ABSTRACT
Political parties are associations of citizens organized with the purpose of conquering state power by means of recurring elections. The Roman Empire and oriental monarchies “were held together by an authority and legitimacy which was basically religious.” In Europe, workers organized into unions and legal or semilegal political groupings and exerted pressure on the upper classes, forcing them to eliminate limitations on suffrage one after another. Experience shows that multiparty systems involving coalition governments tend to be unstable; two- and one-party systems, stable. Parties represent a disappointment for liberal democratic theory— just as imperfect competition and underemployment equilibrium are for neoclassical economic theory. Citizens can also control or participate in legislation directly. This is done by referendum or people’s initiative. Political philosophy, which reflected the growth of the new bourgeois order from the seventeenth century onward, developed a characteristic dualistic concept of man.
