Party, Opposition, and Political Development

E-ISSN： 1748-6858|40|2|163-182

ISSN： 0034-6705

Source： Review of Politics, Vol.40, Iss.2, 1978-04, pp. : 163-182

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Previous Menu Next

Abstract

It is by now conventional wisdom among political scientists that political parties are not the noxious weeds they were once thought to be. Undeniably, parties have hastened the development of democracy in the West and continue to serve vital functions in modern states. Most political scientists would agree too that the emergence of regular party competition is only possible among those peoples who have acquired a measure of political sophistication. A country with nourishing parties is a country that has matured to the point of being able to tolerate dissent, and a country with inchoate or languishing parties is a country that must be consigned to the ranks of the “underdeveloped” or the perverse. Party development, then, is often regarded as a measure of political development, and both of these as indexes to modernization or democratization.