Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties

Volume 1

M Ostrogorski, Seymour Martin Lipset, Moisei Ostrogorski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351522939
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Parties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, originally published in 1902, represented the first serious attempt to analyze the consequences of democratic suffrage by a comparative analysis of political systems. As such, Ostrogorski's two-volume study of the party system in Britain and the United States exerted profound influence on the subsequent writings of Max Weber and Robert Michels. A descriptive analyst of the party system in these two countries, Ostrogorski developed concepts and methods that an-ticipated by nearly half a century those later used by American and British political scientists.

The core of Ostrogorski's analysis is a detailed history of the rise of and changes within the party system in Britain and the United States, the first nations to introduce mass suffrage. While the emphasis of Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties is on the similar trends in the political parties of both countries, Ostrogorski also showed concern with the sources of differences between them. Seeking to explain these variations, he suggested a number of fundamental hypotheses about these two societies that con-tinue to be of relevance today. Lipset's substantial introduction places Os-trogorski's work within its historical context and assesses Ostrogorski's im-pact and influence on both his contemporaries and on later political scien-tists.

THIRD PART

FIRST CHAPTER

The Machinery of the Caucus

I

THE history of the establishment of the Birmingham Caucus which was the starting-point of the movement which we are considering, has supplied us with an outline of the machinery of the representative Associations. It will be remembered that according to the theory of the Caucus all the inhabitants of the locality belonging to either party assemble in public meetings to settle the affairs of the party, directly or through delegates elected at these meetings and constituting deliberative bodies outside those which owe their existence to the Constitution. Their duty and their work consist in upholding and developing in the constituency, and consequently in the kingdom, Liberal or Conservative principles, as the case may be, and in securing the election of Members belonging to the same party. The success of these Members at the polling-booth is intended to procure the party preponderance in Parliament, which again is to ensure the triumph of the principles of the parties styled Liberal or Conservative, supposed to be alone capable of making the country great and happy in times present and to come. The main, the real, business of the Caucus Associations thus amounts to manipulating the electorate in the interest of the party, with the pretension of doing this on behalf of and by the people.

Starting from the principle that the whole electoral population is divided into two sections, into Liberals and Tories, the organization of the parties expects that in each locality the Liberal Association shall include all the Liberals, and the Conservative Association all the Conservatives. This is the theory. The practice is very far removed from it. In reality the Association embraces only a very small fraction of the “party.” The study of the daily working of the Caucus will consequently consist in ascertaining the reaction of this fraction on the whole.

The basis of the organization of the party in the boroughs is the ward or polling-district, where the local adherents of the party assembled in general meetings constitute the electorate of the Organization; from these original electors proceeds the representation of the party. The delegates elected by the wards form the central Association of the electoral division, which is destined to be as it were the local parliament of the party with the executive committee for ministry.

The importance of ward meetings does not lie so much in formal business, which, moreover, requires only two or three sittings a year, as in the relations which they establish among the adherents of the party. In the first place it is there that goes on the process of natural selection of influential persons destined to become leaders in their street or block. The managers of the Caucus of the division keep an eye on the rise and growth of these local influences; in attending the ward meetings they notice the good speakers, the ardent spirits, the men of action, and become acquainted with them. For it is they who will be the pillars of the Organization. Then the ward meetings are a means of maintaining cohesion, of keeping up party ties among their frequenters, just as they present an opportunity for making recruits.

