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Literature Review 2nd Draft

Literature Review

Lit Review 2nd Draft

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Introduction

Political parties in the UK, and many other liberal democracies, are seemingly in decline. The

pressures of social change and the opportunities afforded by the emerging mass media have left

parties isolated from their grassroots. As a result membership numbers and partisan sentiment

are both diminished and the legitimacy of political parties threatened.

Reversing this trend is no small matter. The social change elements of party decline mean that

any long term solution must come from changes in citizens rather than technical measures.

Despite this, developing technologies, in particular the Internet and the World Wide Web have

the potential to contribute to a revival of grassroots activism in parties, creating parties that are

more receptive to the intentions of their members.

Despite high profile claims about the democratising potential of the Web which have ultimately

proved to be unfounded, a recent set of technologies, and more importantly the associated ethos,

known as Web 2.0, promise to bring a conversational element to party politics which is

currently lacking. This may in future have ramifications for the party decline thesis.

This research is designed to assess what factors make a party more or less likely to adopt these

new technologies and this new ethos, how the new technologies are being used, and what

impact Web 2.0 is having on party organisation, specifically, if it is leading to more responsive

and conversational party organisation.

In this literature review I aim to outline the existing literature in this area. Firstly I consider the

party decline thesis, including the likely causes of the falling levels of participation in political

parties. I then go on to look at the Internet and the World Wide Web, specifically considering the

democratic potential of the web and how this has been evidently rejected on the back of

empirical analysis.

I then consider the Web specifically as it relates to political parties, covering the dominant

theories of how parties would respond to the potential offered by the Web and empirical

evidence of their response in practice.

Finally I will consider the embryonic field of Web 2.0 and suggest how this might apply to

political parties in the UK.

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The decline of political parties

A central argument in this thesis is that the political party as an institution in the UK is in

decline. This is not an uncontentious point, and I am careful to explain what I mean by decline.

Parties have been in the past and continue to be a key element of liberal democracies. Although

this status is in question, the level of participation within parties by citizens has declined. Parties

in the UK now have fewer members, less supporters, and are increasingly dominated by

professional elites rather than the grassroots.

In this chapter I argue that this lack of linkage between the party in the electorate and the party

elite has led to parties being seen as unresponsive and acts as a disincentive for citizens to

participate in parties, especially compared with more attractive options such as interest groups.

What is a party?

In the first instance we must ask ourselves the question What is a political party? There is no

simple answer, as the notion of a political party is difficult to compare to any other organisation

(Ware, 1996). To further complicate the issue, the idea of a party crosses cultural boundaries as

well, with the party fulfilling different roles in different states. The US approach to the party, for

instance, is significantly different from that of the UK, and in a country such as China, for

example, the role of a party is different again. The party seems to be all things to all people, and

as such, a comprehensive definition is perhaps beyond us, except to say that the party seems to

be an essential component in a democracy and in quite a few non-democratic countries as well.

Also, the party does not have to be a revered institution in order to function effectively; in some

countries such as the US there is outright anti-partyism which seemingly does little to damage

parties as a central plank of a democratic system (Ware, 1996).

Edmund Burke defines a party as:

A party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the nationalinterest upon some peculiar principal on which they are all agreed.

(Edmund Burke, 1770 quoted in Ware 1996, pg 5)

We have come to conceive of the modern political triumvirate, a collection of three mutually

supporting elements:

The party in the electorate

The party organisation

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The party in government

(Ware, 1996)

The party is not a monolith but a collection of different, some times competing interests. The

party in the electorate represents the voters and party supporters who the party supposedly

represents in the offices it seeks. The party organisation represents the party workers and

activists who work to organise the party in the electorate. Finally, the party in government

represents the party members who sit in government offices. In the UK, the party in government

is often termed the parliamentary party. If we consider this triumvirate to be a balance between

competing interests it reveals how the party might change over time, with power flowing from

one element to the other, often dependent on circumstance. Before the extension of the franchise

power could be viewed as being almost exclusively in the hands of those in government (theelite model). As these parties developed they created extra parliamentary organisations to

manage the party membership; these organisations have increasingly exerted control over party

affairs. In this case we can conceive of power flowing from the party in government to the party

organisation. Other parties practice extreme decentralisation, relying on the membership for

almost all policy and decision-making, power in the hands of the party in the electorate. For an

example of this kind of radical decentralisation in action we can look to the West German Green

Party in the 1980s(Frankland and Schoonmaker, 1992).

We know then a little about the different interests that form the political party, but we also need

to take a functional approach and ask what does a party do? At this point it is necessary to limit

discussion only to parties in liberal democratic governments, and not consider the idea of party

in states which are either illiberal or undemocratic. At many points in history the notion of party

and the idea of government have merged, resulting in political parties that are simply a means of

control as opposed to a means of representation. Again there are many different explanations of

party function with each writer providing his or her list of party function but in essence they are

all share enough commonalities that we can consider a broad consensus to exist (Webb, 2002).

As a starting point we might consider a single list of party functions:

Nominating candidates for public office

Adopting statements of policy primarily in an election platform

Mobilising support for each of the above candidates (public officials) and policies.

(Yani, 1999)

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Parties are responsible for providing a government to lead the state, adopting policies and

formulating manifestos, and finally for educating the voters and campaigning in favour of their

positions. Many other writers have tackled this subject but each has produced a list which

covers in varying degrees of detail the same three categories (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000,

Margetts, 2001, McKenzie, 1965). All of these functions could be theoretically distributed

between the different aspects of the party. In some parties for instance it is common for

individual members to take a strong role in leadership or candidate selection, with each member

receiving an individual vote, in other parties leadership selection takes place in the form of a

coronation without member involvement.

What Yani goes on to argue is that as well as these core functions the party is an important

source of legitimacy for candidates and also by extension the government of the day. Despite

the rhetoric of democracy we are exposed to on a daily basis the vast majority of the population

in the UK is controlled by the tiny minority sitting in Westminster. The individual voter has little

or no say over the day to day running of the country and yet we accept this state of affairs based

on the notion that the candidates we select every five or so years are taking those decisions on

our behalf and in line with what we would want. It is this clash of the rhetoric of equality and

the realities of representative democracy that parties serve to mitigate by speaking for the

people and then lending their legitimacy to candidates and if they are successful, governments.

In addition to its legitimising role, the party serves to lay out a stark and simple choice beforethe electorate, allowing them to choose from a series of pre-existing frameworks and arrive at

the party whose views are most closely allied with their own (Yani, 1999, Dalton and

Wattenberg, 2000). In this way voters are presented with a simplified decision at election time,

choosing between competing frameworks as opposed to searching for a candidate who

represents their exact position on the issues relevant to them. For instance it is easier to buy into

a party advocated position on the optimum response to the economic crisis than arrive at your

own response through independent research. For the majority of citizens, there are issues more

pressing than decisions of state and so consequently they effectively outsource their opinion

making to the party, accepting the party line on complex issues. Of course, this is not always the

case and dissention within the broad church of a modern party is perhaps inevitable, however

for the most part the party acts a guide for its members trying to navigate a complex political

field with limited resources in terms of both time and expertise.

Finally there is a more subversive aspect to parties. It has been argued that a political party is

little more than a vehicle for power for ambitious politicians whose interests inevitably clash

with those they claim to speak for. Such an cynical and elitist approach is summed up by

Michales use of the phrase The Iron Law of Oligarchy which argues that irrespective of the

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rhetoric employed or the best intentions of those who attain high office, political parties will

always be ruled by an elite with a selfish agenda (Michales, 1915).

Whatever the precise role of parties, many believe they are an unavoidable and necessary

element of government in the United Kingdom.

Parties provide the cohesion that makes government possible; the executive could not

be recruited and sustained in the House of Commons without party discipline. If parties

were as weak in parliament as they are, for example, in the United States Congress, that

Britain would face a severe problem of ungovernability.

(Whiteley et al., 1994)

Party Decline

In spite of the acknowledged role of parties as key institutions in liberal democracy, there is a

sense in some quarters that the political party is in decline (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000).

Measuring party membership is a very difficult proposition. There is no requirement for parties

to publish their membership figures, and arguably many reasons to exaggerate or distort the

figures when they do, as such any measurement of party membership represents only a best

guess (Margetts, 2001) (Scarrow, 2000). Despite these problems Katz and Mair found a

precipitous drop in party membership in the UK between 1964 and 1987. As a percentage of the

overall electorate the number of UK citizens involved in parties fell from 9.4% to 3.3%, a

decline of 6.1 percentage points (Katz and Mair, 1992). As an absolute number party

membership went down by 56.2% in the same period (ibid, p332). A follow up paper to this fills

in the missing information between 1990 and 2000. It found that in this time period UK party

membership again halved to the point were only 1.92% of the electorate was a member of a

political party (Mass and Bizen, 2001). Scarrow's figures cover a wider time period, suggesting

that party membership as a percentage of the UK electorate has dropped from 10% in the 1950'sto 1.9% in the 1990s (Scarrow, 2000). Despite the methodological questions, the best guess at

party membership available points to less than 2% of the electorate being members of a political

party. In addition to the decline in membership, there are also reports of declining partisanship.

Less and less voters it seems are strongly identifying with a political party (Dalton and

Wattenberg, 2000, Webb, 2002).

Heidar & Saglie (Heidar and Saglie) are critical of treating party membership figures as the be

all and end all of the party decline debate. They argue that the figures do little to explain who is

leaving the party and why. For example, there is a case for arguing that party activism will

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remain relatively constant over time, despite declining membership figures, simply because the

least active members of the party are the ones falling by the wayside. Despite this there is a

question over what role a political party with so few members can claim in a representative

democracy.

A key explanation of party decline has been that changes in the make-up of society have

hampered the effectiveness of parties as representatives of groups. A reduced importance of

class for example makes it difficult for parties used to relying on class divisions for supplying

their members (Whiteley et al., 1994). The traditional party role has been to aggregate the

demands of a group, forming a coherent manifesto in the process. In cases where groups

demands are out of synch with one another, or outright contradictions, the task of aggregating

interests becomes more difficult and parties run the risk of alienating their membership (Webb,

2000). Connected with this societal change has been the increasing atomisation of communities;

fewer family ties and increased mobility have reduced the effects of socialisation into a political

party (Ware, 1996). Children who cross the country to attend universities far away from their

parents are less likely to adopt their parents political views than those who go to work side by

side with them.

In addition to the apparent complexity in society, parties are now forced to compete for the

attention of citizens in an increasingly crowded political market. Groups such as Greenpeace,

Friends of the Earth, Fathers for Justice, NO2ID, Amnesty International and the Red Cross, allallow citizens to participate in politics either directly or indirectly. In light of these

developments parties must work increasingly hard to appear as attractive propositions to

prospective members (Margetts, 2001).

I would argue however that equally important has been the seismic shifts in the media

environment. As parties have gained access to forms of communication such as television, print

media, there are less benefits derived from having a strong membership base. When the

transmission of political information was done through face-to-face interaction the party needed

to be an active presence in the lives of its voters in order to communicate with them. In the

current media environment, the party can reach far more people through the television set than

through the political rally. The mass media has played a key role in restructuring the party

system into a more professionalized and centralised environ (Panebianco, 1988).

These new forms of communication coupled with the reduced emphasis on the importance of

membership organisations, whilst a product changes in the media environment, are equally also

a cause of party decline in themselves. As parties have developed their organisation strategies to

respond to changing circumstance and to take advantage of new opportunities, they have

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arguably alienated the party rank and file to some degree. One side effect of this increasing

professionalisation has been an increasing focus on experts as sources of policy, not the

demands of members, a state of affairs which could be putting people off joining the party

altogether (Whiteley et al., 1994). Seyd and Whitely argue in their general incentives model

that efficacy of supporters is a key factor in making the decision whether or not to join a party

(Seyd and Whiteley, 2004). If party membership holds no promise of increase influence, then

why is it desirable?

Contained within the detail of the general incentives model are echoes of collective action

theory an economic theory which has since taken on political stripes. When faced with the

choice between joining a large group in order to achieve a collective good, and none

participation, the rational individual will free ride, the end result of which will be that he or she

will enjoy the collective good produced by the group without the burden of contributing. The

argument is that as the good will be produced anyway, with or without the subjects contribution,

the end result remains unchanged (Olson, 1965). In summary, user participation in large groups

is less likely when they view that participation as having little or no effect on the outcome.

Taking this argument to a logical conclusion, any large group will ultimately suffer, as members

do not contribute on the assumption that some one else will do that for them. In the context of

the political party writers have argued that a number of possible incentives offered by political

parties make up for this lack of efficacy amongst party supporters (Ware, 1996, Seyd and

Whiteley, 2004). It might well be the case that as parties become less grassroots orientated andthe role of the supporter is increasingly minimised parties will continue to struggle to attract

both members and supporters.

The idea of party decline should be approached with caution. By describing recent trends as a

decline, I do not mean to suggest that the party may be subverted as a form of political

organisation, far from it. A democracy without parties would be a difficult proposition; there

would be little to co-ordinate voting behaviour, no way for leaders to emerge and ultimately no

way to form a working government. Party decline as I consider it, would not lead to the

extinction of political parties, simply parties without supporters which could translate into a

more wide spread loss of faith and legitimacy in politics (Seyd and Whiteley, 2004, Yani, 1999,

Scarrow, 2000).

Parties in the UK context

Party organisation is often presented as conforming to one of a number of ideal types, elite,

mass, catch-all and in some cases cartel (Hague and Harrop, 2007, Margetts, 2001). In practice

though we must consider that the variance over so many differing political systems is so great

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that no party will ever fit neatly into one category or another and that many party types can co-

exist within the same party system (Margetts, 2001, Panebianco, 1988). The realities of

comparative politics are such that there simply are not enough cases to support anything but the

broadest of typologies and so this list can only really be a general guide to party organisation as

opposed to a set of binding definitions. Additionally this is not teleology; there is no fixed path

for parties to take and no end goal of the ideal party (Katz and Mair, 1995). Parties are largely

unique, and shaped by their own circumstances, meaning that it is perfectly possible for a party

to follow this as a progression, skip a few steps, or go straight from one party type to another

based on circumstance.

In the UK, the modern party system, McKenzie argues, was born out of the Reform Act of 1832

and the subsequent acts that followed it (McKenzie, 1965). The expansion of the franchise that

was a direct result of the Reform Acts led to the emergence of a broader and more diverse

electorate outside the property owning gentlemans club that had gone before. As a direct result

of this the cliques which occupied the House of Commons at the time needed to establish a basis

of support in the electorate at large by adapting to meet the changing political circumstances

(Webb, 2000).

This led to the emergence of the mass party type in which the party began to expand its reach

into the newly enfranchised electorate. Duverger argues that there are structural differences

between the cadre party and the mass party, with the mass party dependent on members for itsvery existence. In a mass party, he argued, the membership was the very life blood of the party,

providing financial sustenance, as well as a willing audience for rhetoric (Duverger, 1959).

Where as a cadre party would be able to tap the resources of its elite members, the mass party

would be forced to rely on contributions from numerous low level members.

We should be careful at this point not to equate the mass party model described by Duverger to

some fictional golden age of representative parties. Although in the mass model there is a

greater role for the rank and file, this may not equate with increased party responsiveness. In

fact Duverger argued that:

This distinction, though clear in theory, is not always easy to make in practice. As we

have just noted, cadre parties sometimes admit ordinary members in imitation of mass

parties. In fact this practice is fairly widespread.

(Duverger, 1959, pg. 64)

The UK is a case in point; despite financial and electoral pressures to establish large electoral

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bases, UK parties retained a large amount of power within the central party organisation, in

particular the Conservative party which sought to limit internal democracy and retain the power

of the central party over the membership (McKenzie, 1965). Webb notes an almost instinctual

drive towards secrecy and the limitation of democracy in the Conservative party, arguing that

the Conservatives were determined to cling to the notion of policy emanating from the leader

rather than loosing power to the external mass organisation (Webb, 2000).

In some senses the two dominant parties of the UK party system both constructed mass

organisations for different reasons. The Conservative Party developed an accompanying mass

movement to suit its parliamentary purposes whilst the Labour party started out as a mass

movement and evolved into a political party and so approached the issue in reverse (McKenzie,

1965). Despite this apparent mass participation in the Labour party the reality of internal party

democracy was very different from the rhetoric. As McKenzie argues, it may well be the case

that some kind of hierarchy is an unavoidable state of affairs:

Parties are usually content to be led; but this is largely as there is no other way in

which they can operate.

(McKenzie, 1965, pg. 664)

As McKenzie has noted the Labour party never really existed in Cadre form, instead growingout of an already established mass movement. Never the less, here too there were limits to the

notion of the mass organisation as being at the heart of the party. For the first 20 years of

existence the Labour Party (formerly the Labour Representation Committee) was unwilling to

acknowledge individual membership to the party. It was only in 1918 that the party began

accepting memberships outside the context of affiliated membership in via a trade union. Even

post 1918 the basic unit of democracy was not considered to be the individual but the affiliated

organisation to which he or she belonged (Webb, 2000). Just as the Conservative party was

seemingly dominated by an elite that paid little attention to the mass of its membership, in the

Labour Party trade unions held sway, as Webb argues in the Labour Party:

The notion of an active mass membership was to become an official party myth.

(Webb, 2000, pg. 199)

In the post Second World War environment the class cleavages and social circumstance which

allowed the mass party or pseudo mass party model to exist to an extent break down and left

behind them a society in which the old distinctions of labour and management or working and

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middle class were beginning to lose their meaning. As the social fabric of societies changed the

old battle lines that sustained the organisations of the mass party were no longer sufficient and

parties reached the limits of the old ideologies (Kircheimmer, 1969). To cope in this new and

difficult environment, rather than sticking to divisive politics of the mass party era, it was

believed that parties would have to adapt themselves to become increasingly attractive to a

segmented society. The catch-all model outlined by Kircheimmer suggested that parties would

have to shed their ideological baggage in favour of manifestos that could capture the votes of a

wider range of voters (Kircheimmer, 1969). In this way he argued that parties could attract votes

from a broad range of people rather than relying on the traditional hunting grounds as defined in

our current case by social class.

The catch-all thesis is not embraced equally by all writers, but it is critical to our understanding

of the modern party as a sales orientated organisation as opposed to an organisation that

represents the interests of its members. Panebianco argues that the catch-all model fails to

adequately address the professionalisation of political parties that has taken place (Panebianco,

1988). Instead he proposes an electoral professional party type which accepts many of the

tenants of the catch-all model but emphasise the importance of the professional core of the party

in shaping party organisation.

Also associated with the rise of the catch-all and electoral-professional models is the increased

use of the mass media as a channel of communication. In the mass organisation contact betweenthe party and potential voters takes place first hand in the form of party meetings and party

literature, in the catch-all party this same function is done by the television and the radio,

leaving the mass organisation increasingly redundant in the TV age (Webb, 2002).

Not only has television accelerated the long term trend towards party decline, but it

has assumed many of the functions once performed by political parties. Television

reporters evaluate and test candidates assessing how well they are doing and setting

benchmarks for success and failure.

(Abramson et al., 1988, pg. 89)

At this point it is worth acknowledging the apparent dual role of the mass media in this analysis

as both driving party change and reflecting it. As discussed earlier, the opportunity to reach so

many citizens at once can be considered one of the factors which has allowed parties to bypass

responsive membership organisations which I argue has contributed to the decline in both party

membership and partisanship. As well as this however, the increased use of the mass media by

parties also reflects the changing strategy of the party as it attempts to maintain votes in a

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different social environment, one seemingly unable to sustain a mass party organisation. In this

way we can think of parties increased use of the mass media as a means of communication as

both a cause of party decline and a consequence of it.

Along with the increasing importance of the mass media also comes the need for party

organisations to be able to exploit and work within the media environment leading to an

increasingly professional central party staff which further chimes with Panebiancos account of

the party (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000, Panebianco, 1988). As communication has moved

away from mass organisations and into the realm of the mass media, and as parties have become

less ideologically focussed and instead concentrated on vote maximising behaviours, the

notional base of support to which political parties lay claim is evidently withering away. Lusoli

and Ward characterised this as moving away from an aggregating function which stipulates

acting based on the interests of party members, towards and articulating function, which is

based to a much greater degree on salesmanship (Lusoli & Ward, 2004).

In the media environment the parties have in some sense needed to become sales people,

competing for votes with attractive policies as opposed to representing the interests of any

specific group. This, arguably as much as social change, has brought about change in political

parties, as the mass medium has developed so to have the parties. If we are experiencing another

such shift in the media environment in the form of the Web, then it seems likely that parties will

need to adapt again, changing their organisational strategies to fit the new environment.

The theoretical concepts of party organisation push even further into the realm of the cartel

party in which political parties cease to compete with one another, but instead work together to

ensure access to state resources for all (Katz and Mair, 1995). In the UK this has not happened,

or at least not to the same degree as in other European countries. As the situation stands the UK

parties exist as hybrids, with distinct features of the catch-all model such as broad ideologies,

professional staff and sophisticated media operations, but also they retain elements of the mass

party model, including a membership organisation and local party branches.

Webb stops short of endorsing the catch-all model in the UK, characterising UK parties instead

as coming to rest somewhere between cadre and the mass party (Webb, 2000) Never the less,

even recent changes point to parties which are increasingly trying to shed their ideological

baggage and break ties to the past which they feel might be excluding voters. In short each party

is trying to turn itself into the best sales prospect for the electorate.

Webb argues that electoral defeat was a catalyst for party change (Webb, 2000). For the Labour

Party, or more accurately new Labour, the great modernising project began after being kept out

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of power by the Conservatives in three decades. The Labour modernisers such as John Smith

and Tony Blair seemingly attempted to increase intra party democracy in this time. They sought

to limit the power of the unions, increase the power of the ordinary member to vote, and even

offered party members a say on policy through a direct plebiscitary vote as was in the case in

the repeal of Clause IV. Nevertheless these reforms, whilst granting the membership greater say

over candidate selection, failed to give the ordinary rank and file membership access to the

inner sanctum of policy making which remained under the control of a series of relatively tame

policy committees.

In reality labours policy making reforms since the 1987 election have almost certainly

been motivated by the desire to enhance the strategic autonomy of the leadership.

(Webb, 2000, pg. 201)

When the New Labour project was an electoral success in 1997, the Conservatives embarked on

their own series of reforms similarly tainted with the rhetoric of internal democracy including

the creation of a single unified Conservative Party as opposed to various party wings as had

previously been the case, the creation of a party constitution, an increase in association control

over candidate selection and limited mass membership choice over the party leadership (Webb,

2000). Overall though the reality was still a Conservative Party in which the party leadership

reserved for itself in the critical domain of policy making (Webb, 2000, p199).

The central dynamic in this narrative is the relationship between the party elites, represented by

the central party organisation which holds sway of policy making and decision making, and the

party supporters, who traditionally at least seem to have little input into the running of the party

(Webb, 2000). As parties increasingly transform themselves from aggregating group interests to

articulating interests as essentially an exercise in salesmanship, the resulting organisation

patterns have seemingly eroded the power of the party in the electorate and handed the lions

share of control what we can consider the party elite, either in the parliamentary party or the

body of professional political operatives at the helm of the party organisation.

This analysis treats the UK party system as effectively being a two party system, and not a

multi-party system. McKenzie argued in his analysis of UK parties that there was little utility in

investigating beyond the dominant parties, as they were the only ones that could meaningfully

affect political outcomes (McKenzie, 1965). He goes on to practice this in devoting only a tiny

percentage of his text to the then third place Liberal Party. The current picture is perhaps

somewhat different. The Electoral Commission currently holds details on 334 political parties

registered in England, Scotland and Wales, and a further 44 in Northern Ireland. Whilst the great

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majority of these parties have little or no representation in government, it is perhaps a little glib

to write off over 99% of political parties without discussion.

In addition to the Liberal Democrats, the acknowledged third party there are a panoply of

smaller parties, many of which could be characterised as single issue parties, and in effect an

extension of other organisations such as interest groups and social movements. Some examples

include the Pro-Life Alliance, which is campaigning on issues such as abortion and euthanasia,

and the Pirate Party, which is dedicated to copyright reform and online privacy. By virtue of

their size these party organisations are likely to differ greatly from the big three parties, but

none the less, each has its own peculiar principle which it seeks to promote, and each is

formally registered as a political party.

Many of these smaller parties hold alternative views on the role of membership organisations to

the dominant Labour and Conservative Parties. The Liberal democrats in particular, despite the

lack of electoral gravitas, are arguably the most attuned to their grassroots of all the

mainstream parties. Whiteley et al argue that this may work in the Liberal Democrats favour:

Since this model [electoral professional] is highly inimical, both to deliberation and to

democracy, and the members lack any sense of ownership of the policies, not

surprisingly it undermines grassroots activism.

(Whiteley et al., 2006, pg. 184)

Where the mainstream parties are seen as hierarchical and professional, the Liberal Democrats

have achieved an image of being much more down to earth and grassroots orientated. Whitely et

al go on to argue that as the pathologies of top down professional organisations become

increasingly apparent to the mainstream Conservative and Labour parties, then the Liberal

Democrats will be best placed to take advantage of any future swing towards more responsive

political parties as voters lose faith in electoral-professional parties (Whiteley et al., 2006).

Conclusion

Parties in the UK do not conform exactly to the models laid down by the literature. Even at the

height of the mass party era, the Labour Party was dominated by Trade Unions. In contrast, the

Conservatives are described as having an almost instinctual desire for strong leadership and

have always limited the role of the party in the electorate. The idea of an active and contributing

membership seems to have passed the UK parties by. Even recent reforms aimed at introducing

greater intra-party democracy have seemingly either little effect on or even strengthened the

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hand of the central party organisation.

According to the party decline thesis, in the current environment parties face ever increasing

competition for the attentions of potential voters, and in light of this, organisations which

seemingly have little to offer the individual supporter may lose out to organisations that are able

to chime more closely with the interests of potential supporters.

I argue that one method of reversing party decline would be to increase the responsiveness of

central party organisations to their membership. If people felt that through participating in a

political party they could make a difference then participation might be more likely. This is not

the only approach to party decline. There is no one key factor that would singlehandedly reverse

this trend. It is, nonetheless, the approach I have chosen to focus on. A more responsive party

organisation is a possible outcome of increasing party reliance on the Internet and the Web for

organisational purposes. In particular the World Wide Web has recently seen developments

which could have ramifications for party organisation if they were incorporated into party

organisational structures. Using the Web parties could allow their members to take an

increasingly active role in fields such as leadership selection, policy formation and allow

increased levels of internal public debate, all of which would serve to make the party a more

attractive prospect for citizens.

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The Internet and the World Wide Web

In this section I will argue that the web provides one possible avenue for reversing the trend of

party decline. The increasing use of mass media by parties is theoretically linked to party

decline, either tempting parties through providing new opportunities to reach voters, sidelining

the membership, or as a result of parties responding to social necessity and shifting their

electoral strategies due to social changes and relying on the mass media as a result. it seems

reasonable to speculate that any changes to the mass media may impact also have an impact on

party decline by again providing incentives for reconfiguring party organisation.

The World Wide Web or Web has rapidly evolved in the 20 years since its foundations were laid

into a new medium with apparent radical potential for communication. The consequences of the

emergence of the web could be far reaching for many fields; government, commerce, literature,entertainment and of course politics. Although much of this speculation ultimately remains

unrealised, the Web has shaped the modern world in some key ways and is likely to have

consequences we do not yet fully understand.

The post-industrial age

At the same time that parties have been apparently declining, many researchers have been

arguing that the world, or more specifically some states within the world, have been undergoing

a process of restructuring.

It has become a clich to say that we are now living through a second industrial

revolution. The phrase is supposed to impress us with the speed and profundity of the

change around us. But in addition to being platitudinous, it is misleading. For what is

occurring now is, in all likelihood, bigger, deeper, and more important than the

industrial revolution.

(Toffler, 1970, pg. 12)

What Toffler went on to describe in a later book is a Third Wave of technological change, one

that came after both agriculturalism and industrialism, that would profoundly change our society

in a myriad of ways (Toffler, 1981). This consensus for sweeping change has also been backed

up by figures such as Lawrence Lessig (Lessig), Yochai Benkler (Benkler), Nicholas

Negroponte (Negroponte) and Manuel Castells (Castells), all of who conceive of humanity

entering a new information age which will alter the nature of our society as profoundly (or more

so) as the industrial revolution.

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Immediately, though, this perception of a new age brought about by technological change is

open to criticism on the grounds that this is a technologically deterministic approach, and

therefore places too great an emphasis upon the power of technology to shape society, while it

lacks the mechanism for society to shape technology. This is often pointed out as being a failing

of many approaches to technology and politics and must be conceded as an inadequate

explanation for change (Abramson et al., 1988). Equally though the polar opposite is also

flawed in that by itself, social changes do not explain technological change, resulting in many

attempting to find a balance between the two (Winner, 1986, Castells, 1996).

As a simplified example, consider the printing press, a device that according to myth has

changed the face of western society more than any other. But considering the point at which the

invention itself came forth, Cook (Cook) points out that not only at that point were a number of

others working with moveable type, that the paper and labour involved made the finished

product so expensive that it was available only to the elite, and that mass illiteracy was common

at the time (Cook, 2006). What this anecdote illustrates is, that by itself technology is not

enough to shape the world, it also has to come forth in a time and place that is open to change.

Equally, however, no one would deny that the printing press is a technology that makes possible

the distribution of knowledge and that, ultimately, it has shaped the world we live in. In

summation, theses could have been filled on the philosophy of technology, but the question

seems to be one of balance.

Whether or not the post industrial age has been brought about by primarily because of technical

change, or primarily because of social change, the realities remain that things have changed and

rapidly:

Indeed, during the last century more innovations in communications have appeared

than in the preceding 360 centuries

(Abramson et al., 1988)

Whether shaped by technology or inward pressures for change, however, the technology

available today is vastly different from anything our predecessors, even those as recent as our

grandparents, would have understood. Whereas agriculturalism and industrialism brought about

great change at a relatively measured pace, now the pace of change seems to have accelerated at

a much greater rate.

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The Emergence of Internet and the World Wide Web

The sharpened point of this new post-industrial era is undoubtedly the Internet. Few

developments in human history have had such radical implications. From one viewpoint it

seems probable that the annals of history will consider the Internet in the same frame as the

printing press and the television in terms of profundity of impact.

As a technology the Internet had its beginnings in an unlikely mix of big business, military

research and a strange scientific culture of freedom and discovery (Castells, 2001). Founded in

response to the Sputnik launch in 1957, the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the US

(ARPA) built the first of what were to be many founding networks of the internet in 1969

(Castells, 2001). ARPANET spread across the universities of the US throughout the early 1970s,

allowing researchers to trade files and eventually email (Naughton, 1999). By 1977, with the

development of new protocols it became possible for other networks to link into the originalARPANET system (Naughton, 1999). By the 1990s several other networks had been

incorporated into the original infrastructure creating a network of networks, essentially what

became the Internet.

