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A one-party system is a political party system that does not recognize the existence of any other political parties in a country except one ruling party. It is different from the one-party supremacy system, in which different political parties exist, albeit slightly .

Some totalitarian and communist countries are adopting this, and in some cases, existing competing parties are converted into fringe parties to establish a one-party system , or a controlled opposition party is established to ward off opposition forces and external criticism. Conversely, there are also countries where a one-party system was established from the beginning, such as Eritrea or the Soviet Union before Mikhail Gorbachev .

Sometimes, even if it is a one-party system, a large-scale political party has multiple factions within the party, so the factions play a similar role as the opposition party, keeping each other in check through factional conflict . The Communist Party of China is divided into factions such as the Communist Youth League , the Shanghai Party , and the Prince's Party .[1] However, if this becomes too serious, it can spread to bloodshed or civil war due to large-scale purges , posing a great threat to the national body itself. A representative example of this is the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which was divided into the Parch and Khalq factions and fought throughout the early days of its administration, thereby reducing the nation's capabilities .

Like Monaco after the 2023 Monaco National Assembly election, the ruling party swept all seats in the National Assembly and the opposition party failed to win even a single seat, making them all out -of-parliament parties. Some people misunderstand that this is a one-party system . However, it is not that Monaco does not recognize opposition parties other than minor parties , and as you can see from the election documents, the opposition party participated normally in the election, so the ruling party simply It was just a landslide victory in the election, not a one-party system.[2]

Advocates of the one-party system often ask whether it would be okay as long as the one-party system is run democratically, multiple candidates can run in elections rather than votes for or against, free discussion and debate takes place within the party, and the party only plays the role of assisting and supervising the candidates. In fact, these are things that can be done by the national government , not by the party , and in fact are things that should be done as a matter of course. If you're going to do it this way, you just need a democratic government . There's no reason to have a one-party system. In fact, the governments of most democratic countries have an election commission, a formal government agency that assists and supervises candidates . In fact, if truly free debate and discussion were to take place, there would be no reason to stop the ruling party from joining the opposition party or forming a new party according to one's views or ideology, and if truly diverse candidates were to freely run for elections, there would be no reason to stop the candidates from forming new political parties or joining the opposition party.

In reality, in one-party countries, the party organization of the ruling party effectively functions like a government agency, and the ruling party itself effectively functions as the government of the country. If this is going to be the case, you may be thinking that it would be better to just integrate it into a government agency, but that is correct. The reason why we insist on maintaining this one-party system that overlaps with the government even though there is a government is ultimately to exclude from power those who do not conform to the ideology of the ruling party. People who do not agree with the party's position or ideology can only be guaranteed political freedom if they have the right to start another life, as the saying goes, if you don't like the temple, you should leave. However, if there is only one temple and you are not allowed to leave, you will have no choice but to follow the party leadership's position when it is decided. Democratic centralism is a method of "discussing freely among party members, but once the decision is made, follow the instructions." In the end, the negative effects of the latter's 'follow the decision' were strongly revealed. In communist countries, this was rationalized as being something that could be discussed freely within one communist party under the dictatorship of the proletariat , but in the end, it turned into a dictatorship where there was no choice but to follow the instructions of the party's central government . In the case of North Korea, where these evils have become more severe, elections are held, but the country has drifted into totalitarianism, with only voting for or against candidates pre-designated by the central party, and there are many one-party dictatorships that do not even have elections. Vietnam is better than North Korea as there are multiple candidates from one communist party, but there is minimal competition for pledges and only party loyalists are the same.

There are cases where democracy was achieved without political parties , such as in ancient Greece , but of course, the absence of political parties is not the same as the one-party system in which membership in the ruling party is virtually mandatory to gain power. Even in ancient Greece, politics was not run in such a way that if you wanted to engage in politics, you were forced to join a faction or group run by a powerful person or the government.

In addition , each political party in a multi-party country often engages in negative actions to cover up its own party's mistakes. In a multi-party system, other parties can point out this and encourage it to be corrected, but if there is only one party, they are likely to try to bury it easily. A similar problem appears in the one-party supremacy system, but in a country with a one-party supremacy system, regime change through the opposition party is at least institutionally possible, so voters can make a judgment when the problem gets to the point where it can no longer be ignored.

 more detailsparty member documentofin a communist country partPlease note.

At first glance, one might think that since there is no other option in a one-party system, the majority of citizens would apply for party membership in order to gain even a few more rights, but the percentage is not that high. The Soviet Communist Party has 6.84% as of 1986 , the Chinese Communist Party has 6.74% as of 2021 , the Korean Workers' Party has 15.93% as of 2015 , and the Nazi Party has 12.88% as of 1945 . In these countries, citizens' membership as a party member becomes a symbol of uncontested patriotism or is considered a kind of honor or privilege . On the other hand, in the past, the National Community of the Bohemia-Morava Protectorate , the 'Revolutionary Popular Movement' in Zaire , the National Development Revolutionary Movement in Rwanda , and the Malawi Congress Party in Malawi , all citizens automatically became party members.