POLITICAL PARTIES

Political Parties

Political parties are formal organisations which represent the aims and interests of different socio-economic forces in the political sphere. They are however creations of the modern age. They were born “along with democracy-along with the development of parliaments and elections- after the American and French Revolutions and were at first parties of notables.” These were relatively small committees or cliques composed of men of wealth and power, influential in their local constituency or district, such as the Whig and Tories in the eighteenth century British House of Commons. With the extension of the suffrage toward the end of the nineteenth century and the emergence of labour and socialist parties (first in Germany and Austria) aiming to recruit mass membership, the parliamentary cliques of the wealthy and the bourgeoisie felt the need to develop extra-parliamentary organisation to win the support of the mass electorate. “Party”, as Katz put it, “is a strategy for cultivating public support.” Mass electorate, mass elections imply mass poltical mobilisation and hence mass parties as means of political involvement conducting election campaigns, and winning popular support to acquire or influence decision-making power of the state.

The most successful of the bourgeois parties in Europe was Britain’s Conservative Party (originally organised on a loose and informal basis, which governed Britain (alone or sometime in coalition) for sixty years between 1900 and 1998.

Among other parties which were created based on demands for legislative representation by groups hitherto excluded, the most important were the working-class parties. The spread of the working-class socialist parties across Europe at the turn of the twentieth century introduced a radical transformation in the nature of politics and political struggle. Later in the century, communist parties emerged after the Russian October Revolution and nationalist parties arose to win freedom from Western colonial rule. These parties demanded not merely reform but also a complete transformation of society.

Today political parties dominate the world of politics-although not all societies have a party-political system of government; for example, Bhutan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Bahrain. Political sociologists, while exploring the role of parties in the political process in different political regimes, have paid special attention to party oganisational dynamics; sociopolitical ideologies espoused by parties; socio-economic background of leaders, members and supporters; the distribution of power between the different groups embraced by party organisation; and the techniques for mobilising support.

MEANING AND NATURE OF POLITICAL PARTIES

Essentially, a political party is a voluntary association of individuals, with a common set of beliefs and political goals, who work together with a desire to take power or keeping power or using power to implement some goals. For some liberal thinkers the aim of securing political power overrides all other considerations. This attitude is reflected in Schumpeter’s classic definition, “The first and foremost aim of each political party is to prevail over the others in order to get into power or to stay in it.” This definition views parties analogous to business firms. Just as the foremost aim of business firms of the economic market is to maximise profits, so political parties are vote maximising machines in the political market; parties have little ideological commitment and are prepared to pursue any policy which will sell to the majority of voters. Such a characterisation of parties, however, does not adequately describe reality. Parties reflect ideologies, values and interests, which give each its particular character. Schumpeter's definition hides it.

According to Marxists, a political party is the most organised and active section of any class or part of that class or coalition of classes in a society. Parties reflect ideology, that is, a theory of society from which a programme of political action may be derived. Parties reflect interests which give each its specific character. Every party speaks in terms of the nation and social interest. But in a society based upon class-divisions, the struggle between parties for political power is nothing but a struggle between classes for determining policies of the government in their own class interest. F. Engels described parties as the “more or less adequate expression of classes and fractions of classes.” In the 18th Brumaire, Karl Marx attributed the division between the French Orleantist and the Legitimist royalist parties to the “two great interests, into which the bourgeoisie is split-landed property and capital.” Unstable and insufficiently organised political groupings emerged supporting the king and aristocracy or defending the interests of the bourgeoisie, the Cavaliers and the Roundheads in England in the seventeenth century, and the right, left, centre during the French Revolution 1789. Defending the interest of the petty bourgeoisie arose Jacobins in France, the Diggers in England. During the formative period of parties in the United States, says David Apter, “Class interests were at the centre of party conflict over who gets what, when and how.” The Federalists possessed the bulk of financial resources of the country. The Jacksonian Democrats emerged to voice the more popular and agrarian interest. Later the Republican Party and the Democratic Party emerged to voice, in the main, the interest of the rich industrial magnates and rural interests respectively. In nineteenth century England arose the modern Conservative Party as the party of the English bourgeoisie but with respect for tradition, including the Crown, the aristocracy, the church, and the status quo.

