Zhang Feian: A Study on the Ideological Characteristics of Western Political Party System Theory
On March 4, 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out at a joint panel discussion of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC): "The system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), as a basic political system of our country, is a great political creation of the CPC, the Chinese people, the various democratic parties, and personages without party affiliation; it is a new type of party system that grew out of Chinese soil." The so-called "new type of party system" is distinguished from the "old" party systems of the West based on competitive elections; it breaks through the discourse hegemony of Western party system theory and provides directional guidance for constructing indigenous Chinese party theory and democratic discourse power. Political parties are a fundamental concept of modern social science. Western party system theory is an ideology presented in a scientific guise, based on a typology of liberal democratic regimes. It maintains discourse hegemony over Western party studies and, in practice, defends the authoritative status of Western party systems. Since it is impossible for Western party system theory to establish the legitimacy and long-term nature of the CPC's governance, constructing a theory for China's new type of party system has become the bounden duty of Chinese scholars. As a prerequisite for this work, we need to step out of the "scientific illusion" of Western party system theory and profoundly reveal its ideological essence in maintaining the legitimacy of Western capitalist political systems. Based on the fact that existing academic achievements mostly focus on where China’s new type of party system is "new," this article pays particular attention to where the Western-centric old party system is "old" and why it must be transcended.
I. "Cold War Social Science" and the Rise of Western Party System Theory
American social science after the 1950s unfolded against the broad backdrop of the Cold War and can be termed "Cold War Social Science." "Cold War as an organizing principle helps to re-examine from a historical perspective the extensive social science research and activities carried out by the United States during this period of abnormal expansion." The systematic scientization of American social science began during the Cold War, producing a large number of foundational concepts and theories with disciplinary-paradigmatic significance. However, "in an era when the social sciences achieved unparalleled prestige and unprecedented autonomy, they never came close to escaping the gravitational pull of the state and society. On the contrary, their enterprise was shaped by the very forces that allowed them access to the corridors of power." American social science of this period was, in essence, an ideology presented in a scientific guise.
Thomas Kuhn pointed out that the hallmark of the birth of a science is the establishment of a research paradigm. For the social sciences, the establishment of a research paradigm and the generation of discourse hegemony are the same process. When discourse hegemony is highly correlated with the legitimacy of a regime, it becomes part of a country's soft power and core interests. For this reason, the generation of social science research paradigms—unlike those in the natural sciences—is not purely the result of the natural evolution and accumulation of knowledge. It possesses strong historical contextuality and political intentionality; it is the result of interaction and collusion between the knowledge community and the subjects of political power or economic interest. During the Cold War, although American social science formed a large number of stable research paradigms, they possessed extremely strong ideological characteristics due to the certainty of their research orientation: anti-communism. This was especially true for American political science, which was "written from a characteristically American perspective," "attached to its state," and whose "unacknowledged pillar and ideal was 'America.'" Its research goal was to universalize and legitimize various American political institutions, thereby establishing the authoritative status and model characteristics of the American political system within regime typology.
David Truman, a representative figure of American behavioralist political science, once frankly admitted that serious study of political institutions would inevitably resort to "reconceptualization" and a new system of discourse for inter-institutional comparison. In fact, from the day the Social Science Research Council approved the establishment of the Committee on Comparative Politics [1] more than a decade earlier, this reconceptualization of political institution research was placed on the agenda. Truman's words clearly present the research objectives of American political science during the Cold War: through reconceptualization, to seek a unified research framework and thereby establish America's discourse hegemony in the field of political institution research.
