Falling Levels of Partisanship in Representative Democracy

This article discusses the problem of falling levels of partisanship in representative democracy and its impact on the political system. It explores the importance of ideology-based politics, the challenges faced by political parties, and the role of partisanship in mobilizing support, addressing societal causes, and collecting funds for election campaigns.

SOCIOLOGY

1
To what extent are falling levels of partisanship a problem for representative
democracy?
Representative democracies have been followed in many countries. UK, India and USA are
the three major countries having this form of electoral systems. It is a type of democracy that
is based on the principle of elected members representing any particular group. There are
various types of representative democracies such as Constitutional monarchy in United
Kingdom, Unitary State in France and federal public in United States (Astor, 2017). Over the
years there are discussions going on about the flaws that are present in the representative
democracy. Falling levels of partisanship is one of the major problems that exist in
representative democracy. Partisanship is understood as an ideology where there is creation
of prejudices in favour of a particular bias (Somerville, 2011). In most of the countries there
are partisanship constituencies that created and people also select one party from that region.
This is because all the people have same cause in that area. Partisanship is a support for group
and person without fair consideration of the circumstances and facts.
People these days are not choosing their representatives on the basis of certain cause rather
they are selecting people on the basis of their own ideology. This is also reducing the
numbers of people that are participating in the politics. People are not taking interest towards
the cause that exist the society (Van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke, 2012). This will reduce the
numbers of people that can be a part of active politics. In representative democracy
participation is very much important. When people are bias or are supporting any particular
cause, it is often seen that they participate less in the election campaigns and polling. Support
for any party is crucial for high turnouts in the polling.
Many researchers suggest that politics must only be on the basis of ideologies. The parties
must stick to their ideology and people should also vote according to their ideologies. This
helps in moving the development process in a particular direction. With the falling levels of
partisanship, the ideology based politics has become very much difficult (Dalton, Farrell and
McAllister, 2011). When the representatives get selected on the basis of certain cause, it
automatically increases the numbers of people that have been selected for that cause. This
increase in the numbers of representatives for a particular cause often helps in addressing that
cause.

2
This reducing numbers of partisanship in representative democracy is a tension for the parties
that are established from years. These parties were successful because they had a support of
people based on certain kind of biases. It is the major reason why these parties were
successful over the years. For the countries like United States this is extremely dangerous
(Urbinati, 2011). This type of representative democracy not only helps the parties but also
helps the party workers. It is because the party workers who are attached to any particular
party are more likely to get their demands fulfilled. For instance in UK, the people who are
supporting Brexit will support the party that is in favour of Brexit and the opposite will
choose the party that is opposing it. Since parties will come to power on the basis of cause
hence demands will easily get fulfilled.
Partisanship allows people to support their leaders. For instance people supporting any
particular kind of bias or ideology will always want that their leader become the head of the
state. This makes their campaigns stronger and allows parties to stretch their base in the
communities. It is also seen that people having particular identity, culture or are belonging
from particular group always support a particular party. For instance more often the labour
class supports the labour party. This allows them to have a particular base in the market. In
the democracies like India where the numbers of parties are in large numbers often needs a
support of any particular cultural or ethnic group. This is their base that helps them to win
elections (Mansbridge, et al. 2012). These groups always support the party and it helps the
democracy to be lively. It also helps the community in their development programs as the
political parties’ works for their benefits. Any failure to do so by any party often leads in
slipping of their vote banks. This is not good for the existence of any party on the long run in
the representative democracy.
Partisanship helps the political parties to collect funds. This is because when the people have
particular type of bias attached with the party, they fund them. This is the major way in which
parties earn which helps them in their capital expenditure. These funds are used by their party
in their election campaigns. If the partisanship gets removed from the politics then there will
be problems for the parties to raise funds (Alonso, Keane and Merkel, 2011). This is not good
for the representative politics as in the lack of funds only those parties and representatives
win who are having huge amount of money. This is because their campaigns will be
powerful. If the common man aspires to represent people, it would not be easy for him or her
to do so. This is the major reason why only few parties are coming to the power. This is also
promoting corruption as the parties collect funds through different illegal means.

3
In the lack of partisanship, it will get difficult for the parties to gain consensus about why
people should vote them. They will have to arrange booth and local level workers and for this
they will have to add people from different segments of the society with extra efforts.
Biasness allows democracy to become more competitive where the supporters of both the
parties support their leaders and fight with each other so as to bring their leaders in power.
Reducing partisanship is a threat for the people that conduct the campaigns for any party
(Drutman, 2017). This is because they will have to make new bases based on Agenda. More
propagandas will be made in favour and against of any particular party or person. This is a
threat for representative politics.

4
REFERENCES
Alonso, S., Keane, J. and Merkel, W. eds., 2011. The future of representative democracy.
Cambridge University Press.
Astor, A. 2017. Partisanship is an American tradition — and good for democracy. [Online].
Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/07/12/
partisanship-is-an-american-tradition-and-good-for-democracy/?
noredirect=on&utm_term=.005bda314c93. [Accessed on 07th February 2019]
Dalton, R.J., Farrell, D.M. and McAllister, I., 2011. Political parties and democratic linkage:
How parties organize democracy. Oxford University Press.
Drutman, L. 2017. How Partisanship Is Fracturing America Democracy, and Why We Need
More of It. [Online]. Available at:
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/gsb/files/partisanship_is_fracturing_democracy.pdf.
[Accessed on 07th February 2019]
Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson,
D.F. and Warren, M.E., 2012. A systemic approach to deliberative democracy. Deliberative
systems: Deliberative democracy at the large scale, pp.1-26.
Somerville, P., 2011. Democracy and participation. Policy & Politics, 39(3), pp.417-437.
Urbinati, N., 2011. Representative democracy and its critics. The future of representative
democracy, pp.23-49.
Van Biezen, I., Mair, P. and Poguntke, T., 2012. Going, going,... gone? The decline of party
membership in contemporary Europe. European journal of political research, 51(1), pp.24-
56.

5