This does not mean that a political party is composed of members of a particular class or strata and seeks to serve narrow class or group interest. Every party seeks to serve social or national interest but its conception of social or national interest is shaped by the interests of class or classes it represents. Political parties are nothing but a structural response to the patterns of social and political needs of a society.

CHARACTERISTICS OF POLITICAL PARTIES

Firstly, parties are “associations”, groupings of a special kind. A political party is, what Max Weber has called, “an associative type of social relationship, membership in which rests on formally free recruitment.” Parties are associational in that they have some aims, whether these involve taking or keeping power or using power to implement some goals. However, parties differ from other social groups in that they have general aims, they are potentially concerned with the whole spectrum of matters which the polity faces. Like other associations, they do not confine themselves to limited number of issues, they are interested in all national decisions. Unlike other associations, therefore, parties tend to be broadly open to all members of society. There are some exceptions, however; the minority party like the Indian Muslim League or the BSP which exist to defend a particular section of the polity; special-issue parties like “ecology” or “green” parties in Western Europe.

Secondly, it is because aims are general and membership open that parties want to secure political power and to stay in power, either singly or in cooperation with other parties. Thus a political party is “a type of social group, primarily concerned with social control as exercised through the government.”

Thirdly, a political party “is held together by its ideology.” An ideology is indispensable in the life of a political movement; it is the mechanism essential to the survival and development of a movement. Ideological differences between parties may be distinct or it may be blurred. But a party seeks to attain political goal against the background of its political perspective.

Fourthly, since most political issues are economic in nature, parties usually represent different interests, or attitudes or questions of economic policy and regulation.

Fifthly, unlike other social groups which represent particular common interests of the group members, a political party is a clientele-oriented organisation. To gain political power, a party seeks to expand its clientele, its support base, accommodating different types of socio-economic interests. A political party thus appears to be a coalition of different groups or classes in society.

Finally, a political party is hierarchical in structure. However, it is not a precisely ordered system of authority and subordination as found in the bureaucratic and authoritarian models of social organisation.

FUNCTIONS AND IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL PARTIES

Political parties dominate the real world of politics in all political systems, whether liberal-democratic or socialist, developed or developing. They represent the aims and interests of different socio-economic forces in the political sphere, although a few societies (e.g. Bhutan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan) do not have a party-political system of government. 

Political parties today are omnipresent and perform universally important functions. They are, as says Neumann, “the life line of modern politics.” Their actual role will be different in detail as societies and political systems differ.

1. Controlling political power

The primary function of political parties is to influence or control and direct the struggle for political power. Politics is about power and the use of power to control things which people value. A political party is the most important organisation today through which people can hope to exercise power or influence over policies and affect the distribution of things. A central motive for forming or joining parties, organising them, recruiting members and leaders, formulating programmes, and serving as candidates is the hope of gaining political power, the power to make authoritative decisions binding on the whole society.

2. Agents of national integration

A political party plays an important role in the political system as an agent of national integration. Individuals who identify with a national party thereby identify themselves with the entire political system. Voting for a party may instill a spirit of citizenship even when it produces no visible results in policy.

Parties are specially important as integrative agencies in developing nations. The formation of parties help to institutionalise popular participation in administration and control it and puts it to work for the state. The whole process of nation-building and economic development in most Third World countries is dependent on the national party's ability to mobilise the masses of people under its flag.

Parties may also play an integrative role in developed nations where cleavages are sharp and legitimacy of the regime is in question. In a nation divided on class and caste and ethnic bases, minority parties provide safety-valves for the expression of discontent of particularistic groups and thus help to reduce strain on the system. However, where politics are sharply polarised, parties are likely to play a disintegrative rather than an integrative role.