During the Cold War, a key link in the competition between the US and the USSR was the competition between political systems, and the legitimacy of political systems revolved around the "universal religion" of the age of mass politics: democracy. Democracy was originally a banner held high by socialist movements and socialist states; the primary value upheld by capitalism was not democracy, but liberty. Since the 20th century entered the era of mass democracy, democracy became a core mass value that one could only support and not oppose. Under these conditions, whoever's political system was defined as a democratic system gained the upper hand in the competition between political systems. In this sense, "how one decides to conceptualize an idea becomes a profound political, normative, and ideological issue," and "all theories regarding essentially contested concepts involve normative and political power relations and positions." The American political science community possessed a high degree of self-awareness regarding this. They planned step-by-step to integrate contested concepts with their own institutions. One of the most important results was the construction of a party system theory predicated on competitive elections—that is, partisan struggle [N]. This party system theory tightly bound the Western party system to the democratic system, attempting to exclude non-competitive party systems from the realm of democratic systems. This theoretical self-awareness, based on political self-awareness, was the direct driving force behind the sudden and rapid development of Western party system theory in the mid-20th century. On the surface, the development of party system theory seemed like a natural evolution; in reality, it was a carefully planned act of "conceptual politics" designed to tout the democratic nature of Western party systems and characterize the Soviet-style one-party state as an anti-democratic, autocratic dictatorship.
The political party is an organizational mechanism of modern society and the modern state generated during the process of Western modernization. Since its birth, it has been fraught with controversy. In particular, most influential Western modern statesmen and scholars viewed parties as derivatives of political factions that hindered community unity and caused social fragmentation—dispersive forces that required institutional restraint to achieve the public interest. For example, in the eyes of America's founding father Washington, parties were always "bad things" whose development needed to be curbed or even prohibited. Madison, in the famous Federalist Papers No. 10, explicitly regarded "faction" [2] as a scourge, believing that partisan struggle "inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good." Precisely because the political party was not seen as a necessity for the survival of the political community, nor did it gain value-recognition at the level of political philosophy, almost all theorists "tended with overwhelming inclination to neglect this subject." Francis Lieber's Civil Liberty and Self-Government, published in 1853, spent only a page and a half discussing political parties; Joseph Alden's The Science of Government under the American System had only one footnote involving parties; and Burgess, the most prestigious American philosopher of the late 19th century, completely omitted parties from his 1890 work Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law. To this end, Schattschneider once said: "The parties have lain for the greater part of a century in the dark corners of the intellectual world, unnoticed. Scholars and publishers have explained everything—democracy, sovereignty, law, constitution, suffrage, representation, liberty, etc.—but there was no room for the party... The party thus became the stepchild of political philosophy."
Answering this general neglect of party research, Schattschneider stepped forward to vindicate the importance of parties. He linked the democratic system with party politics, claiming that "modern democracy is a byproduct of party competition," that parties are "a process built for elections," that "the autonomy of the voters lies in their power of free choice," and that "democracy is not built within the parties, but between the parties." By establishing a correlation between democracy and party competition, it can be said that Schattschneider found the "magic key" to increasing attention on party system research. However, Schattschneider's work was published in 1942, when the US and USSR were in a wartime alliance; Soviet democracy was praised by the American political science community, and Stalin was even described as the image of a "kindly uncle." Since anti-communism was not the primary need, naturally no one had sufficient political sensitivity to excavate the "unique contribution" of Schattschneider's Party Government. His theory of "responsible party government," on which he pinned great hopes, failed to set off a craze for party research. Parties remained at the margins of political science research; even after Maurice Duverger published Political Parties in 1951, the famous party theorist Sartori still felt that his original motivation for writing was a sense of the lack of general theory in party research.
However, the beginning of the Cold War changed the fate of the long-neglected party research. The construction of liberal democratic theory moved the study of parties and party systems from the margins to the center of Western political discourse and theory. Liberal democratic theory relied on the procedural definition of democracy proposed by Schumpeter. In this definition, a competitive election system based on a multi-party system was seen as the first essential of democracy. By hitching a ride on the "democracy bandwagon," the term "party" gradually gained an increasingly laudatory meaning in the political context of Western liberal-democratic constitutionalism. At the same time, constructing a set of party system theories consistent with liberal democratic theory became an urgent academic task for the Western theoretical community. Motivated by this task, party system theory research ushered in a spring of flourishing development.