Important as the groundwork of the Organization of the party, the ward association, in spite of its democratic constitution, really has an extremely narrow base; for its meetings are very little attended. And it is in these meetings, which contain two to three per cent of the whole electorate, that the delegates are chosen who are to invest the Caucus with its representative authority. It has been my lot to attend ward meetings where there were not even twenty persons to elect seventy-five delegates. In these conditions the election of delegates is simply a farce. Generally, a list prepared beforehand is submitted to the meeting and voted in a lump. Often, to curtail the proceedings, even the semblance of a vote is dispensed with; the old list is adopted again. The inevitable result is that all the work falls to a handful of men, who are willing to attend to it. At their head is the ward secretary, who is the mainspring of the ward Organization. Gathering round him more or less active personages, whom he and the leading Caucus-men have singled out from the crowd, or who have become aware of their vocation themselves, he forms in conjunction with them a coterie, which manages all the political business in the district. Coming to an understanding beforehand, and always acting in concert, they are able to manage even meetings of some size without difficulty, and to have the last word in the choice of committee-men or delegates, who in consequence follow them implicitly. An artisan or small clerk by profession, the ward secretary knows all his men, he speaks their language, he has lived for years in constant contact with them, he knows how to lay his hand upon them. At meetings he speaks little or not at all, but it is he who inspires those who do, beginning with the chairman. At the election of delegates to the “hundreds,” he “suggests” “good names”; and his list, settled beforehand, is generally adopted without modifications.

II

Theoretically the Council or General Committee is the most important and influential body in the Organization. As this assembly is supposed to embody the mind and the will of the adherents of the party, it has consequently to prescribe its policy, to notify it to the great ones of the realm, the Ministers and Members of Parliament, for their guidance, and finally to select the parliamentary candidates for whom the members of the party are bound to vote on the polling-day. But in reality the Executive Committee of the Association holds all the power. Composed, as we have seen, of the office-bearers of the Association (president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary), of the ward chairmen and secretaries, and of a certain number of leaders elected in the ward meetings or sometimes introduced by co-optation, the Committee includes the most active and influential men of the Organization. Not only does it set the machine in motion, but it regulates all the details of its working, it controls everything that goes on and everything which makes up the life of the Association and of its ward branches. The selection of the candidates practically rests with it. Constituting an inner circle in the “hundreds,” the Executive Committee is itself again too large to hold undivided power.Consequently an inner circle of the second degree is formed within it, at one time by a process of natural selection, at another by means of the rules which establish “parliamentary,” “financial,” “organizing” sub-committees. One of these subcommittees engrosses all the powers.

In the large towns the concentration of power in the hands of a few reaches its extreme limit, in spite of the autonomist doctrine of the Caucus, and exhibits in the most striking way its tendency towards oligarchic government. Since the last redistribution of seats in 1885, the large towns no longer form single electoral districts with a common representation for the whole borough, but are cut up into Divisions of almost equal dimensions, with a Member for each. To be true to democratic principles, the caucuses of large towns had to allow the new divisional constituencies the right of acting independently in the affairs of the party, a right which they had formerly asserted with such energy for the constituencies of the old type, the representation of which they had taken upon themselves. In consequence each Division obtained an autonomous party organization. In the face of this the single Association has, in some towns, entirely given way to the new divisional Associations. In places where it managed to hold its ground, in the form of a Union or federated Association consisting only of a few representatives of local Associations, it had to encounter severe attacks from the autonomists at the beginning. But gradually, thanks to the healing action of time and above all to the excitement produced by the Home Rule crisis, which threw all other controversies into the background, the objections raised to the general Associations diminished in energy and persistency, and the latter asserted themselves and gained a firm footing, as if nothing had happened. In places where they had been abolished they were quietly started afresh, always with the modest duty of giving advice when they might be asked for it, of organizing meetings, etc. But all the essential powers of the new divisional Associations were soon more or less surreptitiously transferred to the Unions or United Committees, and before long there arose in all the large towns an unstable equilibrium between the mongrel general organization which wields real power, of course with the necessary formal precautions, and the Divisional Associations to which power belongs as a matter of right. Three, four, five, or seven Divisions are practically governed by a small party committee.

III

In examining the constituent elements of the Caucus, from the ward meetings up to its innermost inner circle, a passing notice only has been given to two persons, who are, nevertheless, the pillars of the temple of the Organization,—the secretary and the President of the Association. The secretary is an official appointed by the executive committee and working under its orders. His duties are of the most varied description. In the first place he is a sort of epitome of the ward secretaries. He performs on a large scale for the division or the whole town all the operations which the latter carry out on a small scale in their little respective departments. He gives them instructions, he assists them with his advice, he checks and supervises them; he is careful to get good secretaries appointed in the ward; he does his best to ensure the election by the ward meetings of good delegates to the “hundreds,” active men and skilled in canvassing the voter; he looks after the uninterrupted working of the machine, he sees that the ward committees do not go to sleep, but act, that is to say, meet and hold forth for the greater glory of the party; he goes from one ward to another to attend meetings; in a large town he sometimes has more than one meeting an evening; he arrives, satisfies himself at a glance that all is going on well, and rushes off to another meeting; he encourages here, makes remarks there; he allays susceptibilities or local jealousies, he stifles or quells mutinies; he has constantly to display energy and tact; above all, he must not give himself airs, and he must keep his “head clear,”—that is, not muddled by drink.

