Talk:List of political parties by country/Archive 2006

Open Discussion

What amazes me is that the list is made in a logical way. It is divided in pages for continent sections. These pages links have been made to Lists of political parties for each country and to parties. When you go to the country pages, this can differ. I suggest to choose for a system where one index page links to country pages and to skip the links to party discriptions on the continent pages. (Wilfried Derksen)

I don't think the major/minor party distinction is useful here. The pages about the parties themselves, and perhaps US-specific pages like United States/Political Parties can talk about the relative popularity of the parties. This page looks like more of an overview of what parties exist in various nations, for linking purposes. Putting commentary here like "major/minor" makes it seem like there is some "official" difference, which there is not. --LDC

Um, actually in Canada (and, I believe) most other parliamentary democracies, there *is* a distinction between major and minor. Here you need 12 seats in the Commons to be a major. Below that, you can't ask questions during question period (along with a bunch of other things). For a while, the Progressive Conservatives lost that status here. -- PaulDrye

The U.S. is not parliamentary. Anyone may run for any seat in Congress, or for any other office; whoever is elected to that seat has equal vote and equal right to speak. There are some rules of procedure that recognize the "majority" party and "minority" party of each house, but those are purely procedural rules, not laws. Party affiliation is listed on the ballot. Ballots are controlled by the states, some of which do make ballot access easier for parties that have had recent success (for example, parties that achieved a certain percentage of the vote qualify for immediate ballot access next time while others have to petition). --LDC

When I wrote: "Please add your favourite political parties to this list." I didn't mean "add *one* party you like most" ;)

Entries where only one party from country is listed are strange. Could you add more parties from your coutry ? --Taw

Article reads "not including forums with little power like the British House of Lords" -- the British House of Lords still has significant power, IMHO. It cannot block legislation supported by the House of Commons forever, but it can delay it for quite a while. (see Parliament Acts). But still I'd agree with not listing House of Lords percentages, simply because it will make the Tories seem far more important than they really are :)

Agreed. The House of Lords does have some power but it is insignificant in comparison to the power of the House of Commons, and so listing seat totals for the House of Lords would give a misleading impression of the relative power of the parties. --Eob

Also, a lot of the countries with only one party were added by me -- I found a list of social democrat/labor parties (i.e. members of Party of European Socialists) and added them. It wasn't intentional, it was just my source.

I think it should be noted that European Parliament party groups are not quite the same thing as pan-European politicial parties. Pan-European political parties like the Party of European Socialists have national parties as their members; European Parliament party groups (like the Party of European Socialists party group) have members of the European Parliament as their members.

I think only the Party of European Socialists calls itself a "political party" -- most others, like the European Democrat Union, only call themselves "party unions". (This may change however with the adoption of the "Council Regulation on the Statute and financing of European political parties", currently being debated in the Council of the European Union.)

Nope, at least the ELDR (European Liberal Democrat and Reform party) calls itself a party as well. So ELDR is both the name of the liberal group in the European Parliament, and the name of a pan-European party with member parties from EU- as well as non-EU countries. The EPP (European People's Party, christian-democrats) is a pan-European party as well in the same way as PES and ELDR. -- Herman

Finally, in the case of the UK listing the figures for only the UK Parliament makes some parties seem smaller than they really are. Especially with those parties with a regional base (the SNP, the Plaid Cymru, the Northern Ireland parties), which are not that important in the UK Parliament but quite large in the regional legislatures (Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, Welsh Assembly.)

I suggest adding separate sections for the three assemblies (perhaps indented under the united Kingdom) with the seat totals for the parties in those assemblies. --Eob

-- Simon J Kissane

We used to have (in some countries' listings, anyway) a distinction between active and defunct parties. Why was this eliminated? It is useful to know which parties are now, in 2002, functioning and which are of only historical interest, in my belief -- BRG.

Can someone please fix the entries for Iceland? I'm sure those circle-r registered trademark symbols aren't part of the names of any Icelandic parties, but I don't know the correct item.

(In the interests of sanity, I'm not listing all NY State's minor political parties--nobody outside NY, and few in-state, care.) Vicki Rosenzweig

The Socialist Workers Party is listed on this page as a transnational page, but the linked entry is only for the US party. Is the SWP really transnational? If so, the article should reflect that. If not, this article should reflect that.