II. Western Party System Theory and the Discourse Hegemony of Liberal Democracy
After the 1950s, research on Western party systems (party regimes) entered its heyday, with various party system theories rushing forth. On the surface, party system theories presented a variety of open characteristics, but these theories all used "party competitiveness" as the meta-standard. The first to systematically use the concept of "party system" was Duverger. In his representative work Political Parties, he viewed the party system as the result of multi-party interaction: "except in one-party states, every country has several parties coexisting, and the forms and patterns of their coexistence define the party system of a particular country." Sartori stated in his representative work Parties and Party Systems that "only political systems characterized by the interaction of parties, and thus by such a system of interaction, should be called party systems." Sartori also specifically explained why a party system must be competitive. He believed that a party system must be characterized by "sub-system autonomy" and requires the "recognition of dissent and the institutionalization of opposition." He argued that "'one-party systems' do not exist and cannot be so called, because what is actually referred to in such cases is a 'state system' in which the party's role serves state purposes rather than social purposes." In Sartori's view, only parties that serve society can constitute a "party system"; "one might say that society shapes the party system, but one cannot say that society shapes the party-state system." Under this society-centric perspective, Western party system theory is predicated on pluralism and competitiveness. They may accept the use of the word "party" by Communist Parties and admit that Communist Parties are parties, but they believe that the "party-state system" of a Communist Party can absolutely not constitute a party system. The result of this conception of the party system is that any party system model that does not conform to competitive election parties lacks procedural legitimacy in Western party system discourse; non-competitive parties can only become the organizational mechanism of a "normal" modern state by transforming into competitive election parties. Until the 21st century, Western party system research still had not escaped the conceptual shackles that party systems are tools for competitive elections. In the Handbook of Party Politics edited by Richard S. Katz and William Crotty, the party system is directly defined as a system "formed by the mutual competition of parties for elective office and control of government." Peter Mair, one of the most authoritative party researchers in the Western academic world today, also regards competition as the meta-standard for party systems, emphasizing that the core of any party system is the competition for executive office; it is precisely for the needs of competition that people organize parties in practice and promote their institutionalization.
The reason Western party system theory persists in its standard of pluralistic competition is that it is not a scientific theory for the empirical study of the world's existing party systems, but rather an ideology bound to the hegemonic discourse of liberal democracy. As long as the definition of Western-style democracy remains unchanged, and as long as the socialist system is viewed as a threat to the capitalist system, it will be impossible for Western party system theory to recognize the legitimacy of non-competitive party systems. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels, based on historical materialism, viewed ideology as the conceptual form of the superstructure, noting that it serves the interests of the ruling class that dominates the economic base. To gloss over its own particular interests, the ruling class must be capable of "representing its interest as the common interest of all the members of society," thereby "giving its ideas the form of universality, and representing them as the only rational, universally valid ones." Western party system theory is the product of an ideological counter-offensive launched by the bourgeoisie in the face of the rising momentum of socialism after capitalist credibility was battered by the Great Depression; it carries the mission of universalizing and singularizing the Western party system.
Starting from the mid-19th century, although capitalism was on the rise, the discursive advantage of the bourgeoisie gradually eroded under the rise of various socialist forces, particularly the profound critique of Marxism. That is to say, as the proletariat became conscious, the bourgeoisie’s ability to describe its own class interests as universal interests became severely deficient. From the late 19th century to the beginning of the Cold War, the core agenda of the social sciences was set by leftist discourse. Scholars debated the rights and wrongs, as well as the superiority and inferiority, of socialism versus capitalism. From this topic, analytical perspectives such as imperialism, colonialism, and democratism emerged, each directly questioning the legitimacy of capitalism. As Joseph Schumpeter noted, the value-rationalism developed by the bourgeoisie in the process of opposing feudalism created a "critical frame of mind" which, "after having destroyed the moral authority of so many other institutions, eventually turns against its own; the bourgeois finds to his amazement that the rationalist attitude does not stop at the credentials of kings and popes but goes on to attack private property and the whole scheme of bourgeois values." The expansion of value-rationality left the "bourgeois fortress... politically defenseless." Democrats and socialists used the very slogans of "liberty," "equality," and "popular sovereignty" put forward by the bourgeoisie during the anti-feudal process to critique the capitalist system itself. This critique from the realm of values was difficult to pacify through a value-rationalist response. To reverse this situation of ideological passivity, Schumpeter realized clearly: "Just as the call for utilitarian credentials from kings, princes, and popes was never made in a spirit of impartial inquiry into the possibility of a satisfactory answer, so capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only way in which a victory for the defendant can be achieved is by changing the indictment."
How was the indictment to be changed? It could only be done by turning capitalism from the defendant into the plaintiff. According to the popular discourse in the social sciences at the time, the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union was a contest between two paths of modernization and institutional models: capitalism and socialism. In this debate, capitalism not only had no prospect of victory but also stood on the opposite side of the history of human evolution, destined to be replaced by socialism. The only point of contention was whether the replacement of capitalism would occur through revolution or reform. This historical confidence—grounded in science—meant that "Soviet Communism was increasingly seen as the mortal enemy of Americanism, because it explained itself as an alternative modernity, and moreover, a path by which poor and oppressed peoples could change the status quo without having to replicate the American model."
As Soviet power grew and socialist countries increased in number, this historical confidence became increasingly manifest as a real historical trend. Consequently, the United States felt a profound threat from communism and the Soviet model to its national security and way of life, resulting in an unprecedented sense of fear. Through the embellishment and exploitation of this fear by the government and media, anti-communism in the United States quickly transformed from a set of ideas and attitudes into an ideology guiding policy. In the words of Sidney Lens, by the 1940s, "anti-communism was no longer a gesture, but a credo." However, in the historical context of the time, anti-communism was not an easy task; unless the United States demonized communism, it would be impossible to win a war against it under the conditions of a capitalist credibility crisis. In 1949, a U.S. Congressional subcommittee submitted a report after visiting the Far East, claiming that it was insufficient for the U.S. merely to propose "'containing communism' through military means"; the U.S. needed to reaffirm American democratic principles. In 1955, Theodore Repplier, then president of The Advertising Council, reaffirmed the importance of the discursive power of democracy during a meeting with Eisenhower, stating that if the U.S. wanted to win the Cold War, it had to promote and export ideas more attractive than communism. The concept he referred to was liberal democracy.
Thus, liberal democracy became the U.S. ace in the hole for confronting the socialist camp during the Cold War—a key step in "changing the indictment." The construction of the liberal democracy discourse was a systematic project. The first problem to solve was how to define democracy so that it could serve capitalism and be decoupled from socialism. After all, starting from the 19th century, the banner of democracy had been held high by socialists, while the bourgeoisie primarily advertised and championed liberty. Giovanni Sartori, one of the chief architects of liberal democratic theory, frankly admitted that liberalism was initially opposed to democratism; however, after the emergence of socialism, liberalism completed its annexation of democracy.
The first step in liberalism’s annexation of democracy was to establish a definition of democracy closely linked to liberty and to make this definition a theoretical consensus with the status of a disciplinary paradigm. Before the emergence of the liberal democratic paradigm, the study of democracy was in what Thomas Kuhn called a pre-scientific stage. In the pre-scientific stage, scholars lacked common concepts and theories regarding democracy and frequently engaged in disputes; there were as many concepts and theories of democracy as there were researchers. Amidst so many concepts of democracy, how was one to be selected for American use? The standard was very simple and clear: "If the definition of this term is to be analyzed according to our intent... it must be unambiguously applicable to the distribution of those countries we believe should be categorized together, and distinguish them from those countries we believe should not." A definition that set a standard no Western country could meet was meaningless; likewise, a definition of democracy that could apply to both Western countries and one-party states was also meaningless.
