Political Parties and National Solidarity

This paper pays attention to the role and importance of parties in making national solidarity from theoretical viewpoint, explaining such functions of political parties as making political participation, political socialization, aggregating plural sources of social power, and other factors giving rise to national authority and solidarity as well, then dealing with, on the one hand, the role of the parties in articulating social demands and, on the other hand, the weaknesses and inefficiencies of political regimes. The paper analyzes the factors making Iranian parties unable to produce national solidarity as well as their failures in other party functions. In the final part of the paper, some suggestions has been proposed to strengthen party-making current in Islamic Republic of Iran.