Elements for a Dialogue on Global Political Party Formations

NIGD is launching a project on global party formations that will result in two publications later in the year. Comments are welcome!

Background and justification
Katarina Sehm Patomäki and Marko Ulvila

During the era of globalisation there has been one sphere of social action where the process of increasing international interaction has not been remarkable: political parties. While governments, corporations and social movements have phenomenally increased global interaction, the political parties have reminded to a large extend limited to national spheres or regional settings such as the European Union.

Recently there has been increasing interest in international interaction of political parties and debates about establishing a new global party or parties. Global projections of institutions that are rooted in national political communities risk reproducing the problematic aspects of domestic analogies. Ever since Hedley Bull (1977) coined the term, criticisms of the domestic analogy have been used to criticize attempts to apply democratic principles to world politics. Straight-forward proposals of global parliamentary federalism often include simplistic analogies, but we believe that there are also possibilities to democratise world politics that go beyond simply projecting democratic institutions as we know them into global contexts.

This tendency of international interaction of political parties may be a dynamic democratic force as the political parties play an important intermediary role between the people and the state in national sphere and could evolve similarly in transnational settings.

Historically there are experiences of international party formation mainly in the left/communist circles. The attempts to build international structure for the Left parties began in 1864 with the establishment of the so called First International (the International Workingmen's Association). It dispanded soon and the Second International was formed in 1889 and lasted until the First World War. The Third International (Comintern) from 1919 to 1943 was perhaps the most powerful international party organisation till date.

Since the Second World War there has been a formation of modern international associations of political parties. Among the socialist and social democratic parties there is the Socialist International that was established in its current form in 1951. The Liberal International, founded in 1947, is the world federation of liberal political parties. The Conservative, Christian Democrat and like minded political parties of the centre and centre right formed the International Democrat Union in 1983. The most recent development is the Global Greens that joined together in 2001. All these formations are, however, rather Euro-centric and detached from both social movements and international day-to-day politics.

The project will address the question "What would be the scope for an emergence of democratic international political parties?" Such formations could take several different paths. The following scenarios can be foreseen:

i) Activation of the existing internationals
ii) Formation of new global parties
iii) Formation of new alliances of parties
iv) Global associations of individual members of political parties

Based on this, Heikki Patomäki and Teivo Teivainen are presently preparing a concept paper for the project. The paper will soon be available here.

NIGD is organising a number of dialogues on the subject of party systems, democracy and globalization. A first dialogue takes place in Helsinki, Finland, on Wednesday, 7 September 2005. Future dialogues are also planned.



A draft discussion paper by Heikki Patomäki and Teivo Teivainen is available for downloading as a PDF-file:

Global Political Parties: Toward a Research Programme