ARE POLITICAL PARTIES IN DECLINE, AND IF SO, WHY?
Political parties have been defined by Giovanni Sartori (1976, 60-64) as, "… any political group identified by an official label that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections (free or non-free), candidates for public office". Parties are crucial to democracies as they serve to represent social groups and individuals who otherwise may not have had the opportunity to be represented in parliament. This was the case for the basis of the Labour Party. They were initially known as the Labour Representation Committee and provided working people in Britain with a voice in parliament, whilst the Liberal and Conservative parties had the middle and upper-class people in their interests. They also serve to inform and mobilise voters through the use of party manifestos, in which they articulate their policies and what they plan to do if they form a government. Forming a government or the official opposition is a function which not every party seeks to fulfil because their only aim is to raise awareness of a certain issue. The Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol party, for example, does not seek to form a governmental administration, but to influence policy on drugs and alcohol. Political parties also provide an avenue for pressure groups to have their interests voiced in Parliament which gives them leverage over other groups.
In this essay, I am going to argue that political parties are indeed in decline, and have been in recent years, on the basis that there has been a decline in party membership and an increase in pressure group membership as well as anti-political sentiments. In addition to this, I will put forward arguments to oppose the view that political parties are in decline, but my main line of argument will focus on being in accordance with the issue in question.
In recent years, there has been a decline in party membership, and it has been argued that this is due to partisan dealignment, which can be defined as the decline in the strength of attachments that voters have to a specific political party (Garnett and Lynch 2009). In the period between 1950 and 2005, the Conservative party had gone from 2.5 million members to 300,000, and the Labour party membership fell from 750,000 to 215,00 in the same period (Garnett and Lynch 2004). Andrew Heywood attempts to explain this change in saying that "parties are seen as bureaucratic political machines whose grassroots members are either inactive or engaged in dull and routine tasks" (Politics, 2007) and, therefore, there is a lack of trust with politicians, especially in light of scandals, such as the MP's expenses scandal of 2009. Garnett and Lynch explain this as being due to social and economic change over the past few decades, which has resulted in a weakening of the link between class and voting. Patrick Dunleavy claims that a new form of the working class had emerged by the 1980's, as the traditional working class had decreased, and more people from working class backgrounds were going on to higher/ further education in Britain, therefore they were more likely to get higher paid jobs. In 2001, it was recorded that only 13% of people described themselves as 'very strong ' supporters of one of the main parties, whereas in 1946 it was 43%. The lack of trust, dealignment and decrease in party membership strongly supports the view that political parties in this day and age are in decline, as their influence and relative power undermine their position in society.
Further evidence for the decline in political parties can be seen in the decline of the two-party system which is argued to have existed in Britain. Mark Garnett and Philip Lynch define two party systems as being a situation in which only the government and the main opposition party have a realistic possibility of winning power (2009). They also give a brief history of the two-party system in Britain as it dates back to when there were two dominant groups which dominated Parliament in the 17th century; the Whigs (which we now know to be the Liberals) and the Tories (contemporarily known as the Conservatives). These influential parties fought for dominance and majority influence in Parliament for decades until other parties such as the Irish Nationalists (who existed, but had a minor influence and significance in Parliament) began to demand Home Rule, which was causing polarity within the Whig and Tory parties. The Labour Representation Committee (the forerunner to the Labour Party) was established in 1900, and for many years worked closely with the Liberals. They passed the Representation of the People Act (1918) which extended the franchise to women over the age of 30 and all males over the age of 21, in light of the Suffragette movement in Britain, which opened the prospect that the Labour Representation Committee may become a dominant force in Britain.
