Question

What do you mean by a Political Party?

Answer 1

Hint: Parties, at times, are defined as ‘associations’ and are distinguished from communities like an ethnic group or a tribe. Such distinction is based on the assumption that parties are groups whose membership is open to all members of society.

Complete Step by Step answer:
A political party is a group of people which is organized around an individual leader for the realization of a specific goal. The primary goal of a political party is to fix a political agenda and also policies. Each political party has its own ideology, who try to persuade people by claiming their policies are better than the other existing parties. In other words, parties are instruments of collective human action and are regarded as institutions. Institutions in the sense that they create relatively stable opportunities for popular mobilization and participation; they are channels for communication between the government and the governed and create certain patterns of interaction between the society and the state.

In a democratic political system, political parties act as agenda setters for national debates within or out of the legislatures, as controllers of the military and the bureaucracy, as civic educators and also as coalition-builders among interest groups. Thus, political parties simplify the complexities of the political world making politics understandable to the common people.

Note: There are different classification of parties - one-party system, two-party system and multi-party system. A one-party system is not only about one party but may contain a few other parties that are so small and marginalised that they have no impact on the system. A two-party or multiparty system can usually be found in a liberal democracy.