Political Parties
Challenges and reforms
Explain the problems of political parties and how they can be reformed.
Four challenges. Parties are what people see most of democracy, so they get the blame when it goes wrong. People's complaints fall into four areas.
1. No internal democracy. Power gathers in one or a few leaders at the top. Parties often keep no membership registers, hold no organisational meetings and no regular internal elections. Ordinary members don't know what goes on inside. Those who disagree find it hard to stay, and loyalty to the leader matters more than loyalty to the party's principles.
2. Dynastic succession. Without open, fair procedures, an ordinary worker can rarely rise to the top. Leaders favour people close to them, even family, and in many parties the top posts stay in one family. That is unjust to the other members and bad for democracy, because people without enough experience or popular support get power. It happens in some older democracies too.
3. Money and muscle power. Parties care mainly about winning, so they take short-cuts:
- they pick candidates with money, or who can raise it;
- companies and the rich, who fund parties, gain influence over policies;
- some parties back criminals who can win.
4. No meaningful choice. To give voters a real choice, parties must be really different. But ideological differences have shrunk around the world: Britain's Labour and Conservative parties differ only in details, and India's major parties now differ little on economic policy. Often the same leaders keep switching from one party to another.
Reforms already made.
- Anti-defection law: an MLA or MP who changes party after being elected loses the seat. Many had switched to become ministers or for cash. It cut defections, but made disagreeing with party leaders even harder.
- Affidavits (Supreme Court order): every candidate must declare their property and any criminal cases pending. This made a lot of information public, but nobody checks if it is true, and we do not know if it has reduced the power of the rich and of criminals.
- Election Commission order: parties must hold organisational elections and file income tax returns. They do, but sometimes only as a formality.
Suggested reforms.
- A law on parties' internal affairs: a register of members, following their own constitution, an independent authority to settle disputes, and open elections to top posts.
- About one-third of tickets for women, and a quota for women in party decision-making.
- State funding of elections: the government helps pay election costs, in kind (petrol, paper, telephone) or in cash according to votes won.
Parties have not accepted these yet. And beware: too many rules can backfire, pushing parties to look for ways around the law.
Two other ways to reform parties.
- People's pressure: petitions, publicity, agitations, and the media. When parties feel they may lose support, they change.
- Joining parties: reform is easier if more ordinary citizens take part. As the book puts it, bad politics is cured by 'more and better politics'.
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