The two-party system in Britain has had a direct effect on the decline of political parties as well as other aforementioned factors, as now we can see the rise of smaller parties which are more appealing to the electorate, however, the electoral system will not allow them the representation they deserve. The current electoral system in place, the Single Member Plurality System, puts third parties at a disadvantage and only really benefits the two dominant parties; the Conservative and the Labour parties, however, there is an argument to say that in recent years the system has mostly benefitted the latter. Labour won a 167 seat majority in 2001 on 40.7% of the vote, and in 2005 won 55.1% of seats on only 35.2 % of the vote. This bias towards larger parties (mostly Labour) has been due to differences in constituency sizes and turnouts, as there was a 1997 revision of boundaries (Garnett and Lynch 2009). Andrew Heywood refers to the ‘third party effect' which describes the under-representation of small parties and the geographically thin spread of votes across the country, which the Liberal Democrats have been susceptible to for decades. In 1983, the Liberal /SDP Alliance won 25% of the vote, which was just 2% less than Labour, but only secured 23 seats in comparison to Labour's 209 seats (Parliament, 1983). Even more recently, in the general election of 2015, UKIP got more than 3 million votes nationwide and only got one seat in Parliament, whereas the SNP got fewer votes but were able to secure 56 seats in Parliament (BBC 2015). The rise of smaller, minority parties which appeal to the electorate but cannot get parliamentary representation is a testament to the decline of political parties, as the electoral system in place prevents them from exuding their influence, and (it could be argued that) therefore the population has been seeking new forms of representation from other, less traditional sources, such as pressure groups.
Pressure groups are organised groups that seek to influence government and public policy at any level but do not seek formal positions or political power. There are two distinct classifications which most pressure groups fall into and overlap with; interest and cause groups, and insider and outsider groups. Interest groups are concerned with defending and advancing the interests of their members, whereas cause groups are based on a shared attitude. On the other hand, insider groups are those who are regularly consulted by government, and outsider groups are those who seek to become closely tied with the government or are unable to gain recognition from the government (Coxall et al 2003).
While political parties have had a decrease in membership, pressure groups in the UK have had a surge in membership in recent years. Groups such as Greenpeace, have around 2.8 million members worldwide (Greenpeace, 2015), whereas parties such as the Liberal Democrats in the UK have only 54,240 members. New Social Movements, such as LGBT community movements, and the Occupy movement especially have been successful in gaining lots of attention and support, especially from young people. Heywood emphasises on a correlation between the lack of young people in turnout and party membership, and the abundance of the same group in pressure groups; he justifies this link in the nature of pressure groups, specifically NSM's, as they are loosely organised and are usually relatively local bodies, and, therefore, they form a viable and less strict alternative to party membership for political participation (Politics, 2007). NSM's also place a larger emphasis on participation and activism on the issues which affect groups of people, and, therefore, members feel as if they are having more of an impact in politics and feel more involved than if they are members of a political party. Currently in Britain, the majority of voters are middle class and middle aged and have traditional views, across all three of the main parties (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat), with slight variations in each of them (Coxall et al. 2003). This emphasises the view that political parties are out of touch and are therefore in decline in Britain, as old methods of political activity are no longer appealing to the new electorate, and must evolve to rejuvenate their influence.
One argument to oppose the view that political parties are in decline is that parties no longer require mass memberships to exude their influence and exercise their power. Garnett and Lynch (2009) define mass parties as being political parties with a mass membership that are organised at a national and local level and are developed outside the legislature, and these types of parties began to arise after the franchise reform act of 1867.They argue that parties no longer need this in the 21st century, as the main parties are dominated by small groups of people that are linked with senior figures in other spheres, and the funds can be accumulated from other sources, such as donors and organisations that they are politically aligned with. In 2015, it has been recorded that the Conservative Party raised nearly £3.4 million in donations which is almost double the amount that the Labour party were able to accumulate (Davies and Syal 2015), yet the Conservative Party has over 100,000 members less than the Labour Party (Keen 2015).
So can it be argued that political parties in Britain are in decline? Political parties in this day and age no longer need mass memberships as they did in the 19th century, because they can rely on funding from businesses, organisations and individuals who they are politically in synchronisation with, as exemplified by Christopher Rokos (a billionaire hedge funder) and his support of the Conservative Party (Syal and Davies 2015). Coincidentally, however, this perfectly fits with the explanation for partisan dealignment, as the electorate are said to see political parties as "bureaucratic political machines" (Heywood 2007), and, therefore, feel that they cannot relate to or trust them, hence the rise of New Social Movements and pressure groups in general. Pressure groups provide people with an alternative way to participate politically, as they can have their various interests and affiliations represented and voiced without the commitment of joining a political party. Lastly, the two-party system, which is facilitated by the electoral system in place, has led to the slow decline of political parties as it penalises the smaller parties people may be gravitating towards and works in favour of the two largest parties, therefore people feel that their vote is wasted if they do not vote Labour or Conservative.