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Unit 13: Political Parties

making a study of pressure group politics in this country. One is struck with the fact that even the Notes
groups of the workers and intellectuals have sharp differences so much so that one may suggest the
existence of an isolative political culture in this country. Though at times of great national crisis, unity
has been achieved around the ‘myth of France’, yet the content of national symbols “has always given
rise to disagreement—the interpretations of Jaures and Maurras, Renan and Daudet, being obviously
incompatible. The real France has never been able to produce a legal France in its image.
It is due to this that while the ‘bourgeois’ interests have been in a position of advantage due to the
practical application of their secret lobbying tactics, the ‘proletarian’ organisations have suffered.
The political ineffectiveness of the labour organisation stems from a relatively late development of an
organised working class movement and also from the tendency of French trade unionists to divide
themselves between rivals, if not warring ideological camps. Moreover, the failure of the movement
of syndicalism had its own impact on the working class movement of France. A large section of the
workers felt disillusioned when it found that the official policy of the Confederation (CGS) was wrong
as it was based on the belief that working class victories could be won not piecemeal through
parliamentary means but, in one major push, through the general strike. Moreover, a section of the
ultra-leftists was taken aback when it found that most of the workers’ unions took a pro-bourgeois
stand during the days of the First World War. The result was that the ultra-leftists (communists)
formed an organisation (CGTU) that was disbanded in 1936 when the Popular Front came into being
and a large section of the ‘leftists’ rejoined the CGT dominated mostly by the socialists.
The state of disintegration is still plaguing the politics of pressure groups to the extent that neither
political parties nor pressure groups have been able to form an autonomous sub-system of their own.
There is much of anomism and Poujadism in the political behaviour of various interest groups that
places the stasiological politics of France in a category different from its Anglo-American counterparts.
In fact, the significance of many institutional and anomic interest groups “is directly related to the
uneven effectiveness of associational interest groups, the absence of any effectively aggregative party
system, and its fragmented or isolative political culture. Parties and interest groups in France do not
constitute differentiated, autonomous political subsystems. They interpenetrate one another.”
Self-Assessment

1. Fill in the blanks:
(i) The communist party of ............... occupies important position in the political system.
(ii) NAM is the interest group of ............... .
(iii) The name of CGPF remamed as ............... .
(iv) Gaullism is the most important movement of ............... .
(v) Socialist Party was founded ............... .

13.5 Summary

• “The American party system consists of two major elements, each of which performs in specified
ways or follows customary behaviour pattern in the total system. To remove or alter the role of
one element would destroy the system or create new one.”
• America is known for having a bi-party system. The Democrats and the Republicans are the two
major parties and the power alternates between them. In a strict sense, America may be described
as having a multi-party system as there have been several ‘minor’ parties, though their value is
equal to nothing as they have never been able to make a tilt in the distribution of power.
• The structure of the American political parties is marked by decentralisation of authority and
consequent enfeebling of discipline to an exaggerated degree. Both parties may be regarded as
loose confederacies of States parties since the locus of power is not there at the Centre.
• The American party system displays “more pluribus (plurality) than unuum (uniformity).” It
would not be wrong to say that the structure of each American party smacks of a peculiar
brand of feudalism “with few enforceable pledges of faith, feudalism in which the bonds of

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