Political Parties and Representation in Modern Democracies

Paper Summary:

This paper takes an in-depth look at political parties and issues that surround representation of the people in modern democracies. According to the paper, political parties, in their organization and their functioning, display numerous problems in terms of representation. The paper focuses particularly on two of these problems, the modes of government and the modes of funding. The paper also analyzes the aftermaths of the logic of electoral competition for the representation of the membership and the electorate.

From the Paper:

"Political representation is quite a hard concept to grasp. It was rejected by the French during the Revolution as an impediment to the self-government of the people. Nonetheless, I will try to show that political representation is necessary for ensuring freedom in our modern democracies.
But first let us turn back to our French Revolution and the establishment of what could be considered as a quasi-totalitarian regime. In France, traditional feudal aristocratic society was undermined by an absolutist and centralist state. When the French Revolution broke out, the remaining feudal instances were destroyed even further (loi Le Chapelier), so that in fact only the individuals and the state remained without the traditional feudal corporations to mediate between them. The question then is how a society can be held together when it has been dismembered and robbed of the intermediary associations that had given it its concrete form and reality. Most revolutionaries followed republicans like Rousseau or Sieyes. The only way for them to bring about a post-feudal democratic order was by converting particular interests to the common good. Individuals were now called upon to set aside their particular preferences and to identify fully with the common will of the people in order to establish real popular sovereignty and equality. The Jacobin revolutionaries thus assumed that a true democracy could only be established if abstract democratic principles like formal equality, popular sovereignty or the unitary will of the people were indeed completely "turned into reality" (i.e. "actualized" or "materialized"), rather than merely respected (Weymans: 263-282). This is characteristic of totalitarian regimes. More so, to Claude Lefort totalitarianism represents a society's attempt to fully "materialize" or "actualize" democratic principles by making the people really one, equal, free or sovereign. That is also what distinguishes them from democratic regimes. While the totalitarian state tries to realize the principles (by embodying them), a democratic state prevents a society from realizing these (through representation), thus remaining distinct from and dependent on society. This distinction or alienation of the state from society is indeed necessary."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Braud, Philippe (2006) Sociologie Politique. LGDJ. 8e edition.
• van der Brug, Wouter (1999) 'Voters' Perceptions and Party Dynamics', in Party Politics Vol 5. No2 pp. 147-169. SAGE Publications.
• Budge, Ian (1993) 'Rational Choice as Comparative Theory : Beyond Economic Self-interest', in H. Keman (ed.) Comparative Politics : New Directions in Theory and Method. Amsterdam : VU University Press.
• Budge, Ian (1996) The New Challenge of Direct Democracy. Cambridge : Polity.
• Dahl, R.A. (1999) 'Can international organizations be democratic ? A skeptic's view', in I. Shapiro and C. Hacker-Cordon (Eds.), Democracy's Edges (pp.19-36). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

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