Understand Politics

by Peter Joyce

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  Insight

  In the USA election contests termed ‘primaries’ are used in many states to help select a party’s candidate for the office of president.

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  Subsequently the national conventions of both parties have tended to rubber stamp decisions that have been taken elsewhere, in the individual states. This situation is mainly due to the enhanced role played by state primaries (whose role is further considered later in this chapter in connection with the reform of political parties). These contests expose potential candidates to the cut and thrust of electioneering and are now widely used to enable party supporters to express their choice as to who should be the party’s nominee for the presidency. Although there are differences in the rules affecting primaries (the Republicans tend to allocate delegates on a winner-takes-all basis in each state, whereas the Democrats favour allocating delegates according to the proportion of the vote obtained by each candidate in the state), this procedure means that the delegates who attend the national conventions are pledged (at least in the first ballot) to support a particular candidate (unless he or she has dropped out of the race before the convention meets) and it is common that a front runner has emerged long before the convention actually takes place.

  In 2004, for example, John Kerry secured the necessary number of delegate votes to secure the Democratic Party nomination in March of that year and President George W. Bush faced no challenge to his re-nomination as Republican candidate.

  Questions

  With reference to any country with which you are familiar, indicate how the political parties choose their leaders.

  What do you consider to be the strengths and weaknesses of this process?

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  The selection of candidates

  There are a variety of procedures which parties might use to select candidates. The choice might be made by the rank-and-file supporters of a political party. The American system of primary elections opens the choice of candidate to a wide electorate. As we discuss above, these elections enable registered party supporters to select candidates for public office.

  Elsewhere, party activists at local level might choose candidates, possibly subject to the approval of the central organs of that party. This is a more restricted electorate, being confined to party members. Such is the practice in the UK, when a key role is played by the constituency organizations in the selection of candidates for elections at all levels of government.

  Finally, the central party organization might select candidates, perhaps taking local views into consideration. The party list electoral system may encourage the selection of candidates to be made in this fashion.

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  ORGANIZATION OF SUPPORT FOR GOVERNMENTS

  In addition to selecting political leaders, political parties ensure that governments are provided with organized support. This is especially important in parliamentary systems of government in which the executive is drawn from the legislative branch of government. In the UK, the party whip system in the House of Commons ensures that governments have the necessary backing to implement their policies. The whip consists of written instructions indicating how the party leadership wishes its members to vote. Members who disobey such instructions may have the whip withdrawn. This entails expulsion from their parliamentary party and their replacement with an alternative party candidate at the next election. Without the support of party and its accompanying system of party discipline, governments would be subject to the constant fear of defeat. This organization is also adopted by opposition parties, which are thus able to step in and form a government should the incumbent party be defeated. In this sense, parties may also be said to promote political stability by ensuring a smooth transfer of power from one government to another can be accomplished.

  However, while parties aid the operations of liberal democratic political systems, they are not indispensable to it. In America, for example, candidates for public office often promote themselves through personal organizations, even if they latterly attach themselves to a political party. Neither is membership of a major political party essential for those seeking national office. In the 1992 presidential election an independent candidate, Ross Perot, secured 19.7 million votes. Although Perot failed to repeat this feat in subsequent contests, his showing in 1992 demonstrated that, on that occasion, many Americans were willing to endorse as that country’s leader a person who had no association with either of the major political parties.

  Further, although governments usually rely on the organized support afforded by a political party (or a combination of parties) there are exceptions to this. In 1995 the Italian president, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, appointed a banker, Lamberto Dini, to be prime minister and head a non-party government. Although this government was seen as a temporary, stop-gap expedient, it does illustrate that governments can be formed without the initial backing of established political parties. It possessed sufficient vitality to survive a vote of ‘no confidence’ in October 1995 designed to force an early general election. Dini resigned at the end of that year and subsequently headed a caretaker administration.

  STIMULATION OF POPULAR INTEREST AND INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICAL AFFAIRS

  Political parties also stimulate popular interest and facilitate public participation in political affairs. They perform this function in a number of ways. Parties need to mobilize the electorate in order to win votes and secure the election of their representatives to public office. This requires the party ‘selling’ itself to the general public. In theory, therefore, a party puts forward its policies and seeks to convince the electorate that these are preferable to those of its opponents. The electorate thus becomes better informed concerning political affairs.

