Britain Day 2: Britain's Political Parties and Electoral System

Take-away lessons for Comparative Politics: Functions of political parties, differences in party systems, different electoral systems and their effects. Also, the left-right spectrum.

What is a political party and what functions do parties serve that make them so important? 

“What is a party” is a harder question than it might on the surface appear.  Scholars disagree over whether the same generic term “party” ought to apply to groups as diverse as Singapore’s People’s Action Party, the American Republicans, and the Communist Party of China. 

Borrowing from the scholar of political parties Giovanni Sartori, I will define a political party as “any political group that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office.”   This open definition focuses on what parties do rather than how they might be structured or define themselves. 

According to Peter Mair, traditional political science literature regards what parties do as:

• organizing and mobilizing citizens

• aggregating diverse interests

• recruiting leaders for public office

• formulating public policy

• and serving as an essential link between the citizen and the state.  

The political party is a natural focus for research because it is difficult to sustain modern mass democracy without parties.   Parties are crucial for representation because voters need parties in order to make sense of the choices presented to them in elections.  How will a given individual perform in office?  A party label simplifies the choice.  How will a voter hold those in government accountable for the policies enacted?  Without parties, voters would not have symbols and packages of policy options from which to choose, and the information costs of political participation would be high. Legislators need parties.  In the absence of political parties, legislators might be forced to build new coalitions on every issue in order to create laws.  A system of party competition in which rules are generally observed and behavior is shaped on the basis of the expectation that those rules will continue to be observed in the future would be significantly different from a system in which there was little or no agreement on the rules of the game, in which every agreement had to be negotiated anew or one in which politics takes place on the streets, outcomes based solely on the muscle of rival groups.  

So, now, we know what parties are, what they do, and why they are important. By mediating between citizens and government, they enable modern democracy to exist.

Get to the topic of the day which includes Britain’s political parties.

Two main parties:

Conservative, also called the Tories.

Leader David Cameron  (now Prime Minister)

  (Conservatives.com)

POLICIES: Party right of center, emerged in the late 18th c.  Tend to favor more market-oriented policies, more conservative socially, seen often to be a party of the rich.  1945-1979, participated in collectivist consensus with Labour (below), broad state ownership and welfare state, in context of an overall market economy, pragmatic and less ideological than US conservatives.

http://www.conservatives.com/. 2010 elections slogan: "Now for change"

Labour

Leader Ed Milliband, born 1969, leader of Labour since 2010

Former leaders: Tony Blair (L), prime minister 1997-2007 and Gordon Brown (R), prime minister 2007-2010

POLICIES: Party left of center with a strong basis in the unions (formed 1900, with industrial revolution). Throughout much of the post-World War II period, supported nationalization of industries like coal, utilities, rail, and health care as well as the creation of a welfare state (wide public services for all citizens).  Tony Blair’s Third Way (which brought Labour back to the center), rendered Labour “electable,” won by 1997.

Are the conservatives the party of the rich, Labour the party of the poor?

Too simple, one quarter to one third of lower income regularly vote Conservative (explanations: think they're middle class, deference).

Labour no longer just unionists, drawing from upwardly mobile, progressive types, especially with the coming of Tony Blair.

Can say that there are trends in the electorate:

People have tended to vote the way their parents voted, but this is weakening

Women vote Labour.

Immigrants vote Labour.

Active churchgoers vote Conservative.

Younger people vote Labour (but they are less likely to vote).

Regions of support: Labour gets south Wales, central Scotland, industrial north of England.

Conservatives get: southern and eastern England, suburbs and countryside.

Additional parties: 2+ party system

Liberal Democrats—merged party, mostly offshoot of Labour, tends toward the center.  Hampered in the British system by the nature of Britain’s electoral system.  Now part of the government, ruling with Conservatives.  Leader Nick Clegg is deputy prime minister.

Further parties:

Greens http://www.greenparty.org.uk/

Scottish National Party (SNP) http://www.snp.org/ 

Welsh Plaid Cymru  http://www.plaidcymru.org/

Irish Sinn Fein http://www.sinnfein.org/

Lots of others:

UK Communist http://www.sinnfein.org/

Monster Raving Loony Party http://www.omrlp.com/

Prolife Alliance

Legal Cannabis

Why do we learn about the different types of parties that exist in the United Kingdom?

• Major actors in politics

• Tell us a lot about politics in the country.

Scholars Lipset and Rokkan observed that parties reflect cleavage structure of the population. 

How parties are, reflects cleavages that have been important in the country’s political development (part of approaches to Comparative Politics: Cleavages).

So, learning something about Britain’s parties tells us a great deal about Britain’s politics.

Conservative party—grows out of elite, upper-class, landed, traditional rulership of England.

Labour party—Labour grows out of the industrial revolution.  Don’t find Labour parties in countries that haven’t gone through industrialization.  Workers organized in a party because had to press political system, organize, in order to secure rights of participation.

