The tone of Tea Party partisans, including leaders, in these terms is strikingly and stridently different, with a very active hostility to established institutions and policies of government which is apparent and can easily dominate evaluation of the genesis of this highly visible new movement. In April 2010, a comprehensive and methodologically reliable survey of voters across the US was conducted by the New York Times/CBS News. What emerges from the data is strong alienation from government, including politicians as well as policies, on the part of Tea Party supporters in comparison with all respondents. Only 2 percent of respondents but 11 percent of Tea Party partisans felt the US is becoming a ‘socialist’ country. A total of 46 percent of all respondents but 91 percent of Tea Party supporters disapproved of President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy. Percentages regarding other policy matters were similar, with 51 percent and 93 percent respectively disapproving his handling of health care, and 53 percent and 91 percent disapproving his handling of the federal deficit. Congress was unpopular with both sample populations. Significantly, foreign policy was generally not considered a priority by either group (Zernike, 2010, pp. 195–227).
Parties, public policies and governance
Examining and reflecting on the recent experiences of the Liberal Democrats and the Tea Party movement, in the respective contexts of their wider political systems, provides largely contrasting insights concerning their roles and prospects. Both political organizations reflect incentives reaching well beyond conventional calculations geared to achieving power within the status quo. Both have benefitted significantly from the capacity of modern media to bypass party organizations, facilitating direct communication between activists and candidates and the wider public. Yet arguably neither, despite extreme alienation by some Tea Partiers, is represented by the complete departure from reality personified by the Queen who challenged Alice in Wonderland.
As indicated at the start, historically the British parliamentary system was regularly praised by American political scientists and others. Often, these observers have been individuals giving high priority to commitment to the rule of law, sympathetic to Britain’s historic accomplishments, and impressed by perceived pragmatism which contrasted with Continental practices. In more recent times, the weakness of the British economy and often acrimonious nature of party-political debate has encouraged more critical views.
Yet in the current discussion, the British political system is demonstrating notable collective effectiveness in channeling fundamental political disagreements in directions of effective compromise and, so far, governance. The unusual Conservative–Liberal Democratic coalition so far has survived and carried out legislative initiatives to address the exceptionally serious fiscal and financial challenges facing the nation. Conservatives have been committed to drastic expenditure cuts, while Liberal Democrats strongly support education and social services spending, yet the parties’ partnership continues. This tension will also continue. Former prime minister Tony Blair sums up the situation in his memoirs, stating briefly and perhaps too bluntly that the ‘challenge for the coalition’ is that the two parties involved ‘don’t really agree’ (Blair, 2010, p. 673). Blair, however, also personifies exceptionally pragmatic leadership which transformed his party into ‘New Labour’, abandoning socialist ideology and other policies unpopular with the contemporary electorate. Ultimately, pragmatic considerations were dominant in reaching the Conservative–Liberal Democratic Coalition government. Ironically, Blair had been instrumental in moving the Labour Party away from traditional policies and attitudes in ways which ultimately, combined with other considerations, made the Conservatives relatively more attractive as partners for Liberal Democratic leaders.
The two parties have based their alliance on policy understandings which include in particular a commitment to a referendum on reforming the electoral system from the existing traditional first-past-the-post approach, in which a voter marks the ballot for only one candidate per office, with the winner based on a majority or at least plurality of votes cast, to one of Alternative Vote (AV), a system in which voters indicate support for a pool of candidates for office, in order of preference. If no candidate has a majority after first preferences are counted, the one with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots reallocated to voters’ second choice on the list. Liberal Democrats had opposed this structural change, preferring instead the Single Transferable Vote (STV), a variation in proportional representation in which voters’ ballots are cast for their preferred candidates. After a candidate has been elected or eliminated, the remaining ballots are cast in order of preference for remaining candidates. Liberal Democrats compromised on form of representation on the reasonable perception that they could not do any better, and the proposed system if implemented will almost certainly result in more Liberal Democrat MPs. The Conservatives were successful in creating the Coalition government at least in part because they were willing to open the door to electoral reform, to be decided by a popular referendum in May 2011, and were seen by the Liberal Democrats as more likely than Labour actually to deliver on this promise.
The issue of changing the national voting system was settled for the lifetime of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition, and perhaps many years to come, by the 5 May 2011 referendum, which coincided with local and regional elections. The Liberal Democrats suffered devastating losses on all fronts. The major victor was the Scottish National Party, which won 69 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament, capturing a majority for the first time. The British electorate rejected the AV system by a margin of more than two to one. Liberal Democrats were also decimated in local councils, losing nearly 700 seats, a third of their total; a massive strategic defeat, especially given the traditional and broadly recognized commitment of the party to success through community service. To some extent, the party suffered from becoming a target for public resentment of the extensive austerity and spending cuts introduced by the government to address the economic crisis and fiscal deficit. Beyond that, Conservative Party leaders decided in January to shift to a stance of active hostility to electoral reform.
