What are the roles of political parties and how effectively do they carry this out?

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What are the roles of political parties and how effectively do they carry this out?

Liberal democracy would not be able to function without political parties.  They are a logical and inevitable result of representative democracy.  Over the last 100 years with the evolution of political parties they have developed a number of functions.  However recently there has been increasing criticism that these parties are not fulfilling their responsibilities.

The most obvious role of political parties is to govern.  They exist for the purpose of fighting elections and winning power so that they might govern.  To the large parties power is all that matters because by having it they have an opportunity to rule.  The Liberal Democrats who in the near future have no hope of power exists in a hope to change this and eventually gain control.  However small parties who have no hope of ever getting into power must instead content themselves with highlighting their cause.  They act in a similar manner to pressure groups, for example the Green Party exists to shame the larger parties into more environmentally friendly policies.  The power hungry attitude projects a very selfish image and parties have often been criticised with being self-interested and concerned with power alone, rather than improving the country.  

A function of political parties is to formulate ideas and policies to present to the electorate.  The electorate will then vote for them depending on these policies thereby giving them a mandate to govern.  This puts pressure on parties to come up with winning ideas. When formulating policies parties must balance both electoral and ideological considerations.  They must remain populist and yet at the same time stay true to their ideals.  If lean to far in either direction they will lose credibility and people will no longer vote for them.  It is very important to maintain a balance between principal and populist because manifestos are what the electorate reviews parties and the electorate determines success or failure.  For instance if Labour do fulfil their promise to reform public services then the electorate may choose to vote against them at the next general election.  This need for winning policies limits parties’ ability to perform this role effectively.  In ideological terms they lack adventure, unwilling to present too radical policies which might jeopardise their chances of election.  Because of this electorates are often presented with stale ideas which have simply been repackaged and labelled as a new revolutionary idea.

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Another function expected of political parties is the electoral function.  Simply by existing parties give the electorate someone to vote for.  It allows the public to make sense of politics as they can predict the ideological direction of each party and will therefore know where they stand for most issues.  This has led to party alignment where voters associate with a political party with life as they have similar political views. In ‘safe’ constituencies the public vote for the same party each general election such as Kensington. Despite this there has been doubt over how effectively parties actually perform ...

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