Which definition of democracy could perfectly match Western institutional characteristics while precisely excluding one-party states? Because of its superficial consistency with the actual structures of the two primary post-war liberal democratic states (the UK and the US), Schumpeter’s "competitive election" view of democracy was quickly seen as the most realistic expression of democratic systems. Schumpeter’s definition of democracy viewed multi-party competitive elections as the core element of democracy, arguing that "democracy is a political method" and "the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote." "The principle of democracy then merely means that the reins of government should be handed to those who command more support than do any of the individuals or groups who also compete." After Schumpeter’s definition was established as the paradigm for liberal democratic theory, democracy was equated with partisan struggle. This definition not only successfully turned capitalism from the defendant into the plaintiff—turning the struggle between capitalism and socialism into one between liberal democracy and totalitarianism, with socialism being labeled anti-democratic—but it also changed the fate of party system research, which had long been neglected by theorists. The competitive party system was labeled "democratic" and became a new favorite in academia; Western party systems and democracy were linked by a bond "we dare not sever." From then on, party system theory was constructed along the paths of party typology and democratic assessment standards, to the point where Sartori declared that "a democratic system is, in its actual operation, primarily a party system."
As early as 1942, E.E. Schattschneider perceptively pointed out that the reason the party system was neglected by political theorists was the belief that it was irrelevant to democracy. At that time, whether they were anti-democratic or pro-democratic theorists, the definition of democracy they recognized was popular sovereignty, believing that "it is illogical to derive the modern political party from the traditional concept of popular sovereignty." Understanding democracy as popular sovereignty meant that "the definition of democracy had nothing to do with the operation of democratic government institutions... political parties were excluded from the discussion... the area between popular sovereignty and government is precisely the habitat of the political party... the only way to find the political party is to revise these definitions of democracy." "The political parties created democracy and... modern democracy is a byproduct of party competition." Although not driven by the same theoretical concerns, Schumpeter echoed Schattschneider’s plea in that same year. In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, published in 1942, Schumpeter completed the revision of the concept of democracy, detaching it from the classical model of popular sovereignty and drawing an equal sign between democracy and party competition. Furthermore, Schumpeter frankly stated that a direct purpose of his revised definition of democracy was to provide an "efficient criterion" for "distinguishing democratic from undemocratic governments." In his view, the doctrine of "classical democracy" based on "popular sovereignty" allowed democratic models different from Western "representative democracy"—namely, the socialist democratic model aimed at economic equality—to "fit the will and happiness of the people just as well or better." His proposal of the concept of competitive democracy was premised precisely on a critique of the "classical democracy" doctrine based on "popular sovereignty," in which there undoubtedly lay a deep-seated motivation to seize the "democracy" discursive power from socialist countries.
The degree to which a theory is realized depends on the degree of practical necessity. By the Cold War period, the "painstaking efforts" of Schumpeter and Schattschneider were finally grasped by colleagues engaged in "Cold War social science." They took up the mission of these two men and completed the monopoly of the discourse of democracy by Western democratic and party systems. One of the most outstanding representatives, Sartori, did not hesitate to shed the guise of neutrality habitually touted by Western scholars, declaring with certainty: "Democracy is Western-style democracy" and "'democracy' is but short for 'liberal democracy'." Since liberal democracy is closely linked to partisan struggle, Western party system theory has since carried the "burden of democracy," refusing to recognize the legitimacy of non-Western party systems. In the eyes of Western scholars, the examination of non-Western democratic party systems, such as China’s, possesses value only for the "genesis" and "transition" of democracy, but lacks practical or theoretical worth. Their greatest interest is merely predicting how China’s party system will be maintained, when it will disintegrate, and when it will eventually collapse. In this sense, Western party system theory is an ideology; it maintains the discursive hegemony of Western party research and defends the authoritative status of Western party systems in practice.
