A political party is a political organization that seeks to attain and maintain political power within government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns. Parties often espouse an expressed ideology or vision bolstered by a written platform with specific goals, but may also represent a coalition among disparate interests.

Definitions

In science several definitions of political parties exist. The first historical definitions of political parties concentrated on the institutional nature of parties (organized assembly) and on their functions (working for the national interest) and partisanship. In Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent, published in 1770, Edmund Burke formulated the following definition of a political party: "an organized assembly of men, united for working together for the national interest, according to the particular principle they agreed upon." In 1816, Benjamin Constant formulated the ideological definition of parties, which since that time remained accurate only for those parties that belonged to the grand ideological families, but not for opportunist or pragmatic parties, concerned with access to power, regardless of the political doctrine or ideology. For him, a political party is "a reunion of men professing the same political doctrine." Marxists used a definition related with the central axiom of their doctrine (politics as class struggle): "a political party is the organization of the most conscious elements of a social class."Max Weber kept the function formulated by Burke (realization of a political ideal, but also enlarged the definition, in order to include parties animated by material interests. According to him, a party is "an associative relation, an affiliation based on free recruitment. Its goal is to ensure the power for its leaders within an institutionalized group, having as aim the realization of an ideal or obtaining material advantages for its militants." After World War II, political scientists and other researchers concentrated more on the technical and electoral nature of parties. For Anthony Downs, a political party is "a team of men seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining offices in a duly constituted election". Traditionally, political scientists have focused on the role of political parties as instruments of promoting candidacies in elections to public office. Crotty defines political parties as:

"A political party is a formally organized group that performs the functions of educating the public to acceptance of the system as well as the more immediate implications of policy concerns, that recruits and promotes individuals for public office, and that provides a comprehensive linkage function between the public and governmental decisionmakers."

Udofia, O. E.. Nigerian Political Parties: Their Role in Modernizing the Political System, 1920-1966 in Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4. (Jun., 1981), pp. 435-447. Similarly, according to Coleman, a political party is:

"an association that competes with other similar associations in periodic elections in order to participate in formal government institutions and thereby influence and control the personnel and policy of government."

Fact: date=June 2008 However, not all political scientists agree that participation is the defining criteria of political parties. Neuman utilizes a broader definition, that political parties are

"the articulate organization of society's active political agents, those who are concerned with the control of governmental power and who compete for popular support with another group or groups holding divergent views."

Moreover, in many countries political parties predates elections and universal suffrage. Suryadinata notes that in non-Western societies, standard Western definitions of political parties have limited usage. He urges that the functions of an organization should be the essential aspect and that an organization might have the functions of a political party without formally identifying itself as a political party.