5. Political parties - polarization or convergence? Flashcards
What are political parties
- People united together
- Shared set of beliefs
- To compete for political power and provide public goods in the form of policies
What are common criticisms of political parties
- Only concerned with advancing one specific part of the general will
- Prevent individual politicians from representing their constituents interests
What are the benefits of political parties
- Reduces information cost for voters
- Alloes voters to hold a collective of politicians to account
- Parties recruit and train leaders
- Allows for coordinated collective action across a range of isseus to produce coherent programmes of government
How can you measure the number of parties
Laakso and Taagepera developed an equation
Effective number of parties
- Parties that are electorally successful versus those that rarely win votes or seats
Why is it useful to know the number of effective parties
Used as a method of classifying democracies
- Autocratic
- Non-partisan - no official parties
- Single-party - only one party is legally allowed to hold power
- Democratic
- One-party dominant - only one party has a realistic chance of winning
- Two-party dominant - only two major parties have a realistic chance
- Multi-party - more than two parteis have a realistic chance of winning
How does the cleavage model explain party behaviour
- Deep rooted social divisions structure political conflict within societies
- Parties form to represent these divisions
- Parties are primarily motivated by the pursuit of policy and are unlikely to compromise on their policy goals to win or remain in office
- Possible to predict the number of parties by the number of cleavages
- 1 cleavage (working class vs elites)
- 2 political parties
Describe how the cleavages model helps explain the breakdown of political parties in Belgium
- Multiple cross cutting cleavages (class, religion, language)
- Result is 6 major parties
- This has made Belgium almost ungovernable at times
Describe party families in Europe
European countries are composed of parties taht fit into a broad series of party families
Regadless of electoral system, these parties always seem to be represented since the 1920s
- Radical left - low skilled owrking class, students
- Greens - public sector middle class, students
- Social democrats - skilled working class, public sector middle class
- Liberals - private sector middle class, small business-people
- Christian democrats - religious working and middle class
- Conservatives - private sector middle class, small business-people, farmers
- Radical right - unemployed, low skilled working class
- Regionalists (left or right) - ethno-linguistic minorities
- Anti-Europeans (left or right) - low-skilled working class, small business-people
Who developed the Strateic Actor theory
Anthony Downs
Describe the Strategic Actor model
- Each political party is a team who seek office solely in order to enjoy the income, prestige and power
- Policy is viewed as a tool
- Parties are willing to change policies if it will increase their chances of gaining or retaining power
- They are more likely to appeal to pivotal voters rather than a specific social group as a whole
What is Downs’ theory of party convergence
Downs predicts that parties will converge on the median voter to maximize voteshare
What are the main criticisms of the theory of party convergence
- Only works if there is only one dimension on which parties compete
- If there is more than one then converging on the median voter does’t provide equalibrium
- Will be affectedby which leader is chosen by the party
- Members usually select a leader closer to their ideal point rather than the median voter
- Often used to explain the growing polarisation in American politics
What is The Comparative Manifestos Project
- Coding manifestos according to their policy positions
- Trained individuals review every sentence and tag them as for or against certain policy positions
- Data is combined to give an overall sense of the party’s position on a left-right dimension
Describe Benoit and Laver’s project on measuring party positions
Ask political scientists in various countries to locate each party on various dimensions (economic policy, social policy, decentralasation of decision-making and environmental policy)
They aggregate to determine an overall position
Describe McCarty et al’s theory for measuring party positions
- Look at the past voting behavious of MPs and parties to locate them within a multidimensional space
