• See “The Wikipedia Elections Edit War”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVIl_DJl5NU

INTRODUCTION

During the Measurement series I have argued that concepts we believe to be universal and eternal are simply not. I discussed the limitations of political positions and the definition of elites, and those articles were fairly straightforward. But now let’s look at a thing that we all think we understand and yet don’t: the concept of a political party.

THE LIST

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertas_Spain
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_List_(Italy)

The simplest form of political association is the list. A list is exactly that: a physical list of people or parties standing for election under a common banner. That list is usually headed by the most prominent individual but has no actual party structure. They are popular in countries that have no settled stable political arrangement and mutate from election to election. They were popular in Eastern Europe after the USSR fell because the people needed to put together an organization quickly, and still crop up in places like Italy.

Some of you may remember Libertas, a protean pan-European political party put together to fight the 2009 European Parliament election. It tried to create parties in each state but that was too slow. Instead it created multiple lists, like “Libertas Spain”, which was quicker.

A less benevolent example was the National List in the 1924 Italian election, enabling Mussolini to take power. The Wikipedia article for it still thinks it’s a political party, not a list by the way.

THE SUPPORTERS PARTY

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(French_political_party)

You are a charismatic politician. You want to rule your own party but don’t want to be constrained by party members. You could open a list, but the other people may have actual opinions and you don’t want that, oh no. The solution is to form a supporters’ party. A supporters’ party (a phrase I have just made up) is a party run like a business, with a single charismatic individual at the top, political candidates appointed by him and party members contributing money but no influence. The obvious example in UK is Reform but Macron’s party is also: one. They tend to fall apart when the charismatic politician leaves.

THE NATIONAL PARTY OF REGIONAL PARTIES

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)

These are more familiar to British eyes: the national party made up of smaller regional or constituency parties, like cells in a body. Each member has some influence over the national party, even if it’s only voting at a convention. They are mentioned here for completeness and to allow me to mention the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, which covers all the food groups. They last for several years if not decades.

THE SUBSUMED PARTY

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_Party

A subsumed party exists, has a legal identity and its own members but just like a mitochondrion in a cell is in practice subsumed into a greater whole. An uncontroversial example of this is the Co-operative Party in the UK, which de-jure is independent but de-facto exists within the Labour Party (GB).

THE VESTIGIAL PARTY

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK,_1989)
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_(UK,_1990%E2%80%93present)

A smaller party that never achieves success, or loses it, may be termed a vestigial party: never actually ceasing to exist but no longer playing a significant role on the national stage. Obvious examples are the remnants of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party, still in existence despite the collapse of their precursors. Like Pratchett’s small gods, they hang around for decades thru habit and memories of the old times, true believers in a cause now served elsewhere.

THE ONE-PARTY STATE

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_of_the_German_Democratic_Republic
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_(Czechoslovakia)

Here’s a question: how many parties are there in a one-party state? Counter-intuitively it often isn’t “one”, but “more than one”. Communist countries are good at this, having had many years of practice. You start off with a Communist party or equivalent. You then force the other parties to acknowledge it’s in charge and allow it to vet and reject their members. The parties then stand under a list with a name like “united front”, “national front” or similar and no other party is allowed to stand. It looks like a multiparty state but only one party really counts.

THE ALLIANCE AND THE PACT

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDP%E2%80%93Liberal_Alliance
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_to_Remain

An alliance is a deal between two or more parties of roughly equal magnitude to fight an election without standing against each other. The one you are most familiar with may be the SDP-Liberal Alliance, which fought the 1983 and 1987 elections in the UK, with insufficient success. A more recent one was the Unite to Remain pact between the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru in 2019. They are usually created for temporary political purposes and don’t last long. If there is a more pressing reason for the separation such as geography, they may mutate into the caucus as below.

THE CAUCUS AND THE WHIP

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Unionist_Party
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Democratic_Caucus
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU/CSU

A caucus is a group of people or parties informally voting together in a Parliament after an election. The most famous example in the UK is was the situation before the 1970’s where the Ulster Unionist Party MPs took the Conservative whip in the UK Parliament. Another example is the Democratic caucus in the American Senate (which currently includes three non-Democrats), or the CDU/CSU setup in Germany. They may last for quite a while if there is a solid reason for the separation, such as geography: the UUP in NI and the Cons in GB, or the CSU in Bavaria and the CDU in the rest of Germany.

THE GROUP, THE FRACTION AND THE GROUPING

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_European_Parliament
See also: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU/CSU-Fraktion_im_Deutschen_Bundestag
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron%E2%80%93Clegg_coalition

The group, sometimes called a “grouping” by bad people who hate God, is a more formal arrangement by which parties vote together after an election, usually accompanied by a negotiated agreement between each other. It is popular in the European Parliament, where groups get funding and offices when they meet certain criteria, and also popular in other parliaments. They are not necessary stable across terms and often reform with different names and parties after an election, or cease to exist if the numbers are too small.

THE TRANSNATIONAL PARTY OF PARTIES

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_political_party
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_International
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_International

This is a cross-border collection of parties which have a similar outlook. International by definition they may be loose associations for socializing or information exchange, or tighter creations with a more focused intent. The European Union has also sponsored the creation of specifically European ones, presumably as a precursor to greater European unification.

THE CLEITOPHON CRITERION

See also: https://sports.ladbrokes.com/competitions/politics/international/eu-politics
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_European_Parliament
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_political_party

Why am I writing this article? Why should such an obscure list of trivia better fitted to a Buzzfeed article take up any more than a few minutes of your time? There is a serious answer hidden in the gallimaufry my children, and it’s to do with betting. The American midterms are usually accompanied by a warning by OGH that the Democratic caucus isn’t all Democrats, and the bookies on the European Parliament elections price up the odds based on groups (eg S&D, Renew, Greens-EFA) despite the fact that the groups often change their name after the election. This can cause problems when settling gambling debts.

CONCLUSION
As (I think) @isam found out when Theresa May gave way to Boris Johnson, the minutiae of political structures may not be understood by the ill-informed people on the bookmaker’s help desk. If the bloke on the phone doesn’t understand the differences then he may not pay out even if you are right. As political betting becomes more international as I hope it does, problems like this will multiply if the subtleties are not understood.

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