Liberal Democrats—Liberal Democrats can be well located in time. Most spun off from the Labour party when it was so far to the left that it was generally perceived as unelectable, got up and sang Communist Internationale hymn at meetings, supported nationalization ("Arise ye workers from your slumber . .. . Servile masses, arise, arise!"). This was one of the reasons the Conservatives were able to stay in power from 1979-1997--Labour too far to the left.  Liberal Democrats arose to fill the gap in the Center. The people who found Margaret Thatcher too heartless and the hard-core Labourites too left-wing loony were the LibDems.

Regional parties—tell us something about continuing existence of cleavages between national polity and regional identifications.  Scottish National Party, in particular, a good scorer in Scotland.

Other parties—more marginal, don’t reflect a lot of people. Tell us something of issues people might be interested in. marijuana, joke parties

Why are there two main parties and a smattering of smaller parties?

Approaches to comparative politics:

Find the answer in political culture?  Do British people prefer to pick from among two choices?

Find the answer in level of development?  No, other advanced democracies have very different party systems.

Answer is found in institutional analysis.

Number of parties in large part a result of the rules of the election system, the electoral system.

Additional features like election deposits (also institutions), but election system is the main cause.

Britain’s Electoral System

Single Member District (SMD)

First-past-the-post (FPTP)

Plurality

“Top-of-the-poll”

Same system used to election congresspersons in the US.

Effects:

• Creates a two party system, except where regional concentration allows third parties to succeed (Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru [Wales], some of the Northern Irish parties). 
• Third parties aspiring to national status are usually the biggest losers in this system.  In Britain’s case, this is the Liberal Democratic party. Its level of support deliberately undercut, not turned into seats, by the electoral system.  Not impossible to vault out of this position. Labour used to be the third party to Conservatives and Liberals.  Great integration of the masses of people into the voting system with extension of the franchise led to Labour eventually eclipsing the Liberals.  Can be done, not impossible, but it is irregular, doesn’t happen often.
• Manufactures majorities in the legislature by amplifying vote results for major parties, creates strong governments.  Labour in 2001 won about 41% of the vote and about 63% of the seats in the House of Commons.  1) Can take office with less than 50% of the vote, 2) easier to form governments—don’t usually have extensive coalition negotiations as is regular practice in Italy in the World War II period, 50 governments in 50 years (effect British government stronger and more stable).  3) small change in opinion in the country can lead to wider swing in party support/seats.

To understand how the SMD/FPTP system produces these effects, we need to compare it to the other big type of electoral system: the Proportional Representation System.  And we need to set up some hypothetical constituencies to test the differences in the systems.

First, what is Proportional Representation, generally called PR?

In a PR system, apportionment of votes and seats is more aligned than in SMD systems.

Often, there will be larger constituencies with multiple representatives.  Who wins representatives/seats determined by share of the vote.  Not one winner, winner take all, but multiple winners: three seats for Labor, two for Conservatives, 1 for Liberal Democrats in a six-seat multimember district based on share of the vote received.

Extreme version of a PR system is Israel where the whole nation is one single constituency and MPs are shared out in share of the vote received nationally (after nominal 2% threshold).

Show allocation of seats and largest remainder.

Effects:

• PR systems lead to the representation of smaller parties (depending on the size of the constituencies and the degree of proportionality in the system—sometimes a threshold is used to determine access.  So, all those scoring more than 5% will take a share of the representation.)
• With more and smaller parties, oftentimes coalition government becomes necessary, as you need more parties in order to control 50%+1 of the parliament (to form the government).
• Less advantage to regional concentration; national parties like the LibDems, would attain more representation (perhaps 20% of seats from 2005 elections, up from 10% received under Britain's FPTP system). 
• In PR systems, party affiliation is often even more important as parties determine who stands and voters choose parties rather than candidates.

This is often difficult for Americans to understand because it is so foreign to our way of doing things.  So, you don’t have just one representative.  You can’t call “your Congressman.”  You might have six or seven individuals who represent your district in the legislature.

Trade-off between PR and SMD often seen as between Representation of opinion v. Governability.

So, let’s compare some election results in different imaginary constituencies to see how the different systems produce different results with the same vote.

See handout (the Effects of Different Electoral Systems, below).

Go back to our Effects of the SMD system

• Creates a two-party system (also strategic voting, unlikely to vote for LibDems if think they are going to lose, want vote to count, so acting rationally choose most favorite of the two major parties.)

• Shuts out third parties with national aspirations, but allows small parties with regional concentration to exist.  Couldn’t see this in our example, but how would this work?  (Example: Scotland SNP 2001 second largest share of the vote)

• Manufactures majorities.  In our system, 49% of the vote became 60% of the seats, a comfortable majority in the House of Commons.  Government can carry out its program without worrying about defections. If there were defections, it would have to be big to bring down the government.

