Long before political parties became the giant, membership-driven organisations we recognise today, they operated very differently. In the parliaments of nineteenth-century Europe, a “party” was often little more than a loose circle of wealthy, well-connected individuals who shared similar views and pooled their influence at election time. These were the elitist parties, and understanding them is the starting point for understanding how modern party organisation evolved. The most widely accepted framework for studying them comes from the French scholar Maurice Duverger, whose 1951 work Political Parties classified parties by their internal structure rather than their ideology.
Table of Contents
What are elitist parties?
Elitist parties, also called cadre parties or traditional parties, are organisations that are not built on a mass membership base and do not draw their strength from ordinary people. Instead, they are controlled by a small group of influential individuals. Duverger placed them at one end of his classification, contrasting them sharply with mass parties on the other end.
The defining feature is selectivity. These parties do not throw their doors open to everyone. They are deliberately exclusive in admitting members and deliberately seek the backing of prominent and influential persons rather than crowds of supporters. Whether liberal, conservative, or progressive in their politics, they share this organisational instinct: keep the circle small and select.
It is important to grasp that Duverger’s distinction between cadre and mass parties was never about the number of members alone. A cadre party could occasionally have a sizable following, yet still be dominated by a relatively small group at the centre. The difference is one of structure and purpose, not headcount.
Quality over quantity
The single most quoted phrase about elitist parties is that they emphasise quality rather than numbers. A mass party wants as many dues-paying members as possible because its power rests on sheer numbers. An elitist party wants the right kind of people, those who bring money, social standing, professional expertise, or public reputation to the cause.
Duverger described the basic unit of such a party as the caucus, a small and largely self-governing group of notables. Such a caucus had no formal membership and no desire to expand its numbers. New members were not recruited through enrolment drives; they were co-opted or nominated from within. The power of the caucus depended entirely on the calibre of the people inside it.
The social composition of these groups followed their politics. Conservative caucuses were typically built from aristocrats, industrialists, bankers, and church figures, while liberal or radical caucuses drew on small-business owners, lawyers, and journalists. In every case, the common thread was influence rather than mass appeal.
No formal machinery of membership
One organisational consequence flows directly from this exclusivity. In mass parties, joining means signing a formal undertaking and paying a regular subscription. In elitist parties, by contrast, admission involves no formalities, and regular subscriptions are replaced by occasional donations. There are no precise criteria for who counts as a member. This loose, informal structure is exactly what allows a small group to retain firm control.
The two types of elitist parties
Elitist parties are conventionally divided into two broad varieties: the European type and the American type. Both began from the same starting point, small groups of local notables, but they developed along different lines because they operated in very different political environments. The contrast between them is one of the most useful ways to understand how organisation shapes the behaviour of a party.
The European type
Most of the political parties established in nineteenth-century Europe were elitist in nature. As conservative and liberal cadre parties came to dominate European politics, they exercised power largely through electoral and parliamentary activity. They grew out of legislatures, formed when members holding similar views and sharing similar beliefs came together inside the assembly.
The key characteristic of the European type is the presence of a recognisable, if limited, central organisation. The national body worked to unify the party’s elected members within the assemblies and to give the party a coherent identity. Local committees were responsible for assuring moral and financial backing to candidates at election time and for maintaining ongoing contact between elected officials and voters.
Even so, the central organisation never became all-powerful. Local committees retained a basic autonomy and each legislator kept a large measure of independence. The European type therefore strikes a particular balance: a central structure exists and matters, but it coordinates rather than commands.
Britain is the standout exception that proves the rule. Because the British Parliament was long established, British parties were older and developed strong party discipline in voting, meaning members were expected to follow the party line. This discipline was so distinctive that, according to Britannica, it was imitated on the European Continent hardly at all. Across most of Europe, individual legislators kept their freedom to vote as they wished.
The American type
In their early days, American parties differed little from their European counterparts. Like them, the early American parties were composed of local notables. The crucial divergence was in how the layers of organisation connected to one another.
