Politics Essay: Political Parties

To what extent are parties effective in promoting political participation?

Political parties depend on political participation as they need good political participation to ensure a good turnout at elections. As political parties are brought to government power by the electorate, they need the electorate to have political participation. Political participation, therefore, is one of the functions of a political party.

The first activity that political parties have for participation is the opportunity for people to become members of the political party. By being a member, people can help to shape party policy by submitting their ideas. However the membership of parties in the UK has fallen and so less political participation is made this way. Also, political parties do not make much effort to make the public members of their party and only really try to elicit support at the time of the general election. Also, while some members are very active in supporting the party, the majority are very passive and so do not have any political participation anyway.

Political parties also help to educate and mobilize the electorate. They do this through a range of activities such as meetings, canvassing and advertising. The majority of these activities are done only around the time of the general election ad also all the activities are designed to elicit support for that party and its policy and ideological agendas. This means that the electorate are only actually educated during certain periods of time and all the education is very biased. This means that the electorate are only party educated, not politically educated.

Political parties have not succeeded in their aims to mobilize the electorate, as shown by the decrease in turnout for the general election. This means that their campaign activities and opportunities for people to become members haven’t filled the function of increasing political participation.

Robyn