3. Uniting, simplifying and stabilising the political process

Political parties perform the important function of “uniting., simplifying and stabilising the political process.” Most modern states are big, the electorate is large, interests are varied, government structures are sometimes divisive. Some voluntary organisation is necessary to bring unity in the midst of diversity and stabilize the political process. This is the function which the parties render. As Professor Alan R. Ball has observed, “parties bring together sectional interests, overcome geographical distances, and provide coherence to sometimes divisive government structures.”

Political parties perform the important function of uniting the many segments of the society (which are otherwise divided on ethnic caste, class, religious, linguistic and regional basis on common goals and attain political power. They are the general mechanisms by which conflicts are handled, they are one of the means by which the rulers exercise influence and endeavour to induce the population to accept their policies and, at the same time they are the means by which the active part of the population attempts to exercise influence. Parties are fundamental to modern society; they are the main institutions by which conflicts the stuff of politics-are dealt with. “As a result they have a two-sided aspect : they help legitimate conflict and bring it into the arena of public debate on the one hand, and they help in reducing and in extreme cases repressing conflict, on the other.” Conflicts thus both arise through parties and are solved (by compromise or coercion) through parties.

Parties serve as agents of interest aggregation. They select. reduce and combine interests by various groups in society into a manageable package of proposals. They are “political department stores”, deciding which interests should be displayed, which should be left in the storeroom and which should not be purchased at all.

A party is thus an amalgamation or aggregation of interests. To win the support of the majority of the electorate and gain political power a party seeks to widen the interests it represents and harmonise those interests with each other. The Indian National Congress is one of the most successful parties to win the support of diverse economic and social groups under its own umbrella at the same time and dominated national politics for more than three decades. Conservatives and liberals are found in varying proportions in both the Republican Party and Democratic Party of the United States. These two parties are seen to soften sectional group, economic, and other tensions. Both the British Conservative Party and Labour Party have been able to win support from various economic, social and geographic sections in British politics. Thus political parties “not only reflect divisions in society, but tend to mitigate them” because they ‘aggregate’, or, to use Apter’s expression ‘reconcile’ interests in national politics. In Britain both the Conservative Party and Labour Party have been found to soften economic, social and other tensions. Thus political parties not only reflect divisions in society, but tend to mitigate them because they “aggregate”, or, to use Apter’s expression "reconcile" interests. This role of parties translates itself in terms of the development of ideologies and programmes framed on consensus among diverse groups and interests. In this way political parties have become an important factor in bringing about political stability. In democratic systems, parties commit and unite competing groups to the principle of orderly and open competition for power in elections and thereafter to the principle of majority decision by the legislature. Thus conflict, which is real and the crucial element of the political process, is formalised and acted out “within the system”. This reinforces the legitimacy of the idea that power is to be sought and exercised through the appropriate democratic channels. Competitive parties thus act as an important stabilising factor in democratic politics.

Again, in all federal systems political parties play the role of uniting different government structures. In India, for example, there is a constitutional division of powers between two levels of government-the central government and state governments-but this has not become much divisive because of the existence of major political parties having organisations in different states. Again, as in the United States of America, where the executive is separated from the legislature, political parties perform the function of bridging this gap, of linking the executive to the legislature. Even in the British parliamentary system of government “the structural bridging function of political parties may be seen in the unity of Cabinet and the House of Commons.” In this way political parties have become an important factor in bringing about political stability.

4. Link between government and people

A political party is a central institution linking the mass of the people and the political elites. It is the great intermediary which links social forces and ideologies to the official governmental institutions and relates them to political action within the larger society. It is a major vehicle of public opinion and hence mediates between social thought and political action. Parties are thus a two-way means of communication or influence between the rulers (the political elites) and the population. They are the significant means by which popular interests, demands and grievances can be fed into the formal power structure to influence public policy. They are, to adopt Bagehot, “the hyphen joining the electorate to the government, the main transmission belt through which the demands of the people are communicated to the rulers.” Conversely, it is through parties that people get political information. Both at election times and between, parties are engaged in shaping, educating and clarifying public opinion : that is, they present the public with a choice between policies, by raising issues and taking stands on them. Thus. while providing a formal opportunity for the general population to participate in the political game, political parties generate a political consciousness which allows the electors to confirm or veto at elections the holding of office by alternative political elites. In short, the party is an important agency of political participation.