I am wondering is this article really useful? I think we can seperate list into each article of corresponding country. It is just irrelivant to talk which party is important here in the list of political parties. If no one opposes me for some period, I will break up the article if I remember. Taku 21:43 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

This kind of article is very useful too link articles. Maybe it should be removed one day but not now. User:Ericd

Please leave the list as it is. DON'T break up this article. Where else could one get such a good survey of political parties? KF 22:10 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

Okay. Agreed. Taku 22:13 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with the basic idea of the list but the list must also have a useable structure which was to some extent lacking. I'm sure that any democratic nation can bring up a plethora of insignificant local, provincial or extermist parties and there are basically two ways to deal with this. Either to find a structure which can accomodate 50+ parties per country in a single list or to devide it into smaller portions. I have reworked the list to provide a structure where separate national list can be utilized.

Regarding there election results per for parties there is ample opportunity to do this in the separate entry List of election results where they can be applied uniformly. There is also need for a separate and smaller list for parties which are represented in the parlament or national assembly, this could also show their incumbent or opposition status.

There is still much work to do on the list. Some things should stay and some things should not. Moved this off the main list:

// Mic 13:09 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Is there really a need for a separate list of parties for most countries? I've redirected the list of Norwegian parties to Politics of Norway. -- Egil 04:49 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

IMHO the current split is ridiculous: now the same content is duplicated! How are we supposed to decide what goes on the main page and what goes in the linked pages!? Jpatokal 07:19, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My idea is that when parties are added for all the other countries there will not be room to have the lists as we had before - so major parties appear on the main page, and the minor parties in the linked pages. The list covering all countries (rather than Europe and English-speaking countries as before) would be far too long otherwise. Secretlondon 10:45, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)

It's too long as it is - we need to split it up, probably by continent? Morwen 21:27, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)

The generic names could easily be placed on a separate page. Now that you streamlined the main list, I think it would be nice to leave the page together, afterall, section editing is possible. -- User:Docu

Can the Communist Party still be considered an "international party"? In the 1930s, I'd agree. But the Comintern and Cominform are gone, the USSR is gone, and today, national communist parties are just as independent from each other as the various socialist parties or the various liberal parties - they may be linked by very loose international coordinating bodies (as are social democrats and liberals - Socialist International, Liberal International etc) but I'm not sure that we can consider them part of the same party? They share a common name and probably some common principles, but that's not the same thing. Similarly, is the Green Party really an international party (rather than a group of independent national parties that are loosely associated), and in what sense? User:rjp_uk10:45, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

We should probably start consistently linking the "List of political parties of ..." from the respective "Politics of ..." pages, otherwise there will be duplication of work. There are a bunch of those pages that diverge even now. --Shallot 18:51, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Agreed - they should link both ways. Secretlondon 23:11, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Comprehensive list

I completed the Index of political parties project, so now I am able to include in this list an overview of the national parties in the listed countries. The new intro explains which parties are included. - Electionworld 21:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BELGIUM: you forgot the Belgian Union (Belgische Unie - Union belge or B.U.B.) which has a French, Dutch and English page here at Wikipedia.

This party was not forgotten, but is very small and does not fulfill the criteria for listing in this list.Electionworld 19:08, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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Alliances?

Should political alliances between parties (such as the Concertación or Alliance for Sweden) also be included on this page? Both Concertación and the opposition Alliance for Chile are included in the List of political parties in Chile page but not on Chile's section on this page. I have added Alliance for Sweden on the Sweden section, but do say if it is wrong to put it there. Tamino 17:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Too much work

I filled this page with the parties in october last year. It helped to get a comprehensive set of articles on political parties. But to update it frequently remains very much work. Therefore I reverted the page to the version that only included links to list of parties by country. It is less work to keep the lists updated in this way. I hope you can agree. Electionworld = Wilfried (talk 22:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds very sensible. Tamino 08:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Information about the type of party system

I agree that a list of parties for each country is an overkill for this page. However, I am wondering if it would not be good to include the type of political party composition (Multi-party, Two-party, Dominant-party, Single-party, No-party). This classification seems to be included on the individual country pages (e.g. China and Sweden), and a partial list is provided on Two-party_system (which I think is not the best place for this listing).

Including this information would add some self-contained content to this page, instead of it serving only as an index (not that an index is not important), and I believe that it should not be that hard to update. While parties come and go, countries do not change between these systems so easily.

