The functions of political parties and their effects on democracy

The study covers the functions of political parties accepted as the indispensable element of democratic political life and the impacts of these functions on democracy. The functions performed by political parties within the political systems can have negative results as well as its positive results in terms of democracy. Many factors directly or indirectly affect the content of these results in determining the content of the results in question. In this context, the effects of factors such as political party types; the political party systems, electoral systems and political cultures of the countries are mentioned in the study. In the historical process, with the change of social structure and relatedly the political structure and culture, the political ground has also undergone a change. In other words, the understanding of post-modern politics has caused a change in both political parties and the context of politics. Whether this process affects the place and importance of political parties in democratic systems or not has been one of the issues of this study which is also believed to have an actual value. Again, with the phenomenon of globalization and the development of technology, how a digital democracy practice, which has been directly applied to democracy, will affect the place and importance of political parties in democratic systems has been another topic discussed in the study.