5. Broker of ideas

Parties act as the broker of ideas, constantly clarifying, systematizing and expounding the party’s doctrine. The doctrines of all parties may not be clear, they may be blurred and they may be divorced from the actual political behaviour of the party. But it is on the basis of their ideology or doctrines that parties seek to distinguish themselves from one another and to organise public opinion in a particular ideological direction. This conflict of ideas and doctrines educates the people, enhances their political consciousness and keeps the nation’s mind alive. It is on the basis of their ideology that political parties, as says Ball, “present issues”, and “set goals for the society.”

Political parties educate the private citizen to political responsibility by bridging the distance between the individual and the society. Every party, while seeking to serve powerful special-interest groups, constantly tells its supporters that their specific interests must be “fitted into the framework of the national collective.”

6. Agents of social change

Parties have been the prime movers in the revolutionary upheavals in modern times. The revolutionary transformation of Russian, Chinese, Cuban and East European societies in the twentieth century were led by communist parties committed to radical social change, the establishment of socialism. In Western liberal democracies, parties contributed to the creation of welfare states in the third quarter of the twentieth century, and to the shift towards more competitive economics in the last quarter of the century. In the developing world, parties played a crucial role in winning independence and in the subsequent process of nation-building and economic development.

7. Recruitment

Parties have come to be the main source of recruitment of political elites. This function of recruitment is regarded by some writers as the most important one in political parties. Leadership is indispensable in the modern world, and parties are the prime instrument for developing leadership in the state. They bring to the fore persons willing and able to take the responsibility of ruling the country. Candidates for public office are prepared and selected at all levels, and in particular the national leadership is chosen by the party. Thus political parties act as gatekeepers, controlling the flow of personnel into government. As a matter of fact, they are the main mechanism by which such recruitment takes place continuously and smoothly in political systems, liberal-democratic and socialist. Of course, “political elites” or the “political class can be recruited from the bureaucracy or the army. But in the contemporary world party recruitment is the most natural because parties are obviously the “schools for training” individuals in the skills of politics.

8. Socialising function

Political parties are the main proponents of political culture. They socialise the different sectors of the populace. They try to win the support of the electorate on the basis of a socio-economic policy and programme. Their campaigns and electioneering affect the behaviour of the citizen. They disseminate norms and values for the citizen to use in his own process of evaluation of the existing sociopolitical system. They teach value positions and thus may socialise the citizens for stability or change. They may socialise both for partnership and integration.

9. Providing a competitive political system

Another function of political parties is that they provide a competitive political system. They give the voters an alternative group of policymakers as well as an alternative programme stated in general terms. The party in power seeks to win voters in favour of its candidates, stating its record and its promises for the future; the opposition party’s role is to subject the ruling party to merciless scrutiny of its record. Political parties thus provide an instrument for assuming responsibility for public policy and acting as a watchdog.

A TYPOLOGY OF INDIA’S POLITICAL PARTIES

Multiplicity and diversity, coupled with a continuous process of fission and fusion make any attempt to classify India's political parties a perilous adventure. In addition to classifying political parties in India with reference to the three point scale of the Pleological spectrum, i.e. left, right, and centre, several dichotomous, classification may be made such as national parties and regional parties, traditional and modernist parties, communal and secular parties, ideology-oriented and interest-oriented parties. Such dichotomous classification is however, not very significant and watertight. These suffer from obvious overlapping. The so-called national parties, as designated by the Election Commission, are except Congress exclusively concentrated in certain regions. Traditionalism and modernism are practically enmeshed in all parties except the Communists and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The distinction between communal and secular parties begs the question of definition of the terms “communal” and “secular”. Bearing in mind these difficulties and limitations, it may be justified in attempting a classification of our political parties on the basis of several criteria : party orientation, geographical spread, and ideology.

