ABSTRACT
Numerous factors account for the decay in one-party rule, including organization and leadership weakness and the rise of competing social or political forces. In democracies, political parties are central to civic life: in principle, they reflect the voters' preferences, provide alternative policy visions, and hold governments accountable. The predecessors of the contemporary Congress and Liberal Democratic Parties date to the 1880s; the Chinese Communist Party, in contrast, was established shortly after World War I, as were other communist parties in Asia and Europe. An obvious difference is Congress's commitment to electoral competition and other elements of political democracy during all but two of the years that it formed national governments. In contrast, the Chinese Communist Parties (CCP) operated under the Leninist norms of single-party monopoly of revolutionary momentum. The history of the Liberal Democratic Party is very different from that of either the Congress or the CCP.
