Party Mandates And Democracy

Contrary to public opinion, election promises are often fulfilled

In democracies, contemporary politics is party politics, and parties serve to organize the political process even as they ensure democratic representation of minority and majority policy preferences. How do they do this? In great part, as this ambitious survey shows, parties translate policy preferences into policy priorities by articulating and enacting clearly defined party platforms. There is, this international author team demonstrates, a strong connection between what parties say they will do in an election campaign and what they actually do when elected. In sum, we are shown that political parties deserve more credit than they often receive.This book addresses questions central to the operation of modern democracies and can be used to inform institutional development in emerging democracies. It is at once an ambitious summary of original research and a model text for students of comparative politics. First the theory and method are introduced. Then, ten key countries are covered in parallel detail, with the discussions proceeding from general consideration of institutional and political context and program and party trends to more specific examinations of the congruence between party programs and policy outcomes. The data for all countries and parties span the post-World War II period up to the late 1980s. The analyses employ agenda, mandate, and ideology models and expenditure analyses across key policy arenas.Because of its commitment to comparative rather than merely descriptive analysis, Parties, Policies, and Democracy offers convincing answers to basic questions about the functioning of democratic political systems. Rigorous comparative analysis of forty years’ experience across ten countries demonstrates that political parties in contemporary democracies work better than critics have claimed. This is important news for emerging democracies just now establishing institutions and policies that bear watching over the next forty-year period.

Susan Stokes explores why Latin American politicians seeking reelection would impose unpopular policies.

Are election campaigns relevant to policymaking, as they should in a democracy? This book sheds new light on this central democratic concern based on an ambitious study of democratic mandates through the lens of agenda-setting in five West European countries since the 1980s. The authors develop and test a new model bridging studies of party competition, pledge fulfillment, and policymaking. The core argument is that electoral priorities are a major factor shaping policy agendas, but mandates should not be mistaken as partisan. Parties are like 'snakes in tunnels': they have distinctive priorities, but they need to respond to emerging problems and their competitors' priorities, resulting in considerable cross-partisan overlap. The 'tunnel of attention' remains constraining in the policymaking arena, especially when opposition parties have resources to press governing parties to act on the campaign priorities. This key aspect of mandate responsiveness has been neglected so far, because in traditional models of mandate representation, party platforms are conceived as a set of distinctive priorities, whose agenda-setting impact ultimately depends on the institutional capacity of the parties in office. Rather differently, this book suggests that counter-majoritarian institutions and windows for opposition parties generate key incentives to stick to the mandate. It shows that these findings hold across five very different democracies: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. The results contribute to a renewal of mandate theories of representation and lead to question the idea underlying much of the comparative politics literature that majoritarian systems are more responsive than consensual ones.

Political parties have traditionally aimed to create large memberships to sustain and advance the objectives of their political platforms. This way parties became the main vehicle for political activism and the gatekeepers for political representation. Membership was based on active participation in the activities of the party and in some cases on paying a fee to finance the party. Today, many parties still boast large traditional memberships, yet a trend of decreasing numbers is observed globally. While formal membership is decreasing, new forms of political party membership are being introduced. These new forms involve new types or levels of membership that require less commitment, or do not include any payment of fees. This Primer analyse these new forms of political party membership and presents how different parties and contexts have given birth to different ways of engaging citizens in the party’s life.

How popular democracy has paradoxically eroded trust in political systems worldwide, and how to restore confidence in democratic politics Democracies across the world are adopting reforms to bring politics closer to the people. Parties have turned to primaries and local caucuses to select candidates. Ballot initiatives and referenda allow citizens to enact laws directly. Many democracies now use proportional representation, encouraging smaller, more specific parties rather than two dominant ones. Yet voters keep getting angrier. There is a steady erosion of trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating most recently in major populist victories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue that devolving power to the grass roots is part of the problem, not the solution. Efforts to decentralize political decision-making make governments and especially political parties less effective and less able to address constituents' long-term interests. To revive confidence in governance, we must restructure our political systems to restore power to the core institution of representative democracy: the political party.

​​Given the centrality of political parties in modern democracies, most research on these systems either directly address their internal functioning and activities or question their critical role. Political science has moved from describing institutions to the thorough analysis of behavior within these institutions and the interactions between them. The inevitable consequences of the maturing and institutionalization of the discipline of political science in many countries include the forming of sub-fields and specialized research communities. At the same time the number of democracies has vastly increased since the 1980s and although not each attempt at democratization was eventually successful, more heterogeneous systems with some form of party competition exist than ever before. As a consequence, the literature addressing the large issues of party democracy spreads over many research fields and has become difficult to master for individual students of party democracy and party governance. The present volume sets out to review the behavior and larger role of political parties in modern democracies. In so doing the book takes its departure from the idea that the main contribution of political parties to the working of democracy is their role as vehicles of political competition in systems of government. Consequently the focus is not merely in the internal functioning of political parties, but rather their behavior the electoral, legislative, and governmental arenas. Thus several chapters address how political parties perform within the existing institutional frameworks. One more chapter looks at the role of political parties in building and adapting these institutions. Finally, two chapters explicitly address the party contributions to democracy in established and new democracies, respectively.​​

Political parties are one of the core institutions of democracy. But in democracies around the world—rich and poor, Western and non-Western—there is growing evidence of low or declining public confidence in parties. In membership, organization, and popular involvement and commitment, political parties are not what they used to be. But are they in decline, or are they simply changing their forms and functions? In contrast to authors of most previous works on political parties, which tend to focus exclusively on long-established Western democracies, the contributors to this volume cover many regions of the world. Theoretically, they consider the essential functions that political parties perform in democracy and the different types of parties. Historically, they trace the emergence of parties in Western democracies and the transformation of party cleavage in recent decades. Empirically, they analyze the changing character of parties and party systems in postcommunist Europe, Latin America, and five individual countries that have witnessed significant change: Italy, Japan, Taiwan, India, and Turkey. As the authors show, political parties are now only one of many vehicles for the representation of interests, but they remain essential for recruiting leaders, structuring electoral choice, and organizing government. To the extent that parties are weak and discredited, the health of democracy will be seriously impaired. Contributors: Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther • Hans Daalder • Philippe Schmitter • Seymour Martin Lipset • Giovanni Sartori • Bradley Richardson • Herbert Kitschelt • Michael Coppedge • Ergun Ozbudun • Yun-han Chu • Leonardo Morlino • Ashutosh Varshney and E. Sridharan • Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair.