“Do” or “Be” the Party. A Brief Report of the Assimilation of the Word “Party” (Political Party) as the Idea of Social Division

Abstract

From an etymological perspective, the words party (English) parti (French, Albanian, Danish, Norwegian and Turkish), partido (Spanish and Portuguese), partito (Italian) partei (German), partit (Catalan) páirti (Irish), párt (Hungarian) partij (Dutch), partii (Polish) partid (Romanian), all derived from the Latin verb partíre, which means the division of an entity in two or more parts. The word “party” therefore suggests division and conflict. In antiquity and until the seventeenth century, organized political groups gathered in factions, not parties. It was not until the twentieth century that we witnessed universal acceptance of the concept of “political party”. This paper seeks to demonstrate, from a historical perspective, how the term “political party” was established in Western culture without losing its original associations with the concept of division.