Guide to Citizens’ Rights and Responsibilities

part of the twentieth century in Western Europe and the nation-states of
the “old” Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as well as in the
de facto: (Latin) actual; in effect but not
officially declared 
■ ■ ■  
socioeconomic: relating to the traits of
income, class, and education

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United States, although in a somewhat different manner. Such a view suggests
that systems of more than one party replicate on the political plane the basic
divisions of the existing social structure, such as class divisions (among conser-
vatives and 
socialists
), religious divisions (between Catholics and Protestants or
between believers and nonbelievers), and ethnic or national divisions. In the
United States the ethnic basis of parties has often been noted, with the
Republican Party seen as the party of the gentry with long ancestral roots in
America, and the Democratic Party the party of the working-class Irish or
Italians, or minority groups such as Jews.
Thus, systems of more than one party were often composed of well-defined
camps or pillars, each supported by a large network of organizations (including
even sports organizations), each attracting large numbers of dedicated mem-
bers, and each sustained by a clearly defined ideology, especially with respect to
the distinction between workers and the bourgeois. At election times activists
mobilized their supporters and attempted to convince the uncommitted.
While such battles took place at election time, the party that won then had
to establish a government afterwards. When there was no clear majority, that is,
if the election did not result in the straightforward victory of one party, deals
had to be struck between political leaders, for instance, to build 
coalitions
.
These arrangements were typically labeled “
consociational
” to use the expres-
sion coined by Lijphart with respect to the Netherlands, across at least some of
the pillars of the political system.
The result of these deals was to blunt the opposition between camps.
Moreover, voters acquired gradually some independence vis-à-vis their party as
a result of the decline in the intensity of divisions by “nationality” in the United
States, religious divisions in Western Europe, and the class struggle throughout
the Western world. The classical notion that party systems were based on social
cleavages came to be, as the twentieth century drew to a close, less and less real-
istic. Especially in the United States but also in Western Europe and the former
Commonwealth, the independence of voters led to volatility and an increased
number of voters who stayed away from the polls during elections. The parties
lost so much of their grip on the electorate that a different model of voting
behavior began to prevail, one that resembled a market, with issues acquiring
more importance than party loyalty. Party 
platforms
became increasingly con-
cerned with providing solutions to the problems of the day.
For such a development to occur and in particular for parties to respond to
what seemed like the new way in which the electorate approached politics, a
fresh set of links had to be created. Party organizations declined and contribu-
tions could no longer be obtained from members and even sympathizers. Soon
state
subsidies
came to the rescue along with donations from private interest
groups. As loyalty to organizations declined, the personalization of power
increased, both in the older parties, whose leaders often insisted on fundamen-
tal changes in the party platform, and in new parties, in which political entrepre-
neurs used their personal appeal to make a breakthrough at the polls.
Whether parties in Western Europe will remain as stable in the twenty-first
century as they were previously is therefore in question. Only in the United
States do the two main parties continue to fully dominate the scene, perhaps
because primaries enable all candidates to try their luck with voters. Such has
not occurred in Western Europe, where, on the contrary, the control of nomina-
tions still lies, by and large, in the hands of party officials and active members.
Some ideological differences remain, but mostly on the fringes, among
extremist parties. Communist parties have declined markedly in the countries
socialism: any of various economic and polit-
ical theories advocating collective or govern-
mental ownership and administration of the
means of production and distribution of
goods
■ ■ ■  
coalition: an alliance, partnership, or union
of disparate peoples or individuals
consociational: belonging to an association,
especially a church or a religious association
platform: a statement of principles or legisla-
tive goals made by a political party
subsidy: a government grant used to
encourage some action

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where they were once strong, mainly France, Italy, Portugal, and Finland, but
organizations of the radical right have emerged in these same places. They are
typically small and often ephemeral, however.
S Y S T E M S   W I T H   M O R E   T H A N   O N E   PA R T Y:   W O R L D W I D E
U N C E R TA I N T Y   A N D   F R A G I L I T Y
In the ninety or so polities outside the West in which a system of more than
one party is found to exist, parties and party systems are more fragile. This has
occurred despite the great upsurge of such systems in the late 1980s and
POSTERS FOR THE PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN HARARE, ZIMBABWE IN 2005.
During the parliamentary elections held on March 31,
2005, all 120 of 150 seats were on the ballot, and the socialist Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front increased its victory
percentage over the rival Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party by winning 60 percent of the vote, though the MDC has
claimed that the voting process was tainted. 
(SOURCE: ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

