Understand Politics
Page 11
Result of the 2010 UK general election
Party
Votes
Seats
Conservative
10,726,814 (36.1%)
307
Labour
8,609,527 (29.0%)
258
Liberal Democrats
6,836,824 (23.0%)
57
Others
3,518,615 (11.9%)
28
In total 29,653,638 electors (65.1 per cent of the total) voted.
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This result gave no single party an overall majority of votes in the new House of Commons. After five days of negotiation, a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government was formed, headed by David Cameron. The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, became Deputy Prime Minister and four of his Liberal Democrat colleagues were given seats in the Cabinet. It was also agreed that 66% of all MPs would need to approve a move to dissolve Parliament and call a fresh general election.
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THINGS TO REMEMBER
Elections enable citizens to choose between rival candidates seeking public office and to hold those who are elected to account for their actions.
Citizens may decide not to vote in election contests for a variety of reasons, including a dislike of the way in which political activity is conducted.
Candidates and political parties put forward policies which they intend to carry out should they be elected. They use the concept of the mandate to justify this course of action – public endorsement of their views gives them the right to translate them into actions.
Psephology is the term used for social scientific investigations of voting behaviour.
A variety of methods are used by liberal democracies to elect candidates to public office in national or local elections. A basic division exists between the first-past-the-post system and proportional representation.
The first-past-the-post electoral system promotes a close relationship between public office and voters. However, the system has been accused of distorting the wishes of the electorate by consequences which include discrimination against minor political parties.
The main electoral systems associated with proportional representation are the single transferable vote and the party list system. Although these systems ensure that the composition of legislatures closely reflects the votes obtained by each party at an election, they have been criticized for producing multi-party systems and coalition governments.
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5
Parties and party systems
In this chapter you will learn:
the functions served by political parties
the factors influencing the development of political parties
the contemporary problems facing political parties.
Objectives and key characteristics
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Insight
The main aim of a political party is to secure power and exercise control over government. This may be at national, state, regional or local level.
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We are familiar with political parties. They are especially prominent at election times.
Their role is to determine the composition of government and the policies that it carries out. To achieve this objective a party may operate independently or it can co-operate with other political parties by participating in coalition governments.
We tend to regard political parties openly competing for power as the hallmark of a liberal democracy. However, political parties often exist in countries which do not possess a liberal democratic political system. The ability to inaugurate meaningful change within society is thus an important qualification required by political parties in a liberal democracy. They should be able to carry out their policies without hindrance from other state institutions.
A party possesses a formal structure which involves national leadership and local organization. The main role of the latter is to contest elections and recruit party members. This organization is permanent although it may be most active at election times. The relationship between a party’s leaders and its membership varies quite considerably, especially the extent to which a party’s leaders can be held accountable for their actions by its rank-and-file supporters. Policy making is frequently the preserve of the party’s national leadership, which may also possess some degree of control over the selection of candidates for public office.
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Dominant party systems and one-party states
We might believe that it is essential in a liberal democracy that office should alternate between political parties. However, in some countries one party frequently wins national elections. This was so for Fianna Faíl (which held office in Ireland for 37 of the 43 years between 1932 and 1973), for the UK Conservative Party (which won four successive general elections held between 1979 and 1992) and the UK Labour Party (which won three successive general elections held after 1997). In Germany, Helmut Kohl’s Christian-Socialist-dominated government was in power from 1982 until 1998.
However, in all these countries the replacement of the party holding office is theoretically possible and it is the potential of change which separates a one-party state (in which opposition parties are not allowed openly to exist) from one in which a single political party is dominant but could be replaced through the process of free elections.
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FACTIONS AND TENDENCIES
The term ‘faction’ denotes the existence of a minority group within a larger body which takes issue with the majority over the leadership of that body or the policies that it advocates.
A faction is frequently defined as a group which exists within a political party. It consists of a group with formal organization and a relatively stable membership and is effectively a ‘party within a party’. The Italian Christian Democrats and Japan’s Liberal Democrats are essentially coalitions of several factions.
