MEANING OF POLITICAL PARTY

MEANING OF POLITICAL PARTY

A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government. They agree on some policies and programmes for the society with a view to promote the collective good. Since there can be different views on what is good for all parties try to persuade people why their policies are better than others. They seek to implement these policies by winning popular support through elections.

Thus, parties reflect fundamental political divisions in society. Parties are about a part of the society and thus involve PARTISANSHIP. Thus a party is known by which part it stands for, which policies it supports and whose interests it upholds. A political party has three components:

*  the leaders,

*  the active members and

*  the followers

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK

WHAT DOES A POLITICAL PARTY DO?

WHAT DOES A POLITICAL PARTY DO?

What does a political party do? Basically, political parties fill political offices and exercise political power. Parties do so by performing a series of functions:

1.  Parties contest elections. In most democracies, elections are fought mainly among the candidates put up by political parties. Parties select their candidates in different ways. In some countries, such as the USA, members and supporters of a party choose its candidates. Now more and more countries are following this method. In other countries like India, top party leaders choose candidates for contesting elections.

2.  Parties put forward different policies and programmes and the voters choose from them. Each of us may have different opinions and views on what policies are suitable for society. But no government can handle such a large variety of views. In a democracy, a large number of similar opinions have to be grouped together to provide a direction in which policies can be formulated by the governments. This is what the parties do. A party reduces a vast multitude of opinions into a few basic positions which it supports. A government is expected to base its policies on the line taken by the RULING PARTY.

3.  Parties play a decisive role in making laws for a country. Formally, laws are debated and passed in the legislature. But since most of the members belong to a party, they go by the direction of the party leadership, irrespective of their personal opinions.

4.  Parties form and run governments. As we noted last year, the big policy decisions are taken by the political executive that comes from the political parties. Parties recruit leaders, train them and then make them ministers to run the government in the way they want.

5.  Those parties that lose in the elections play the role of opposition to the parties in power, by voicing different views and criticising the government for its failures or wrong policies. Opposition parties also mobilise opposition to the government.

6.  Parties shape public opinion. They raise and highlight issues. Parties have lakhs of members and activists spread all over the country. Many of the pressure groups are the extensions of political parties among different sections of society. Parties sometimes also launch movements for the resolution of problems faced by people. Often opinions in the society crystallise on the lines parties take.

7.  Parties provide people access to government machinery and welfare schemes implemented by governments. For an ordinary citizen, it is easy to approach a local party leader than a government officer. That is why they feel close to parties even when they do not fully trust them. Parties have to be responsive to people’s needs and demands. Otherwise, people can reject those parties in the next elections.

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK

NECESSITY OF POLITICAL PARTY

NECESSITY OF POLITICAL PARTY

This list of functions in a sense answers the question asked above: we need political parties because they perform all these functions. But we still need to ask why modern democracies cannot exist without political parties. We can understand the necessity of political parties by imagining a situation without parties. Every candidate in the elections will be independent. So no one will be able to make any promises to the people about any major policy changes. The government may be formed, but its utility will remain ever uncertain. Elected representatives will be accountable to their constituency for what they do in the locality. But no one will be responsible for how the country will be run.

We can also think about it by looking at the non-party based elections to the panchayat in many states. Although the parties do not contest formally, it is generally noticed that the village gets split into more than one faction, each of which puts up a ‘panel’ of its candidates. This is exactly what the party does. That is the reason we find political parties in almost all countries of the world, whether these countries are big or small, old or new, developed or developing.

The rise of political parties is directly linked to the emergence of representative democracies. As we have seen, large societies need representative democracy. As societies became large and complex, they also needed some agency to gather different views on various issues and to present these to the government. They needed some ways, to bring various representatives together so that a responsible government could be formed. They needed a mechanism to support or restrain the government, make policies, justify or oppose them. Political parties fulfill these needs that every representative government has. We can say that parties are a necessary condition for democracy.

Activity:

Categorise these photographs by the functions of political parties they illustrate. Find one photograph or news clipping from your own area for each of the functions listed above.

1: Activists of BJP Mahila Morcha demonstrate against hike in prices of onions and LPG in Visakhapatnam.

2: Minister distributes Rs One lakh cheque to the families of hooch victims at their houses.

3: Activists of CPI (M), CPI, OGP, and JD (S) take out a rally in Bhubaneswar to protest against POSCO, the Korean steel company for being permitted by the State Government to export iron ore from Orissa to feed steel plants in China and Korea

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK