An organization that contests or has contested elective office, or that once ruled or seeks to rule as the vehicle of an organized political movement, treated as its own institutional category per the comparative party-politics literature (Katz and Mair) rather than folded into the governments its members sometimes lead. Belongs here: a named party (the Labour Party, the Chinese Communist Party, the African National Congress) or a standing multi-party coalition (the CDU/CSU-SPD Coalition (2025)). Does not belong here: the specific administration a party currently leads, which is a government entity, or the ideology the party espouses, which is an ideology entity.
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1. Political party (Wikipedia)
WikipediaPolitical party, Origins sectionQuote, Political party, Origins section
Some scholars argue that the first modern political parties developed in early modern Britain in the 17th century, after the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution.
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