III. Western Party System Theory under Competitive Norms
Because Western party system theory is a product of the Cold War and serves as an ideology to maintain the discursive hegemony of Western party systems, its theoretical construction exhibits a stable characteristic that takes the practice of Western party systems as its standard—this characteristic is "competitiveness." Western party system theory has constructed a seemingly complete and detailed theoretical system around the "definitional studies," "typology," "causality," and "transition studies" of party systems. However, this theoretical system consistently adheres to the Western-centric principle of "competitiveness." Definitional studies refuse to acknowledge the conceptuality of non-competitive party systems; "causality" studies have never systematically researched the historical formation of non-Western party systems; "typology" excludes non-competitive parties from the "counting" of parties; and "transition studies" regard Western party systems as the democratic paragon and the ultimate reform coordinate for non-competitive parties. These theoretical paradigms based on "competitiveness," even by the non-Marxist standards of Western sociology of knowledge, possess highly ideological characteristics. For example, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Science defines "ideology" as "forms of expression of beliefs and opinions with symbolic significance, which form, mobilize, direct, organize, and justify certain patterns or modes of behavior by way of representing, understanding, and evaluating the real world, and deny all other patterns or modes of behavior." Given that the second part of this article has already spent considerable space explaining the competitive characteristics of the definitional studies of Western party systems, the following section will conduct a systematic analysis of two other important components of Western political system theory—party system typology and party system causality—to see how these theories use "competitiveness" as a standard to negate non-competitive party system models.
1. Western Party System Typology
Party system typology is the most influential field of research in Western party system theory next to definitional studies. After directly defining a party system as "the system formed by the mutual competition of political parties for elective office and control of the government," Western party system typology has generally classified existing party systems based on the number of parties. Following the principle of "competitiveness," Western typology identifies the number of parties based on their ability to participate in elections and secure a certain number of effective seats in parliament.
As a pioneer in party system typology, Maurice Duverger was the first to classify party systems into one-party, two-party, and multi-party systems based on the number of competing parties in his work, setting a precedent for using the number of parties as the foundation for classification. Jean Blondel inherited and developed Duverger's classification method by introducing a perspective of the relative strength of parties. Using the vote shares of parties in parliamentary elections from 1945–1966, he divided party systems into four types: two-party systems, two-and-a-half-party systems, multi-party systems with one dominant party, and multi-party systems without a dominant party.
After the method of classifying party systems by the number and strength of parties was widely adopted, Robert Dahl, based on the principle of competitiveness, reviewed the patterns of opposition parties in Western democratic countries. He classified party systems into four types based on differences in government formation and interaction with opposition parties, and differences in the competition strategies of opposition parties: strict competition (UK), cooperative competition (USA, France, and Italy), coalitional competition (Austria and wartime UK), and total coalition (Colombia). Dahl’s classification scheme highlighted the competitiveness of parties even more prominently. This scheme demonstrated that two-party and multi-party systems do not need to be distinguished by simple counting hypotheses or standard type hypotheses; the categories of competitive and coalitional-competitive systems combined systems that might otherwise be split into two-party or multi-party types. Following Dahl, Stein Rokkan further refined the classification of multi-party systems based on the ways major parties formed alliances or engaged in confrontations during elections. Focusing on smaller nations, he distinguished three different party systems: the first is the 1 vs. 1+1 model, primarily featuring competition between two parties with occasional alliance with a third party (e.g., Austria and Ireland); the second is the 1 vs. 3–4 model, where one large party faces a coalition of three or four small parties (represented by Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, also known as the "Scandinavian model"); and the third is the 1 vs. 1 vs. 2–3 model, where three or more parties of balanced strength compete, also known as a "balanced multi-party system."
Within Western party system typology, the most influential classification standard is the one proposed by Giovanni Sartori in his book Parties and Party Systems. Sartori argued that dividing parties into one-party, two-party, and multi-party competitive systems was too simplistic and crude to explain the real differences between party systems. He specifically introduced the concept of "relevance" to determine which parties should be taken into account when classifying a party system and which could be ignored. He first excluded the "party-state system" of communist countries from the field of political system research, arguing that communist countries do not have a party system in the true sense. He then clarified the rules of party strength affecting political systems, arguing that a party's strength is first and foremost its electoral strength, also termed "seat strength." According to "seat strength," Sartori argued that in multi-party conditions, there are two rules for deciding whether a party should be counted: first, parties that have governing relevance in the arena of forming a governing coalition must be valued; second, parties in the opposition that can change the direction of the governing party's competition by moving left or right on the ideological spectrum—thereby determining centripetal or centrifugal shifts—must also be valued. These two rules mean that smaller parties should be counted as having governing relevance if they possess "coalition potential" (i.e., being a necessary partner for forming a viable governing coalition in many instances) or "blackmail potential" (i.e., the presence of the party can influence the competitive strategies of parties with coalition potential). Parties that never have influence over coalition seats are considered irrelevant. Finally, based on his standards of party influence, Sartori divided party systems into seven types: one-party, hegemonic party, predominant party (where one party consistently maintains a majority in elections), two-party, limited pluralism (3–5 parties), extreme pluralism (6–8 parties), and atomized (more than 8 parties).
