What is a Party?
A political party is a structured assembly of people who have the matching philosophy, or who else have the similar party-political positions, and who field contenders for votes or elections, in an effort to get them voted and thus accomplish the party’s program or agenda.
Question 1
- A diverse coalition (V.O. Key)
This theory entails a temporary alliance or partnering of different political parties to come together and combine their objectives to develop a coalition (Hrebenar, 2019). However, these political parties must be having similar values, interests, and goals which, when combined, conform a more reliable and powerful coalition.
Strengths
- An alliance increases the prospects for success since they have combined power, and hence their convincing power is high and can gain more citizens during elections.
- A coalition escalations the impact of the political parties’ effort since being involved in an alliance portrays that many people develop a well understanding of the goals and hence campaign on your side.
- Again, the individual political parties’ visions and missions are broadened by this unity. Thus they form a durable base for transformation, and therefore opposition groups have a challenge of disregarding the coalition’s determinations and manifesto.
Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Weaknesses
- The democratic principle of one party-one vote may not always be acceptable for political party members with a lot of power and resources. Thus the coalition must clearly define the relationships between the less-powerful and ruling parties.
- Individual parties may, at times fail to get their contributions to the alliance (Hilton, 2019).
- The coalition may be deteriorated if individual party members get diverted from other work since the non-alliance exertions become less operative.
- An essential ingredient of democracy (Woodrow Wilson)
This theory states that Parties should create obligations to the constituency, and further undertake them and develop substitutes while outside the party offices.
Strengths
- This theory has the capability to safeguard that there is the founding of a robust government that safeguards proficient productivity.
- There is upgraded democratic answerability since when there is the parting of obligations, it becomes easy to state if things are working as intended or not (Rosenbluth & Shapiro, 2018).
- The existing complications evident with government roles make it more fascinating to implement this theory since people want confidence in self-government.
Weaknesses
- The definition of the theory is very shallow and is also directed towards behavioral prescription rather than guiding towards the behavior of the government officials.
- Again, public administration or democracy revolves around public interest and least focuses on the achievement of the desired outcomes.
- Compromise has been termed as a success for the public administration since nobody owns a controlling number of shares in the government set-up.
- An open conspiracy against the separation of powers (Aldrich)
According to this theory, political Parties aid to evade the blockages generated by American federalism, comprising the parting amid executive or administrative and legislature or parliament and the supremacy of national governments.
Strengths
- Separation of authorities in the government guarantees that there is no misuse of power, and the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature cannot obstruct one another.
- It averts oppression between government roles (Beregovskiy, 2019).
- It offers the aptitude for each arm of the government to check and balance its basis.
Weaknesses
- Separation of powers can inhibit the performance of an individual arm of the government.
- It may initiate despotism since there is no antagonism or opposition to the government.
- Separation of powers inflicts internal boundaries by apportioning the government alongside itself, thus giving the arms distinct roles and compelling them to share sovereignty.
- An institutional product of communication technologies (Lepore)
This theory asserts that rebellions or revolutions in communication expertise form and reform party systems.
Strengths
- It helps citizens to obtain the necessary information for participation in the political process.
- Communication technologies aid decrease the existing gap between the government and the governed by providing new communication relations between the people and the ruling elite.
Weaknesses
- The citizenship information available may not be sufficient for public engagement.
- These technologies may be used by the government to communicate racist or undesirable information like enabling illegal organizations such as terrorism.
- A tool of politicians (Downs and Aldrich)
This theory states that Parties aid in enhancing the vocation objectives of politicians.
Strengths
- The basis of governance and its corresponding influence on the party’s program is scrutinized (Piketty, 2018).
- Parties develop substitutes to present strategies while out of office.
- Parties are very satisfactorily diverse to provide voters an actual selection during general elections.
Weaknesses
- This theory approves that only two-party rule is decent.
- The aspect of variation of parties may result in violently inconsistent policy.
Question 2
A strong political party shows a direct rule in demanding to elect aspirants and support voters. On the other hand, aspirants of a weak party rely on themselves, or mass media and interest crowds to get voted (Quirk, 2017).
Defending the Two-Party System
The two-party system is established from the histrionic changes in party federations or alliances and transformations aimed at democratizing the voting process (Livermore & Richardson, 2019). After establishing the two-party system, only two main parties in a country have a genuine chance of winning votes or elections.
Question 1
Openness is the strongest argument for defending the two-party system since there is a disclosure of the voting statistics whereby the votes of the two respective major parties in America are analyzed and the winner announced (Hilton, 2018). The weakest argument is flexibility since the two parties develop consistently and may at some point have equal power and bring challenges in the voting process.
Question 2
- They are less competitive.
- They encourage voter apathy since there are very few choices.
- They downplay alternative viewpoints.
References
Hrebenar, R. J. (2019). The Japanese party system: from one-party rule to coalition government. Routledge.
Hilton, A. (2019). The Politics Insurgents Make: Reconstructive Reformers in U.S. and U.K. Postwar Party Development. Polity, 51(3), 559-596.
Beregovskiy, A. I. (2019). Effect Of The Two-Party System On Voter Turnout In The United States Of America (Doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University).
Rosenbluth, F., & Shapiro, I. (2018). Responsible parties: Saving democracy from itself. Yale University Press.
Piketty, T. (2018). Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict. WID. world Working Paper, 7.
Quirk, P. J. (2017). The presidency.
Livermore, M. A., & Richardson, D. (2019). Administrative Law in an Era of Partisan Volatility. Emory LJ, 69, 1.
Hilton, A. (2018). The Politics Insurgents Make: Reconstructive Reformers in American and British Postwar Party Development. Polity (Forthcoming).