Parties are over

Whether the major parties of the present are viewed as 'hits' or 'boulders', the medium-term trends set in motion by the internet will undermine their position in the political system.

These will combine with other political factors which also affect their future viability.

One such factor is the issue of values as drivers of party policies. Can they be both driven by a set of beliefs and deliver the kind of responsiveness which the public increasingly expects? As Ben Rogers (2005) has written:

"The public works with a sophisticated understanding of representation. Voters might not expect representatives to share their views on everything but they do expect politicians to connect with them, listen to their concerns and report back on how and why they took the decisions that they did. They are also more inclined to trust institutions with a local face. At the same time, however, parties cannot become too open. They have to remain value-driven organisations, with distinct ideological orientations, and politicians will have to be seen to act from deeply-held political principles, otherwise voters will not have cause to vote for one rather than another and so will not vote at all. This is a hard trick to pull off; it is not easy to be both responsive and value-led. Yet democratic governance will increasingly depend on politicians being able to conduct this delicate balancing act. We need politicians willing to consult widely, devolve power where possible, and then stand up for their beliefs and actions in open debate." ^[i]

If this may become an increasingly impossible balancing act for parties to manage, another set of broader political factors was outlined in Political Parties in the New Europe by Kurt Luther and Ferdinand Muller-Rommel ^[ii].

They argued that parties in western Europe are facing challenges across six areas: socio-economic changes resulting from changes to the occupational structure; a change in political values, seen in greater activism and issues such as environmental protection which sit outside the traditional left-right divide;  changes to the structure of political communication with fragmented audiences; a shift in political issues and policy agendas towards acceptance of free markets; European integration which has seen authority move up and down from the traditional state level; and reforms of constitutional systems including electoral systems and legislatures.

Another issue facing the major political parties has been their inability to find the language needed to communicate with citizens whose values and perceptions have changed from what they once were.

As Philip Parvin and Declan McHugh (2005) wrote, albeit in a defence of political parties:

"Political identities have become freed from their traditional ideological moorings; they are more complex, fluid and changeable than they were when the adversarial system was conceived. Consequently, we have seen a rise in issues-based politics (and, connectedly, single-issue parties), with traditional ideological identities and conflicts taking a back seat. Yet, in terms of their dialogue, political parties appear unable to break out of the adversarial mould." ^[iii]

None of these factors on their own, or even a combination of many of them, could be considered an insurmountable obstacle to the continuation of the major political parties.

But it does make it clearer that parties are now facing a complex multi-dimensional and asymmetric challenge in which the tools and responses which have served them in the past are no longer sufficient.

[i] Rogers, B. (2005), 'From Membership to Management? The Future of Political Parties as Democratic Organisations', Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 58 No. 3, p. 607.

[ii] Luther, K. and Muller-Rommel, F. 'Political Parties in a Changing Europe' in Luther, K. and Muller-Rommel, F. (eds)  Political Parties in the New Europe (2002), Oxford University Press, pp. 3-16. Quoted in Needham, C. 'Introduction: Do Parties Have a Future?', Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 58 No. 3, 2005, p. 501.

[iii] Parvin, P. and McHugh, D. (2005), 'Defending Representative Democracy: Parties and the Future of Political Engagement in Britain', Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 58 No. 3, p. 641.