The Cartel Model

The model of the ‘cartel party, as outlined by Katz and Mair, first in their 1995 article pertaining to the topic, Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy; The Emergence of the Cartel Party, then once again in the revised article titled The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement, in 2009 is one that the established parties in Western Europe have adapted themselves to declining levels of participation and involvement by party members by not only availing of the resources provided by the state but by doing so in a collusive manner, functioning like cartels. According to Katz and Mair parties from various European countries have developed into this model in recent times. This essay will analyze first the organizational structure

Germany, where ‘tradition of inter-party cooperation combines with a contemporary abundance of state support for parties, and with a privileging of party in relation to patronage appointments’ (Katz and Mair, 1995). The two German political parties with the most strength are most likely to have cartel model traits are the SDP and the CDU. The contemporary abundance of state support for parties is not new for Germany. Being described as ‘one of the pioneers of the public roads to political money’ (Detterbeck, 2005). Since 1959 parliamentary parties have received subsidies for employing research assistants and secretaries and from 1969 onward individual MPs have had the ability to receive an allowance for employing personal assistance. The national levels of both the SPD and CDU have been financed primarily by the state since the 1970s (Detterbeck, 2005). The Political Parties Act 2004 states that parties ‘shall receive funds as partial financing of the activities generally assigned to them under basic law’ (Idea.int) the provision for state funding is limited to parties that polled 0.5% in the last election to the Bundestag and European Parliament or 1% for an election to a Landtag. In the amounts of public finance coupled with other public benefits to parties the largest of which, the SPD and CDU, share in a common

Under Blair, in the 1990s, the government successfully undertook efforts to reduce the financial dependence on the unions and to expand the party budget by ‘reversing the downward trend of individual party membership, raising membership fees and attracting donations from the business sector’ (Scarrow, 1996). This is when the cartelization of the Labour party starts to show evidence as since the party had made more revenues it possible to expand and professionalize party headquarters, and to employ new strategies of political marketing and capital-intensive campaigning (Detterbeck, 2005). Subsequently this new era of the Labour party started attempting to attract new and different sectors of society, instead of moving towards the state. At the same time, the parliamentary party elite could ‘increase its political autonomy by reducing the policy input of trade unionist leaders and party activists through party reforms’ (Detterbeck, 2005). This is the party organizational behaviour Katz and Mair associated with the formation of cartel parties. Those who had direct impact on party policies were not given the attention that the party was giving to a wider spectrum of society. The two main parties in Britain have not completely severed ties with their historical allegiances,