Representative Systems Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Extant democracies are based on representation: decisions are taken by politicians, elected and regularly controlled by citizens. In this process, political parties play a crucial role. They build up the alternative political projects among which citizens choose in elections. By doing this, parties both aggregate and reflect some of the different interests in conflict that can be found in any given society; for instance, among territories, social classes, ethnic groups, or religious denominations. In spite of the growing literature on the crisis of parties, democracy and representation cannot be understood without them.

How Social Conflicts Condition Representative Systems

Political parties reflect social conflicts between groups with different interests or values. However, not all interests in conflict are equally represented in all contexts. Certain issues, such as class or language, may be the fundamental axes along which party systems are structured in some cases, but not in others. Which conflicts have become predominant cleavages that have shaped the structure of the party system?

A social conflict becomes a cleavage when it fulfills three conditions. Firstly, it involves a social division that separates groups with different characteristics, such as ethnic origin, language, religion, or occupation. Second, the people separated by this division are conscious of their collective identity and share certain common values, culture, or ideologies as members of their respective groups. Finally, a cleavage has also an organizational dimension: the groups separated by the cleavage, with a common identity or culture, tend to form their own organizations such as trade unions, parties, or other associations to defend their interests.

Social cleavages are thus based on social differences that result from historical processes, but also are politically constructed, reinforced, or smoothed down by political entrepreneurs, parties, and other organizations.

In their seminal work on party systems, Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967) distinguished four main cleavage lines that are at the origin of contemporary political alignments in the early years of western European democracies. Two of them—center versus periphery, state versus church—are the result of the process of creation of nation-states in the modern age, triggered in France, while the other two—rural versus urban, workers versus employers—appear as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution that started a few centuries later in Britain.

The center-periphery cleavage appeared as the result of the conflict between the national elites wanting to standardize laws, markets, and cultures within the state borders, and the communities, normally situated in the periphery, wanting to preserve their autonomy. This resistance to centralization ended up in cases of independence (such as Ireland from the United Kingdom) or absorption of the minorities by the center in more successful processes of nation-building (such as the French). In many other cases the tension between the dominant center and the ethnic and linguistic minorities was translated into the party system, such as for instance in Spain or Belgium, with party systems that include regionalist or nationalist parties.

The state-church cleavage opposed the centralizing and mobilizing nation-state to the traditional privileges of the church, particularly concerning education, a fundamental tool for standardization. In some countries, such as for instance the Netherlands, the churches (Catholic and Protestant) managed to create vertical networks of associations, including religious parties, to ensure maximum loyalty from their faithful citizens.

The Industrial Revolution shifted conflict toward economic issues, once there was already a certain degree of national consolidation. The growth of trade and industrial production introduced tensions between primary producers in the countryside and merchants and entrepreneurs in the cities. In the Nordic countries, this conflict overlapped with the center-periphery opposing conservative-agrarian and liberal-radical parties.

Finally, conflicts in the labor market between workers and employer were reflected in all western European party systems with the appearance of socialist parties defending working-class interests. In the Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom, these parties were soon integrated into the system, while in Germany and southern Europe, socialist movements were repressed and did not become fully integrated until the end of World War II (1939–1945).

This scheme can broadly be applied to the United States and to other democracies. In the United States, for instance, the tension between the North and the South can be considered a form of center-periphery cleavage, the religious cleavage opposes Protestants to other denominations, and there is also a noteworthy rural-urban distinction. But there is also a significant difference: no party in the United States can be considered a working-class party, as we find in most western European countries. This responds to several characteristics of the American political system: workers were enfranchised much earlier in the United States than in Europe, the system was more open to better education and social mobility, there were very large amounts of religious and ethnic heterogeneity within urban workers as well as among the very large rural population, and the prevailing political culture opposed high government intervention.

Thus, although we can find some common patterns, countries differ in the way social differences become cleavages and structure the party system. Depending on different patterns of historical alliances among actors, some conflicts became dividing lines across parties and others did not. In some cases social cleavages encapsulate segments of society (producing pillarization or verzuilling). In some others social differences within parties are as important as those between parties. But whether reflecting closed cleavages or not, once they become established in a fully enfranchised electorate, parties are political organizations that tend to stay and are difficult to change. This means that to a large extent and in spite of the social changes that have occurred in the past years, extant parties are those that were in existence a few decades ago, reflecting a freezing of party alternatives.

