Political party

A political party is a political organization subscribing to a certain ideology or formed around special issues. In party-list proportional representation, parties (and sometimes multi-party cartels) can play a functional role in the voting system.

Table of contents

1 Single-party, two-party, and multi-party governments
2 Parties and directions
3 Colors and emblems for parties
4 International organizations of political parties
5 See also
6 External links

Single-party, two-party, and multi-party governments

In single-party states, only one political party is allowed. This party is not, however, identical to the government, although sometimes positions within the party may be in fact more important than positions within the government.

Two-party systems are states, such as the United States, in which there are two dominant political parties, with extreme difficulty for anybody to achieve electoral success under the banner of any other party. The relationship between the voting system used and the two-party system was described by Maurice Duverger and is known as Duverger's Law.

Multi-party systems encourage diversity in the political offer.

Parties and directions

Political parties are often considered on a political spectrum. One typical spectrum has the Left associated with radical or progressive policies and the Right with conservative or reactionary policies. Other analyses include other dimensions such as the political parties' acceptance of parliamentary democracy as opposed to authoritarian or totalitarian attitudes, and economic policies, the Left favoring social-democracy, socialism or communism, while the Right tends to favor laissez-faire economics.

Colors and emblems for parties

Generally speaking, over the world, political parties associate themselves with colors, primarily for identification, especially for voter recognition during elections. Red usually signifies leftist, communist or socialist parties; pink sometimes signifies socialist. Conservative and Christian democratic parties generally use blue. Yellow is often used for liberalism. Green is the color for green parties and Islamic parties.

There are notable exceptions and variations:

In the United States, the (currently) conservative Republican Party is red, and the (currently) progressive Democratic Party is blue, stemming from southern Texas ballots helping illiterate voters in late 19th century and early 20th century thus colored [1]. Quite confusingly, however, electoral maps for Presidential elections are produced by the government with these colors reversed. For example, see U.S. presidential election, 1992. Nevertheless, the news media tends to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats.
In Taiwan, New Party uses yellow as its party color though its policies are conservative; Democratic Progressive Party uses green though its international alignment is with the Liberal International.
In Canada, the official colour for the New Democratic Party is orange, while the Liberal Party of Canada uses red.
In Belgium, the Liberal Democrats (VLD/MR) are blue and the Christian Democrats are orange. In the Netherlands, Liberals (VVD) are blue and Christian Democrats use green.
In Northern Ireland, the Protestant parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly are called the "orange block" and the Catholic parties are the "green block".

Color associations are useful for mnemonics when voter illiteracy is significant. Another use case is when it is not desirable to make rigorous links to parties, particularly when coalitions and alliances are formed between political parties and other organizations, for example: Red-Green Alliance, Blue-Green Alliance, Pan-green coalition, and Pan-blue coalition.

The emblem of Socialist Parties is often a red rose held in a fist.

International organizations of political parties

During the 20th century, many national political parties organized themselves into international organizations along similar policy lines. Notable examples are the International Workingmen's Association, the Socialist International (both red), the Liberal International (yellow), the International Democrat Union (blue), and the Worldwide green parties (green). The Socialist International, the Liberal International, and the International Democrat Union are all based in London.