Political Parties

Parties are the central political structures of A House Divided. Everything meaningful, including elections, legislation, coalitions, and parliament formations, flows through party membership. If you want to do more than run as an independent, you need a party.

What a party is#

A political party is a country-scoped organization with its own name, abbreviation, color, treasury, and ideology position on a two-axis grid (economic left-right, social liberal-conservative). Parties hold seats, run candidates in primaries, and accumulate resources that leaders can spend on collective actions.

Each party also has a per-state footprint: state party organizations track regional membership, organization score, treasury, and leadership separately from the national party. What happens in Texas Democratic circles is distinct from what happens nationally.

The two-axis ideology system#

Party ideology lives on two axes:

The party's official position on these axes directly affects:

• Which NPPs align with the party (ideology proximity)
• Which voter demographics the party appeals to
• How your character's primary score is calculated (party alignment component)

Party IDs and URLs#

Each party has a short ID number used in its URL, like /parties/1?country=US. This ID is only unique within a country. The US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party might both be party number 1, so country context is always required when looking up a party.

URLs always include a country parameter: /parties?country=UK lists UK parties, and party links always carry the country flag.

Party pages#

Navigate to /parties and select a country to browse all parties. Each party page shows:

• Overview: ideology position, seat counts by office type, member roster
• Leadership: current chair, vice chair, and treasurer with their term status
• Organization: per-state org scores and budget allocations
• Treasury: national treasury balance and tax rate settings

Built-in vs. custom parties#

Built-in parties (Democrat, Republican, Labour, Conservative, and their equivalents by country) are pre-configured with party colors, historical positions, and seeded membership. They cannot be deleted, and they don't go through the charter system.

Custom parties are created via a Party Charter, a founding agreement signed by 3 human founders. One player drafts the charter (party name, abbreviation, the two-axis economic/social platform, and the three founders), and the party only materializes once all three founders have co-signed. The two co-founders must live in the proposer's home state or a state adjacent to it, and any replacement founder must satisfy the same rule relative to the anchor founder. Any founder can reject during the signing window, which opens a founder-replacement window with the same deadline: whichever is longer of 14 turns or 72 real-world hours. Custom parties that go empty (no members, no seats) are otherwise deleted automatically, but a party with a ratified charter is exempt from cleanup until the charter is dissolved.

Existing pre-Phase-6 third parties were migrated to the charter system in place: each was given an automatically generated charter, marked incomplete if fewer than three human officers were available at the time. Incomplete migrated parties keep their cleanup immunity; the remaining founder slots can be filled later from the charter detail page to fully ratify.

Parties by country#

Each country has its own set of default parties suited to its political system:

Related#

• Party Membership: How to join, switch, and what membership unlocks.
• Party Leadership: Chair, vice chair, treasurer roles and elections.
• Party Organization: The org score system, how it builds and decays.
• Party Ideology: The two-axis ideology grid and its effects.
• Party Actions: What leaders can spend party resources on.
• Coalitions: Cross-party alliances and their effects.