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early 1990s, or perhaps because the change was often too rapid. Only in about
twenty countries outside the West have such systems been continuous since
the 1940s, the main examples being Israel, Lebanon, India, Sri Lanka, Japan,
South Africa (with severe restrictions), Brazil (with marked limitations),
Colombia, and Costa Rica. Meanwhile, the countries that became independent
following the 1950s and those in which the pluralistic system endures have
tended to be small in population. They are often islands with a strong cultural
identity; many belong to the “new” Commonwealth, with the traditions
that such a membership implies. Thus, while it may be that in most former
communist countries and over thirty other countries (especially but not exclu-
sively Latin American) a system of more than one party has prevailed uninter-
rupted since the late 1980s or early 1990s, there is no assurance, except
perhaps in Eastern Europe and some Latin American countries, that this situa-
tion will be maintained indefinitely.
Systems of more than one party—sometimes labeled “pluralistic”—outside
the Western world have tended to be fragile as the parties that compose them
have also been fragile. This has resulted, in part, because the parties involved do
not have deep roots in the population, with the profound antagonism between
traditionalists and those wishing to bring about rapid change rendering the
shoring up of social and political structures difficult if not impossible. Thus, as
in many single-party systems, parties in pluralistic party systems have often been
based on—indeed created by—strong leaders. Not surprisingly, even in Latin
America where they have had a longer time to develop, these parties have been
described as “inchoate.”
Overall, outside the West and probably outside parts of Eastern Europe and
East and Southeast Asia, systems of more than one party are not truly consoli-
dated. Even where the pluralistic party system is better established than it was
previously, economic difficulties lead to social tensions and outright violence.
In Peru, Colombia, even Venezuela, as well as in some Central American states,
the military’s return to power cannot be ruled out. This is even more likely to
be the case in African countries that, sometimes under Western pressure, opted
in the 1990s for a system of more than one party.
Western party systems have also become more fragile, but the gap is still
large between parties and party systems in these countries and parties and party
systems in the Third World. Old loyalties continue to play at least some part in
the West, even if such occurs in association with the increased role of personal-
ities in both traditional, large parties and newer parties that attempt to chal-
lenge established ones. In the United States, for example, such new parties have
occasionally emerged (such as Ross Perot’s third-party run for president in 1992
and Ralph Nader’s in 2000) although they have had a less successful fate in
Western Europe.
The opportunities for citizens to play some part in the political process
depends on the party system being both sufficiently stable for these citizens
to acquire a clear sense of their choices, and yet not so entrenched that many
voters will feel powerless to exercise influence in an election. The latter kind of
situation characterizes more single-party systems than systems of more than
one party, to be sure. Meanwhile, the opportunities for citizens to intervene in
politics in systems of more than one party can also be markedly limited by the
restrictions resulting from the electoral system. For the citizenry, the extent to
which it has a genuine influence, on both who runs the country and how that
takes place, remains relatively small almost everywhere, even in systems of more
than one party that are well-established and not in imminent danger of being
overturned.

