Political parties and democracy: The ambiguous crisis

Democratization

Volumn 12, Issue 5, 2005, Pages 633-650

  Webb, Paul ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Governance; Party systems; Political recruitment; Political representation

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRACY; MEDIA ROLE; PARTY POLITICS; POLITICAL PARTICIPATION;

EID: 31344482096     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: 1743890X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510340500322124     Document Type: Review

References (72)

1. I define 'established' democracy operationally as any country which has enjoyed unbroken competitive democratic rule since 1945, or which has made a successful transition since then in so far as few would suggest any foreseeable prospect of authoritarian rule. In effect, we are talking about Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries enjoying high per capita incomes; such countries are often referred to as 'advanced industrial', 'post-industrial' (see, for instance, Russell J. Dalton, and Martin Wattenberg, Parties Without Partisans: Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
2. or even 'post-modern' in nature (Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Post-Modernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)). Geographically, this more or less equates to Western Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia.
3. M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties, Volume 1 (London: Macmillan, 1902)
4. R. Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1962; first edition, 1915).
5. Jack Dennis, 'Support for the Party System by the Mass Public', American Political Science Review, Vol.60, No.3 (1966), p.613
6. Anthony King, 'Political Parties in Western Democracies: Some Sceptical Reflections', Polity, Vol. 2, No.2 (1969), p.140.
7. Otto Kirchheimer, 'The Transformation of West European Party Systems', in J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), p.200.
8. Hans Daalder, 'A Crisis of Party?', Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol.15, No.4 (1992), pp.269-70
9. see also Hans Daalder, 'Parties: Denied, Dismissed or Redundant? A Critique', in Richard Gunther, Jose Ramon Montero and Juan. J. Linz (eds), Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.39-57.
10. The SPD is the German Social Democratic Party, the CDU is the Christian Democratic Union, and the FDP is the Free Democrat (or Liberal) Party.
11. Thomas Poguntke, 'Explorations into A Minefield: Anti-Party Sentiment', European Journal of Political Research Vol.29, No.3 (1996), pp.319-44
12. Susan Scarrow, 'Politicians Against Parties: Anti-Party Arguments as Weapons of Change in Germany', European Journal of Political Research Vol.29, No.3 (1996), pp.297-317.
13. Cited in Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), p.51.
14. Paul Ginsborg, 'Explaining Italy's Crisis', in S. Gundle and S. Parker (eds), The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.19-39.
15. See Jeremy Richardson, 'The Market for Political Activism: Interest Groups as A Challenge to Political Parties', West European Politics, Vol.18, No.1 (1995), pp.116-39
16. Kay Lawson and Peter H. Merkl., When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998)
17. Geoff Mulgan, Politics in an Anti-Political Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
18. See, for example, S. Ahmin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization (London: Zed Books, 1997).
19. See Poguntke (note 7), pp.325-38.
20. The findings cited here are summarized from Paul Webb, David M. Farrell and Ian Holliday, Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.438-42.
21. See also Russell J. Dalton and Martin Wattenberg, Parties Without Partisans: Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
22. The effective number of parties is a classic indicator of party system fragmentation. See M. Laakso and R. Taagepera, 'Effective Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to Western Europe', Comparative Political Studies, Vol.12, No.1 (1979), pp.3-27.
23. That Spain is the exception should not be surprising in view of the fact that this is the most recently transitional democracy among the cases surveyed; it is to be expected that the early years of democratization and party system formation will be associated with volatile electoral behaviour, but that volatility will gradually reduce as the party system consolidates into a stable competitive pattern. Similarly, Spanish citizens' appreciation of parties is likely to derive from their relatively recent memories of competitive party politics as heralding the advent of democracy. In general, these findings suggest that citizens' attitudes are shaped by a country's stage of democratic development rather than by the 'contagious' influence of neighbouring states.
24. W.R. Shonfeld, 'Political Parties: The Functional Approach and the Structural Alternative', Comparative Politics, Vol.15, No.4 (1983), pp.477-99.
25. Howard Scarrow, 'The Function of Political Parties: A Critique of the Literature and the Approach', Journal of Politics, Vol.29, No.4 (1967), p.770.
26. A point made a surprisingly long time ago by some observers. See, for example, Frank J. Sorauf, Political Parties in the American System (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1964).
27. Theodore J. Lowi, 'Toward Functionalism in Political Science: The Case of Innovation in Party Systems', American Political Science Review, Vol.57, No.3 (1963), p.571.
28. See Webb et al. (note 13), pp.444-50, for further detail.
29. Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? (London: Macmillan, 1980; 2nd edition, 1984)
30. Francis G. Castles, The Impact of Parties: Politics & Policies in Democratic Capitalist States (London: Sage Publications, 1982).
31. Paul Webb, 'Apartisanship and Anti-Party Sentiment in the UK: Correlates and Constraints', European Journal of Political Research, Vol.29, No.3 (1996), pp.376-7.
32. Peter Mair, 'Political Parties, Popular Legitimacy and Public Privilege', West European Politics, Vol.18, No.3 (1995), pp.43-5.
33. See, for instance, Mark Leonard, Politics Without Frontiers: The Role of Political Parties in Europe's Future (London: Demos, 1997).