After Sartori, few people proposed new party system classification methods. A relatively innovative attempt was made by Peter Mair, who tried to use the contest for government as a new method for classification. He pointed out that under party systems characterized by "closed" competition for government, there is a wholesale alternation between parties, and the parties entering government are often limited to a few; the UK and Japan are typical of this closed competitive structure. Contrasted with this is the "open" competition model, represented by the Netherlands and Denmark, where it is easy for new parties to enter the governing coalition. With the emergence of new parties, the methods of governing also exhibit innovation.
2. Western Party System Causality
Party system causality, as the name implies, is the theory that explores the reasons for the formation of party systems. Since the definition of Western party systems has already positioned the party system within the competitive Western party model, when exploring the causes of party systems, Western scholars' research focus is limited to excavating the reasons why different countries form different modes of party competition. Regarding non-competitive party systems—such as the System of Multi-Party Cooperation and Political Consultation under the Leadership of the CPC—they have never analyzed their historical roots or rational basis from an objective perspective. They believe that non-competitive party systems only have value for transition studies and no significance for the exploration of causality. Regarding the reasons why competitive parties form different system models, Western scholars have primarily proposed two research paths: institutionalism and sociological analysis.
The most influential case of institutionalist analysis in party system causality is "Duverger’s Law," which is revered as a classic. In his groundbreaking book Political Parties, Duverger first explored the impact of electoral systems on party systems, pioneering the study of political system causes from an institutionalist perspective. Duverger’s basic view was that a reciprocal relationship exists between electoral systems and party systems, wherein the electoral system is the independent variable and the party system is the dependent variable. Regarding specific causal relationships, simple-majority (plurality) electoral systems lead to two-party systems, which is known as "Duverger’s Law"; proportional representation tends to lead to multi-party systems, and the two-round absolute majority system tends to form multiple parties that maintain political alliances with one another, which is known as "Duverger’s Hypothesis." In addition, the institutionalist research path also focuses on the relationship between presidentialism/parliamentarianism and party systems, arguing that the winner-take-all nature of presidential elections suppresses the proliferation of small parties and makes multi-party systems more inclined toward cooperation; presidentialism is also conducive to the formation of stable two-party systems.
The sociological analysis of party system causality is represented by the research of Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan. In 1967, Lipset and Rokkan edited the collection Party Systems and Voter Alignments, and the long opening essay co-authored by the two editors had a major impact. In this essay, Lipset and Rokkan proposed the "social cleavage theory" to explain the causes of party systems. This theory holds that modern party systems are the product of social conflicts occurring over several centuries in the West, and that different structures of social cleavage are the roots of different party systems. "Social cleavage" originates from divisions between different groups in society; class, identity, religion, and ethnicity constitute the causes of social cleavage in different countries, societies, and periods. When society is divided into different groups, groups with the same interests and value identities form a collective consciousness and desire to unite fellow members through organizational forms. As universal suffrage gradually spread, political parties became an effective way for different interest groups to express preferences and realize interests; different parties developed into spokespersons for different social groups within the government. Lipset and Rokkan pointed out that in the process of Western nation-state formation progressing alongside the Industrial Revolution, four lines of cleavage emerged: center-periphery, church-state, rural-urban, and capital-labor. The differences and conflicts between these four lines, as well as the differences in the number and nature of the social rifts created by these conflicts, are the fundamental reasons for the formation of different types of party systems in Europe. How conflicts are resolved, the outcome of each resolution, and the results of interactions between political elites all influence party alignments and electoral rules. When a certain party gains an advantage in an early alliance with voters and obtains parliamentary dominance, it has the opportunity to formulate an electoral system favorable to itself, thereby squeezing the space for the survival and development of its competitors. In this process, different parties strive to maintain representative rights for different groups, "binding" themselves to the fixed interests of the social structure; when this binding is "frozen," the party system is produced.
