UK Political Parties

7 Key excerpts on "UK Political Parties"

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  eBook - ePub

  Political Parties in the UK

  • Alistair Clark(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  2 THE ROLE OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UK

  According to Schattschneider (1942) ‘modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of political parties’. Yet political parties are also often the source of much disillusion among electors. In recent years parties have been said to be in decline in a number of ways, whether in terms of their membership, or in their ability to motivate electors to turn out to vote for them. Against this backdrop, this chapter assesses the current literature on British parties to ask two key questions: what is the role of political parties in the modern UK; and to what extent are parties successfully fulfilling their democratic functions? The first section begins by setting out various definitions of political parties and highlighting their functions in democracies. The second section addresses itself to the question: to what extent are the UK’s parties successfully fulfilling these roles? British parties are argued to be fulfilling these functions to varying degrees. While they continue to simplify the electoral choices available to voters, they have been decreasingly able to command the loyalty of voters. Nevertheless, through their position in organising both government and opposition in the House of Commons and the devolved assemblies, parties play a crucial, if not always necessarily central, role in providing political accountability in the UK. Arguably political parties have become decreasingly rooted in the communities they aspire to represent, thereby leaving governing and electioneering at the heart of what parties currently do in the UK today.

  Defining Political Parties

  What is a political party? Definitions of parties can be found from eighteenth-century philosophers such as David Hume and Edmund Burke (van Biezen and Saward, 2008: p.23), through to the more recent work of specialists such as Sartori (2005 [1976]). Consequently, there are many competing definitions of what parties are and what they do. Rather than try to resolve this long-standing debate with one definition, it is useful to have a conception of the various different understandings of parties that scholars have set out and the different elements that they each emphasise. Sartori’s (2005 [1976]: p.57) minimal definition suggests that ‘a party is any political group that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office’. Panebianco (1988: p.6) similarly points to electoral competition as an activity that distinguishes parties from the goals of other political organisations such as pressure groups. While compellingly simple, there are two difficulties with these definitions. Neither considers what parties do if they are successful in being elected to office, and in recent years single-issue pressure groups have increasingly sought influence by contesting elections, thereby blurring the distinction between them and parties. Ware (1996: p.5) attempts to resolve these difficulties by proposing that ‘[a] political party is an institution that a) seeks influence in a state, often by attempting to occupy positions in government, and b) usually consists of more than a single interest in society and so to some degree attempts to “aggregate interests”’. However, this renders the electoral aspect an implicit element of his definition, something that many observers would consider crucial. An understanding and combination of each of these three approaches to defining parties is therefore a necessary initial condition for understanding what parties are and what they do.

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  Beyond the Nation State

  Parties in the Era of European Integration

  • D. Hanley(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  A t 2007 21 22 MAC/BNA P 8 9781403 907950 03 h 01 1 Parties, Nation States and Beyond: Some General Considerations National parties enfeeble themselves, and they will begin to understand that, I hope. They are not able to tackle the European dimension on their own. Liberal MEP, 2006. Internationalism and transnationalism If we are to treat our subject of transnational activity adequately, we need to define our terms initially. Scholars of international relations and historians of ideas have of late shown much interest in internationalism and related ideas. This development is clearly linked to changes in polit- ical, economic and social structures across the world, which are often summated roughly under the heading globalisation. The literature on internationalism is vast, and its angle of approach varies considerably, in particular depending on whether the author is a philosopher or a specialist in the relationships between states. The aim of this section is not to study such differences in depth, but rather to map out a concep- tual basis for looking at political parties and their operations outside their own territory. To this end, two brief observations about the existing body of work can be offered. The first is that much of it is, whether explicitly or impli- citly, highly normative in character. Many writers, particularly those from Anglo-Saxon backgrounds with an underlying tendency to look at politics primarily from a moral standpoint, come to questions of international relations with an agenda: it is usually about recognizing or strengthening moral communities, however, they might be envis- aged. For such approaches, which stem mainly from Kant, politics is based on the ‘rational individual as carrier of a universal moral agency’ 8 Parties, Nation States and Beyond 9 (Colas, 1994: 513).

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  African Political Parties

  Evolution, Institutionalisation and Governance

  • M. A. Mohamed Salih(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Pluto Press

    (Publisher)

  Parties in this sense are seen as essentially representative agencies, oriented towards giving voice to their particular constituencies and deriving their legitimacy from their capacity to articulate their voters’ interests and to aggregate their demands. This is also easily seen when we go beyond the minimal definition of party, and when we look at the more nuanced and often normatively oriented categorisation of party types – cadre parties, mass parties, catch-all parties, and so on – almost all of which derive from a prior categorisation of linkages with the wider society. As far as most of the literature is concerned, parties can therefore be seen as an outgrowth of society, and are defined by, and best understood in terms of, their rela-tionship with this society. For example, it is precisely because of the unwillingness to foster such a relationship that the performance of post-communist parties has been criticised (see, for example, Schmitter, 2001). Links with government and the state, by contrast, are often seen as almost 275 276 AFRICAN POLITICAL PARTIES wholly instrumental. These are links that could be used by party, but which are not constitutive of party. In part, this emphasis on the social anchoring of parties has derived from the overwhelming tendency to see (Western) European political development as the norm. More than perhaps any other area within political science, party studies have always had a major bias towards Europe, with the work of individual European scholars (Michels, Duverger, Kirchheimer, Rokkan, Sartori), or the compelling nature of particular European models (derived from the experiences of the British Labour Party, the German Social Democrats, the Italian Christian Democrats, the French Gaullists) setting the standards from which much of the party literature drew its terms of reference.