1. Classification by party orientation

Parties in India may be classified by their central focus of orientation: charismatic leader-oriented party, ideology-oriented party, politico-cultural oriented party, interest-oriented parties. A charismatic leader-oriented party is one in which a top leader becomes a rallying point of support and allegiance for the party. This charismatic leadership is often associated with an idea, national or ethnic. By his personal charm, magnetism and towering personality the leader wins the trust in his ability to bring the party and the nation to a more exalted destiny. Indian National Congress has been such a party, first under Mahatma Gandhi who directed the final pre-independence transformation from an interest group of the English-educated middle classes to a nationalist movement and then left the political stage by leaving to his trusted lieutenants, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, to negotiate the transfer of power to Indian National Congress. But Jawaharlal Nehru became the designated heir of Mahatma Gandhi. Nehru, as the acknowledged leader of the Congress, articulated a set of ideological and policy goals that provided always a clear social and economic orientation, direction and cohesion to state policies-domestic and foreign. And till his death he rode like a “colossus” on the Indian political scene: with his towering personality and popularity he made the Congress the centre of India’s party system, which scholars have labelled a one-party dominant system. Congress became a mart or woken and after  a brief interlude faulentas the great split in the party in 1969 initiated by his daughter Indira Gandhi. Congress slowly but surely became Indira Gandhi’s party. After Indira Gandhi’s tragic assassination, her son Rajiv became the leader of the Congress. The leader of the party decided everything and that tradition continued, to a great extent, even under Narasimha Rao. No other party is comparable to Congress as a leader-oriented party: Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK led by M.G. Ramchandran and then by her protege Miss Jayalalitha, West Bengal’s Trinamul Congress led by Ms Mamata Banerjee and Andhra's Telugu Desam led by N.T. Rama Rao may be described as leader-oriented parties.

An ideology-oriented party is characterised by upholding an ideology like Marxism which determines party’s formulation and programme of action. The Communist parties belong to this category. The Bharatiya Janata Party may also be called an ideology-oriented party as the ideology of Hindutva guides its policies and actions. As opposed to this category is the so-called pragmatic party, which is said to be not concerned with “doctrinaire” points of view. Congress is a typical pragmatic party with its shifting centrist policies. In reality, Congress is also ideological in the sense that some variants of bourgeois liberalism lie behind its policies and actions. Similarly, communist parties and the BJP are found in practice less doctrinaire and more pragmatic.

Parties of politico-cultural orientation may be modernist or traditionalist. The Communist parties and the BJP (including the Muslim League) serve as obvious examples of the two opposite types. But other parties contain both elements combined in different degrees. Congress is however more modernist than traditionalist. Traditionalism and modernism are so confusingly intermeshed in Indian political system that a party’s national leadership may be modernist, but modernism diminishes more and more as one moves down towards the grass roots.

Interest-oriented or clientele parties are based on the protection and promotion of specific socio-economic interests of particular groups like caste (the Bahujana Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party, for example), community (the All-India Muslim League, the Akali-Dal. Assom Gana Parishad), tribe (Jharkhand party, Gorkha League in Darjeeling, the Naga National Council. Mizoram National Front. Manipur People's Party, etc.), region (Telegu Desam, DMK, AIADMK) and so on.