This stance rankled the Liberal Democrats, who accused the Conservatives and others in the ‘No to AV’ camp of using misinformation, untruths, and outright lies in their campaign. Liberal Democrat Minister Chris Huhne even confronted Prime Minister Cameron in cabinet over the issue shortly before the vote, demanding that he disavow the tactics of the referendum’s opponents. Protests aside, there were no silver linings from the May 2011 elections results for the Lib Dems. Respected analyst John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde adds that policy does matter, and dramatic Liberal Democrat shifts on public spending, student fees and other matters to accommodate the Conservative Party were strongly resented in particular by strongly committed Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless, there was no significant move to abandon the Conservative–Liberal Democrat governing coalition (interview, John Curtice, 11 May 2011; Cowell, 2011; Vinograd, 2011).
While foreign policy was not a highlight of the election campaigning, marked differences between substantial anti-European Union (EU) pressures within the Conservative Party, and historic Liberal support for the EU, conceivably could mean political trouble down the road. Over approximately the past one and one-half decades, anti-EU sentiment has grown markedly among Conservative MPs. A substantial number of MPs who had been pro-Europe retired from politics at the time of the 1997 general election, and many of their successors are characterized by skepticism or outright hostility to the long-term movement toward European economic and administrative integration. The research of Mark Garnett and Philip Lynch has confirmed that general hostility to Europe and support for British nationalism, often with strongly emotional overtones, has grown over the years in the Conservative Parliamentary Party, but they also indicate the subject became less divisive and central to internal party discussion and debate after the decade of the 1990s (Garnett and Lynch, 2003, pp. 155–8). In this context, public attitud
es generally appear to be moving in negative directions regarding the EU. A March 2011 ComRes opinion poll showed that 63 percent of Conservative supporters and 66 percent of Liberal Democratic supporters want a referendum regarding continued membership in the EU. Only 38 percent of Labour supporters felt this way. Only 29 percent of the entire sample felt that Britain ‘gets a good deal’ from membership of the EU, while 55 percent disagreed with the statement.3
The political system overall is undergoing major transition in the steady long-term loss of support for both major parties, in favor of the Liberal Democrats and a wide range of other party formations. When Samuel H. Beer and R.T. McKenzie published classic studies of British party politics in the 1950s and 1960s, both authors devoted almost exclusive attention to the Conservative and Labour parties, and largely ignored the Liberal Party and others (McKenzie relegated the Liberals to three pages in an appendix). Beginning in the 1960s, third parties have become steadily if unevenly stronger. In the elections in June 2009 for representatives to the EU, fully 40 percent of the vote went to parties other than the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats. In the 2010 general election, the Conservatives and Labour together received only 66.6 percent of the votes, the lowest for the two parties together since Labour replaced the Liberal Party in popular support. The current governing coalition in Westminster therefore reflects long-term structural change in British politics (Kavanagh and Cowley, 2010, pp. 115–26, 385).
The Tea Party faces a much more uncertain present and future, with no history of survival and long-term revival comparable to the Liberals and Liberal Democrats. Rather, by definition a highly innovative new phenomenon in organizational terms has no well-defined political road. In this regard, extensive media coverage during the 2010 political campaigns, only to end in some significant election defeats, gives pause to any prediction of long-term survival and influence. Rigidly inflexible adherence to ideological prescriptions among members of the faction in the House of Representatives may stymie effective policy implementation, including reductions in federal spending. House Speaker John Boehner so far has proven adept, however, at maintaining the Tea Party within the Republican coalition.
Foreign policy also contains challenges for extreme conservatives on the US side of the Atlantic. Walter Russell Mead contrasts the neo-isolationism of Patrick Buchanan, Texas Congressman Ron Paul and (his son) newly elected Kentucky Senator Rand Paul with support for interventionism, and emphasis on backing Israel, personified by Sarah Palin and various neoconservatives in and around the administration of President George W. Bush (Mead, 2011, pp. 31–2). In the case of Britain, renewed controversy over EU membership could sunder the Conservative–Liberal Democratic coalition. In the US, if the Republican Party in 2012 recaptures the White House, or even the Senate, these serious foreign policy concerns which characterize the political right could feed a central, intense policy debate.
In recent years, American political analysts have not usually looked to Britain for inspiration. Yet Karl Marx developed his definitions of alienation as well as class conflict through direct experience in Britain, the country which launched the world’s first Industrial Revolution. In both countries, third parties have served to channel activists and voters alienated from the mainstream of politics and the two major political parties. So far, the British system is proving more effective in translating current populist pressures in manageable political directions (Cannadine, 1999, chapter 5; Cyr, 1988, chapter 6). Liberal Democratic participation in government represents pragmatic channeling of increasingly diffuse British voter preferences. By contrast, the Tea Party has reinforced and underscored strongly felt ideological drives and divisions within the US body politic.
Notes
1. Party leader Jeremy Thorpe was first caught up in financial problems connected with the failure of a bank with which he was associated. This was soon overshadowed by the accusation that he allegedly was involved in a murder conspiracy involving a man with whom he had a personal relationship. His reluctance to give up the party leadership post caused great anxiety in party ranks.