By itself the Internet has seemingly limited value to the ordinary user. Navigation required

highly specialised knowledge, not least of which is exactly where you were going and what you

intended to do. In many respects it is best to think of the Internet as an infrastructure that

supports other applications, most notably at the time perhaps email.

In 1989 however a researcher at the Conseil Europen pour la Recherche Nuclaire or more

commonly known as CERN on the Swiss French border and now home to the Large Hadron

Collider, developed a short memo describing a filing system he had been experimenting with at

home entitled Information Management: A Proposal. This memo written by the now Sir Tim

Berners- Lee contained the first few principals that were later to develop into the Web (Berners-

Lee, 1989). Berners-Lee noted that despite the notionally hierarchical structure of CERN that

researchers communicated with one another and across the organisational boundaries that

existed. He reasoned that perhaps an information management system that reflected this might

be superior to an organisation tree. Drawing on his personal experiences with hypertext

Berners-Lee proposed what would eventually become the basis for the World Wide Web, which

today is perhaps the dominant tool supported by the infrastructure which is the internet.

A tree has the practical advantage of giving every node a unique name. However, it

does not allow the system to model the real world.

What was needed as a link from one node to another, because in this case the

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organisation was not naturally organised into a tree.

(Berners-Lee, 1989)

What started as a memo at a research lab quickly became a massive phenomenon thanks to the

development of easy to use and accessible web browsers such as Mosaic in 1993 and Netscape

in 1994 (Naughton, 1999, Castells, 2001). It is impossible to say for sure, but Google, perhaps

the organisation which has done the most to organise the Web, has measured around one trillion

unique URLs (uniform resource locators or web pages) currently online (Google, 2008). In

terms of individual users some estimates put the total population with access to the internet at in

excess of 1.6 billion, almost a quarter of the globe (Stats, 2009).

Networked organisation

The main factor that underpins much of the discussion of the web is the idea of the web as a

network. In itself the network is not a new kind of organisation or a new way of thinking about

organisation. Every organisation is in some way a network.

Defined in simplest form, as any set of interconnected nodes, networks are ubiquitous.

The nodes can be individuals, groups, organizations, or states (as well as cells or

internet users); the connections or links can consist of personal friendships, trade flows

or valued resources.

(Khaler, 2009)

By this definition a network could contain as few as two individuals, perhaps simply consisting

of two friends who share a secret. What was picked up by many of the early web scholars was

that the nature of the Web and the Internet would mean that it was possible (although not

inevitable) to facilitate looser and more decentralised forms of organisation made up of nodeswhich have greater access to information and greater abilities to act than before, therefore

creating vast networks of loosely connected nodes (Castells, 1996).

As individual nodes gain greater access to information they gain greater autonomy and agency,

and therefore become less reliant on hierarchy in order to function (Benkler, 2006). Toffler

argues the point some decades earlier by using the example of what he refers to as ad-hocracy

at an industrial plant, in which workers, instead of reporting faults to their supervisor and

waiting for it to be passed up the chain of command and then back down to some one who could

repair the break-down, simply informed their opposite number on the maintenance crew

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(Toffler, 1970). The result of stepping outside of organisational boundaries in this way would

be an increase in the responsibility of the individual node (in this case the factory worker) and a

reduction in time between spotting a problem and fixing a problem. For writers such as Castells

and Toffler the network was going to be the dominant organisational form of the new

information age, hence the post-industrial or post-bureaucratic society.

If we look at Berners-Lees original memo, he found organisation in a tree structure to be

inefficient, and therefore he resolved to develop a system of organisation whereby any node

could link to any other related node without having to first pass through another node higher up

the organisational schema. If we replace the idea of nodes as web pages, but instead consider the

individual creating that information, then we can see how hierarchies, where one person might

manage the output of several others could be broken down as individual nodes gain the ability

to publish their own material without approval. In many ways the web can be considered an

anathema to hierarchy, by allowing any node within the network to link with any other node

then the end result is a flatter and more distributed organisational form. Castells argues that the

Internet itself represents an architecture which effectively cannot be controlled from any central

point (Castells, 1996).

The obvious criticism of this position is that whether we are living in the post industrial age or

not, there are many hierarchical organisations still in existence, and changes in the information

available to and the personal autonomy of the workers is not going to break down thosehierarchies any sooner. Again this goes back to the question of technological determinism and

social shaping. The web makes such organisations theoretically possible, or at least easier; it

does not explain why an organisation would want to adopt this new format. Undeniably there

are gains in efficiency to be had in a flatter organisation but these come at the expense of the

loss of a degree of organisational control. In reality, networks can exhibit varying degrees of

hierarchical control, despite the possibilities offered by the Web it still requires users to make a

conscious decision to use it in a non hierarchical way.

eDemocracy

Since even before the development of the Web, Information Communication Technologies

(ICTs) have been heralded as having great democratic potential. Although this thesis is

primarily concerned with the impact of the Web on political parties, it is worth briefly

examining the various predictions made for the Web as a democratising medium. Each of the

theories can be classified into one of three camps, either predicting democratic reform,

democratic decline, or no change from the status quo.

Reform

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Democratisation - Robert Dahl once wrote:

Let me put it this way. In many countries, the task is to achieve democratization up to

the level of polyarchal democracy. But the challenge to citizens in the older

democracies is to discover how they might achieve a level of democratization beyond

polyarchal democracy.

(Dahl, 2005, pg.197)

It is common argument that we enjoy only a representative democracy as opposed to the

systematically purer form of democracy bequeathed to us by the Ancient Greeks. The

limitations of a democracy in which decision making is filtered through representatives are well

known, and a return to the Athenian values of democracy in which all citizens have the right to

vote on all decisions of consequence may well be an attractive proposition. Certainly the

technological possibilities are in place for this to be made real, and there is little to be said, from

a rhetorical perspective, against such an argument (Budge, 1996).

The realities on the other hand might well be more difficult to deal with. The problem with the

clash between equality and practicality, is that as much as the rhetoric demands, the practical

limitations of democracy have evolved for many reasons, not just the fact that many citizens are

further than a days walk from the agora. The time and energy required to come to a reasoneddecision on the issues Budge describes is more than the average citizen might be able to expend,

resulting not in the empowerment of voters, but the overwhelming of them (Abramson et al.,

1988). Additionally, we must consider the role that the limitations on direct democracy play on

shaping the debate. Democracy is far more than a simple ranking of preference, but is a product

of the democratic system itself (Street, 1997, Abramson et al., 1988). Abramson et al. argue that

democracy is:

Participation in a process where power goes to the most persuasive and not just the

side with the most votes.


