Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, August 09, 2012

If not parties, what?

Parties are a part of all representative systems. Seems natural. Is it? What if the parties are no longer there?

Lonely at the top: Is the mass political party on its way out? And does it matter?

BELONGING to a political party has never been cheaper…

Yet despite such attractive prices, Europeans and Americans are turning away in droves from affiliating with any one party. Membership has been falling for many years, but the decline seems to be accelerating and taking on a different quality…

Party membership has shrivelled in Europe since the 1980s, and at an especially fast rate in the first decade of this century. In roughly ten years up to 2008 party membership fell in Germany by 20%, in Sweden by 27% and in Norway by 29%. In Britain, where the decline is even more pronounced at 36%, the Caravan Club now has more members than all the political parties put together…

In America, where people can state a party preference when registering to vote, the proportion of voters eschewing a party affiliation and calling themselves “independent” reached an average of 40% last year, a record high…

People have many reasons for falling out of love with parties. In a globalised and complex world, more voters doubt that politicians can solve their problems. As individualism has grown stronger, political tribalism has weakened. The decline of unions has hurt parties on the left.

But shifts in the media and in technology matter, too…

Now the internet lets multitudes of politicos thrive. Many voters see better ways of making their voices heard than parties… Blogging provides more interesting forums than ward meetings ever did. The internet also reduces the cost of asserting your political identity. Why fill out forms and carry a party card when you can sign a petition online, tweet and sport a wristband to show you care?

Some say that the old parties could even stage a comeback—thanks to prolonged economic troubles…

It is more likely that the decoupling of voters from political parties will continue. But how much does it matter? Party leaders may not mind much. They will not have to listen to all those pesky members’ resolutions at party gatherings. And although it may be harder for a party to run a campaign with fewer volunteers… Politicians will give more weight to wider opinion outside the party.

Even so, there are drawbacks. Without fee-paying supporters, parties will have to find financing elsewhere—which makes them more dependent on donations from vested interests…. And a more fragmented political spectrum can make forming governments much harder.

The risk is that mass political parties, despite being abandoned by many of their members, will seem strong—until they quickly fall apart. History is littered with once-dominant institutions that were imperceptibly hollowed out and then suddenly collapsed. Such a tipping point could be near, particularly in Europe. If so, the landscape of Western politics could suddenly look very unfamiliar.