For most of their history, political parties were understood to be external to the state. Particularly starting in the last quarter of the twentieth century, there has been an accelerating trend to redefine the relationships between parties and civil society on the one hand, and between parties and the state, on the other. Parties have been drawing away from society and moving toward the state. Parties often draw a large portion of their resources from the state in the form of subventions and are increasingly regulated by the state according to norms more generally associated with public entities than with private associations. The resulting similarity of regulatory and financial circumstances, and the expansion of partisan public offices shared by parties that are temporarily in office and temporarily out of office, both brings the mainstream parties closer to one another and blurs the boundary between parties and the state.