POLS 2300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: John A. Macdonald, Party System, October Crisis

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 2300
• Professor: Ajay Sharma

Document Summary

Canadian democracy does not depend on the existence of political parties. Parties do not exist solely to campaign for office. Parties are not the shapeless, outdated, elite-driven organizations they are sometimes made out to be. A political party is a formal organization of politically minded citizens who unite under a common label and contest elections. Political parties have many roles: aggregating and articulating interests, selecting a leader and choosing candidates, running election campaigns, promoting a government agenda, coordinating a legislative agenda. Elite parties: closed cadres of the upper class - small political parties run by people with ascribed social status. Mass parties: emerged after wwi, grassroots political parties characterized by efforts to sig(cid:374) up (cid:373)e(cid:373)(cid:271)ers, (cid:272)are less a(cid:271)out the perso(cid:374)ality of the party"s leader tha(cid:374) the ideas that the leader espouses. Pure elite and mass parties phased out of canadian politics, remaining as historical (cid:862)ideal types(cid:863)