2. Classification by geographical spread

Parties may be classified on the criterion of the geographical area of influence and political support base : national parties, trans-regional parties and regional parties. Parties whose influence extends to the whole country are called national parties. The Election Commission has always made a simple distinction between national parties and regional or other parties. This is, however, not a useful distinction. Congress is the only national party in the proper sense of the term; it has its presence throughout the country and has always had broader support in most States of the Indian Union. Other so-called national parties-the BJP, CPI, CM, Janata Dal-did not have a genuine national spread at all. To illustrate, in the Ninth Lok Sabha Elections (1989), the BJP had MPs from only 8 States, CPI from 5 States, CPM from 7 States, Janata Dal from 9 States only, while Congress failed to get MPs from 3 States and 2 Union Territories. Other so-called national parties are at best multi-state or trans-regional parties because they have influence in some States but not in all the States and the Union Territories : CPI, CPM, BJP and Janata Dal. Ali these parties however play, in different degrees, important role in national politics. Among regional parties mention may be made of major political formations in ethnically, culturally and linguistically defined regions : DMK and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, the Akali Dal in Punjab, National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir, Assam Gana Parishad, Telegu Desam in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand Morcha in Bihar, the Manipur People’s Party in Manipur. All-India Muslim League and Indian Union Muslim League in Kerala, Tamil Maanila Congress, Sikkim Sangram Parishad, Kuki National Party, Maharashtra Gomantak Party. Though regional, some of these parties because of their popular support base, have the capacity to send their members to the Lok Sabha and Raiva Sabha, andhave been playing a critical role in recent times as a balancing factor between the ruling party and the opposition in Parliament as well as in the formation of the Government at the Centre.

3. Classification by ideology

Parties in India may also be classified with reference to the three-point scale of the ideological spectrum: left, right and centre. A conservative or rightist ideology defends the existing socio-economic order and political arrangements whereas a leftist or radical ideology attacks the existing social order and aims to rebuild it. Between these two extremes there lie the liberals, the reformists, the evolutionary changers called the centrist parties. Left and radical parties of  importance exist in differing degrees of importance in several parts of the country. At Independence the Left was broadly divided into two main streams, Socialists and Communists. Through splits, mergers and splits Socialists have by seventies become a pent-up force. The Corommunist movement has also split into several parties the Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the All-India Communist Party formed by S. A Dango-one of the founders of the CPI. The last one was of no significance and is now extinct. Both the CPI and CPM have undergone a process of de-radicalisation, have adhered to a parliamentary and reformist rather than to a revolutionary path. Organising left and democratic front Governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura the PM, the dominant partner, has introduced some radical changes in the agrarian relations. Both the CPI and the CM are prominent constituents of the United Front formed after 1996 parliamentary polls, the CPI joining the UF Government while the PM supporting it from outside-a Government which exists on the sufferance of the Congress party. The CPI (M-L) and other fragments of it tend to eschew parliamentary path but their influence is highly confined in several rural areas in Bihar and Andra Pradesh.

Among other non-Communist Left parties, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) has a small but a permanent electoral pockets in West Bengal and Kerala. The Forward Bloc, established by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, is now divided and has been a component of Left Front in West Bengal.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the incarnation of Jana Sangh, the most important “right” party, as it is more or less opposed to modernisation including State planning. It supports the existing socio-economic order. But the party is traditionalist and other parties call it communal in character because of its Hindutva ideology, and opposition to constitutional secularism. In recent times the BJP has emerged as a formidable force in national politics, becoming the single largest party in Lok Sabha after 1996, 1998 and 1999 parliamentary elections. It is, however, an insignificant force in the south and north-eastern part of the country.

Between the extremes of Left and Right is the Centrist party-the Congress which has always occupied a middle-of the road Position on the ideological spectrum. The Janata Dal, to a certain party of Other Backward Classes. Its splinter group Rashtriya Janata Dal of Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party are essentially caste parties, though their leaders would deny so.

This broad classification of parties on the basis of their ideological persuasion is only an approximation. In particular, the goals, strategies and tactics of parties have changed over time. All political concepts are elastic under the pressure of demands of various segments of India’s highly diversified society following the economic and political modernisation. Over the last three decades political parties are required to constantly revise their ideological precepts and redefine their strategies to widen popular support so as to achieve power.

References

Bhattacharyya, D. C. (2015). Political Sociology. Vijoya Publishing House. pp. 313-356