A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a governance structure in which only a single political party controls the ruling system.[1] In a one-party state, all opposition parties are either outlawed or enjoy limited and controlled participation in elections. The term "de facto one-party state" is sometimes used to describe a dominant-party system that, unlike a one-party state, allows (at least nominally) multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political power effectively prevent the opposition from winning power.[2]
Membership in the ruling party tends to be relatively small compared to the population.[3] With such a small winning coalition, leaders in one-party states usually lack the incentive to care about the well-being of citizens.[4] Rather, they give out private goods to fellow elites to ensure continued support. One-party, compared to dominant-party dictatorships, structure themselves unlike democracies. They also turn into democracies at a lower rate than dominant-party dictatorships.[5] While one-party states prohibit opposition parties, some allow for elections at the smallest local level. One-party states lack any legitimate competition. Therefore, they place elites and sympathetic candidates in key administrative races.[6] For example, the Chinese Communist Party exercises political control by infiltrating village administrations.[7] They view these positions as crucial for gathering information on the population and maintaining a presence in the far reaches of their borders.[8]
One-party states recognize the trade-off between election victory and gathering valuable data.[9] To account for this, the regimes have been observed placing local nobility in easy-to-win races.[10] One-party states have also been observed using elections to ensure that only the most popular elites get chosen to office.[11] They also gather data from elections to indicate if a local official is performing poorly in the eyes of the residents.[11] This gives locals the opportunity to monitor local officials and communicate satisfaction with the local government.[11] Throughout the country, members of the one party hold key political positions.[5] In doing so, the party avoids committing outright fraud and rather sustains their power at the local level with strategic appointment of elites.[8] Data on one-party regimes can be difficult to gather given their lack of transparency.[6]
Current one-party states
As of 2024, the following countries are legally constituted as one-party states:
Two satellite parties operated until 1988; they were dissolved in response to the Revolutions of 1989.
De facto one-party states
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A de facto one-party system is one that, while not officially linking a single political party to governmental power, utilizes some means of political manipulation to ensure only one party stays in power.[23] Many different countries have been claimed to be de facto one-party states, with differing levels of agreement between scholars, although most agree that the African continent is marked by this political system.[24][25][26] Below are just a few examples of governments that have been claimed to have single party rule due to political manipulation.
Although Nicaragua has been practicing multiparty elections since 1990, the country has become a de facto one-party state with Sandinista National Liberation Front as the sole dominating party and was consolidated after the 2021 Nicaraguan general election.[29]
Although Rwanda nominally allows for multiparty elections, they are manipulated in various ways, which include the banning of opposition parties, the arrests or assassinations of critics, and electoral fraud.[30][31]
Since 2014, the country has been going through a period of crisis of legitimacy and exceptionality due to the order to close the National Assembly and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly by Nicolás Maduro on May 1, 2017, composed mostly of PSUV politicians. Since then, different laws have been approved to restrict political participation, including informal persecution and the disqualification of certain politicians (including complaints of electoral fraud), concluding in 2024, at which point, because of new laws, the majority of opposition politicians have been disqualified and their organizations banned, leaving only a controlled opposition.[33][34]
A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials. The dictator maintains control by influencing and appeasing the inner circle and repressing any opposition, which may include rival political parties, armed resistance, or disloyal members of the dictator's inner circle. Dictatorships can be formed by a military coup that overthrows the previous government through force or they can be formed by a self-coup in which elected leaders make their rule permanent. Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian, and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, personalist dictatorships, or absolute monarchies.
The politics of Indonesia take place in the framework of a presidential representative democratic republic whereby the President of Indonesia is both head of state and head of government and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the bicameral People's Consultative Assembly. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
In China, politics functions within a communist state framework based on the system of people's congress under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the National People's Congress (NPC) functioning as the highest organ of state power and only branch of government per the principle of unified power. The CCP leads state activities by holding two-thirds of the seats in the NPC, and these party members are, in accordance with democratic centralism, responsible for implementing the policies adopted by the CCP Central Committee and the National Congress. The NPC has unlimited state power bar the limitations it sets on itself. By controlling the NPC, the CCP has complete state power. China's two special administrative regions (SARs), Hong Kong and Macau, are nominally autonomous from this system.
