A party of power refers to a political party that has a close relationship with the executive branch of government in a manner that the party is an extension of the executive rather than an autonomous political organization. The concept is similar to that of a cartel party. It is a legislative block that typically backs the executive in a presidential republic. The concept has been commonly applied to post-Soviet political parties. Claims have been made that United Russia, the New Azerbaijan Party, Kazakhstan's Nur Otan, the Republican Party of Armenia, the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan and the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan are parties of power. Parties that have been considered as parties of power in the past include the Union of Citizens of Georgia (before 2003) and Georgia's United National Movement (until 2012).
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Parties of power are typically described as having a hierarchical top-down structure, being centralised, organised in clientelistic networks, lacking a defined or coherent ideology and playing a subordinate role towards the bureaucracy.
The use of the concept and the term "party of power" has been criticized, including by those who claim that, strictly speaking, United Russia and Nur Otan do not possess or exercise power themselves. It is not the parties that make decisions and policies in the last resort. The term "parties of power" may therefore be regarded as misleading.
Russian parties of power
In the Russian language, the term "party of power" (or more correct "power party" or "party in power") is used to describe the party which advocates the current head of state, the party which belongs to/is controlled by the current government or the party established by the current highest official in the state. The terms "ruling party" and "party of power" can be considered as antonyms, because a party of power will be established after a presidential election to support the winner and not the reverse. The party has the same ideology as the president or prime minister. A party which supports the current president without difficulty wins parliamentary elections. After the party leader loses a presidential election, a party of power without coherent ideology, as a rule, ceases to exist.
List of Russian parties of power
These parties were specially established for support of the incumbent president or prime minister in the Russian parliament: