What is Political society?
Political society includes political parties, interest groups, and political movement and basically those institutions, that provide or at least profess to provide the medium to raise political demand before the state.
Political society is generally defined as the realm, where political parties contest for dominance over the government.
But defining political society in this way brings up lots of problems because political participation goes beyond political party’s activity, it also includes private citizen’s initiative to organize and raise issues through a variety of ways without confining themselves to the political party mechanism.
So it can be argued that political society is not just a sphere where political parties contest for political power, rather it is a community that provides political space. It is an arena, where citizens are represented and their views are aggregated and packaged into specific policy.
Political society is, where the political agenda is set or at least should be set. In political society, formal rules matter the most. They are managed in a manner that not only enhances the legitimacy of the political process but also crucial for the stability of the political system at large.
Role of Political party in Political society:
The role of political society is to aggregate demands into policy. Therefore it requires a manageable and functioning party system. Political parties are vital to political society. How the party system is constituted and institutionalized matters.
Because the under-institutionalized party system becomes rigid and unable to accommodate the change in society, as a result, it posed a threat to the political stability of the country.
Moreover, a large number of parties is not necessarily better for how political society function. Effectiveness is easier when the number of parties is not too high.