Go back to our Effects of the PR system

• Lead to representation of smaller parties. We saw this in our example. Party Y got a seat under PR, while it did not under SMD/FPTP

• With more and smaller parties, coalition government might become necessary to reach 50%+1

• In both our PR examples, Party X had only half the seats, could do a couple of things, could operate a minority government or could seek a coalition with Party Y or Party Z.

• Less advantage to regional concentration.  Especially in the Israel example, single constituency country, no advantage to regional concentration at all. Whatever and wherever your vote is, get that share of the vote (beyond minimal threshold).

• Parties more important, often choose by party symbol.  In the British case, parties also important.  But compare PR party list to US system.  Congressmen can switch parties, raise own money, party much less important.

UK looked at changing the electoral system in a May 2011 referendum. Alternative vote (instant run-off, preferential vote: if no one over 50%, distribute second choices of those who voted for third candidate, re-count) was proposed by Liberal Democrats. Put forward by Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. Alternative vote would have allowed second choices to count and potentially help the Liberal Democrats a great deal. Vote went down by 2 to 1. FPTP stays.

The Effects of Different Electoral Systems

Scenario A (SMD/FPTP, like the UK and the US):

One hundred voters are divided into 10 10-person constituencies.  These are SMD constituencies that will be won by FPTP.

Results:

X-Y-Z                     WINNER

Constituency A    5-3-2                       X

Constituency B     3-6-1                       Y

Constituency C    8-1-1                       X

Constituency D    2-7-1                       Y

Constituency E     10-0-0                     X

Constituency F     6-4-0                       X

Constituency G    3-4-3                       Y

Constituency H    5-3-2                       X

Constituency I      4-3-3                       X

Constituency J      3-6-1                       Y

Party X’s share of the vote 49%         Party X’s share of the seats 60%, 6 seats

Party Y’s share of the vote 37%         Party Y’s share of the seats 40%, 4 seats

Party Z’s share of the vote 14%         Party Z’s share of the seats   0%, 0 seats

Scenario B (PR-One National Constituency, like Israel):

In this scenario, our 100 voters are now considered as one constituency, and the ten seats are awarded based on the proportion of the overall vote received by each party.

With ten seats up for grab, it takes 10% of the vote to win each seat.

Results based on same vote cast above:

Party X’s share of the vote 49%         Party X’s share of the seats 50%, 5 seats

Party Y’s share of the vote 37%         Party Y’s share of the seats 40%, 4 seats

Party Z’s share of the vote 14%         Party Z’s share of the seats  10%, 1 seat

Scenario C (PR-3 Multimember Constituencies, typical of many European electoral systems, also Indonesia):

In this scenario,  constituencies A, B, and C are joined. They will jointly select three representatives.  Constituencies, D, E, F, and G are joined.  They will jointly select four representatives.  Constituencies H, I, and J are joined. They will jointly select three representatives.

Vote results:                                                         X-Y-Z                     Share of the vote:                   X   -Y-     Z

Constituency K (old A, B, and C)                     16-10-4                                                                   53%-33%-13%

Constituency L (old D, E, F, and G)                  21-15-4                                                                   52.5%-37.5%-10%

Constituency M (old H, I, and J)                       12-12-6                                                                   40%-40%-20%

Seat results (quota is 33% for three-member districts and 25% for the four-member district):

Constituency K (3)                              X-2. Y-1 (X gets second seat by largest remainder)

Constituency L (4)                               X-2, Y-2 (Y gets second seat by largest remainder)

Constituency M (3)                              X-1, Y-1, Z-1 (Z wins the largest remainder this time)

Seat Totals:                            Remember the original share of the vote:

X=5                                         X=49%

Y=4                                         Y=37%

Z=1                                         Z=14%

Result happened to be the same in scenarios B and C, but not necessarily so.  How could this change?

Parties and Elections in the UK

 2010 Election Results

2005 Election Results

2001 Election Results

Source: Michael Curtis, “The Government of Great Britain,” Michael Curtis, et. al. ed. Introduction to Comparative Government, New York: Longman, 2003, 69, Table 2.8.  Also, BBC News for 2005 Data.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm

Honors: Discuss International Herald Tribune article on upcoming elections and class warfare.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/world/europe/12iht-letter.html?_r=1

• Sum up the article.

• Election coming in Britain. Incumbent Prime Minister in trouble. Polls show opposition Conservatives leading 38-30 over Labour.  Brown resorting to class warfare in attacking opponent's posh speech and policies.  Trying to get British on his side (more regular Joes) and trying to revive old Labour spirit of being on the side of the working man.

• Discuss class in parties in the UK and the US.

Last updated: September 6, 2011.

Return to Dr. Tan's homepage: http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/'