components, and then clarify the terms in which it makes sense to speak of cartelization and collusion. We then go on to explore some of the implications of the thesis for our understanding of contemporary democracies and patterns of party organization and party competition and we identify a possible agenda for future research in party scholarship.

Local representative democracy and protest politics: the case of the Five-star Movement

“…In this case, it would not be surprising to find an extreme version of the loosely integrated, 'stratarchic' organisation described by Carty (2004), in which local and national leaders and activists are weakly connected and, in some cases, are almost completely separated (Katz and Mair, 2009) 'non-local' (one can also say 'state-wide') election. Figure 1 shows that in the case of the Democratic Party (PD) there is a strong, positive correlation between the local and national dimensions (correlation coefficient, R=0.7).…”

“…Since power and authority no longer rest in one single place, different organisational units within parties possess different powers and autonomous functions (Hepburn, 2010). Therefore, it is not surprising that many parties have developed new 'stratarchical' organisational structures (Carty, 2004;Katz and Mair, 2009). According to Katz and Mair (2009: 761), 'stratarchical adaptive strategies' may 'be pursued by national party leaders seeking to maintain local organisations, both for their utility in campaigns and to avoid the public perception of decay, but at the same time to free themselves of constraints imposed by those local organizations'.…”

The 2015 Regional Election in Italy: Fragmentation and Crisis of Subnational Representative Democracy

“…Italian statewide parties seem to have developed new 'stratarchical' organisational structures (Carty, 2004;Katz and Mair, 2009). In this context, national leaders are still able (and willing) to control the selection of national representatives and define the national strategy of the party, whereas local and regional organisations are free to adopt different programmatic and coalition strategies depending on the regional context (Van Biezen and Hopkin, 2006).…”

Intermediate Conditions of Democratic Accountability: A Response to Electoral Skepticism

“…If a small number of strong partisans can oust an incumbent in a nominating primary that excludes non-members, but a much larger number of voters cannot do the same at the general election because the district as a whole is uncompetitive, the principal to whom the incumbent is truly accountable is the smaller faction, not the larger. Beyond the USA, broader trends in partisan organization (which have fallen under the rubric of the "cartel party" thesis) indicate that major parties around the world are increasingly able to sustain their positions through state support, to place control of electoral processes in the hands of partisan legislators, and to engage in collusive behavior with one another within any given party system (Katz & Mair, 2009). Such trends violate the openness and competitiveness that are assumed to be necessary for votes to act as effective sanctions.…”