BF2S Forums A Democracy Without Political Parties... Could It Work?

it did work. read up on your US history.

back when america was a wee baby, there were no political parties. it worked, parties were eventually born, and all went to hell.

Ender2309 wrote:

back when america was a wee baby, there were no political parties. it worked, parties were eventually born, and all went to hell.

Sure there were. Parties always existed. Recall your Federalists and Democratic Republicans for one.

I had a similar idea at one time though, that the nation would be better off without political parties. However, I began to learn more and more about how parties, lobbyists, and interest groups influence the policy made and saw that they were an essential linkage institution between the people and government. The government and its associated groups get a bad rap for stupid reasons. The real life pictures is much less bleak than what some would have us believe.

I have a few essays collected on this topic; I'll see if I can find them.

Last edited by DesertFox- (2007-12-16 14:49:51)

The only way it could possibly work would be to do away with the whole notion of nationhood and to forget about any large scale projects being built ever again.

ReTox wrote:

topthrill05 wrote:

But if we were to remove lobbyists from the situation then we would see a huge improvement.

On that I think everyone will agree.  Being able to buy politicians legally is ridiculous.  Lobbying can work but only if there is absolutely no money exchanged, no perks, no "per diem", and no freebies.

The problem I have with parties is that the actual politics of the issues become second to the backstabbing and bitching between differing party ideologies.  Doesn't matter if it is the right thing to do but more if it's what the party wants to endorse.

I hardly agree with that sentiment. How exactly are they buying politicians? Campaign money is severely limited and lobbyists aren't even allowed to pay for a dinner with a representative if they go out like that. The argument can be made that parties contribute to disenfranchising people to vote because they believe the entire government is so partisan as shown by the campaign platforms.
When political scientists talk about parties, a few favor the view of the responsible party model. In this, they believe that parties should:
1) present distinct, comprehensive programs for the nation
2) have candidates committed to the program and have internal cohesion to carry it out
3) have the majority party implement its programs, and minority state what it would do if in power
4) have majority party accept responsibility for performance of government.

This is probably what a lot of people would wish the parties would be like in opposition to the automatic negative connotation politics has in their mind. Most of the party arguments get done in the committees though, and the House is much more partisan than the Senate anyway. It's in their job description to have different views, different people to represent. You can't have a good representative democracy without argument unless everyone thinks the same way. This style of government wasn't designed to be fast though.

Read what else I wrote. Also, look at this.

That's what lobbyists do. Their job is to bring attention of policymakers to issues that they are concerned with. In return, the candidates will get campaign contributions. You've got a wide variety of interests to represent as an electd official with single issue voters and interest groups, but you also have the mixed interests of Joe Six-pack in your district. It's not as though you can't do anything about politicians in office. They can lose elections, which is why they are so concerned with their campaigns and the money they need to raise.

The fallacy of parties now is that the politicians are more endebted to The Party than to their constituents. That is a damn shame. In that regard, doing away with political parties would be a plus...the politicians would be answerable only to the electorate.

I was actually thinking about this last night. Is there a way that the US Legislative branch could be revamped to make the two parties less influential? But I kept coming back to the Bill of Rights, and how can it be done without infringing upon those? What about the other, less influential, parties out there?

Governments tend not to work optimally due to human error, self interest, etc.

-konfusion

mr.widdim wrote:

Our country was founded without taking political parties into consideration...

Washington warned of the dangers of partisan government when he left office and Madison wrote of the dangers of what he called "faction" (pretty much what parties have become) in Federalist #10. The Founders played a great role in creating the party system in this country anyway. Though today, parties are much weaker than they have been in the past of this country.

DesertFox- wrote:

Read what else I wrote. Also, look at this.

That's what lobbyists do. Their job is to bring attention of policymakers to issues that they are concerned with. In return, the candidates will get campaign contributions. You've got a wide variety of interests to represent as an electd official with single issue voters and interest groups, but you also have the mixed interests of Joe Six-pack in your district. It's not as though you can't do anything about politicians in office. They can lose elections, which is why they are so concerned with their campaigns and the money they need to raise.

I know that contributions are important but the problem is that some corporations/organizations will do just about anything to get around the limits and rules, even getting friends and family to contribute to the same politician because they need to get the bill passed into law.

The trick is getting politicians who represent all the people.  Many seemingly good proposals create a tyrrany of the majority...rule by mob is not very good if you are not part of the mob!

Democracy only works because the parties oppose each other and stop things from getting done on a wide scale. Single-party states get things done.
Such as invading france. England and Germany have a history of doing that when they get one strong ruler and no opposition. The soviet union ran itself into the ground. North Korea is being threatened by the US for having missiles. Iraq is a warzone.

We need political parties so politics happens on a scale longer than terms of office. God forbid someone DOES something, that messes everything up.