:- How do election methods affect parties and politics?
Answers
Political parties and elections play an important role in the analysis of politics in developing countries, particularly in the analysis of democratization, and specifically the consolidation of democratic political regimes. Among political scientists, the existence of free and fair elections on a regular basis is considered the minimal condition for a democracy (democratic regime) (Dahl 1971; Diamond 1999). A political party is defined as a political group that is officially recognized as being part of the electoral process and who can support (put forth) candidates for elections (free or not) on a regular basis (Sartori 1976). In this way, political parties (party system) and elections are used as a measure of the consolidation of a society's democracy. As an external standard, there is a "two-turnover" criterion (Huntington 1991). By this criterion, a democracy may be considered to be consolidated if a party that takes power in an election at the time of transition to a democracy loses a subsequent election (not necessarily immediately following the first election), and if the subsequent ruling party then loses a later election."From a deeper perspective, it is when elections involve the true competition of political parties based on their proposed policies and platforms, and not the popularity of individual political candidates or voting based on special interests, that consolidation of democracy is advanced (Kitschelt 1995; Mainwaring 1999).
On the other hand, even under authoritarian regimes, in many countries political parties exist and elections are held. In many cases, such countries established parliamentary governments directly after gaining independence from colonial powers or after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Subsequently, although the civilian government was replaced by dictatorships or by military rule after a coup-d'etat, the political institutions including electoral and parliamentary systems, in most cases, were not removed, because elimination of such institutions would significantly damage the legitimacy of the current political administration. Those in power utilize the political party as a vehicle to propagate the regime's ideology among the citizenry and to create a base of political support (Binder 1978). In addition, it is not unusual for the ruling powers to "produce" elections to "demonstrate" that they were chosen by the people, allowing the participation of other political parties under limitations. This also has the effect of dividing moderate and hard-line opposition groups, thereby weakening the entire opposition to the regime (Lust-Okar 2004). However, such illegitimate elections can also trigger mass protests that may even result in regime change, as seen in the cases of the Philippines, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan.