Political Parties

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Welcome to class! 

In today’s class, we will be talking about political parties. Enjoy the class!

Political Parties

• Definitions and Types of Political Parties
• Functions of Political Parties

Political Party

A political party is an organization of people of like-minds united by the common desire to obtain the mandate of an electoral constituency to form and operate a government.

Types of political party

1. Mass parties: These are political parties that are structured to allow as many citizens as possible to take a membership. Membership of mass parties are mainly composed of different sections of the society
2. Elitist parties: These parties either deliberately or otherwise limit membership to a few elitist in a society and these elitists are of the upper class.
3. Ideological parties: Some parties are formed mainly to promote a particular ideological belief, a good example is Adolph Hitler national socialist party (NAZI).
4. Oligarchy parties: These are parties that are formed by and which invariably revolves around certain individuals.

Functions of political party

1. Political parties unite the people on major issues affecting the states
2. It serves as a line between the people and government
3. It enables the government’s accountability to the people
4. It provides an organization for running the government
5. It serves as an avenue for changing government

 Evaluation

1. What is the major goal of political parties?
   (a) influence public opinion
   (b) form and operate government
   (c) recruitment of leaders
   (d) educate government
2. Which of the following is not a function of political parties?
   (a) aggregation of opinion
   (b) educating the government
   (c) interest articulation
   (d) unifying factor
3. One of these is not a type of political party
   (a) elitist parties
   (b) religious parties
   (c) ideologies parties
   (d) mass parties
4. The kind of political parties that restrict membership to the upper class are known as
   (a) mass parties
   (b) elitist parties
   (c) ideological parties
   (d) oligarchy parties
5. The party that allow as many citizens as possible to take membership is
   (a) mass parties
   (b) ideological parties
   (c) religious parties
   (d) elitist parties

 

In our next class, we will be talking about the Party System.  We hope you enjoyed the class.

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