A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government. They agree on some policies and programmes for the society with a view to promote the collective good. Parties reflect fundamental political divisions in a society.
A political party has three components: leaders, active members and followers.
Functions
- Parties contest elections.
- Parties put forward different policies and programmes and the voters choose from them.
- Parties play a decisive role in making laws for a country.
- Parties form and run governments.
- Those parties that lose in the elections play the role of opposition to the parties in power.
- Parties shape public opinion.
- Parties provide people access to government machinery and welfare schemes implemented by governments.
Democracies that follow a federal system have two kinds of political parties: parties that are present in only one of the federal units and parties that are present in several or all units of the federation.
There are some country-wide parties, which are called national parties. These parties have their units in various states. Every party in the country has to register with the Election Commission. Most of the major parties of the country are State parties. These are commonly referred to as regional parties.
Challenges to political parties
The first challenge is lack of internal democracy within parties. The second challenge of dynastic succession is related to the first one. The third challenge is about the growing role of money and muscle power in parties, especially during elections. The fourth challenge is that very often parties do not seem to offer a meaningful choice to the voters.