Instruments to measure the successfulness of political parties
Authors: Suvakovic Uros 
Published: November 2011

Social sciences should always aim to reach the highest possible level of exactness, as much as they can when one has in mind their topic of research. In the case of research about political parties, we believe that it is possible - with relatively exract indicators - to establish their successfulness and quantify it by using two measuring instruments: the ten-member graphic scale of successfulness of political parties and the index of successfulness of political parties. Political parties are political organizations of ideological-political like(similar)-minded persons who create associations lasting relatively long period of time to promote specific programme standpoints with the basic goal to win, that is stay in power or participate in power. Through power, they realize and confirm the interests, values and goals of those social groups which they tend to represent, as a rule trying to present these interests, values and goals as general, that is as global as possible. This definition of the notion of political party clearly indicates that its basic goal is winning, that is staying or at least participating in power. Therefore, to measure the successfulness of political parties means to determine the degree a party succeeded in realizing that basic goal of any party. Since the political power is implemented through the parliament and the government is a product of the power relations in it, one could assume that successful political parties are only those which have a parliamentary status. How much one of them would be successful depends on the position it can ensure for itself in a concrete constellation of political relations. Among the successful ones the least successful is the political party which has a parliamentary status but it is in the opposition and not leading this opposition - so it has no influence on the government (the position 6 on the scale); the most successful party is the one which has enough power to form the government alone (position 10). From the standpoint of any party - winning, staying or participating in power, the nonparliamentary parties are unsuccessful political parties. Amnog them, the most unsuccessful is the party which just satisfied the conditions for registration, whose leaders meet twice a year and which formed at least 5 local leadership bodies (the position 1 on the scale); the least unsuccessful political party is the party which won more than 3% of the votes of those who voted at the parliamentary elections, but is below the census proposed for entering the parliament or which managed to nominate at least 10% of the total number of the candidates for the representatives in the assemblies of the local communities at the municipal rank (position 5). While calculating the index of successfulness, each party is given a number of points for every year - these points reflect the position of that party on the scale of successfulness for that year (for example, the party X has the position 5 in 1993 and it gets 5 points). Since the index of successfulness is calculated for the period of 10 years, the sum of points acquired for these 10 years is divided by the number 10 to get the index of successfulness of political parties.