Abstract
The shouts to “take back control” and to further democratise established systems can be heard from Paris to Washington DC. There is no doubt that in this current zeitgeist there is an increased demand (and supply) for participatory politics, like referenda and leadership elections. This should have led to democracy becoming fairer and more stable, as it is led by the people. Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue in Responsible Parties that, in fact, the opposite happened. Paradoxically, through more grassroots politics, decentralisation has led to further alienation. This “misdiagnosis of democracy’s ills” (Chapter 1) forms a vicious cycle, which can be attributed to many factors including public discontent with the bailing out of bankers during the financial crisis of 2008. The solution offered in this book opposes popular belief as the authors advocate for a system with ‘two big strong’ parties. This book aims to point out the good (two programmatic competitors), the bad (multiple parties and coalition governments) and the ugly (weak parties with intra-party competition) in order to find a way to cure the disease, not the syndrome.
One of the main arguments is that “the more, the merrier” is not a mantra to be followed in a party system. Parties in two-party systems act fundamentally differently to parties in multi-party systems, due to a shift in perception of the competition. When one party wins, the other one loses. It is obvious that this is more complex in multi-party system, not only because the largest party is unlikely to gain a majority of the votes but also because they have a different incentive in choosing their electoral strategy. Parties in a PR system cater to their own members; parties in a two-party system are forced to take a larger population into account. If the British Conservative Party only catered to their own membership, they would lose the election to the Labour Party. In a multi-party system, parties are far more inclined to cater to their own membership. There is post-election uncertainty regarding who a party will enter the coalition government with, unless this is decided prior to the election. The authors of the book describe this as “marriages, not hook-ups”, referring to cases like Greece in 2015 when radical left-wing party SYRIZA joined government with the far-right party ANEL. These parties are unlikely to keep their core supporters, and a reaction similar to what the UK Liberal Democrats experienced after the 2010 coalition is not unlikely.
Yet, even two-party systems can be far from perfect, as the parties in the system may be classified as weak. Weak parties will not even appeal to their own members’ views, due to their loose party discipline and organisation. This self-destructive element can be seen in parties with primaries. Primaries lead to parties competing against themselves and in the process alienating a proportion of their own members. Another version of this tale exists in parties that practice open leadership elections; Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership election is an example of radical activists of a party represented in the leadership. In contrast to this, strong parties are defined through giving the leadership the freedom to design their political agenda – subject to the success they bring to the party. This boils down to having strong party discipline where everyone in the party, from leadership to backbenchers, is working towards the same goal.
The final part of the solution to the alienation of voters can be found in party size. With the addition of this part of their theory, it becomes clear why parties are an essential feature of a working democracy. In a system with special issue groups only, there would be no incentive of showing long lasting costs of their policies. According to the authors, large parties discourage the temptation of proposing issues in a vacuum. The authors give the example of Proposition 13 in California property tax, where people were asked to vote on a tax decrease without the perspective of a resulting decline in the quality of public schools. A current example of this is the Brexit referendum, where voters were not informed of the costs attached to voting Leave. Yet, this could also be solved through the process of re-election; if an issue group aims for re-election, they are more likely to be realistic about proposals as the electoral success in up-coming elections will make them accountable.
One of the key features that proportional representation provides is the ability to give relatively small sections of society a platform. For instance, racial or religious minorities have the opportunity to form their own party. This is not possible in two-party systems - however, according to Rosenbluth and Shapiro, this does not make it less representative. In a two-party system, parties need every vote. They will be more inclined to cater to the interests of vulnerable minorities, as this is an interest group that will not be owned by the competitor. A single party can represent Israeli Arabs, however this party is unlikely to join a coalition government with a right-wing Jewish religious party. Unless the party gets into government, the representation they provide is not influential. The authors use a controversial example to underline their point; in a less tense environment a party representing a minority may well opt to join a coalition with a mainstream party. It is unclear why a party would potentially abandon their majority group to gain the vote share of one vulnerable minority. In case of extremist groups, a “majoritarian system deni[es] entry to radicalism” (p. 164). This leads to another issue, what happens to groups when they cannot form their own parties and have not been able to shape a party’s policy agenda?
The book stands out as it takes a problem-focused approach in understanding that people were disconnected from politics and the solution to this was seen in increased public participation encouraged through proportional representation and referenda. Yet, this has not worked as well as we had hoped. In understanding the problems that increased decentralisation has brought from country and regional case studies, the authors successfully embrace and rescue the idea of having only two parties. The book takes into account the individual circumstances of countries and even exceptions to the explanations, notably the so-called labradoodle Germany. A rational, problem-centric approach makes this a must-read book for everyone keen on finding a solution of discontent with current democratic structures.