Reformations of Social Coalitions for Elections

This paper investigates how political parties reform its constituent support bases, especially when faced with political-economic crises.  It is argued that relatively small, third-force political parties can gain from a crisis while the other struggle. When a crisis hit democracies, the electorate expects political parties to actively play the leading role in overcoming the crisis.  Therefore, demand for political parties' activities tend to surge during crises, and some parties could exploit the opportunity to sell themselves despite parties' declining significance.

Decline of political parties has been studied for more than three decades. Studies of political parties have shown a lot of evidence and reasons of the decline. Now it seems that the future of political party is not bright unless some drastic changes are made. How can political parties regain popularity to survive?

A political actor who cares about and frequently checks its popularity is the government. Popularity of the government is surveyed frequently in democracies. When the popularity is declining, the government tries to increase popularity or at least keep it from dropping further. One common maneuver to regain the popularity is reshuffling the cabinet: The executive change the members of her cabinet within her party to show how fresh her cabinet is.

Furthermore, in democracies, the coalition government is a norm, whether parliamentarism or presidentialism. Therefore, the executive can change not only the cabinet members within her party but also those across partner parties. That is, she can change combinations of parties forming the coalition. This implies that reshuffling of the coalition could be one effective measures to counter the declining popularity.

Then, the next question is if the executive reshuffle the coalition within her party. The term “coalition” most often describes a group of political parties formed to control the government, but each political party, usually viewed as a component of a coalition, contains a coalition within the party. If the party itself is another kind of coalition, why do political parties not try to reshuffle it to increase its popularity? Like coalitions of political parties, a political party can change its constituent members.

This paper investigates such possibility of coalition reshuffling within a political party. It is argued that some political parties change the constituent members when they have opportunity to do that, and such an opportunity has been given by the recent financial crisis.

The current financial crisis has had huge effects on ordinary people. In the developed world, most countries experienced a relatively long economic downturn on one level or another. While the financial crisis hits the electorate, political parties are in long-term crisis.

These two crises might be viewed quite differently by the electorate and parties. Most of the electorate, on the one hand, do not care about the political-party crisis. Whether political parties prosper or die, the people do not care. Even if they admire representative democracy, the crisis of political parties is not highly visible.

On the other hand, political parties take thought for the electorate because they can gain by doing so. The literature of economic voting provides strong evidence that the voters reward (punish) the government who improved (worsened) the economy at election in many different countries. Accordingly, the economic crisis for the people could bare its fangs against the government, and unlike the political-party crisis, an economic crisis is readily visible for the electorate.

Therefore, the relationship between political parties and the electorate regarding two different crises is asymmetric. The parties, not necessarily a cause of the financial crisis, are expected to act in a rapid and efficient manner, while the electorate, the main cause of the other crisis, is concerned only with the financial one. Yet, it does not mean that political parties have been put in a disadvantaged position. Rather, it could be a great opportunity for some parties to reform themselves and get through the crisis.

Depite their long-term slump, political parties are still alive. In fact, it is said that party politics is "still the only game in town for modern electoral democracy" (Dalton, Farrel, and McAllister 2011). The electorate needs political parties. But it is probably not in a peaceful, prospering time. In a good time, the ordinary people do not care about politics much. It is in a crisis when the electorate raises their awareness of politics and is more likely to need to depend on political parties. Given this perspective, an economic crisis can provide political parties with a chance to connect themselves with the electorate again.

However, political parties cannot count on the partisan votes to win an election any more. Instead of choosing a party based on partisanship, the larger number of voters are said to cast ballots based on valence issues. A good economy is an example of valence issues, and the studies of economic voting support the prediction. Therefore, political parties have to provide a good economy to the people. The key for an electoral victory is whether they can make voters believe that they will deliver the outcome the voters want.

Here is where the effect of the financial crisis comes in. Unlike a normal bad economy, the crisis hinted that the problem stemmed not just from the incompetent government, but also from the broader-range political-economic systems. Facing the situation, the voters should avoid to choose political parties that have constructed and driven the status quo politico-economic institutions. Therefore, the political parties who can enjoy the crisis as a chance should be relatively small parties that are usually not the formateur of the cabinets.

Based on these considerations, it is argued that relatively small parties gain some electoral benefits in an economic crisis. They obtain them by strategically changing their policy positions toward the voters who do not cast partisan votes. In other words, these parties try to form or reform their social coalition by moving their ideal points in order to win more votes at elections. I will demonstrate this by examining the survey data compiled by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems.