The impact of party organisational changes on democracy

Abstract

This article explores post-World War II developments in the organisation of political parties and the impact this has had on democracy in Western Europe. Adopting three models of democracy as analytical tools we discuss the consequences of, for example, declining membership figures and power on parties' ability to sustain competitive, participatory and deliberative aspects of representative democracy. We find that while there is evidence of a trend towards the competitive model, it is not uniform and the relationship is less clear-cut than previously suggested. The article shows that by making normative assumptions explicit, analyses of party change become more accurate, fruitful and, paradoxically, less biased. Because our conclusions are contingent at times on questionable assumptions about empirical relationships, we urge further research on a number of party organisational matters.

Acknowledgements

This article is a revised edition of a paper presented at the workshop ‘Democracy and Political Parties’ at the ECPR Joint Session of Workshops in Granada, Spain, 14–19 April 2005. Besides the participants there, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, Jozef Bátora, Kasper Møller Hansen, Knut Heidar, Knut Midgaard, Jo Saglie and Anne Elizabeth Stie for valuable feedback. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

1. The somewhat paradoxical development of formally empowered grassroots and less influential membership organisation is explained by the assumption that more direct intra-party democracy implies more atomised and less challenging party members vis-à-vis the national leadership (Katz and Mair 1995: 21).

2. And vice versa: changes in democracy at large also affects political organisations like parties.

3. Hence, we discuss elements that point towards decline of hierarchical party structures. However, we do not explore what Katz and Mair (1995: 20–1), through their famous cartel party thesis, argue have replaced the mass party's delegatory structure, namely stratarchy. This implies formal strengthening of the individual party membership, in practice more powerful national leadership, but also increased local autonomy in certain issues.

4. Democracy based on parties as such is thus not questioned and compared with other basic types of government, like neo-corporatism or referendum democracy.

5. The three aspects of representative democracy are treated as ideal types. We accentuate general commonalities across individual theories and focus on major patterns.

6. There are several streams within what is here termed the competitive perspective. For example, Katz (1997) distinguishes between ‘liberal democracy’ (majoritarian and pluralist; see e.g. Schumpeter 1996 [1943] and Dahl 1956) and ‘popular sovereignty’ (e.g. individualist popular concepts, like Downs' (1957) model). Riker (1982) differentiates between ‘liberalism’ and ‘populism’ (see also Held 1987). For instance, the liberalists – for different reasons – put less emphasis on preference aggregation through formulation of extensive policy programmes, which reduces the possible need for participation in parties even more (Katz 1997: 59).

7. Aggregation deals with adaptation to, co-ordination of and transformation into public policy of voter preferences (King 1969: 138).

8. As Schattschneider (1942: 60) phrased it: democracy is to be found between parties, in the competitive mechanism, not within them. As firms do not follow the preferences of their employees instead of consumers in commercial issues, parties should respond to voters, not members. However, it should be noted that Schattschneider did not discuss the mass party model of organised members. His statements were aimed at American parties.

9. In this respect, Ware draws on the defence of intra-party democracy presented by the ‘Responsible Party Government’-school in American political science in the 1950s (APSA 1950). It should, however, be noted that not all proponents of this school promote intra-party democracy. Schattschneider was in fact head of the committee presenting the APSA report (Assarson 1993: 65). It may be added that the underlying assumption of vote-maximising parties is questionable, too.

10. The extent to which these options are applied, whether they are used primarily by the already engaged, and whether they may renew the deliberation within parties remains to be seen. During the early 2000s the effects were limited (see e.g. Gibson and Ward 1998; Pedersen and Saglie 2005; Pedersen 2006) but they are expected to have increased since then, due to increased familiarity with the internet among both people and parties.

11. As in the case of the competitive perspective, it could be argued that this general summary ignores important differences within the deliberative perspective on democracy. We concentrate on those emphasising popular involvement.

12. Thus, opinions do not necessarily change but may do so through deliberation (Hansen 2004: 100).