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  Politics & Power

  • Warren Kidd, Karen Legge, Philippe Harari(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  For example: The views of the parties seemed to have changed. New issues in society, often involving risk have risen to prominence in contemporary political debate. The traditional assumption that some parties represented certain sorts of people rather than others seems no longer true. The association of class with voting behaviour seems to have declined. The political parties seem to have moved on the political spectrum – they no longer offer what they once did. Political parties have tried to reinvent themselves, to publicly redefine who and what they think they are. The role of the mass media and the advertizing industry in political cam-paigning has risen to a position of massive importance – especially the role given to spin doctors. This chapter will start by considering the type of political system the UK has and will discuss the ideas of the main political parties within the UK. It will then, drawing on the list above, offer some contemporary sociological inter-pretations of these changing political times – looking at what has changed and why it might have done so. VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS A political system refers to the way in which the governance of society is struc-tured as a whole. In other words, it refers to how running society is organized. Every political system involves consideration of the following key questions – the particular answers to which would shape the type of political system the particular society ends up with. Questions that define a political system: 1. How many people should have ultimate power in a society? 2. What type of person or people should run society? 3. Should they be elected or born into the position or can they display their leadership qualities through military service? 4. Can anyone run for election? Changing Ideologies and Transformation of Political Parties 109 5. How much say can the people have over who should run their society? 6. If elections are to be held, how will they be organized? 7.

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  The Europeanization of British Politics

  • I. Bache, A. Jordan, I. Bache, A. Jordan(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Part III Politics 8 Political Parties and Party Politics Andrew Geddes Introduction This chapter examines the Europeanization of British party politics. It is within the domain of party politics that debates about the EU have often been at their most intense, yet, compared to particular policy areas, party politics tend not to be the subject of analyses of Europeanization. This is surprising because, as Hix (2005: 180) points out, 'EU politics is party politics' not least because it is the parties that provide a vital link between the national and EU arenas. This chapter aims to address this analytical gap by identifying the domestic consequences of European integration for British political parties. The chapter's focus is on party political structures and the represent- ation of cleavages, defined by Rae and Taylor (1970: 1) as 'the criteria which divide the members of a community or subcommunity into groups, and the relevant cleavages are those which divide members into groups with important political differences at specific times and places'. Upset and Rokkan (1967) famously identified the 'critical junctures' centred on church- state, centre-periphery and class relations that provided the social and spatial foundations of European party politics. As the editors of this volume suggest in Chapter 2, Europeanization need mean neither harmonization nor convergence. Following their definition, the concern here is with the extent to which engagement with the EU has 're- orientated or re-shaped' British party politics. Two arguments are developed. First, that links can be made between two of the domains of Europeanization identified by Radaelli (2000), namely structures of representation and norm- ative and cognitive constraints/change.

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  GOVT

  • Edward Sidlow, Beth Henschen, Edward Sidlow(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  The voters who do go to the polls are often strong supporters of their party. Indeed, in many states, registered voters who registered without a party affiliation cannot par- ticipate in primary elections, even if they lean toward one or the other of the two major parties. As a result, the Republican primary electorate is very conserva- tive, and Democratic primary voters are quite liberal. Candidates often find that they must run to the politi- cal right or left during the primaries. Traditionally, candidates then often moved to the center during the general election campaign, though such a “pivot to the center” has been much less common in recent years. Running Campaigns Through their national, state, and local organizations, parties coordinate cam- paigns. Political parties take care of a large number of small and routine tasks that are essential to the smooth functioning of the electoral process. For example, they work at getting party members registered and at con- ducting drives to recruit new voters. Sometimes, party volunteers staff the polling places. Informing the Public Political parties help educate the public about impor- tant political issues. In recent years, these issues have included police reform, environmental policies, health care reform, the tax system, immigration, and ways to stimulate the economy. Each party presents its views on these issues through television announcements, newspaper articles and ads, website materials, cam- paign speeches, and debates. These activities help citizens learn about the issues, form opinions, and con- sider proposed solutions. Coordinating Policymaking In our complex government, parties are essential for coordinating policy among the various branches of the government. The political party is usually the major institution through which the executive and legislative branches cooperate with each other.

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  The New Walford Guide to Reference Resources

  Volume 2: The Social Sciences

  • R G Lester, Peter Clinch, Heather Dawson, Helen Edwards, Susan Tarrant, R G Lester, Peter Clinch, Heather Dawson, Helen Edwards, Susan Tarrant(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Facet Publishing

    (Publisher)

  It is possible to read recent policy documents, election manifestos and blogs from key members. You can also keep up to date with the latest news by viewing webcasts, party campaign videos and political interviews. Links are provided to a large number of other Republican websites, including state parties, grassroots organizations and Republican interest groups. 1951 Unión de Partidos Latinoamericanos (Union of Latin American Political Parties) www.upla.net An international association of political parties from Latin and South American nations who seek to promote democracy in the region. Its website provides information on the aims of the organization, its membership and recent activities. It is a good starting point for tracing news and links to political parties in the region. Most information is offered in Spanish only. Directories & encyclopedias 1952 Encyclopedia of British and Irish political organizations: parties, groups, and movements of the twentieth century P . Barberis, J. McHugh and M. Tyldesley Continuum, 2000, 576pp. £50. ISBN 9780826458148. Wide-ranging work which includes coverage of the main political parties, think-tanks and civil society campaign groups active in Britain and Ireland during the period 1900–1998. Each entry provides a summary of the history, objectives and main activities of the group. It also lists key publications. Longer essays are provided for the main political parties and the politics of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These are useful starting points for gaining an understanding of movements for political devolution in these regions. 1953 The Greenwood historical encyclopedia of the world’s political parties Greenwood Press, 1982–. This series provides coverage of historic political parties from all areas of the world. The volumes are organized by continent or region and within each volume political groups are described alphabetically by country.

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