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See also:
Majoritarian Party Systems; Political Parties.
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
Downs, Anthony. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper Collins, 1957.
Duverger, Maurice. Political Parties, Their Organization and Activity in the Modern
State, 3rd ed. London: Methuen, 1969.
Katz, Richard. S., and Peter Mair, eds. How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in
Party Organizations in Western Democracies. London: Sage, 1994.
Kirchheimer, Otto. “The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems.” In The
West European Party System, ed. Peter Mair. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Lipset, Seymour M. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
Lipset, Seymour M., and Stein Rokkan, eds. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-
national Perspectives. New York: Free Press, 1967.
Mainwaring, Scott, and Timothy R. Scully, eds. Building Democratic Institutions: Party
Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Panebianco, Angelo. Political Parties: Organization and Power. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Pedersen, Mogens. “The Dynamics of European Party Systems: Changing Patterns of
Electoral Volatility.” Electoral Journal of Political Research 7 (1979):1–26.
Sartori, Giovanni. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Sorauf, Frank J. Party Politics in America, 6th ed. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1988.
Vanhanen, Tatu.  Democratization: A Comparative Analysis of 170 Countries. London:
Routledge, 2003.
J. Blondel
Political Protest
Political protest involves attempts by individuals or groups to address or
stop perceived injustices within a political system, without overturning the sys-
tem itself. Unlike revolutionaries, political protesters maintain some level of
conviction that the political system is capable of correcting and improving itself.
Yet, political protesters do not rely exclusively on traditional ways of political
participation, such as voting, either because they have no right or access to
them or because they do not consider them effective.
F O R M S   O F   P O L I T I C A L   P R O T E S T
Political protest may take various forms. One major distinction is between
non-violent and violent protest. Nonviolent forms include 
petitions
, newspa-
per articles, works of art, sit-ins, strikes, and peaceful demonstrations, while
violent forms include destruction of property, bodily harm, and acts of terror-
ism. Although violent means mainly target agents of a regime, they also may
be random and occasionally self-inflicted, as in the case of Jan Palach, the
Czech student who in January 1969 set himself on fire to protest the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia. Nonviolent protest may turn violent, often as
a result of government responses to protesters.
petition: a written appeal for a desired
action, or, to request an action, especially of
government
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R E S P O N S E S   T O   P O L I T I C A L   P R O T E S T
Responses to political protest vary, ranging from the harsh enforcement of
bans on political protest, to attempts to calm it down by making partial conces-
sions, to tolerance of the phenomenon. Any of the responses, whether harsh or
soft, may or may not be sanctioned by law. Democratic thinkers often have
called for the constitutional enshrinement of the right to protest as a way to
guarantee those excluded from the 
polity
to reenter it. Indeed, both democratic
and non-democratic countries have recognized the advantages of allowing some
political protest as a way to release economic and social tensions and avoid
revolution. However, in many cases police or army forces facing legitimate
acts of protest have used excessive power to subdue them, especially when the
protesters belonged to minority races or ethnicities.
Political protest may be an individual act, as when French writer Emile Zola
(1840–1902) stood up during the Dreyfus Affair in late nineteenth century
France, writing J’accuse against the church, military, and political establishments
that aligned to falsely accuse Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935) of trea-
son. On the other hand, it may be the product of a social movement or the align-
ment of social movements. Famous examples include anticolonial movements
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the civil rights movement in the United States,
and women’s movements all over the world. One characteristic of modern
globalization
is the shift from political protest confined to specific political
regimes, as in China’s Tiananmen Square (1989), to the formation of interna-
tional protest movements. Examples of the latter include antiglobalization forces
that have opposed international organizations such as the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Seattle, Washington; Genoa, Italy; Quebec
City, Canada; and elsewhere.
P O L I T I C A L   P R O T E S T   T H E O R I E S  
Political protests have been fueled by various political theories, the consid-
eration of which may highlight the wide range of causes, motives, and forms of
political protest: 
German political philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) attributed the causes of
political protest to class struggle. Considering conflict between social classes as
necessary and inevitable, he envisioned a perpetual clash between the 
proletariat
and the 
bourgeoisie
, which provided the 
ideological
base for much of the mass
protests of the modern era. Although Marx and his followers, especially Russian
communist leader Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), feared that protest may hinder
rather than enhance the coming of an all-out revolution, Marxism gave a solid
theoretical base to labor unrest on a mass scale and provided it with a repertoire
of engaging promises, slogans, posters, and songs. Even after Marxism fell into
disrepute and political protest focused largely on what became known as “post-
material” concerns—exemplified in the antinuclear movement, environmental
groups like Greenpeace, and animal rights activism—this repertoire continued to
nourish the protesters’ legacy.
Another set of theories empowering political protest is that associated with
colonialism and “postcolonialism.” While the struggle against colonialism in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America involved the liberation from the powers—mostly
European—that colonized these regions, postcolonial theory focuses on the
elimination of the cultural elements believed to lie at the core of the colonial con-
dition. Postcolonial theorists, especially Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) and Edward
Said (1935–2003), pointed to the literary and political symbolism that has justified
the power of the colonizers by marginalizing and excluding the colonized “other”
polity: a form of government held by a
specific country or group 
■ ■ ■  
globalization: the process of expanding
regional concerns to a worldwide viewpoint,
especially politics, economics, or culture 
proletariat: the lower class of workers and
laborers in a society
bourgeoisie: the economic middle class
marked by wealth earned through business
or trade
ideology: a system of beliefs composed of
ideas or values, from which political, social, or
economic programs are often derived

