EUROPEAN POLITICAL PARTIES

Yuwanto, Ph.D

Fundamental Principles of democracy in the European context? Popular Sovereignty Full citizenship (suffrage) and national self-determination (nationalism) Stable Institutions An elected assembly (parliamentary sovereignty)

Common principles across European countries?

Parliamentary Government

An assembly with constituencies based on geographic divisions, elected by an expanding electorate

Subordination of executive to the legislative branch

ministerial

responsibility

once

leadership

(Cabinet/Ministers) has lost the confidence of the full assembly it/they cannot continue to hold office.

Recent Changes

European systems are decentralizing

Only Great Britain continues with single member plurality electoral districts
Other European states have complex multiparty systems which results in coalition governments

(Frances election system does push outcomes toward two party)

Political parties have repeatedly been acknowledged as the critical link to democratic governance.
E.E.Schattschneider(1942): Political parties created democracy, and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.

Robert Huckshorn (1984), Political Parties in America: A political party is an autonomous group of citizens having the purpose of making nominations and contesting elections in hope of gaining control over governmental power through the capture of public offices and the organization of the government.
For Huckshorn, the raison d'tat for having political parties was simple: they were the means necessary to win elections and provide direction to government.

European Political Parties: Early Development

Party-based politics was one of the transforming inventions of the 19th century. The best way to understand how this transformation occurred, and how party-based politics came to be a central feature of modern democratic practice, is to look to political developments in the 19th century. Across Europe (and North America) the 19th century witnessed a broad movement towards mass electoral politics. The presence of multiple, competing, political parties gradually came to be considered one of the hallmarks of a democratic regime.

Political parties as we know them today have their roots in distinctly inhospitable intellectual soil. At this stage the term party was most usually applied in a negative sense, interchangeably with the term faction, to describe divisions around ideas or personal interests which threatened peaceful government. The slow emergence of a secular and non-pejorative definition of parties is evident in political practice as well as theory. Through the 18th century and well into the 19th century, most of those involved in what we would now describe as political parties themselves rejected the label.

The newfound prominence of political parties in much of 19th-century Europe seems clearly linked to two distinct but interrelated developments: the transfer of political power to legislatures, and the expansion of the electorate.

Many authors have emphasized the temporal and causal priority of parliamentarization in this process: First there is the creation of parliamentary groups, then the appearance of electoral committees, and finally the establishment of a permanent connection between these two elements (Duverger, 1954: xxiv).
Sartori described a similar sequence: legislatures became more responsible, then parties became more important, then party competition led parties to try to gain an electoral edge by enfranchising new, and presumably grateful, voters. Finally, the need to mobilize a larger electorate stimulated the parties to develop more formal organizations (Sartori, 1976: 23).

Steps toward institutional democratization in western Europe

Countries can be roughly divided into 3 categories: those where the shift of decision-making to legislatures (parliamentarization) preceded the creation of a large electorate those where legislative sovereignty increased only after the creation of a large electorate those where the two changes occurred more or less simultaneously. These patterns are clearly key to any model that hopes to explain why recognizably modern, electorally-oriented, political parties emerged where and when they did.

In many places, democratization of the suffrage outpaced the transfer of responsibility to the legislature, so that countries like Germany and France had manhood suffrage long before their elected bodies received a full mandate to govern.

When trying to explain why parties emerged when and where they did, it is as important to consider the institutional obstacles to party building as to look at the institutional incentives for organized competition. Across continental Europe, prohibitions against political organizing were briefly lifted after the revolutions of 184849, but they were quickly reimposed once these revolutions failed. Such strictures gradually relaxed, but in many countries their remnants lingered well into the 20th century.

For instance, until 1899 German laws prevented all cross-regional links between party associations, and until 1908 local political associations in most German states had to notify local authorities whenever they held public meetings: women and minors were legally excluded from all such gatherings. Most notably, from 1878 to 1890, Germany's antisocialist laws banned socialist or communist publications, and prohibited public meetings to promote socialist and communist aims, though they did allow Social Democratic candidates to compete in Reichstag elections and to take their seats if they won (Fairbairn, 1996; Turk, 1990; Ruud, 1979: 525).

Conclusion. The roots of modern parties are to be found in the 19th century. The emergence of party-organized politics was an unanticipated, & even unwanted, side-effect of the liberalization & democratization of politics in that century. Although countries took varied routes to the modern party era, by the beginning of the 20th century recognizably modern parties had begun to play an important role in many places, structuring electoral choices, coordinating legislative and executive action, mobilizing the electorate, and recruiting candidates.

Party Politics in Post-Communist Transition

The collapse of the one-party totalitarian regime has presented party politics with a unique challenge. As a result, party behavior is substantially different from both the established liberal democracies and other third-wave democracies. The post-communist transformation is regarded as unique in its comprehensive character. A new economic system, a new pol. system, new constitutional regimes and, sometimes, new states were to be built simultaneously. Parties had to face the legacy of weak or non-existent democratic experience & complete concentration of power under communism.

As Freedom House scores attest, most other former communist countries can be considered formally democratic. However, they still in high electoral volatility, low popularity of parties, relatively low turnout, small party membership, weak partisan identities, weak grounding of parties in civil society, their financial dependence on state, and low level of organizational loyalty among politicians are the most glaring signs of weak institutionalization.

Based on these observations, a major group of scholars emphasized the fluidity & immaturity of post-communist party politics. Another group of researchers, however, are ready to point out the emergence of relatively stable structures & the predominant role of parties, particularly in East-Central Europe. Lets discuss the difference between these two approaches at institutional, systemic, social, and organization levels.

The institutionalization perspective directs attention to the difference between the power of parties and personalities (Mainwaring, 1998). A contrast between individual political entrepreneurs and political parties indicates the dominance of the latter in Central Europe, and the prominence of the former in the former Soviet Union, with the exception of the Baltic countries.

Independents have unprecedented influence, however, in the eastern part of the postcommunist world. In 2000 in Belarus 74% of legislators did not belong to parties. In Ukraine in 1994 two-thirds, and in 2002 21%, of the MPs were independent (Lewis, 2003: 154-5). The weakness of parties is most obvious at the level of local politics. Typically less than half of local councilors are party members.

The systemic perspective. Observers agree that political parties are rather weak in performing the functions of integration, mobilization, and mediation (Lewis, 2001: 486). However, in East-Central Europe their weakness in the representative functions is counterbalanced by their strength in procedural functions: organization of parliament and government, recruitment, etc. Few institutions can challenge the influence of parties in these countries. The esprit de corps of the bureaucracy, the military, the judicial system, etc., was broken during the transition. The main exception to this rule is the mass media.

The success of the democratization process is often linked to the failure of the ancien rgime forces to maintain a strong bargaining position. One way for the communist elite to preserve its grip on power is exactly to promote rules (majoritarian electoral system, presidentialism, etc.) that weaken the partisan logic and strengthen the role of personalities. Clientelism, patronage, and rentseeking are also claimed to be closely related to the former communist parties' ability to maintain continuity (Kitschelt, 1996).

The social perspective. The scope of support for the party systems is reflected in the level of turnout, strength of party identification, stability of voting patterns, level of party membership, and the attitudes of the citizens toward the party system. As indicated above, post-communist politics has a poor record on these dimensions, and this is from where the supporters of the immaturity thesis take most of their examples.

The distrust of parties is particularly high, and it goes together with a generally high level of dissatisfaction with democracy. In Russia, around half of the electorate identifies with none of the parties, and consequently aggregate volatility was 51.4% in 1995 and 54.4% in 1999 (White, 2004). In Latvia, electoral volatility reached 74.2% by the third election (Kreuzer and Pettai, 2003: 84).

The organization perspective. Post-communist parties are typically dominated by their leadership; the role of the members is secondary. The level of party membership is low, and membership fees contribute a small fragment of the parties' overall budget. Kopeck (1995) attributes the neglect of members to the following reasons: the finances of the parties are based on other sources (mainly state transfers); the leaders see members as challengers; and the lack of preexisting party loyalties and the high level of depoliticization make it difficult to attract new members. Observers agree that postcommunist transition did not produce mass parties.

Perhaps the most general conclusion that one can draw from the post-communist experience hitherto is that democratic politics by and large equals party politics. Whether this is an optimistic or pessimistic conclusion is left to you.