To What Extent the UK Has a 2 Party System - Essay Example

Order 193564 Topic: To what extent does the United Kingdom have a 2 party system INTRODUCTION Looking beyond Westminister, there is even less evidence of a two-party culture. Parties are, it is now generally agreed, indispensable features of democracy. The "two party system" develops out of the one-party predominance only after the resulting civil war had shown a people the danger of party violence. In England, in the course of the eighteenth century the idea of parties as a part of the governmental scheme had been dawning on the minds of the most acute observers. What is less readily seen is that the English "two party system" was rooted in a traditional struggle for spoils between two distinctly aristocratic functions or divisions of the aristocratically control. The description of British Government so far given has required frequent mention of political parties. The nearest approach to official recognition is in the rules for the formation of Committees of the House of Commons. Yet without them the whole nature of the Constitution would be changed and many of its conventions would become unworkable. The relations of Parliament to the Government on the one hand, and to the people on the other, are governed by the party system (Field, 1963). The essence of this system is that people who find themselves in agreement on major matters of policy should unite in organized bodies to secure the return to Parliament, and to other elected assemblies, of Members who will work for an agreed policy. Thus the party system plays a very important role in the political system of United Kingdom. 2. PROBLEM STATEMENT OF THE STUDY A political party is more or well organized group of citizens who act together as a political unit. They share or profess to share the same opinions on public queuing and by exercising their voting power towards a common end, seek to obtain control of the Government. In a democratic form of government there might be several parties. And they work through their own ideologies. But in the case study of United Kingdom we find two major parties working and dominating the state politics. This influence or domination is called in terms of Political Science a "two party system". There may existence more parties known as minor parties who are always under the control of the major parties and this absolute domination paves the way of Dictatorship in the politics of UK. Although democracy prevails in UK but practice is not absolute because of "two party system" that is a time demand for amendment. And this is a severe fault of democracy, however this defect of democracy as well as British govt. is aimed to evaluate in the thesis. 2. BI-PARTY SYSTEM BI-party system does not mean that a particular country has only two parties and there is no third party in it. It means there are only two major parties and the rest of the parties are less important. For example, there are more than two parties in England, viz.. Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Party, Fascist and Communist Party. But in politics, only two parties are important, i.e., the Conservative and the Labour Party. Sometimes the Conservative Party and at other times the Labour Party forms the Government. No seat has been obtained by the communist and the Fascist Party. In the House of Commons, the Liberal Party has only a few seats. Similarly in the U. S. A. though there are, many parties like the Communist Party, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, yet only Republican and Democratic Par-ties are important and they form the Government. The Communist Party has no importance in the politics, thus, there is a bi-party system in the Great Britain and the U.S.A. Where there is a multi-party system, there are more than two important parties in politics. This system prevails in France, West Germany, Italy and certain other countries of Europe. 3. POLITICAL PARTIES AND 2 PARTY SYSTEM IN UNITED KINGDOM (UK) The British parties have been inextricable entwined, cross-fertilizing each other with philosophy, policy, strategy and organizational form. Each party can therefore only be understood as part of a party system. Although it is common to characterize Brithain as having two-party system, this must be subject to qualification. There is usually an important third-party presence; indeed, seventy-one various parties actually contested in the 2001 election. 3.1 EMERGENCE OF TWO PARTY SYSTEM The "two-party system" is not a new practice in British politics (Verney, 1964). Britain has been living under a "two party system" since the mid-seventeenth Century. However, this system is still a foundation of most ideas of British politics. Other than America, Britain is one of the only major countries that have a "two party system". For hundreds of years, the "two party system" have dominated the British culture, but many people are confused by what a "two party system" actually means. Although a "two party system" is defined as 'two parties that are bigger than the rest, third parties have greatly impacted elections for over a hundred years' (Term Papers). 'Nearly all of the party systems in UK of the late nineteenth century were made after the British two-party system as well as degenerated to electoral machines completely controlled by means of the equivalent governments' (Franklin & Valen et. al., 1992, p 78). 'In the United Kingdom, importantly, the sustained revival of the Liberal party since 1970, the rise of nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland, and the new Social Democratic Party, posed significant challenges to the established two-party system' (Alvarez, & Naglar, 2000:59). The "two party system" have taken hold in England for the development of a cabinet system. The other important factor for "two party system" is the consequent development of a catholic party. England buttressed religious uniformity by depriving catholic and other religious dissenters of political privileges until well into the nineteenth century .As a result England could evolved the fundamental and simple division of conservatives and liberal party. The weak economic structure disallowed the development of social movements which would be able to change the political system. Social movements such as a socialist subculture have continuously been too weak to change the extremely oligarchic political structure of the late nineteenth century. The conservative and the Labour party face each other as the chief parties of the right and left. The Labour party is the political expression of a working class of people movement which can be seen developing from the time when the industrial revolution created. Its purpose is to use the democratic system of governance so as to transform Britain from capitalism to a socialist country. 3.2. TWO PARTY POLITICS IN RECENT YEAR Great Britain has a two-party political system. The two-party system has proven to be effective in Great Britain. There are many reasons that the party political system has persevered in Britain. Since 1979, the two parties have won the vast majority of the seats and also most of the votes. Another reason consists of economic factors as well as societal and issue-related factors. Both of them are structural as well as historical and they exist both internally and externally. Actually two parties successfully dominate the system and the political agenda as they hold most of the seats in both houses of Parliament the two parties have won the vast majority of the seats and also most of the votes and form the government where Small parties are rather immaterial. Thus they get absolute power in major issues and the UK has invariably experienced a two-party system since the nineteenth century. 4. INFLUENCES ON BI & TWO-PARTY SYSTEM 'For example, in the 1987 British general election survey, respondents were asked to provide the main reason for supporting a particular party at the polls - one of the three response options often used to indicate strategic behaviour was: "I really preferred another party but it had no chance of winning in this constituency."' (Alvarez, & Naglar, 2000:61). When it is evidently looking at the political system of United Kingdom it is not hard to think about the array of issue plaguing it, the issue of winner takes all creates a two-party system makes it difficult for an independent to gain success in any election. The procedure has shaped a "two party system" in which no other party except the two key ones has a chance to be elected. The political process has made the public choose between only two candidates, so the public feels like they have to choose the less of the two evils. The public generally are upset with how politicians campaign, behave, and are manipulate. Consensus decision making, another process for selecting an option based on people's preferences which, different a voting system, do not identify an accurate way to decide the winning option. 5. HOW EXTENT A TWO-PARTY SYSTEM It is definitely recognized that the United Kingdom has a "two party system" and behind this there are certain criterions. The two great Reforms Acts hardened the fluid parliamentary alliances with a new sense of party discipline, greatly enhancing the leaders' authority. Under the influence of the first-past-the post- electoral system, a broadly bi-partisan politics has evolved in Britain, held by apologies to have features peculiarly favourable to democracy and contrasted with West European multi-partisan. Much writing has extolled virtues such as strong single-party government and alternation of governments in office. Party politics in Britain are characterized by the existence of two great parties, rivals for government, and a third of lesser, but considerable size (Stewart, 1938:164). These parties have local organizations in every constituency responsible for choosing the candidate and conducting propaganda with assistance from a central office. Most of the agents in the constituencies and staff at the center are paid full time worker. Subscriptions from rich members form a considerable part of the funds among conservatives, a less proportion among the liberals and only a small sum for the labour party. These gifts are supplemented by small subscriptions from the rank and file, the bulk of labour's funds coming from that trade unionist who pay the political levy which makes them affiliated members of the party. This shape of political structure shows that mainly two parties dominate the politics of Britain and only one party shares some portion of the power. In this study follows the Alvarez-Nagler implementation of multinomial probit which assumes that the respondent's utility is a function of choice-specific and individual-specific characteristics (Alvarez and Nagler, 1998: 57-65): (1) where Uij=utility of the ith voter for the jth party; Ai=characteristics of the ith voter; Xij=characteristics of the jth party relative to the ith voter; =a vector of parameters relating the characteristics of a voter to the voter's utility for the jth party; a vector of parameters relating the relationship between the voter and the party (Xij) to the voter's utility for the party; =random disturbance for the ith voter for the jth party. So we estimate one set of (one for each prospective issue), and two sets of . One set of examines the relative effect of each voter attribute on the likelihood of the voter choosing Conservative over the Alliance, the second set of examines the relative effect of each voter attribute on the likelihood of the voter choosing Labour over Alliance. Yet British voters presumably did not view these three choices as truly distinct alternatives. Common wisdom holds that the Alliance was a substitute for Labour, or at least closer to Labour than to the Conservative party (Alvarez, & Naglar, 2000:68). Thus to a very large extent "two party system" prevails in United Kingdom politics. When we look at the political system of UK it is not hard to think about the array of issue plaguing it, the issue of winner takes all creates a "two-party system" makes it difficult for an independent to gain success in any election. The procedure has shaped a "two party system" in which no other party except the two key ones has a chance to be elected. The political process has made the public choose between only two candidates, so the public feels like they have to choose the less of the two evils. The public generally are upset with how politicians campaign, behave, and are manipulate. Consensus decision making, another process for selecting an option based on people's preferences which, different a voting system, do not identify an accurate way to decide the winning option. The study conceptualizes that United Kingdom (England) has a two party politics to a large scope. 6. CRITICISM ON TO WHAT EXTENT TWO PARTY SYSTEM IN UK In considering the political system of the United Kingdom there are, for many reasons and in many way, soon impressed by the fact that no two-party system of government anywhere can ever be an adequate and effective vehicle for the transmission of public opinion. Party politics specially "two party system" is developed in UK and still existing as the most popular party system (Edward, 1966). The people of UK are not fully familiar to the system but take it naturally. Party politics is one of the most common criticisms in where "two party system" has been criticized in great extent. It is said that in "two party system", mass individuals into groups and stifle independent thought but there is conflict in matter of opinion. The major party holds absolute power and neglects the opinion of the minor parties for benefit of the "two party system". The members of the majority party must approve of all the actions of their party and their government. They must learn to keep silent even if they find their government bungling. For this reason the party discipline is so rigid that any violation is bound to result in serious consequences. The dictatorship of the cabinet in England is partly due to the "two-party system" in that country. The two-party system results in an intolerant party spirit. The members of a party feel that whatever is done by their party is right and they are bound to support it in a truly patriotic manner. Even the national interests may be sacrificed at the altar of the party interests. Devotion to party gains has more importance than devotion to the country. Once the elections are over, the people become dumb-driven cattle. They are absolutely helpless even if the majority party bungles very badly. There is no provision for the recall of members and consequently the people cannot do anything effectively to stop the work of government. They can merely wait for the day when the new elections come and they are given an opportunity to have their revenge. This prevails that absolute democracy is not possible in a "two party system" politics. The study shows, therefore, that the British two-party system largely disfranchises an unknown but undoubtedly a very large number of citizens qualified to vote; that in the main this disfranchised group is made up of our better minds whose political will should be effectively registered as of right, and whose political thought, if registered, would afford a valuable contribution to American political life. This is-and will always he-the first signal failure of any two-party system. It had destroyed the status of the British Constitution and made it the British cabinet as a dictator. It enabled the government not only to propose but also to dispose whatever it wished to dispose. The government might even ignore the solemn pledges given at the time of elections. Under a two-party system, the choice of the voters was reduced to a simple acceptance or rejection of the whole political programme of one of the two parties. There is no other alternative. This is a sever effect of this system. The two-party system "substitutes blind devotion for intelligent appreciation and choice in both the followers and leaders." It creates strong vested interest and party prejudices. 7. CONCLUSION The fact that two-parties dominate Parliament does not mean that single-party government has invariable been the case. During the twentieth century, Britain experienced some twenty-one years of rule by a combination of parties. In "two party system", majority party means the ruling party has the sufficient majority in the legislature and the opposition party hold an insignificant position, the ruling party will act arbitrarily and it will not care for the opposition parties. It will give rise to the dictatorship of the ruling party. Therefore, it is said that for the success of democracy effective opposition is essential. There is in the United Kingdom yet another factor, unnatural in origin and bad in effect, which is determinative of party membership in many cases. In this country, largely as a result of the permanent two-party system, as I will show later on, there is a large group of people whose main business throughout life is politics. When their party is in power they have political jobs, varying degrees of authority, and in many cases certain income-producing "rackets." They seek in every possible way to strengthen their party's position so that it will remain in power and control as long as possible. The theory of ""two party system" " refers that there is no existence of third party in this system but while observing the "two party system" in UK we find that there are several parties and one of them shares a very short portion of power in the political system. The study can be concluded that the "two party system" in UK is not an absolute "two party system" government. 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An Analysis of Political System. London. Read More