Postindustrialized societies of the early twenty-first century are, however, very different to those in the mid-twentieth century. The expansion of the welfare state has smoothed class differences, education has expanded throughout society, and mass media have assumed many of the functions that parties used to perform. It should come to no surprise, therefore, that traditional social divisions (particularly class) and long-term attitudes such as party identification are becoming less important in explaining vote choice. Although the empirical evidence is mixed, other aspects related to the political context, such as issue positions, candidate evaluations, or evaluations of government economic performance, could be becoming more relevant. According to some authors, the political agenda now includes postmaterialist concerns such as environmental protection, alternative lifestyles, participation, self-realization, or minority rights. These issues have in some occasions been accommodated into the old parties (like in the United States) or produced new parties (like the environmental parties in France or Germany). New extreme right parties have appeared also in some places as a reaction to the new left. Parties have experienced change particularly in their organization, in their relationship with both civil society and the state, evolving from the mass party, to the catch all and the cartel party. However, new parties based on new social conflicts have not replaced most of the traditional parties born from the old classic conflicts of class, religion, and territory.

How Institutions Condition Representative Systems

Democracies are organized in a variety of ways. They differ widely in a number of institutional features that condition the way representation works and the role of parties. In some contexts parties are the crucial actors, while in others individual representatives have a more important part. In some countries the institutional setting leaves room for the representation of many different parties, while in others there are high thresholds of access that only the largest ones can overcome. Some institutional features also condition the extent to which members of parliaments are a biased or a representative sample of the electorate in terms of attitudes and social characteristics.

Presidential and parliamentary systems, for instance, have very different expectations considering the role parties should play. To start with, the very personalistic nature of presidential elections reduces the weight of parties. Particularly in the United States, candidates are not party leaders, but self-promoted individuals with large fund-raising abilities. It is presidential candidates, and not so much parties, that articulate broad government policies. Moreover, in presidential systems, parties are not necessary for government stability. Presidents do not need the support of congress to stay in office, and thus representatives belonging to the president’s party may eventually vote against the president without bringing about a government crisis. This means representatives may feel freer to defend the interests of their local constituency. This may be good, but also can bring about a number of less heartening consequences: a fragmented legislature defending particularistic constituency interests in detriment of broader policy considerations and lack of cohesion and ideological commitment.

In parliamentary systems, on the contrary, government stability depends on stable parliamentary majorities, which can only be secured by party discipline. In these systems, parties are the key actors both in parliamentary elections and in parliaments. Party discipline is a standard feature of European parliamentarism. While sometimes considered as a limitation to a representative mandate and to the ability of members of parliament to represent the interests of their constituency when they contradict the party line, it is also a means to guarantee party cohesion and government stability.

The electoral system is another fundamental institutional feature that can reinforce these differences in representation across systems. The electoral system may play an important role in structuring the behavior of representatives in cases where there is a difference between party policy positions and the interests of local districts.

Single-member districts were the first used, at the early stages of democratization, before suffrage was extended to the whole population, mass parties appeared, and party discipline became a common feature of parliamentary democracy. In this electoral system (currently still used in countries like France, the United Kingdom, or the United States), territorial representation is central. Representatives are very visible to their local constituents and thus may find it useful to pay close attention to the interests of their electoral districts if they seek reelection. This also may happen in other electoral systems where candidates must compete among themselves, such as the Irish or the Finnish.

On the contrary, in some proportional electoral systems (for instance, those of Spain or Portugal), citizens can only choose among closed party lists, usually made by the parties’ apparatus themselves. In this case, the chances of a representative being (re)elected depends largely on being located in a top position in those lists, and thus on the party decision. The representative has then many incentives to follow the party guidelines and less to cultivate a close link to the territorial constituency. The degree of personalization in the electoral system, which depends on the type of district and on the ballot design, thus influences the style of representation. The stronger linkage between the representative and her territorial constituency is actually one of the arguments in favor of single-member districts (although not entirely undisputed).

