Qn 16. Comment on the decline of political parties and examine whether new social movements shall be an alternate strategy for establishing link between government and society. (2016/II/Q.1b/10m)
Political parties are organisations seeking government office. New social movements are group phenomenon articulating specific post-materialist interests. In the modern age, changing roles of political parties and social movements can be linked.
A political party is an organised group with similar political aims and opinions, that seeks to influence public policy, by getting its candidates elected to public office.
Decline of political parties principally stems from the evidence of their decline as agents of representation and as effective links between the government and the people.
Reasons can be—
- Parties are viewed as political professionals, pursuing power, high office and corruption, and not ‘of the people’
- real or perceived oligarchical character (being viewed as bureaucratised political machines, with grass-root members inactive or engaged in impotent roles)
- traditional social identities which gave birth to the parties have begun to fade in a globalising world (e.g. decline of class-politics, old social, religious and other solidarities).
A ‘crisis of party politics’ can be witnessed in decline of both party membership and partisanship (reflected in partisan de-alignment). Research suggests —
- lesser proportion of people join political parties,
- average age of party member has risen,
- voter turnout is falling,
- dramatic electoral swings etc.
- Many herald ‘anti-politics’ - the rise of political movements and organisations, solely as apathy towards conventional power holders.
The emergence of these new phenomena is also reflected in the rise of new social movements.
New social movements are labelled to select collective actions that emerged and flourished since the 1960s, in the West, and 1970s, in the East. These were facilitated by globalisation and fuelled by information and communication technology. These mainly include:
- the women’s movement (pursue gender equality and anti-patriarchy, including equal pay and opportunities etc.)
- the environmental (or green) movement (advocating valuing and conservation of the environment, as per recognition of its fragility and deterioration by anthropogenic factors),
- peace movement (shunning violence and promoting compassion),
- anti-capitalist or anti-globalisation movements (such as ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement, 2011 and ‘battle of Seattle’, 1999) – these involve environmental, developmental, ethnic-nationalist, anarchist and revolutionary socialist groups, inter alia.
New social movements as alternate strategy: Complex, modern societies are difficult to govern. Cynicism and disillusionment grow as parties promise improvement and problem-solving but fail to deliver when in government power. This adds to the growing influence of interest groups. Plus, with fading social identities and old solidarities, new aspirations and sensibilities have come into the agenda – notably those associated with post-materialism (as projected by new social movements).
Even when these new social movements articulate their interests through party organisation, they assume the mantle of anti-party parties. In addition, single issue based protest movements are successfully attracting membership and support (particularly youth), as they are —
- more loosely based
- Highly localised
- emphasise participation
- encourage activism.
- Information and communication technology has accelerated awareness, organisation and social mobilisation.
It has been witnessed in the Arab Spring chain-reaction, western anti-capitalist protests and even women rights, anti-corruption and environmental movements in India.
In the modern globalising world, traditional political party functioning has been inadequate. Thus, these new social movements and single-issue groups may well be gradually taking over the role of traditional political parties – articulating, needs, aspirations and goals of the electorate – i.e. linking government and society.