Abstract
In Political Parties and Democratic Linkage, Dalton, Farrell, and McAllister (hereafter DFM) conclude that “parties are nothing if not survivors” (p. 230). Contrary to many other recent studies of political parties, the authors object to the decline of parties thesis and provide a more optimistic assessment of parties—they have remained relevant by adapting and updating their roles. They reject the conventional wisdom of the fate of parties for several reasons: “The evidence of the decline is too selective, emphasizes changes in the mass public rather than in party performance, and is arguably too focused on the mass party ideal” (p. 14). Instead, the authors focus on the role that parties play as organizations. Overall, this book is a welcome addition to the ongoing debate on whether parties still matter in the age of an increased distrust of institutions, round-the-clock access to news and information, candidate- centered politics, and catchall parties. Political Parties and Democratic Linkage is clearly and engagingly written, grounded in the current literature, and accessible and relevant to both students and scholars.
Instead of following the format of many books on parties’ roles in democratic societies, which are typically organized following V. O. Key’s three party functions—party in the electorate, party as an organization, and party in government, Political Parties and Democratic Linkage is structured around what DFM label the “chain of democratic linkage.” This framework builds on Lawson’s (1980) conception of parties as providing the linkage between citizens and the state but is, however, at its core not that different from the functional roles of parties in Key’s model, as the authors rightly point out. DFM’s model of party linkage includes five forms of linkage—campaign, participatory, ideological, representative, and policy. The empirical chapters follow this framework and focus on three areas: the role of the party in the electorate, how voters continue to use parties as heuristics, and the role of parties in government. The authors show that parties continue to play an important role in campaigns and getting out the vote, that voters can correctly identify parties’ left–right positions and then use this information to inform their vote choice, and finally that there is voter–party congruence and that at the end of the day, it matters which parties are in office when looking specifically at social issues.
To test their claims, DFM primarily use data from the most recent wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), which consists of national surveys conducted between 2001 and 2006, and supplement it with additional data sources, including party expert surveys, data from the Comparative Manifestos Project, and social spending data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The overall analysis includes 36 countries from Module 2 of the CSES.
In chapters 2 and 3, DFM focus on the campaign and participatory forms of linkage, respectively. Looking at data on campaign funding, the authors find evidence of a strengthening of links between all parties and the state and not just between cartel parties (Katz & Mair, 1995) and the state. They find that parties still play a crucial role in the candidate recruitment process, which is strongest in new and developing democracies. They then confirm the relationship studied by Rosenstone and Hansen (1993) in the United States, that contact with political parties increases turnout.
In chapters 4–6, DFM investigate the ideology form of linkage and assess the relationship between voters’ and parties’ ideological positions using both CSES and expert survey data. First, they demonstrate that voters still use parties’ left–right position as a heuristic (chap. 4), next they show that voters know where parties are on the left–right spectrum (chap. 5), and then they illustrate that voters can choose the parties that match their left–right positions (chap. 6).
Last, in chapters 7 and 8, DFM turn to the final two aspects of their linkage model: representation and policy. They show that representation is a dynamic and iterative process and not a simple Downsian story of parties responding to voters. Through both prospective and retrospective evaluations of government, voters are able to provide important information to the current government and opposition parties. DFM find that once elected to office, parties largely implement the policies promised in their manifestos. In sum, they argue that elections improve the level of voter–party congruence. It is in this chapter where the authors could engage more with the current literature on whether parties respond to voters, voters respond to parties, or if both processes are at work. Finally, in chapter 8, DFM examine social security expenditures of governments in OECD countries and find that left–right placement does predict social spending. They thus conclude that it matters which parties are in government. The authors, however, recognize that partisan politics is only one of several factors that drive social spending.
For readers familiar with the debate in the literature on whether parties still matter, a comparison with the earlier edited volume by Dalton and Wattenberg (2000), Parties Without Partisans, is evident. Different from Political Parties and Democratic Linkage, this earlier book (in which all three authors contributed) is decidedly more pessimistic in its assessment of parties. In this volume, the editors conclude that parties will survive because of their role in parliaments and governments as their roles in the electorate and as organizations have declined. Their conclusion is based on the evidence presented in the various chapters, which shows that parties are not mobilizing the way they used to, turnout is declining, the media have supplanted parties’ campaigns, party membership is declining, and there has been a decentralization of the selection process. Conversely, DFM, as discussed above, offer a much more optimistic assessment of parties—parties still mobilize voters and control the selection process, voters still vote based on ideology, and parties represent voters and have distinct positions. The authors posit that underlying their more optimistic outlook is that their focus is not on the mass public or the mass party ideal. However, because the conclusions of the two books are vastly different, I would have liked an explicit discussion of how the starting point of Parties without Partisans accounts for the more cautious assessment of the role of parties as compared to Political Parties and Democratic Linkage. Is it more empirical—a difference in data (the earlier book examines only OECD countries), a slightly different focus, a different period, or other factor? Or is it a difference in the assumption of the role or function of parties as linkage mechanisms?
Though this study is well conceived and executed, one can always find areas for improvement. I have identified three of these. First, although I liked the authors’ inclusion of new and developing democracies in their analysis, I would have liked to see more space devoted to how parties are perhaps different (in their role in society, function, etc.) in these countries and what this means for parties as institutions. Second, I also would have liked to see more emphasis on established versus newer parties, such as the Pirate Party, and how they may differ in fulfilling these linkage functions. Third, although I liked the discussion of electoral systems in chapter 2 and how they influence who wins, I would have liked further discussion and analysis of how electoral systems directly condition other linkage functions. Even with these shortcomings, this is an important and germane book that significantly contributes to the debate on the role of political parties.