However, single-member districts have other consequences for representation. Only the winner can take the (single) seat in each district. This means that smaller parties—unless they have their electoral support concentrated in a few districts were they can win a plurality or a majority—are strongly underrepresented in parliament, if they manage to get any representation at all. Electoral systems thus not only affect the behavior of representatives, but also who actually gets representation. Small parties are better represented in systems with proportional representation and large districts. There is thus a close relationship between the proportionality of the electoral system (mainly a consequence of district magnitude) and the number of political parties that obtain seats in parliament. This is important because a larger number of parties is usually considered to provide a wider choice for citizens, and a better representation of voters’ heterogeneity. It also partially explains why the American parties are large, broad, and loose coalitions of very heterogeneous voters. They reflect the decentralized structure of the state as well as the closure of the electoral system: no third party has managed to overcome the high electoral threshold of the American electoral system at the federal level.

Beyond effects on party representation, scholars have argued also that women and minorities of any kind are better represented in systems with high levels of proportionality. This refers to the descriptive notion of the concept of representation, as stated by Hanna Pitkin (1972), according to which the representatives are expected to be similar to the population they represent in terms of attitudes and social attributes. Although many authors tend to disregard descriptive representation as problematic (arguing, for instance, that what is important is the accountability of the representative), others acknowledge its importance in certain circumstances, like when interests are not clearly articulated before the election takes place, or in contexts of deep distrust.

Encompassing several institutional features Arend Lijphart (1999) has distinguished between majoritarian or Westminster democracies and consociational democracies. In the Westminster model of democracy, representation is articulated as to produce a majority in parliament, which would support a single-party government during (hopefully) a whole legislature. Thus there is a single relevant house in a centralized state, with a majority produced by a plurality or majoritarian electoral system. The party system is then likely to be structured around two main alternatives that change from government to opposition depending on how well they perform (like in the United Kingdom).

This system would not be applicable to plural or segmented societies, deeply divided by a number of social cleavages, usually class, religion, or language (such as Belgium, the Netherlands, or Switzerland) where there is no clearly identifiable majority. This is why consociational democracies are organized over the proportional representation of all relevant minorities in parliament, in government, and in all relevant institutions. Other relevant features of this pattern of democracy are a decentralized state, a veto right for minorities, and political elites that tend to cooperate rather than compete. Lijphart has explored the consequences of these two models, coming to the conclusion that consociational democracies outperform majoritarian systems on measures of political equality, women representation, and proximity between voter preferences and government policies, but other authors contend that minority interests are actually better served under majority rule.

The Linkage Between Citizens, Representatives, And Parties

When talking about representative systems, it seems reasonable to inquire how well citizen interests are represented, or in other words, to what extent the views of the representatives reflect those of the citizens they represent. This is, however, a tricky question for several reasons. In the first place, it would be difficult to argue that citizens have independent, exogenous attitudes; on the contrary, these often are shaped by the parties and representatives themselves. For instance, issue positions and candidate evaluations are to a large extent the result of party identification. Secondly, even a perfect match between citizens and representatives’ characteristics and issue positions would not mean we have the best possible substantive representation, nor that citizens are actually controlling their representatives. It is not clear which should be considered the relevant issues, and in any case being or thinking is not the same as doing. One should consider what the representative actually does for the represented, and whether the representative is responsive and accountable to voters.

Still, citizen-elite agreement or correspondence, though difficult to analyze because of scarce data, have become a standard for judging the quality of representative systems. There are several ways of analyzing this relationship. Some authors have analyzed the dyadic correspondence between the constituency opinion and their representative behavior. This makes sense in single-member district electoral systems, in which each constituency elects a single representative. However, citizens also can be represented in parliament by representatives elected in other constituencies, so the distribution of elite attitudes can also be compared to the distribution of citizens’ views in what is called collective correspondence. Where representatives are elected by parties rather than by voters, and parties behave in blocs within parliament, as in most European democracies, what is more interesting is the comparison between voters and party positions. The empirical analyses of these questions, certainly impossible to summarize here, have found that the degree of congruence between citizens and their representatives, whether individual legislators or parties, depends on many different factors: the policy domain, the attitudes of representatives, and the institutional and political characteristics of the context and of the parties themselves.

Interest representation in a political system depends on a combination of historical, socioeconomic, and institutional factors. Early social conflicts are reflected in party systems, that although have evolved reflecting social change, still mirror pervasive old-politics cleavages. Institutional variables such as the relationship between the executive and the legislature (presidentialism versus parlamentarism), the electoral system (plurality versus proportional), or the pattern of democracy (majoritarian versus consociational) have also a fundamental influence both on who gets elected (and thus who gets represented) and how representation works. The correspondence between citizens’ and representatives’ attitudes varies accordingly.

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