  Second, parties enable persons other than a small elite group of public office holders to be involved in political activity. Members of the general public can join political parties and engage in matters such as candidate selection and policy formulation.

  Crucially, parties are a mechanism whereby those who hold public office can be made accountable for their actions. Although elections provide the ultimate means to secure the accountability of public office holders, parties may subject these officials to a more regular, day-by-day scrutiny, possessing the sanction of deselecting them as candidates for future elections if they fail to promote party policy.

  PROMOTING NATIONAL HARMONY

  Political parties simplify the conduct of political affairs and make them more manageable. They transform the demands which are made by individuals and groups into programmes which can be put before the electorate. This is known as the ‘aggregation of interests’, which involves a process of arbitration in which diverse demands are given a degree of coherence by being incorporated into a party platform or manifesto. One consequence of this is to transform parties into ‘broad churches’ which seek to maximize their level of support by incorporating the claims of a wide cross-section of society.

  Such activity enables parties to promote national harmony. Numerous divisions exist within societies, based among other things on class, religion or race. But to win elections, parties have to appeal to as many voters as possible. In doing this, they may endorse policies and address appeals which transcend social divisions. Thus parties might serve as a source of national unity by conciliating the conflicts between diverse groups in society. For example, the UK Labour Party needs to secure support from a sizeable section of the middle class in order to form a government. Thus it may put forward policies to appeal to such voters. In doing so it bridges the gulf between the working class (whose interests it was formed to advance) and the middle class. One political party thus becomes the vehicle to further the claims of two distinct groups in society.

  PROVIDERS OF PATRONAGE

  Political parties provide the personnel of government and in this sense serve as important sources of patronage. They are able to dispense perks to their members. The party in charge of the national government is in the best pos
ition to do this. The chief executive can make ministerial appointments and thus the party becomes the vehicle through which political ambitions can be realized. Party supporters can also be rewarded. In the UK this includes paid appointments to public bodies (quangos) and the bestowal of a range of awards through the honours system.

  The decline of established parties?

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  Insight

  The reduced level of support obtained by established (or ‘major’) political parties in recent election contests in a number of countries has been attributed to failures associated with performing their traditional roles and also to more deep-rooted explanations caused by social and economic change.

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  In the UK, 97 per cent of the vote cast in the 1955 general election went to the Labour and Conservative parties. By 1964 this figure had declined to 88 per cent. It was further reduced to 76 per cent in 1992 and 68 per cent in 2005. In France a similar pattern has emerged. In the 1981 legislative elections the four main parties (RPR, UDF, PCF and PS) secured 93 per cent of the votes cast in the first round of elections. Subsequently, there has been a significant move away from the two-bloc, four-party system. In 1993 the four main parties obtained 68 per cent of the vote cast. Further, 2 million voters spoiled their ballots in the second round of the 1993 legislative elections rather than give their support to a major party candidate. In the 1993 legislative elections the support for the Italian Christian Democrats dropped to below 30 per cent.

  In recent years extreme right-wing parties have benefited from the decline in support for established political parties. Parties which include the Front National in France, the Progress Party in Norway, the Danish People’s Party, the Swiss People’s Party, the Italian Northern League, Vlaams Blok in Belgium and the British National Party in the UK have gained considerable support in the late twentieth and early years of the twenty-first centuries. In parliamentary elections held towards the end of 1999 Austria’s far right Freedom Party secured over 33 per cent of the vote. This resulted in the party forming a government in coalition with the conservative People’s Party, an outcome which was continued after the November 2002 elections in spite of a slump in support for the Freedom Party. In the October 2000 local elections in Belgium, Vlaams Blok secured 33 per cent of the vote in Antwerp, making it the second biggest political force in that country’s second city. However, the most significant achievement of extreme right-wing parties occurred in France in 2002 when the Front National candidate defeated the socialist prime minister in the first round of the presidential election.

  Below we consider two explanations for the decline in support experienced by established political parties – failures affecting their performance of the traditional functions associated with political parties and social and economic changes that have helped to erode the support traditionally enjoyed by the major parties.

  The traditional functions of political parties

  This section discusses a number of problems affecting the manner in which established political parties perform their traditional functions, which may have eroded public confidence in their operations.

  POLITICAL EDUCATION

  Parties may not seek to educate the public in any meaningful manner. Election campaigns may be conducted around trivia rather than key issues. Parties may be more concerned to denigrate an opponent than with an attempt to convince electors of the virtues of their own policies. Or they may decide that the wisest course of political action is to follow public opinion rather than seek to lead it. Thus ideology or policy that is viewed as unpopular might be abandoned by a party in an attempt to win elections.

  POPULAR INVOLVEMENT

  We may also question the extent to which parties enable widespread involvement in political affairs. Parties do not always have a mass membership. In America, voters do not ‘join’ a party as they might, for example, in the UK. However, even in countries where individuals can join a political party they do not always do so in large numbers. French and Irish political parties, for example, lack a tradition of mass membership and tend to be controlled by small elitist groups. Neither are those who do join a party guaranteed a meaningful role in its affairs. The Italian Christian Democrats, for example, have a mass membership but this has little say on matters such as party policy. The formal accountability of party leaders to rank-and-file activists through mechanisms such as annual party conferences is often imperfectly achieved in practice due to the domination which leaders often exert over their parties.

  Centralized control over political parties extends to election contests. In the UK the recent emergence of stage-managed general elections marginalizes the role of the general public in these contests.

  DIVISIVENESS

  Political parties do not always seek to promote harmony. Some may seek to make political capital by emphasizing existing divisions within society. France’s Front National has sought to cultivate support by blaming that country’s economic and social problems on immigration, especially from North Africa. The scapegoating of racial or religious groups, depicting them as the main cause of a country’s problems, is a common tactic of the extreme right and serves to create social tension rather than harmony. Racial tension in Germany in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries led some politicians to suggest banning the far-right National Democratic Party.

  SELF-INTEREST

  The role of parties as dispensers of patronage may result in accusations that they are mainly concerned to award ‘jobs for the boys’. This may result in popular disenchantment with the conduct of political affairs, with politics being associated with the furtherance of self-interest rather than with service to the nation.

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  The funding of political parties

  Political parties commonly secure their income from a variety of sources. These may include sponsors (who make regular donations to party funds) and donors (who make ‘one-off’ gifts). Commercial activities undertaken by political parties may contribute towards party funds, and parties such as the United Kingdom’s Labour Party derive income from the trade unions, particularly at a general election. Subscriptions paid by party members also constitute a source of funding for some political parties.

  A major problem with donations from private or business sources is a perception that those who give money to parties will expect something in return for their outlay. This may include influence over the content of party policy or its leadership.

  In some countries political parties are funded by the state. It is vital in Spain and Portugal where the late transition to liberal democratic politics in the 1970s meant that political parties were unable themselves to raise adequate finance. State funding also occurs in Germany (where parties represented in the Bundestag receive finance based on the level of their popular support) and in the USA (where since 1976 public funding has been offered to candidates contesting the office of president provided that they accept an overall capping on their total spending).

  There are several reasons for state funding of political parties. This avoids perceptions that wealthy people or organizations are able to buy influence over the operations of a political party in return for their financial support. State funding may also place a ceiling on political expenditure, especially at election times. This last objective was one reason for the introduction of federal funding for presidential candidates in America. However, a danger with state funding of parties is that these become perceived as organs of the state which have little incentive to recruit a mass membership.

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  Questions

  Conduct your own study of the operations of political parties in any country with which you are familiar.

  In your view, do parties aid or hinder the conduct of liberal democratic politics in that country?

  Political parties and social and economic change

  In addition to problems affecting the way in which political parties discharge their traditional functions, social and economic change
s in contemporary society have eroded the support enjoyed by the established political parties.

  Fundamental changes to a country’s economic or social structure might have a significant effect on its political parties. For example, the decline in jobs in the French steel, coal and shipbuilding industries has been cited as one explanation for the reduced support for the Communist Party. Immigration may influence the growth of racist political parties. Below we consider social and economic changes that have contributed to the loss of support for the major political parties.

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  Insight