By simply adhering to the process of democracy, they argue, we miss the aspects that are truly

important, such as debate and deliberation. By pursuing equality without regards to practicality

we may well bring down the very institutions that make representative democracy function as

well as it does and replace them with a mass of voters who lack the decision-making and agenda

setting frameworks necessary.

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In addition to the practical problems, the other spectre which haunts the directly democratic

dream is that of the black box problem. Essentially computers and the Internet are black boxes,

we see what goes in, we see what comes out, but very few of us understand the process which

takes place in between. The paper ballot as it is now, whilst being expensive and slow, has the

advantage of being understandable and relatively transparent. This would not be the case in a

decision mediated by computers. As recent events have shown

, there is a very real possibility

that an online poll could be hijacked and fixed and no one would know a thing about it. No one

is suggesting that online polls would be unsophisticated or lack appropriate precautions, but the

fact remains that any result could be called into question and the vast majority of the electorate

would have little or no ability to call fair or foul.

Despite these limitations the direct democracy argument, when applied to parties as opposed topolities as a whole may be stronger. In cases of low level party voting with little risk of being

hijacked, there may well be a case for saying that direct democracy may be a valuable tool for

increasing supporter involvement in party activity. Certainly, in the realm of policy formation,

candidate selection and leadership selection internal voting, even if it is non-binding, might well

have a role to play in giving the party supporters a voice.

Equalisation - The increasing importance of interest groups as rivals to parties is a central

aspect of the party decline literature. As society has fragmented, interest groups have been able

to collect support from those that the political parties are unable or unwilling to speak for in

their new role as electoral salespeople. The web too is predicted to provide a boost to these

smaller groups, finally allowing them to compete on equal terms with established interests. As

the costs involved of getting online drop, there may be a case to say that it is the small, less well

resourced group which will benefit (Abramson et al., 1988).

A recent online poll held by Time Magazine to find the top 100 most influential people in the world was hijacked. The only real

evidence of this is an obscure posting on a music blog and the first 21 results of the poll which spelt a message:

MARBLE CAKE ALSO THE GAME

Marble cake being the name of a formerly popular IRC chat channel which was used to organise a number of protests against

Scientology in 2008, and the game being a widely recognised in joke or meme on a popular internet message board.

The notion of the game originated as a kind of joke amongst the Cambridge University Science Fiction club in the 1970s.

Essentially the aim was o create the simplest game possible. Any time you think about the game you have lost, and you must report

that you have lost the game to those present. It has become a common calling card in some Internet circles to find innovative ways

to make other lose the game. By this standard the Time Top 100 hack has to be acknowledged as one of the most successful victoriesin the game ever.

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What some have termed the Zapatista Effect has become the case in point of a number of

groups which previously would have been excluded from the mainstream being able to get their

point across over new media (Cleaver, 1998). In this particular case the group EZLN (Zapatista

National Liberation Army) was able to get its grievances over land use rights in Mexico heard at

the dinner tables of New York and London via the Web. In addition there are a number of other

examples of small groups and movements having an impact that is disproportionate to their size

(Lin and Dutton, 2003, Khan and Kellner, 2004, Pickerill, 2006).

This ability to circumvent the traditional requirements for group success such as resources and

media access could result in accelerated pluralism (Bimber, 1998). This is not the revolution

predicted by those who advocate teledemocracy, but instead a continuation of the logic that

underpins pluralistic societies and so will bring about a much more restrained rate of change by

bringing groups to the fore that previously had not been able to gain attention, groups which

might be much less dependent on established organisational structures (Bimber, 1998). Bimber

went on to argue that the availability of the information in the online environment would change

the logic of collective action theory which had previously been thought to favour larger groups

with the ability to incentivise members to participate (Bimber et al., 2005, Olson, 1965)

In terms of party politics, we must tread carefully here, as the dividing line between political

party and interest group has narrowed considerably in recent years. This is perhaps in partsymptomatic of Bimbers hyper pluralism, as groups with comparatively miniscule resources

are now able, theoretically at least, to engage on the same playing field as those who enjoy all

the support that comes with being a member of an established political party. The Pirate Party

for instance is a registered political party in the UK, but does it simply constitute a political

wing of any interest group? Either way, the Pirate Party, as well as a number of other UK parties

have close ties to interest groups and many might owe their existence to the ease with which

like-minded individuals can seek out one another online.

Decline

Balkanisation - One persistent criticism of the web is that with so much information on offer,

how is it possible for the average citizen to filter the quality information from the irrelevant

noise (Margolis and Resnik, 2000). Benkler calls this criticism the Babel Objection and

argues that far from being a problem, information deemed quality tends to find its way to the

surface as it is passed around between various groups and linked to or reproduced by other

actors (Benkler, 2006). The majority of content posted online is doomed to obscurity, but the

content that is found to be useful is often preserved by users linking to it and distributing it to

their friends.

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In conjunction with this is the development of a wide range of services designed to point people

in the direction of content they find useful. This trend has reached its zenith in the Web 2.0 era

discussed later, but the origins can be found in the Web 1.0 era. This can be viewed as a massive

increase in receiver control; whereas previously an individual was reliant on a very few conduits

for information e.g. TV stations or radio stations, now one can select material from an virtually

unlimited numbers of conduits (Abramson et al., 1988). Recommendation agents, described as a

Digital Sister in Law after a relative that persistently sent Negroponte newspaper clippings

result in the concept of the Daily Me, a collection of information picked from the internet to

meet specific individual tastes (Negroponte, 1995).

Politically, however, this culture of picking and choosing information has also been criticised.

By allowing people to cherry pick information in such a way we may possible encourage what

one writer called the echo chamber effect, where people only engage with material which

supports their existing views as opposed to challenging their prejudices (Sunstein, 2007). Of

course this is a common problem even in the offline world, the left reads papers of the left just

as the right reads papers of the right, newspaper editors know that their readership does not like

to be challenged. That this effect is more extreme online is probably true, with the vast number

of narrowly focussed news sources available online the ability to tailor reading to a specific

world view is within the reach of most users.

