Page 252 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Unit 10: Party System

3. Parties unite the people of a country by means of political mobilsation and recruitment. They Notes
not only place issues and matters before them, they give national character to local and regional
issues. The leaders move from one part of the country to another; they have a set of followers
hailing from different parts and regions of the country. They meet, they discuss, and then they
decide matters in a way so that a semblance of public interest may be accorded to them. The
result is that the working of the parties enables the people to distinguish between regional and
national matters and accordingly shape their ideas and attitudes. So it is said that the parties
“gather up the whole nation into fellowships, and they lead in the sense of bringing to the
individual citizen a vision of the whole nation, otherwise distant in history, territory and
futurity.”
4. Parties act as a check against the tendency of absolutism what is also known by the nicknames
of ‘Caesarism’ and ‘Bonapartism.’ When one party forms government or few parties form a
coalition to hold power, other parties play the role of opposition. It not only keeps the government
vigilant, it also prevents it from being arbitrary and irresponsible. The leaders of the opposition
expose acts of corruption, scandals and maladministration in which great men in power are
involved. Thus, great leaders like Prime Minister Macmillan of England and President Nixon
of the United States had to resign. Lowell, therefore, endorses: “The parties enable the people to
hold the government in check. The constant presence of a recognised opposition is an obstacle
to despotism.”
5. The parliamentary form of government cannot operate without the role of political parties. The
party getting majority in the elections forms the government and other parties form the
opposition. The Prime Minister is the leader of the majority party and theministers are his
partymen. If the ruling party resigns, the opposition parties may be given the chance to form
the alternative govenment. One may easily grasp the point that type of government cannot
separte if there is no party system in the country. Bryce says that “if there is no party voting,
and everybody gave his vote in accordance with his own, perhaps crude and ill-informed,
opinions, parliamentary government of the English type could not go on.”
6. It is also said that political parties impart political education to the people. The leaders of the
parties deliver public speeches, they lead processions and stage demonstrations, release pamphlets
and books, publish newspapers and periodicals and do many other things to have the participation
of the people in the domain of politics as far as possible. By organised campaigns and movements
of the political parties the people are awakened; they understand the value of their political rights;
they get lessons of political socialisation; they come forward with their demands, which the
government has to meet within the framework of the fundamental rules of the state.
7. Parties save a country from political turmoils created by crafty leaders. They appraise issues
and counter-issues and then apprise the people of their respective merits and demerits. They
may also warn and forewarn the people of certain consequences entitling from the commission
or omissions on certain counts. In other words, great leaders may put a check on the irresponsible
behaviour of the younger or distracted leaders whose doings may lead to unwarranted situations
of public resentment. Only strong parties may give a constructive direction to the enthusiasm
of the people.
But the party system has its demerits too. We may enumerate them as under:
1. The rise and development of party system is like an unnatural political phenomenon. Different
parties demonstrate an artificial agreement among people who profess to have identical views.
The disagreement with their opponents is, in the same fashion, based on artificial grounds.
Thus, reason is dominated by passions and emotions and the people agree to disagree in most
of the controversial situations just for the sake of sticking to their pretentious convictions. As a
result of this, groupism and factionalism develop that create conditions of ill-will and
confrontation. We may also take note of the fact that party system divides a community into
irreconcilable camps which seek to degrade each other. “It tends to make the political life of the
country machine-like or artificial. The party in opposition, or, as it is sometimes called, the outs
is always antagonistic to the party in power or the ins.”

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