The President of the Association, on the other hand, need not put his shoulder to the wheel. He is more a show personage. If the secretary’s part somewhat recalls Figaro, the chairman has that of the heavy father in the play. He must be eminently respectable, very well known in the town, influential, and, what is always an advantage, pretty rich or at all events well off. The name of the President is a flag, a standard. It is his personal prestige, the respect and confidence that he inspires, which carry the members of the Association, the “workers,” and keep them loyal and devoted to the Organization. The Tories, who pay marked attention to respectability, are of course never at a loss for men qualified to fill this position of pompous mediocrity. The Liberals have a good supply of them too. It will be borne in mind that, at the time of the Home Rule crisis in 1886, the hope was expressed that the Caucus of the Gladstonian party would not be able to hold its ground after having lost its respectable members, who had become Unionists. This hope, as we know, has not been realized; and, in so far as it was based on the desertion of the respectables, it was, as may be pointed out here, not well founded. For respectability has nothing absolute or individual about it; the somewhat inferior moral qualities and virtues of which it is the outcome, or the generalization, however relative they may be, are found in every sphere of society. They constitute, in every social organization, an inexhaustible store which supplies, in the desired form and quantity, the wherewithal for equipping the men who serve as an example to their fellows, who set them the fashion. It is, therefore, perfectly justifiable to parody the saying, that one is always a reactionary in some one’s eyes, by the dictum that one is always somebody’s ideal of respectability. When the respectable class has resigned or lost power, its place is soon taken by the next succeeding layer of respectability, which becomes the respectable one with all the attributes attaching to its influence on the layers below it. There may be an interregnum, but it is never of long duration. Just as in society a great disturbance may displace the forces revolving therein, but very soon these forces or others will fall into position, and so long as the machinery is not broken, it will continue to work with other men, with new respectables,—perhaps not so well as before,—but still it will work. When, in consequence of the Home Rule crisis, in 1886, the respectables had withdrawn from the Liberal Associations, a new category of respectables insensibly was evolved by or arose within them, which became the fulcrum of the Organization of the party.

IV

The President with his qualifications of respectability and wealth leads the Association also from the point of view of social rank. He represents the well-to-do middle class which, owing to the well-nigh complete abstention of the aristocracy,¹ is almost always the superior social element in the party Organization. The numerical importance of this element is not great. It may be said of the middle class, especially so far as its upper strata are concerned, that it pays little or no heed to the daily life of the Caucus. All it does is to supply the party Organizations with a portion of their staff, on the Conservative side to a greater, perhaps even a preponderating extent, on the Liberal side in a lesser degree. But it is almost always the middle-class men who are the financial supporters of the Organizations. Consequently the power of the rich over the Associations would be immense if it were not diminished by their own indifference. A good many of them in fact are satisfied with paying their subscription, from a sense of duty to their party or a feeling of self-respect, and attend only the big meetings of the party, for the pleasure of seeing their name in the paper the next day among the “influential and eminent gentlemen who were on the platform.” Leaving the small fry of the Caucus to themselves in the daily existence of the Organization, the bigwigs appear on the scene when the parliamentary candidate has to be selected, and on these occasions they weigh more or less heavily on the Associations, especially in the Liberal camp, to such an extent that they may be considered the real masters of the Organization. In the Tory Organizations the inherited docility of their members prevents them from feeling this weight, while on the Liberal side the more timorous political views and the class feeling of the plutocrats naturally conflict with the more radical inclinations of the rank and file of the party. Nevertheless, there is seldom a rupture in the Liberal Associations, both because the rank and file are perfectly well aware that without the money of the middle-class members, the Association of the party, in one of which they are interested, could not be carried on, and also owing to the tendency of most of the members of the Caucus to gravitate in the social orbit of these middle-class people, a tendency which the latter carefully foster, as we shall see before long.

