UK Paper 1: Political Parties Flashcards
how do parties serve their function of participation?
in order to win power/influence, parties encourage people to participate in politics - this mainly includes voting, and becoming a member of a party.
how do parties serve their function of campaigning?
how do parties serve their function of policy formulation?
how do parties serve their function of selecting candidates?
how do parties serve their function of electing a leader?
how do parties serve their function of representation?
what is the evidence that parties enhance democracy in the uk?
-provide open opportunties for people to become politically active. few demands are made of party members typically
-they make political issues coherent, and help to make the government accountable
-they help to make the operation of parliament effective, and understandable to the public.
-they identify and recruit people for political office and leadership.
what is the evidence that parties do not enhance democracy in the uk?
-adversarial party politics denies the creation of consensus and reduces issues to simplistic black and white choices
-parties claim legitimacy through electoral mandate, even when they are elected with a minority of the popular vote.
-parties can become elitist so that small leadership groups can dominate policy making to the detriment of internal democracy
what are the arguments in favour of publicly funding political parties?
-public funding would end financial corruption in political parties. oxford uni estimated that between 2005 and 2014, 92 of those appointed to the lords donated around £34 million to parties between them.
david cameron awarded 13 peerages to conservative party donors in 2016 alone - removing this would restore confidence in the system.
-public funding would remove the possibility of hidden or secret influence in parties. this would improve political representation, ensuring parties do not rely on funding from a tiny section of society. would prevent cases like blair and bernie ecclestone, where ecclestone donated £1m in return for a delay on a tobacco advertising ban in F1 racing.
-public funding would reduce the financial advantage that large parties enjoy, and give smaller parties the opportunity to make progress. cons and labour dominate elections now, but state funding would allow parties to fight campaigns in all seats, rather than prioritising marginal seats. eg labour receieved £11m from TUs in 2014/15. public funding would curb this advantage. therefore pluralism is encouraged, enhancing democracy in the UK by providing more choice for voters.
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what are the arguments against publicly funding political parties?
-most of the public regard parties as private organisations; tax payers’ money should go to causes like healthcare and education, rather than to prop up political parties. many would argue that in the liberal society of the UK, people should be free to spend their money as they see fit, as much as possible.
furthermore, it would be very difficult to regulte public spending on parties. as it stands funding to public bodies like the BBC is regulated by the government; having the governing party regulate their own public budget would open the door for more corruption
-tighter regulations and reforms on donations have largely solved the problem of rich donors providing money for something in their ow interests. political parties, elections and referendums act 2000.
the public are already able to decide whether they approve of a party’s financial connections, through democratic accountability. it is already common knowledge that labour has strong links to TUs, while conservatives receive donations from businesses.
-it would be difficult to decide how to distribute state funding to small parties. public funding may enable extremist parties to become successful. to solve this parties may need to get a certain amount of seats, which would mean the problem of enabling smaller parties to be more successful isn’t solved anyway. there are already limits; £30k per party per constituency, opposition gets short money etc. excessive state control of parties is not in the interests of democracy.