34. Ian Budge and Hans Keman, Parties and Democracy: Coalition Formation and Government Functioning in Twenty States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Michael Laver and Ian Budge, Party Policy and Coalition Governments in Western Europe (London: Macmillan, 1993)
35. Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Richard Hofferbert and Ian Budge, Parties, Policies and Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).
36. Paul Webb, The Modern British Party System (London: Sage Publications, 2000), p.271.
37. Pippa Norris, Passages to Power: Legislative Recruitment in Advanced Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
38. Kay Lawson and Thomas Poguntke, How Political Parties Respond: Interest Aggregation Revisited (London: Routledge, 2004).
39. Kees Aarts, 'Intermediate Organizations and Interest Representation', in H.-D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs (eds), Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p.251.
40. Pippa Norris, John Curtice, David Sanders, Margaret Scammell and Holli Semetko, On Message (London: Sage Publications, 1999), pp.93, 97.
41. Ibid., p.127.
42. Stephen Ansalobehere and Shinto Iyengar, Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize The Electorate (New York: Free Press, 1995).
43. P. Mair and I. van Biezen, 'Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980-2000', Party Politics, Vol.7, No.1 (2001), pp.5-22.
44. Susan E. Scarrow, Parties and Their Members (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
45. Otto Kirchheimer, 'The Transformation of West European Party Systems', in J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp.177-200.
46. The reasons why parties might continue to demand members are set out in Susan E. Scarrow, 'The Paradox of Enrolment: Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Party Memberships', European Journal of Political Research, Vol.25, No.1 (1994), pp.41-60,
47. and Webb, The Modern British Party System (note 26), pp.221-7.
48. Geoff Mulgan 'Party-Free Politics?', New Statesman, 15 April 1994.
49. S.E. Scarrow, P.D. Webb and D.M. Farrell, 'From Social Integration to Electoral Contestation: The Changing Distribution of Power within Political Parties', in R.J. Dalton and M.P. Wattenberg (eds), Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.129-53.
50. Quangocracy is literally rule by 'quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations'. Also known as 'non-departmental public bodies', quangos are 'bodies that are either entirely or partly financed by government departments, and which act with a large degree of independence from government' (Dan Lewis, The Essential Guide to British Quangos 2005 (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 2005), p.4). There are now estimated to be some 529 quangos in the UK, which provide appointive positions for approximately 60,000 individuals. Many of these positions are in the gift of the political parties. Lotizzazione refers to the practice of allotting the spoils of office according to the electoral returns of the parties in parliament (or even of the various factions within the old Christian Democratic Party). This approach to distributing public sector jobs clearly undermined placement and promotion through merit, and although Italians came to accept this as so normal that the fine-tuned percentages, ministry by ministry, were actually published in a regularly revised booklet, critics nevertheless saw it as a cause of weak performance by a bloated public sector.
51. Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair 'Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party', Party Politics, Vol.1, Vol.1 (1995), pp.5-28.
52. Mair, 'Political Parties, Popular Legitimacy' (note 23), p.54.
53. Cornelius P. Cotter, and John F. Bibby, 'Institutional Development of Parties and the Thesis of Party Decline', Political Science Quarterly, Vol.95, No.1 (1980), pp.1-27
54. John F. Bibby,. 'Party Organizations, 1946-1996', in Bryon E. Shafer (ed.), Partisan Approaches to Postwar American Politics (New York: Chatham House, 1998), pp.142-85.
55. See Katz and Mair, 'Changing Models' (note 39)
56. Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, Party Organizations: A Data Handbook on Party Organizations in Western Democracies, 1960-1990 (London: Sage Publications, 1992)
57. Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies (London: Sage Publications, 1994).
58. For a summary of trends in party organizational resourcing, see Webb et al. (note 13), pp.442-4.
59. D.M. Farrell and P.D. Webb, 'Political Parties as Campaign Organizations', in R.J. Dalton and M.P. Wattenberg (eds), Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.102-28.
60. Mair, 'Political Parties, Popular Legitimacy' (note 23), p.54.
61. Peter Mair, 'Democracy Beyond Parties', paper presented to Eurpean Consortium of Political Research Workshop on Political Parties and Democracy, Granada, 14-19 April 2005.
62. Juan J. Linz, 'Parties in Contemporary Democracies: Problems and Paradoxes', in Gunther et al. (note 5), p.294.
63. Susan E. Scarrow, 'Party Competition and Institutional Change: The Expansion of Direct Democracy in Germany', Party Politics, Vol.3, No.4 (1997), pp.451-71.
64. Alan Ware, Citizens, Parties and the State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), p.13.
65. Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)
66. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Democracy for a New Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984)
67. James S. Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).
68. John Hibbings and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Stealth Democracy: Americans Beliefs About How Government Should Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp.1-2.
69. For an example, see Clare Delap, Making Better Decisions: Report of an IPPR Symposium on Citizens' Juries and other Methods of Public Involvement (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 1997).
70. Hibbings and Theiss-Morse (note 51), p.9.
71. In similar, though somewhat more academic, vein see Steven Barnett, 'Will a Crisis in Journalism Provoke a Crisis in Democracy?', Political Quarterly, Vol.73, No.4 (2002), pp.400-408.
72. John Lloyd, What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics (London: Constable, 2004), p.22.