When one speaks of the bulk of the Caucus members, it is not popular masses that are really in question. Considering Jheir enormous numerical preponderance and the democratic basis of the Caucus, it is they who ought to supply its main contingents and constitute its motive power; but, in reality, this is not the case. True, every Association includes many members who are workmen by trade, often even they form the majority in the “hundreds,” but they are hardly representative of the working classes, who, taken as a whole, give the Caucus a decidedly wide berth. The ward meetings or the meetings of the “hundreds” and all that goes on there have absolutely no attraction for them. The consciousness of themselves, of their interests, of their wants, which for some years past has begun to take a more or less definite shape among the workmen, displays itself more in the sphere of social claims and makes even the most quick-witted of them look with distrust on the political Organizations which labour exclusively for the benefit of their respective parties or, as some say, of the capitalist class. The majority who think little or not at all cannot or will not rouse themselves from their habitual not to say normal condition of political indifference. In short, the general fact is that the great mass of workingmen come into contact with the Caucus at election time only.

Having thus dealt with the various social classes, all of which we have seen take little or no part in the Caucus, there remains only the lower middle class to supply the framework of its organization; and as a matter of fact, it is from this class that the men who keep it going are mainly recruited. Shopkeepers, clerks, and superior artisans, this is the sphere from which most of the active members of the Caucus are taken. Their greater eagerness to join in it has a good deal to do with their moral position in English society. In the absence of legal barriers between the classes, the social life of England divides them in a harder and faster way than any legislation could have done. The gradations of wealth and of social relations, so long considered as almost physical lines of demarcation in England, are still far from having lost this meaning in the English society of the present day, engaged though it be in democratizing its institutions. The parliamentary Reform of 1832, and the great rise of industry and commerce from and after 1846, had thrown open the doors of “society” to the upper section of the middle class, to the manufacturers and the merchants. Those who came next to them in the social scale, especially the small tradesmen, the shopkeepers, were left out in the cold and treated rather as social pariahs. The shopkeeper was despised in the first place because he was only a shopkeeper, then because as such he was bound to have bad manners, and again because he had not even a decent religion; he was almost always a Dissenter, he attended the services of a man who was not a gentleman, who had not in his young days taken honours at Oxford or joined in athletic sports with young men of good family at Cambridge, like the Rector or Vicar of the parish. In proportion as political reforms made him the equal of this privileged order in the State and the levelling tendencies of economic life decreased the distance between them in society, the shopkeeper grew more and more anxious to step across the social barrier which confronted him, or, to use the English expression, to “force himself into society.” The Reform Bill of 1867, by giving him the parliamentary franchise, undoubtedly raised him in the social scale, but the exercise of his electoral right was necessarily an isolated act: the opportunity of voting recurs only once every five or six years. The sphere and the duration of the activity offered by the Caucus was much more extensive: it set up a miniature parliament, the members of which were always in full view of their fellow-citizens and invested with powers of some importance, extending to politics in its higher aspects. The small middle-class man therefore readily availed himself of the opportunity of rising and he speedily managed to acquire a constantly increasing share in the government of the party Associations. It is by no means uncommon to see the caucuses of large towns controlled by men who only yesterday were nobodies, and whose claims to the distinction it would be very difficult to specify. Their office soon gives them a certain social position. Once raised to the rank of local notables they are ripe for municipal honours, and through the Caucus they obtain easy admittance into the Town Council or other local elective bodies.

In the Tory Caucus the lower middle class, important as its position is, plays a more retiring p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Biographical Note
• Introduction: Ostrogorski and the Analytical Approach to the Comparative Study of Political Parties, by Seymour Martin Lipset
• Preface, by James Bryce, M.P.
• Author’s Preface
• FIRST PART
• SECOND PART
• THIRD PART
• Index