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from the political structure on grounds of race. Consequently, Fanon introduced
one of the most radical forms of protest against colonialism and its cultural man-
ifestations, calling for severe violence that would liberate the oppressed, thus
bringing the notion of political protest to the verge of an all-out revolution.
On the other hand, India’s Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) advocated non-
violent political protest. Gandhi called for the liberation of India through civil
disobedience, which was to be carried out in accordance with satyagraha
(truth and resolution). For example, on April 6, 1930, Gandhi arrived in the
coastal village of Dandi after marching nearly 388 kilometers (241 miles) on
foot to gather salt. This was a march of protest against the British Salt Tax used
to generate revenue to support British rule. The march unleashed widespread
disobedience of British laws throughout India, while employing relatively little
hatred and violence toward the British authorities.
Inspired by Gandhi’s non-violence, Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)
became a symbol of the civil rights movement in the United States. In his
famous speech “I have a dream,” King invoked American values in support of
black Americans, drawing legitimacy for his cause directly from the American
ON MAY 4, 1989, CHINESE STUDENTS PROTEST IN SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY IN TIANANMEN SQUARE IN BEIJING.
After the government
declared martial law, premier Li Peng sent troops on June 3 and 4 to remove the protestors. What followed was a horrific
and bloody attack on the unarmed supporters, leaving hundreds if not thousands (estimates vary widely) dead and about 
ten thousand injured. 
(SOURCE: © PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS)

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Declaration of Independence. His dream that “one day this nation will rise up
and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-
evident that all men are created equal,” aimed not at overthrowing the American
system but at exposing an inherent hypocrisy and at changing racial attitudes
present within the American political culture.
Similarly, activists in the women’s rights movement did not reject the
American principles of equality, but rather invoked them for their own cause.
In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), an activist in the movement to
abolish slavery, drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, where she used the
words from the Declaration of Independence and stated: “We hold these truths
to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.” Though the
struggle for equal rights started in 1848, it was not until 1920 that women
obtained the right to vote in the United States, and not until the 1960s that fem-
inist protests succeeded in bringing about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion,
sex, and national origin. 
During the 1960s, known as “the decade of protest,” many civil groups in
the United States and Western Europe engaged in demonstrations, sit-ins,
takeovers of university buildings, planting of “peoples’ parks,” and other forms
of protest, inspired by resistence to the American war in Vietnam, and by gen-
eral discontent with the modern industrial state. This era of protest was marked
by a strong nexus between political protest and the arts. This nexus—the ori-
gins of which can be traced to artistic movements protesting World War I, such
as “Dada”—came to bear in posters, drawings, photojournalism, displays, fringe
theatre, films, music, and other artistic expressions depicting political protest.
Nick Ut’s 1972 photo of nine-year-old Kim Phuc fleeing a Napalm attack, Bob
Dylan’s ( b. 1941) song “Blowin’ in the Wind,” or Andy Warhol’s (1928?–1987)
image of the Birmingham race riots of 1964 are well-known examples.
Political scientists have made various attempts to account for the causes
of political protest. Ted Robert Gurr asserted that it springs from “relative
deprivation,” or the perception of people that they are deprived in relation to
others. Of course, this theory does not account for protesters who are not
deprived themselves but may engage in political protest in support of others
who are. “Rational choice” theorists, who follow economic thinking in its
assumption that individuals are maximizers of interests, explained participation
in political protest as the outgrowth of a calculus that its benefits exceed its
costs. This theory does not account for the many cases in which individuals and
groups have been willing to risk costs exceeding any “cost-benefit” calculus in
their protest against injustice.