US parties were never mass parties but functioned as such via civil associations.

Evidence

The creative role of parties means that in one respect the traditional complaint about parties is correct: parties do challenge the imagined unity or holism of the political order. On one hand, political parties seek to bring people together in majority coalitions to govern. On the other, they create and exacerbate divisions. Indeed, partiality and opposition are their raison d’être. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 195 (#expands, via linked claim)

AOC did insist that in any properly functioning party democracy, Manchin and she would not find themselves in the same party. Yet this wish did not change the calculus in which she was caught. Congressional discipline would reassert itself. The Bernie bloc had consolidated itself precisely due to the weakness of the Democrats as a party, which has revealed itself to be more of a state department than anything else. But this also implied working as a surrogate within the party itself. It allowed Bernites to maintain a critical distance which the Corbynites lacked. But it also put them in a position too close for comfort for a frontal assault. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 324 (#builds-on, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Democratic Party functions as a state department, not a real party — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 324; Parties are definitionally partial and oppositional, not unifying institutions — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 195

Related

• Parties are definitionally partial and oppositional, not unifying institutions (similarity 0.89)
• The Democratic Party functions as a state department, not a real party (similarity 0.87)
• Parties deliberately create the divisions critics accuse them of worsening (similarity 0.84)
• Parties do not mirror existing conflicts but actively create and organize them (similarity 0.83)
• Parties organize political conflict rather than merely reflecting preexisting disagreements (similarity 0.82)
• Parties function as institutional guarantors of political pluralism against populism (similarity 0.80)
• Political parties create the people and majority they then claim to represent (similarity 0.80)
• Mass parties provided a unifying heuristic that hyperpolitical individuals now lack (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Parties are definitionally partial and oppositional, not unifying institutions #expands (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 195