The American type is marked by extreme decentralisation and a correspondingly weak central organisation. The link between a local committee and any national body was even weaker than in Europe. There was some coordination of party organisations at the state level, but at the national level effective coordination simply did not exist. Power lived at the bottom, not the top.
This local strength gave rise to the famous party machine. Britannica notes that the decentralised structure enabled a party to establish a local quasi-dictatorship in a city or county by capturing all the key posts in an election. Once a machine controlled the mayoralty along with the police, the finances, and the courts, it held a city in its grip. The machine, in other words, was a development of the original cadre party adapted to American conditions.
The classic illustration is Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine that dominated New York City politics for well over a century. Tammany operated through patronage: its bosses handpicked candidates and rewarded loyal supporters with government jobs and contracts, the “spoils” of office. It built a loyal following by helping newly arrived immigrants find work, housing, and even citizenship, turning that gratitude into reliable votes at election time.
Because power was concentrated locally, American politics through the nineteenth century was strikingly decentralised. As one analysis of the system observes, leadership was concentrated in state capitals and city halls, and the local bosses who ran the machines became kingmakers at presidential nominating conventions. The “smoke-filled rooms” where presidential nominees were chosen were filled with these local and state organisation heads.
A focus on the electoral process
This points to the defining purpose of the American type. While the European type was rooted in the legislature and worked to unify members within the assembly, the American type was oriented almost entirely toward winning elections. The machine existed to mobilise voters, capture offices, and distribute the rewards of victory.
From this electoral focus emerged a class of full-time, professional political leadership. The ward bosses and party organisers were not gentleman-amateurs dabbling in politics between other pursuits; they were professionals who lived for and off the party. George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall openly defended this arrangement, and machine figures generally spoke out against civil-service reform and in favour of patronage, since patronage was the lifeblood that kept their organisations running.
European type versus American type at a glance
The two varieties can be summarised through a few sharp contrasts. On the question of central control, the European type maintains a meaningful central organisation that coordinates elected members, while the American type has a notably weak centre and pushes power down to local units.
On the question of orientation, the European type grew from and remained tied to parliamentary life, whereas the American type built itself around the electoral process and the capture of offices. On local power, both relied on local committees, but in America the local unit became dominant through the machine system, giving local bosses extraordinary leverage over national politics.
What unites the two, and keeps them both within the elitist or cadre category, is professional and selective leadership. Both maintained a relatively small group of influential leaders at the helm, and both stand in contrast to the membership-based, ideology-driven mass parties that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century to represent groups, especially the working class, that the old elite parties had left out.
Why this classification still matters
Duverger himself was cautious about his own framework, describing his theories as tools for further inquiry rather than a finished theory. Later scholars added an intermediate type of party and, in time, newer models such as the catch-all party and the cartel party, reflecting how organisations kept evolving.
Yet the elite-versus-mass distinction endures because it captures a fundamental question about any party: is the party an instrument of its members, or is it a vehicle for a small group of leaders responsive mainly to the electorate? The classification is also not rigid. Over time, parties can shift their characteristics, blending features of one type with another as their circumstances change. Recognising where a party sits on this spectrum tells us a great deal about who really controls it and whose interests it ultimately serves.
What do you think? If a modern party keeps a mass membership on paper but is run in practice by a tight circle of professional strategists and donors, should we still call it a mass party, or has it quietly become a new kind of elitist party? And which model, the centrally coordinated European type or the locally driven American type, do you think produces more accountable politics?
References
- https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/political-parties-and-movements/political-parties
- https://entri.app/blog/classification-of-party-system/
- https://rtuc.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/the-concept-of-a-mass-party/
- http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2009/11/cadre-parties-and-mass-parties.html
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-party
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall
- https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-american-party-system-a-lament
- https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/william-boss-tweed-and-political-machines/
Leave a Reply