Any thoughts on whether this would be a good or a bad idea?

Torfason 21:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen no objections to the above proposal, so unless anyone objects in the next few days, I will start to convert the page so that will look something like this:

Country	Multi party	Two party	Dominant party	No party
Abkhazia			•
Afghanistan	•
Åland	•
Albania	•
Algeria	•
American Samoa				•
Andorra	•
Angola			•
Anguilla		•
Antigua and Barbuda		•
Argentina	•
Armenia	•
Aruba	•
Australia		•
Austria	•
Azerbaijan			•

--Torfason 11:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template usable on articles

{{Political party list}}

Template:Political party list

I made this template 6 months ago & used it on some minor political party pages: people did figure out how to use it; now it just needs more use, lol. Cwolfsheep 20:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Australia vs UK

Why is Australia listed as a two-party system and the UK as a multi-party. There systems are pretty much identical, there either both a two-party system or both a multi-pary system.

US two party?

I feel that the US should be listed as multi-party. It is legally a multi-party system, so it should be listed as such. Obviously two parties are much more powerful than the others, but many other parties hold positions at the local and state levels. There's a note to say that there are multiple parties, but listing it as a two party system is misleading. I changed the US to a multi-party system but left the note to explain that two are dominant. I'm not completely sure on the rules here, so if I did something improper by changing it before a consensus is reached please just revert it. I also changed the US Virgin Islands to multi-party, as the article says there are three. --SodiumBenzoate 05:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because this does not concern the legal situation but the real situation. There are no countries that are legally bipartisan. If two parties divide nearly all political posts, are the only ones that hold seats in both houses of parliament and are the only ones to stand a chance at presidential elections, you're two party. (See for instance Arend Lijphart Patterns of Democracy 1999 Yale University Press, p.77). I have reverted this edit. C mon 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like someone switched it back to multiparty. I moved it back to two party cause unless someone can name me a non-democrat/republican (not counting independents) at national level then its two party dominated. Mikebloke 06:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Venezuela

The article says it is multi-party, with so many major parties no single party can gain power without a coalition. Why, then, is it listed as "dominant party"? --SodiumBenzoate 05:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because out of the 167 seats 114 are held by Fifth Republic Movement after the 2005 elections. In the previous elections it held 91 seats. This means that this party dominates parliament. I have reverted this edit. C mon 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is a misunderstanding of what is meant by a "dominant party" in this list. Just because a party wins an overwhelming majority of seats at one (or two) elections does not make it a "dominant party", and the system would still be described as "multi-party". Such a situation also applies in the United Kingdom, where the Labour Party has won an overwhelming majority of seats since 1997 (three elections), but the system is still clearly "multi-party". A "dominant party" system is one where the ruling party can be expected to win every election, largely because other parties are denied full access to the media, are not allowed to operate freely, or are forced into subordinate coalitions. That is clearly not the case in Venezuela, and the entry should be returned to the "multi-party" category. Skinsmoke 13:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I base my definition of dominant party on external sources like Alan Ware's standard work Political Parties and Party Systems (Oxford, 1996) p.162 where he defines dominant party system as "More than one 'relevant' party but only one party controls the legislature" and Arend Lijphart Patterns of Democracy (Yale; 1999) p.67 where he gives several examples of dominant party systems: "Examples of the former are pre-1990 Italy with its dominant Christian Democratic party and the three Scandinivian countries with strong Socialist parties". They both point a numerical condition or the way power is organized within the parliament. If one party is very large compared to the other and is thus able to control the legislature it is a dominant party system. I think Venezuela fits into this category very well. C mon 14:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No Venezuela doesn't fit this into this category at all well. The point about pre-1990 Italy was that the Christian Democrats had held power for 45 years. Similarly, in Scandinavia, the Socialist parties had won the overwhelming majority of elections over a period of 50 or 60 years. In Venezuela, the ruling party scored a landslide victory in a single election. That could easily be reversed at the next election (as has happened, for instance, in Canada. For it to become a dominant party system, it would have to score similar crushing victories in a series of elections over a period of time. Skinsmoke 16:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Skinsmoke on this; apart from that, none of the Scandinavian countries feature a dominant party system as of 2006, incidentally. —Nightst a llion (?) 23:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]