2. The position originally went to David Laws, who was forced to resign after revelations of illegal parliamentary expenses.
3. ComRes data available at www.comres.co.uk/.
References
Beer, Samuel H. (1967) British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Blair, Tony (2010) A Journey – My Political Life (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf).
Bogdanor, Vernon (2011) The Coalition and the Constitution (Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing).
Burnham, Walter Dean (1971) Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company).
Butler, David, and Dennis Kavanagh (1994) The British General Election of 1992 (Basingstoke, London and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press).
Cannadine, David (1999) The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain (New York: Columbia University Press).
Caplan, Bryan (2007) The Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press).
Cowell, Alan (2011) ‘Liberal Democrats Dealt Huge Blow in Britain Votes’, New York Times, 6 May 2011.
Crewe, Ivor, and Anthony King (1995) SDP – The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).
Cyr, Arthur I. (1977) Liberal Party Politics in Britain (London and New Brunswick: John Calder Ltd And Transaction Books, Inc.).
Cyr, Arthur I. (1988) Liberal Politics in Britain (New Brunswick and Oxford: Transaction Books, Inc.).
Duverger, Maurice (translated by Barbara and Robert North) (1963) Political Parties – Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
Epstein, Leon (1980) ‘Whatever Happened to the British Party Model?’, American Political Science Review, 14, 9–22.
Garnett, Mark, and Philip Lynch (2003) The Conservatives in Crisis: The Tories After 1997 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press and Palgrave Macmillan).
Huntington, Samuel P. (1957) The Soldier and the State – The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).
Hurst, Greg (ed.), et al. (various years) The Times Guide to the House of Commons (London: Times Books, HarperCollins Publishers).
Kavanagh, Dennis, and David Butler (2006) The British General Election of 2005 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Kavanagh, Dennis, and Philip Cowley (2010) The British General Election of 2010 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Laws, David (2010) ‘Why the Lib Dems Rejected Labour’, New Statesmen, www.newstatesman.com/2010/12/labour-lib-andrew-coalition.
Mead, Walter Russell (2011) ‘The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy – What Populism Means for Globalism’, Foreign Affairs, 90(2), 28–44.
Moe, Alexandra (2010) ‘Just 32% of Tea Party Candidates Win’, MSNBC, 3 November, http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.
Phillips, Kevin (1993) Boiling Point – Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity (New York: Random House).
Rasmussen, Scott, and Douglas Schoen (2010) Mad as Hell – How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System (New York: HarperCollins Publishers).
Taylor, Andrew (2011) ‘Budget Pact Barely Touches Current Year Deficit’, Associated Press, 13 April, www.ap.org.
Vinograd, Cassandra (2011) ‘UK Coalition Government Will Endure, Politicians Stress’, Globe and Mail, 7 May.
Waltz, Kenneth (1967) Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics – The American and British Experience (Boston: Little, Brown and Company).
Young, Penny (2010) ‘What Voters Really Think of Lib Dem Policies’, Guardian, 23 April, www.guardian.co.uk.
Zernike, Kate (2010) Boiling Mad – Inside Tea Party America (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Company).
9
Party Polarization and Ideology: Diverging Trends in Britain and the US
Nicol C. Rae and Juan S. Gil
Major political parties in the US have traditionally been regarded as organizationally weak, highly decentralized, and ideologically incoherent by comparison with the highly disciplined, ideological, class-based parties of the UK. Indeed, for a period after the Second World War American parties’ scholarship tended to look approvingly at the UK as an alternative model of a well-functioning party system for modern advanced industrial democracies (Schattscheider, 1942; Ranney, 1962; Beer, 1965). British scholar David Butler and others had challenged this interpretation as early as the 1950s (Butler, 1955), but it was the late Leon Epstein (1980) in his 1979 American Political Science Association (APSA) presidential address ‘What Happened to the British Party Model?’ who convincingly argued that the UK party system was no longer – if it ever had been – an appropriate model for American political parties.
Epstein may have ended the debate over whether British-style ‘responsible party government’ had any relevance as a prescription for America’s weak, non-ideological, political parties and separated governmental system, yet since he wrote it appears that in several aspects American and British parties have become more similar. American political parties are now more ideologically polarized, more disciplined and united in Congress, and more centralized in their operations than they were in the post-war decades, when the APSA’s famous report Toward a More Responsible Two Party System (1950), bemoaned the US parties’ lack of those very characteristics. In the UK, by contrast, social change has eroded the dominance of the class-based political parties of mid century, promoted ideological convergence between the Labour and Conservative parties, and assisted the increasing fragmentation of the British party system in the post-Thatcher era.
Here we argue that contemporary American and British parties remain fundamentally different – particularly in their organizational aspect – and the apparent convergence is due more to changes in the respective societies as British society has become somewhat less polarized while American society has become more so since the 1960s.
The Legacy of the Crash Page 22