Factions need to be distinguished from tendencies. These also exist within a political party and consist of persons who share common opinions. Unlike factions, however, they lack formal organization. During Margaret Thatcher’s period of office as prime minister in the United Kingdom (1979–90) the ‘Wets’ were a tendency within the Conservative Party opposed to many of her policies. Towards the end of the 1990s a further tendency emerged within that party, the Eurosceptics. These were opposed to any further moves towards the pooling of sovereignty and political integration within the European Union and in particular opposed the goal in the 1991 Maastricht Treaty of economic and monetary union. In 1995, Eurosceptics supported the leadership challenge mounted by John Redwood to the then Conservative party leader and prime minister, John Major.
In the United States the term ‘faction’ is closer in meaning to its eighteenth-century definition of ‘party’. Key provisions contained in the American Constitution, including the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances, were devised to prevent a majority faction seizing control of the government and riding roughshod over minority interests. James Madison (1751–1836) exerted considerable influence over these provisions of the constitution, believing that factions were derived from the unequal distribution of wealth.
Question
With reference to the political parties in any country with which you are familiar, distinguish between factions and tendencies and give examples of each.
Determinants of party systems
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Insight
The origins of political parties often reflect divisions within society founded on factors that include class, religion and regional identity.
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Considerable differences exist within liberal democracies concerning the nature of party systems. Some countries such as the UK, America and New Zealand have relatively few political parties. Scandinavia, however, is characterized by multi-party systems. In order to explain these differences we need to consider what factors influence the development of political parties and party system
s.
THE BASIS OF PARTY
The degree of homogeneity (that is, uniformity) in a country is an important determinant concerning the formation and development of political parties. Basic divisions within a society might provide the basis of a party. These might include social class, nationalism, religion or race. Any of these factors is capable of providing the basis around which parties are established and subsequently operate. Some form of partisanship in which groups of electors have a strong affinity to a particular political party is crucial to sustain a stable party system.
Let us consider some examples of this.
Social class
In the UK, social class was a key factor that shaped the development of political parties in the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. The landed aristocracy was identified with the Conservative Party, the industrial bourgeoisie with the Liberal Party and the working class with the Labour Party.
Religion
In France, Italy and Germany religion played an important part in providing the underpinning for political parties. In nineteenth-century France, the basic division was between clericals and anti-clericals. Today the vote for left-wing parties is weakest where the influence of the Catholic Church is strongest, although by the 1960s social class began to play an increasingly important role in determining party affiliation. In Italy, the Christian Democrats initially relied heavily on the Catholic vote, while in Germany the coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Christian Social Union represented a religious alliance between Catholics and Protestants in opposition to the Social Democrats, who were viewed as representative of the secular interests within society.
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The Irish party system
Political parties may emerge when key social divisions are absent. This is the case in Ireland. Here a party system developed in the early twentieth century in a country that was relatively unified in terms of race, religion, language and social class. The key issue that divided the country was a matter of policy – support for or opposition to the 1921. Anglo-Irish Treaty, which accepted the partitioning of Ireland whereby six Irish counties remained part of the United Kingdom.
In response to this situation, two parties emerged – Fine Gael (which supported the treaty) and Fianna Faíl (which opposed it). However, as the treaty issue became irrelevant to the conduct of Irish politics, the parties remained as permanent interests. In this sense it might be argued that the parties became the cause of divisions in Ireland rather than reflections of them.
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Regionalism and nationalism
Regional and national sentiments may provide the basis of party. These may arise from a perception that the national government pays insufficient regard to the interests of people living in peripheral areas and is often underpinned by cultural factors. Regional or national autonomy is frequently demanded by such parties. Examples include the Italian Lega Nord, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru in Wales, the Parti Québécois in Quebec, Canada, and the Catalan Republican Left and Basque National parties in Spain.
Question
What factors do you think are most important in securing support for a political party?
The role of political parties
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Insight
Political parties perform a range of functions that are vital to the operations of liberal democratic government. These include organizing support for governments and helping to promote national harmony. They also act as the vehicle to select our political leaders.
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In this section we consider the major functions carried out by political parties and explain their importance to the operations of liberal democratic government.
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Views of party
Political parties are now an accepted way for political affairs within liberal democracies to be conducted. But political parties have not always been accepted as helpful political mechanisms.
The American Constitution contained no provisions for party government and in his farewell address to the nation in 1796, President Washington bemoaned the ‘baneful effects of the spirit of party’. In France, the development of political parties was checked by the belief that they tended to undermine the national interest.
However, parties became an accepted feature of political life in both of these countries. The 1958 Constitution of the Fifth French Republic specifically acknowledged their existence.
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SELECTION OF POLITICAL LEADERS
Parties are responsible for selecting candidates for public office at all levels in the machinery of government. Having selected a candidate, the role of the party is then to secure electoral support for its standard bearer. In particular, a country’s national leaders emerge through the structure of political parties. Parties provide the main method for selecting a nation’s political elite.
This function is an important one. In the nineteenth century, monarchs frequently exercised their powers of patronage to select members of their country’s government. But with the gradual extension of the right to vote, the composition of governments became the subject of popular choice, which was aided by the operations of political parties.
Below we briefly consider the various methods that the main political parties use to select their leader in the UK and to choose their nominee for the office of the president in America.
THE UNITED KINGDOM
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Insight
All three of the UK’s main political parties involve their rank-and-file members in the election of their leaders.
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The position of party leader is an important one in the UK since, following a general election, the leader of the party with the largest number of seats in the House of Commons will be appointed prime minister and will head the new government. Leadership elections are generally caused by the death or resignation of the incumbent (that is, the person already holding the post), although there are also formal and informal methods to remove a party’s leader and thus trigger an election contest to find a replacement. There is, however, no common procedure whereby the main parties choose their leader.
Labour Party
A person who wishes to be the leader or deputy leader of the party must be a member of parliament and has to secure the support of 20 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party (that is, Labour members of parliament). The leader and deputy leader are chosen by an electoral college that was first used in 1981. This has three components – the Parliamentary Labour Party, affiliated organizations (mainly consisting of trade unions) and individual party members: since 1993 each component possesses one-third of the votes. To be elected to either post a candidate has to secure 50 per cent of the vote and if he or she fails to do this a second ballot is held. The last vacancy for the leadership of the party occurred in 2007, following the resignation of Tony Blair. On this occasion Gordon Brown was elected leader without a contest since his main challenger, John McDonnell, failed to get the endorsement of sufficient MPs to secure nomination.
Conservative Party
Formal elections for the post of leader were first introduced in 1965 and between then and 1998 only Conservative members of parliament were involved in the process. In 1998 new rules were introduced to broaden the leadership election procedure. Candidates for the leadership must be a member of parliament and be nominated by two members of parliament. If there are more than two candidates, a series of ballots involving MPs are held in which the candidate with fewest votes is eliminated. This procedure is continued until only two candidates remain. The party members are then balloted to determine which of these two candidates should become leader of the party. The last contest for the party leadership occurred in 2005 when David Cameron defeated David Davis by the margin of 134,446 votes to 64,398.
The Liberal Democrats
A candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats must be a member of parliament. He or she requires the support
of 10 per cent of his or her parliamentary colleagues together with the signatures of 200 party members in at least 20 different constituencies. Candidates with this level of support are balloted by the party members using the alternative vote. The last leadership contest occurred in 2007 when Nick Clegg defeated Chris Huhne by the margin of 20,988 votes to 20,477.
AMERICA
The methods that are employed by the Democrats and Republicans to choose their presidential candidates possess many similarities. In both cases presidential and vice presidential candidates are chosen at the party’s national convention. This is held every four years and its role extends to choosing a platform on which the party will contest the forthcoming national election and choosing a National Committee that is responsible for organizing the next convention and governing the party until this event takes place.
National conventions formerly played a major role in selecting presidential candidates and were often characterized by wheeling and dealing conducted in smoke-filled rooms, which went on into the early hours of the morning and sometimes lasted several days. In 1924, for example, the Democratic National Convention held in New York lasted for 17 days and conducted 103 ballots before selecting John Davis as the party’s presidential candidate. However, since the 1970s the national conventions have played a more restricted role in selecting presidential candidates. The last occasion when a convention exercised a major role in candidate selection for the Democrats was in 1968 when (in the unusual circumstances following the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy) Hubert Humphrey (who had not stood in the primary elections) was chosen as the party’s nominee. In 1976 considerable support was given at the Republican National Convention to Governor Ronald Reagan, who mounted a strong challenge to the incumbent Republican President, Gerald Ford. But Ford defeated Reagan by the narrow margin of 1,187 to 1,070 votes.