Parties In Liberal Democracies Term paper

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The State as a metaphysical entity is often taken to be an unavoidable concept at the base of any study of politics. However there exists a more fundamental assumption, that of a society of human beings sharing certain values, interests and beliefs, to which a owes its legitimacy. This is the assumption with which modern political science starts. What role does the political party system play in the interactions between the State and society?

One school of thought has traditionally insisted on a formal separation between the rulers and the ruled, the ordinary members of society and the leaders and representatives they elect through democratic voting systems, as a basis for the study of liberal, democratic, political systems. An analytical study of the relations between these two entities can be more rewarding in terms of understanding the processes by which the representatives are chosen, and an understanding of the social and organisational bases of their influence.

Leiserson in Parties and Politics examines how the distribution of power in a society is reflected in the organisation of political parties. Political organisation serves as a third structure, a kind of bridge linking the two other main structures: the constitutional-legal system and the social stratification system. Thus the origins of parties and the ways in which they organise themselves across the political spectrum are rooted in social structure.

We may define a party system as a formal organisation which allows a social and ideological interaction of politicised individuals. There is also a second field of interaction: the political party provides the connective linkage between the holders of power, who must remain accountable and therefore dependent on their electorate, and the electorate itself, the voting public. This is indeed the crux of a democratic system. Once elected, public policy-makers must remain in touch with and permanently accountable to the mainstream movements in popular sentiment and intergroup feeling. However the party system introduces an additional element to the basic concept of the democratic voting system (representation, legitimacy, accountability, etc). Party affiliation extends to the entirety of a politician s term; that is to say a party member does not just adopt his party s ideological stance for the duration of an election campaign, but he remains subjected to the changes of the broad sentiment of the individuals whose interests he represents and on whose behalf he acts, through the evolution of the party s creed which supposedly reflects these changes. The party acts as an interest group, promoting the interest of the group(s) of individuals it is traditionally associated with. What s more, parties may serve as a point of reference of stability, whereby citizens may attach a certain brand value to the party they chose to support and they may look to their respective spiritual family (von Beyme) for guidance and reference in times of indecision: it s a two-way interaction, which reinforces the linkage between the electorate and the various political groupings it adheres to.

A further ability of the political party system is its structural approach to organising and adjusting political controversies. It permits productive and democratically useful debate, by canalising, even polarising, the multitude of different interests at stake by grouping them under one broad ideological banner, thus allowing, theoretically, even the smallest of minorities to express itself by adding its voice to a larger group with similar ideological roots, whilst avoiding a fragmentation of public debate. Any two Labour-supporters in the UK may not necessarily agree on every point of the party s manifesto; but as long as they agree in principle of the majority of the issues the party feels most strongly about in aggregate, the democratic representation process is complete. Edmund Burke in his definition of a party speaks of some political principle on which all members are agreed. Thus the party is the key element, the key link in indirect democracy. The party must adjust and coordinate the interests of the value and power-seeking rational individuals and the groups they form, sometimes alienating certain members, other times gaining new adepts, but on the whole respecting and furthering the achievement of the purposes of the group association. This demands strong leadership, coercive authority and responsibility exercised by not just one leader but a structured elite of officials.

However, the political party system certainly leaves a lot to be desired. First of all, there exists an effective oligopoly in the party competitive arena: if the voters are discontent with all available parties, there is little scope for them switching their support to a new entrant because it is very hard to create a new party., especially when existing parties have already deeply penetrated social structures. Hence the cynical comment that in any election one votes...

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