Chapter 4 Solutions — Political Parties

Popular dissatisfaction with political parties has focussed on four problem areas:

1. Lack of internal democracy: There is a tendency towards concentration of power in one or a few leaders at the top. Parties often do not keep membership registers, hold organisational meetings or conduct internal elections regularly, so ordinary members cannot influence decisions.

2. Dynastic succession: Since parties lack open and transparent procedures, top positions are often controlled by members of one family, which is unfair to other members and bad for democracy.

3. Growing role of money and muscle power, especially during elections. Parties tend to nominate candidates who can raise lots of money, and rich people and companies who fund parties influence their policies; in some cases parties even support criminals who can win.

4. Parties often do not offer a meaningful choice to the voters, as ideological differences among parties have declined and the major parties differ little on economic policies.

Some reforms suggested to strengthen political parties are:

1. A law should be made to regulate the internal affairs of parties, making it compulsory for them to maintain a register of members, follow their own constitution, have an independent authority to judge party disputes, and hold open elections to the highest posts.

2. It should be made mandatory for parties to give a minimum number of tickets, about one-third, to women candidates, and there should be a quota for women in the decision-making bodies of the party.

3. There should be state funding of elections, where the government gives parties support for election expenses, either in kind (petrol, paper, telephone) or in cash based on the votes secured in the last election.

Two other ways can help: people can put pressure on parties through petitions, publicity and agitations, and those who want change can join political parties, since the quality of democracy depends on public participation.

A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government.

Parties reflect fundamental political divisions in a society and involve partisanship, so a party is known by which part of society it stands for, which policies it supports and whose interests it upholds.