General introduction
The Parties have become a major player in politics in the late nineteenth century.
The functioning of political regimes is deeply committed to the existence of these political parties that did not exist in the eighteenth century and were still embryonic in the early nineteenth century. In the totalitarian, one-party organizing mobilization. This explains the importance of parties in this type of regime.
The importance of parties is also true in pluralist democracies because there is a democratic competition : competition between political parties that compete for the conquest of institutions and power. As the parties have a monopoly of electoral offer, they effectively control all elected offices, this means that the party has a virtual monopoly on the selection of leaders.
For all these reasons, if we want to understand how liberal democracies work, one must understand how a political party works.
What is a political party?
A political party is an organized association that brings together citizens united by a common ideology or philosophy, which she seeks fulfillment , with the goal of conquest and exercise of power. This is an organization in the service of an idea.
The political environment is not the same everywhere. It may give a different country to another characteristic of a locality to another. These characteristics result in particular the diversity of political parties, but also systems of parties that are not uniform.
(In France, the role of political parties has been enshrined in the Constitution of 1958 (art. 4), which since 1999 also gives their mission is to promote equal access for women and men to electoral mandates and elective functions. Law of 11 March 1988 on the financing of political parties said they form and pursue their activities freely, they are endowed with legal personality and can take legal action.)
The French political system can often seem bewildering and difficult to