Legitimation

Parties

Criticism of parties (III)

	Parties are often criticized for having insufficient legitimation vis-à-vis the amount of power they exercise. The social composition of the population is not mirrored in party membership, for example the disproportionate number of women party members. The first text on this page addresses this problem. The second text lists the main arguments surrounding the debate on a crisis of legitimation.
	The emergence of other competitive organizations wanting to participate politically in many democracies during the early 70s provided an indication that legitimation problems existed for political parties. We have made another text available on civil-action groups and their relationship to political parties, using Germany as an example [...to the text on civil-action groups]

Membership

Party democracy is based on the party-political commitment of citizens. As we have already established, however, the social composition of party memberships does not mirror the social composition of society as a whole. Women and manual workers, for instance, are under-proportionately represented in all the parties. Indeed this situation is skewed even further to the detriment of these groups when a distinction is made between formal membership and active party-political activity. The upper middle class dominate the composition of party membership (...).

Nonetheless, this lack of adequate representation of society's true social composition should not be over dramatized. Given that the "people's parties" have to take into account the needs of their voters, party policy and party interests are not necessarily and certainly not exclusively determined by the social standing of its members.

[Uwe Backes/Eckhard Jesse, taken from: Informationen zur politischen Bildung 207, Parteiendemokratie, Bonn BpB 1997]

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Legitimation crisis

One controversial issue surrounds the question as to whether the population actually regards political parties as being the legitimate representatives of its interests and as to whether party democracy is deeply rooted in the consciousness of the population (legitimized).

One group of critics (...) thinks that political parties are facing a serious lack of legitimation: The susceptibility of the capitalist state to crisis has an effect on the party system, because its legitimation stands on weakly developed foundations. 95 percent of citizens have nothing to do with political parties, and even large numbers of party members are active in a limited way only. Lightning strikes and especially civil-action groups, whose members see inadequate representation of their interests in the large parties, represent a growing number of groups that are questioning "established" party democracy (...)

In contrast, other political scientists (...) assume that political parties and the party system is anchored in the consciousness of a large majority of citizens and therefore enjoys a high degree of acceptance (...).

[Uwe Backes/Eckhard Jesse, taken from: Informationen zur politischen Bildung 207, Parteiendemokratie, Bonn BpB 1997]

The problem of party legitimation plays a major role in the discussion surrounding the "party state". This discussion is featured in a special section of basic course 5 [...to the section on "party state"]

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Subjects: Human Rights I Democracy  I Parties I Examples I Europe I Globalisation I United Nations I Sustainability

Methods:    Teaching Politics    II    Peace Education    II    Methods

This online service on the subject of political education was developed by agora-wissen, the Stuttgart-based Gesellschaft für Wissensvermittlung über neue Medien und politische Bildung (GbR) (Partnership for the Exchange of Information Using New Media and Political Education). Please contact us with your questions or comments. Translation from German into English by twigg's Übersetzung deutsch-englisch.