POLI 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: List Of Political Parties In Canada, Lumpers And Splitters, Caucus

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 200
• Professor: Manuel Balan

Document Summary

Political parties: functions, coordination (link between citizens and gov, contesting elections, opposing parties hold gov accountable, representation, recruitment & selection. Origins & development political party: organization that has a central role in the competition for political power in legislative bodies. 3 factors determine interaction: how many, which exist, how do they behave? developed based on cleavages, old europe (centre-periphery & state-church, industrial revolution (rural-urban & worker-employer, post-industrial revolution (materialism-post-materialism, homogenous constellations (predominant cleavage, heterogenous constellations (various overlapping cleavages) Freezing hypothesis: party system structure gets frozen in place after key event, parties emerge/disappear. 2-party system: 2 major parties contend to control the gov, majority gov, 1 party not in power for long multiparty system, several parties are significant actors in competition for power. 2+ party system: leading parties gain 75-80% of seats but 3rd party prevents either from gaining majority moderate multiparty system, 2-5 significant parties, usually 2 have 4/5 of seats fragmented multiparty system, 5+ parties, none significant.