POLS 1400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Party System, Proportional Representation, Royal Assent
8 Dec 2016
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An organized group that nominates candidates and contests elections in order to influence the personnel and policies of government. Functions: organize public opinion, provide leadership, provide symbols of allegiance, provide integration, they connect all of you to the state, policy agenda. Formulate policies, pass the bills, and make the policies: organize governments. Organized through the creation of political parties: structure the vote. Political parties are the mechanism or tool that you need to say if you want to vote a certain way: organizing public opinion pols. Parties that are less democratic because they only recruit form the political elite. Dropped in popularity: mass too large, involved, and strutualized, catch all try to accommodate a large diverse population by creating policies and issues that would affect large populations into the party. Pre-requisites: active leadership, freely recruited following, procedures, ideology, issues. History of political parties in canada: 1867-1896: one party dominance. Controlled canada for around 30 years: 1896-1921: classic two party system.