Regime change is the partly forcible or coercive replacement of one government regime with another. Regime change may replace all or part of the state's most critical leadership system, administrative apparatus, or bureaucracy. Regime change may occur through domestic processes, such as revolution, coup, or reconstruction of government following state failure or civil war. It can also be imposed on a country by foreign actors through invasion, overt or covert interventions, or coercive diplomacy. Regime change may entail the construction of new institutions, the restoration of old institutions, and the promotion of new ideologies.
In politics, a regime is a system of government that determines access to public office, and the extent of power held by officials. The two broad categories of regimes are democratic and autocratic. A key similarity across all regimes is the presence of rulers of both formal and informal institutions, which interact dynamically to adapt to changes to their environment The CIA website also has a complete list of every country in the world with their respective types of regimes.
In political science, a political system means the form of political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state.
Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction.
Political polarization is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization.
The term "illiberal democracy" describes a governing system that hides its "nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures". There is a lack of consensus among experts about the exact definition of illiberal democracy or whether it even exists.
Elections in the People's Republic of China occur under a one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Direct elections, except in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, occur only at the local level people's congresses and village committees, with all candidate nominations preapproved by the CCP. By law, all elections at all levels must adhere to the leadership of the CCP.
Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that it becomes unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock, and is regarded as the only available system of government within a country. A country can be described as consolidated when the current democratic system becomes “the only game in town”, meaning no one in the country is trying to act outside of the set institutions. This is the case when no significant political group seriously attempts to overthrow the democratic regime, the democratic system is regarded as the most appropriate way to govern by the vast majority of the public, and all political actors are accustomed to the fact that conflicts are resolved through established political and constitutional rules.
Civic nationalism, otherwise known as democratic nationalism, is a form of nationalism that adheres to traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights, and is not based on ethnocentrism. Civic nationalists often defend the value of national identity by saying that individuals need it as a partial shared aspect of their identity in order to lead meaningful, autonomous lives and that democratic polities need a national identity to function properly. Liberal nationalism is used in the same sense as 'civic nationalism', but liberal ethnic nationalism also exists, and "state nationalism" is a branch of civic nationalism, but it can also be illiberal.
The Nebraska Republican Party (NEGOP) is the affiliate of the Republican Party in Nebraska. The party is led by chair Eric Underwood. Its headquarters is located in Lincoln. It is currently the dominant party in the state, controlling all of Nebraska's three U.S. House seats, both U.S. Senate seats, the state legislature, and the governorship.
Democracy promotion, also referred to as democracy building, can be domestic policy to increase the quality of already existing democracy or a strand of foreign policy adopted by governments and international organizations that seek to support the spread of democracy as a system of government. In practice, it entails consolidating and building democratic institutions
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Political scientists have created typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states.
A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.
Democratic backsliding is a process of regime change toward autocracy in which the exercise of political power becomes more arbitrary and repressive. The process typically restricts the space for public contest and political participation in the process of government selection. Democratic decline involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracies, especially freedom of expression. Democratic backsliding is the opposite of democratization.
In political science, economic voting is a theoretical perspective which argues that voter behavior is heavily influenced by the economic conditions in their country at the time of the election. According to the classical form of this perspective, voters tend to vote more in favor of the incumbent candidate and party when the economy is doing well than when it is doing poorly. This view has been supported by considerable empirical evidence. There is a substantial literature which shows that across the world's democracies, economic conditions shape electoral outcomes. Economic voting is less likely when it is harder for voters to attribute economic performance to specific parties and candidates.
David Stasavage is an American political scientist known for his work on democracy and political economy. He is the Dean for the Social Sciences and the Julius Silver Professor at New York University's Department of Politics and an affiliated professor in NYU's School of Law. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.
↑ Bozarslan, Hamit (2019). "Afterword: Talaat's Empire: A Backward Country, but a State Well Ahead of Its Time". End of the Ottomans - The Genocide of 1915 and the Politics of Turkish Nationalism. I. B. Tauris. p.330. ISBN978-1-7867-3604-8.
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