Lipset and Rokkan's theory is markedly different from institutionalism. Based on a sociological explanation, they view institutions as dependent variables, arguing that institutions are the result of the interaction of social forces rather than the cause, which denies the significant impact of specific institutional structures on party systems. Subsequently, many scholars followed the method of using social cleavage theory to analyze party systems, further demonstrating the relationship between the type of party system and the nature and number of social cleavages, forming views such as "using the number of social cleavages to predict the number of relevant parties" and "the more structural cleavages in a society, the greater the number of parties." However, no matter how much the sociological research method focuses on the impact of the social structure itself on the party system, it exerts no effort in explaining why developing countries form party systems different from competitive elections, much less can it recognize the necessity of non-competitive party systems for late-developing modernizing countries to concentrate authority to complete the tasks of state-building and modernization.
IV. Conclusion
Through a systematic analysis of the Cold War origins of Western party system theory, its correlation with the discourse hegemony of liberal democracy, and the resulting normative research path that treats competitiveness as the fundamental characteristic of party systems, this article fully demonstrates that Western party system theory is not a so-called value-neutral scientific theory. Rather, it is an ideology designed to maintain the legitimacy of the Western capitalist political system. Within the research horizons of Western scholars, the party system is merely a tool for competitive elections subordinate to the liberal democratic system. Non-competitive party systems are directly defined by them as anti-democratic systems. Consequently, China's system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation has consistently been viewed as representative of the "party-state system" and the "one-party system." The fact that multiple political parties have existed since the founding of New China [13] has been completely ignored, because the relationship between China's various parties is one of cooperation rather than competition. The Western determination of the number of parties is predicated entirely on competitiveness: "any group, however loosely organized, which seeks to elect governmental office-holders under a given label" [14] can be called a political party. Parties lacking a competitive relationship are excluded from the party system count. If one relies on Western party system theory, it is fundamentally impossible to understand the functionality, rationality, and superiority of the Chinese party system. This is because Western party system theory is an "old" theory predicated on competition that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie; it is built upon the foundation of social fragmentation, using competitiveness to disintegrate integration [15] in order to prevent the people from forming holistic interests, and even more so to prevent a party representing the people's holistic interests from taking power and threatening bourgeois rule.
To understand Western party systems, we must proceed from the methodology of the Marxist historical materialism and understand that the ultimate cause of all social change and political transformation should be sought in changes to the modes of production and exchange. Social existence determines social consciousness. As a political superstructure, the Western party system is built upon the economic base of private ownership of the means of production under capitalism, serving the goal of maximizing the interests of capital. Under the conditions of the capitalist economic base, the contradictions between different classes and groups are irreconcilable, exhibiting characteristics of competitiveness and divisiveness. Therefore, the bourgeois state requires a "society-centered" competitive view of democracy and treats political parties as tools for realizing liberal democracy while distancing itself from and avoiding the class essence of political parties. Only by having a profound understanding of the "oldness" of the Western party system—understanding that it is subordinate to the bourgeois view of the state, democracy, and political parties, and that it is an ideology representing bourgeois interests—can we possess a stronger theoretical self-awareness to construct China's own party theory. Only then can we safeguard China's discourse power in the field of party studies and understand the superiority and progressiveness of China's new-type party system. We must understand that China's new-type party system is established upon the Marxist view of the state and democracy, and is "the product of combining Marxist party theory with China’s reality... [it] can truly, extensively, and persistently represent and realize the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people and the fundamental interests of all ethnic groups and sectors of society," and "is a major contribution to human political civilization." [16]