To what extent are parties effective in promoting political participation?

This is an essay I wrote back in my first year of college while learning about political parties in the UK. When I read it now it looks terrible and I can't believe that I did well, but there you go! Time makes me super-critical.

Robyn, UK

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.

Why, and to what extent is there consensus between the major UK parties?

In post 1945 there was a lot of consensus between social democracy and one nation conservatism. This was contrasted by the arrival of Thatcherism in the 1970s which created adversary politics as Labour, went further left in an attempt to offset the new right of Thatcherism. Blairism created more consensus politics as he adopted some Thatcherite policies and ideas as well as post 1945 social democratic ideas. In the UK today there is still consensus politics.

There is more consensus politics as parties are becoming more of catch-all parties than pragmatic parties. This can be seen in the election of David Cameron as the leader of the conservative party. He has modernised the party in an attempt to attract homosexuals, ethnic minorities and the poor. This has meant that Cameron is a One Nation tory and has led to similar social policies between Labour and the Conservatives.

In terms of crime, the Conservatives want to empower communities by rebuilding the bond between the police and the public. They believe this will be done by cutting paperwork and reforming the regulation of investigatory powers act. Labour also want to build a better relationship between communities and the police by making it easy to contact the police working with them to agree on local priorities and deal with peoples concerns. Although there is a lot of consensus in this area, as they both want to better the relationship between police and communities, there is also a lot of adversary politics, which can be seen in the way that they would do this. While conservatives would change laws and regulations, the Labour party would just try to create more communication rather than changing laws. This means that Conservatives want to do something big to show change, where as Labour want to leave the law as it is but create the belief that things have changed.

There is more adversary policies when it comes to families and financial help than with anything else. This is because Cameron has stuck with the traditional Conservative family views whereas Labour believe that single parent families and couples need more support than married couples. This can be seen in Labours plans to increase child benefit, cut income tax, extend maternity leave and help businesses such as Sure Start. Conservatives, meanwhile, would change the laws, systems and rights for different types of families such as ending the couple penalty. This shows that Conservatives are more concerned with giving different families different rights to help them and then leaving them to it, whereas Labour gives money to help but doesn’t change any law, therefore help isn’t only for those who need it.