Political parties, representation and party-based organizational structure: A conceptual debate

Abstract

The present article seeks to make a theoretical discussion about the emergence of political parties, their usefulness as main means of democratic representation, and to emphasize their organization based on internal factors from the conception of some authors, such as: Giovanni Sartori, Robert Michels, and Maurice Duverger. To do so, it rescues the emergence and the need for representative methods that meet the demands of society by the thought of Hannah Pitkin and Bernard Manin. In addition, this argument brings to light the ideological process, that is, party identity, as well as personal identification by the electorate through the figure of the candidate. These issues make it possible to visualize two approaches that treat political parties as fragile institutions, or attributes that make them into a strong representative means. In this sense, it provides a brief history of the political parties in Brazil that shows their specificities in "green and yellow soil".