A Theory of Parties and Electoral Systems

6. An Intensive Test: Verification

An Intensive Test: Verification IN the preceding chapters, the electoral systems of Great Britain, Ireland, and Italy have been examined in the light of a theory of candidate rationality to the point at which specific predictions have been made regarding the nature of parliamentary parties in these countries. This chapter concludes the intensive test by doing two things* First, the process by which these predictions were reached will be reviewedbriefly for each country. Second, the actual nature of the six parliamentary parties studied will be described so that it may be seen thatthe predictionsmade are, in fact, accurate, In doing this, only those aspects of the parliamentaryparties that are relevant to the predictions will be considered. Since these predictions have dealt with broad characteristics, these discussions will not require the wealth of detail expected in single-party or single-nation studies and may, therefore, initiallyappear somewhat superficial. The differences among the parliamentary parties of the three countries studied are so large, however, as to make relatively gross comparisons adequate for the purpose of showing that the equallygross differences predicted by the theory presented here obtain in the real world. Britain A British parliamentary candidate is selected primarily as a spokesman for his national party, So long as he is prepared to defend his party and its platform before the electorate and to support the party's leaders on divisions in the House of Commons, the candidate personally may oppose them on some issues. The candidate's personal strengthwithin the party, or the support of prominentparty leaders or interest groups are of little effect in securing nomination, and indeed even a former cabinet minister sometimes has trouble finding a constituency. At the same time, the intensity of his conflict with other would-be candidates is moderated by the fact that those not selected in one constituency may be adopted in another. 100 6 An Intensive Test: Verification 101 Once adopted, the candidate campaigns in an environmentthat is again oriented toward party, Britishvoters maketheir decisions in terms of party; although the ballot lists only candidates, and not parties,1 and although the personalities of the national leaders may have a significant impact on voter choice* it is universally conceded that the local parliamentary candidates influence at most several hundredvotes. The resources the candidate needs are procured for him by the constituency party, which in most cases will organize his campaign as well The orientation of the electorate toward party, together with the size of the constituencies, leads to concentration on issues^ and these tend to be national. Because of the effects of the singlemember plurality electoral law, this leads to the prediction that British parties will conform wellto the norms of cohesion and issueorientation, but will not be ideological The Conservative party readily can trace its history back to the Toriesof the eighteenth century and continuously has been identified with the traditional forces inBritishsociety, the aristocracies first ofbirth and thenof wealth, the established church, and the empire. The Labour party arose from the movement of the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries to secure direct representation in Parliament of working people by working people, and rose rapidly to replace the Liberals as the country's second party, providingthe classic example of the "squeezing" of a center party in a single-member plurality system.2 In termsof the social bases of their support, the two majorBritish parties are different, but not overwhelmingly so. The Labour party is a working class party; 75 percent of its voters are self-described members of the working class. On the other hand, whilethe Conservativeparty is the strong choice of the upper and middle classes, because of the relatively smaller numbers in these classes, over half of its supporters are workingclass as well3 Thus, the class orientation of the parties is tempered by the fact that each party must have significant support from more than one class if it is to be victorious. The class basis of the party system does not, therefore, as it might under an electoral system more favorable to such competition, lead to ideological conflict between a Marxist party and a capitalist one? notwithstanding the fact that the Labour party isnominallysocialist and many ofits members are themselves Marxists. At the parliamentary level, the class differences betweenthe parties have become progressively smaller as more Labour MPs, and especially more Labour cabinet ministers, come from university backgrounds while fewer Conservatives come from the leading public schools. Rather, if there is an underlying philosophical difference between the British...