Sunstein (2007) went on to warn that online communities were particularly vulnerable to self

radicalisation by virtue of the effect that they were able to exclude all dissenting viewpoints,

which left in group members competing with one another to become the most extreme, or

simply just to fit in. This is certainly well evidenced in some of the webs more seamy chatrooms

and groups, but may also be the case in a political context, where some communities might

drive the policy agenda to an extreme through simply not wanting to incur disfavour by being

seen as weak.

Elite Control- One other disturbing possibility is that, in contrast to the open and distributed

organisations described above; the end result of allowing so much information to be available

online might be increased control and manipulation. The increased access to information that is

supposed to benefit the smaller and under resourced organisations works both ways and may

well result in the traditional power brokers increasing their control.

Rheingold argues that hypothetically, as well as the potential benefits of the wired world, there

is a possibility that the all pervasive nature of modern computing risks making real the

totalitarian nightmare described by Orwell. The 1984 scenario is a clich in current discourse,

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but has become one perhaps because of its increasing relevance. Rheingold describes the

possibility of a perpetual panopticon, where one could constantly be under surveillance.

Although ultimately Rheingold takes a measured stance on this issue, advising caution rather

than outright rejection of the technology, we must consider that far from being a decentralising

influence, the web may very well increase the control of the centre over our everyday lives

(Rheingold, 2000/1992). The surprising thing, perhaps, is that we are prepared to give up a

degree of privacy in order to secure the benefits on offer, although I suspect that this may be

down to the current opt in nature of the web rather over direct compulsion. Research from the

2004 US election campaign reveals suggestions that groups which may be touted as the

decentralised and loosely organised can be as effectively hierarchical as any other, with

participants feeling as though they are resting at the bottom of the hierarchy (Hara, 2008).

For political parties then, far from tipping the balance in favour of the rank and file, the use of

the web may effectively increase the control of the elite either directly or indirectly in the form

of increasing the ability of the party to manipulate and market.

What if hopes for a quick technological fix of what is wrong with democracy constitute

nothing more than another way to distract the attention of the suckers while the big

boys divide up the power and the loot?

(Rheingold, 2000/1992, pg. 295-296)Normalisation

The final possible outcome for democracy as a result of the web would be a null hypothesis, no

change. This is a position which has been argued by Margolis and Resnik (2000) who wrote

Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace Revolution, which in places reads like a lament to the early

days of the web which they saw as free and uncorrupted:

Political life on the Internet has moved away from fluid cyber-communities in which

civic life centres around free discussion and debate. It has entered an era of organized

civil society and structured group pluralism with a relatively passive citizenry.

(Margolis and Resnik, 2000, pg. 7)

Far from the Lockean state of the early Internet; the Web has become increasingly dominated by

commercial interests and the organisations that already dominate the offline world. In the case

of politics it is the dominant parties that have come to rule the online roost rather than the

insurgents. In the online world, just as the offline world, the technology will come to serve those

who know how to use it and those who can afford to use it. The radical potential of the net

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according to this view, has been lost as the space has been flooded with a largely passive online

citizenry and the architecture of the net became like simply clicking a remote.

Norris (2001) argues that, although the web has been seen as a way to overcome the problems of

democracy, that it no be considered a one week wonder diet (Norris, 2001, p233) and instead

be approached with caution. She argues that the internet will likely engage those that have

always been engaged, and at the same time leave those groups which have not traditionally been

involved in politics at greater risk than ever before of being excluded from the political mix.

For parties then this thesis would result in organisations remaining as they were with the real

world discrepancies remaining online as well.

Empirical Evidence

In essence the theoretical evidence presents us with three possible scenarios:

Democratic improvement through enhanced autonomy, improved information flow and

the possibility of direct democracy

Democratic impairment as a result of over focussing on the procedure of democracy as

opposed to the process surrounding it, self radicalisation as a result of cherry picked

information, and a loss of confidence in the outcomes of elections and increasing eliteconsolidation

No change, by virtue of the size and resources of the existing political establishment

The difficulty comes in identifying change and linking web access to this as a causal factor.

Various analyses over the years have examined data for this link but none have provided the

revolutionary findings predicted by the early theorists. If we are living in a new post-industrial

age, the impact on democratic behaviour seems to be minimal (Bimber, 2001, Shah et al., 2001,

Krueger, 2002, DiGennaro and Dutton, 2006).

With only one exception, neither access to the Internet nor use of the Internet to obtain

campaign information is predictive of voting or other forms of political participation.

(Bimber, 2001, pg. 55)

Even the most thorough of studies have found only minimal evidence to contradict the politics

as usual thesis. A study of UK voters in 2005 was able to find a small but significant increase in

the numbers of young people engaging in politics online rather than offline, but again ultimately

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was left to conclude that the normalisation of online politics was proceeding apace (Gibson et

al., 2005).

What the empiricists showed is that the early writers have all assumed that the by removing

barriers to political participation through increasing personal autonomy and creating

opportunities for involvement that citizens would automatically seek to be involved with them.

It may seem anti-democratic to say it, but for the vast majority of UK citizens political

participation may not be something they want more of. Everyone of the legal age (with some

exceptions) has the right to vote, the right to form or participate in a political group, and thanks

to a system of state schools the majority have sufficient education to do so. The only thing we

are left with is perhaps they do not want to.

Advocates of teledemocracy often assume a much greater interest in politics than

currently exists among citizens. The publics appetite for politics is modest at best. The

era of widespread participation is long gone; other forms of entertainment have

replaced politics as a recreational activity.


I argue that at nearly every turn, the anticipated effects of expanded communication

are limited by the willingness and capacity of humans to engage in complex politicallife.

(Bimber, 1998, pg. 136)

If we proceed from this assumption, elitist though it may be, it is soon clear that looking for

evidence of wide scale democratic improvement as a result of the Internet is a non sequitur, why

should there be an effect?

Additionally, if we return to the issue of balance between the technological determinist and

social shaping standpoints, then it is also apparent that the arrival of the Web by itself cannot be

sufficient to drive societal change at the level these studies looked for.

Upon the first serious study of the web, it became apparent that the predictions of many writers

have so far failed to materialised not because they are not technically possible, but that there is

no societal motivation for them to do so. The ability to do something is necessary but by itself

not sufficient to say that people willdo something. Consequently, it becomes necessary to seek

less grand effects of the web. In looking at political parties this thesis has dramatically reduced

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the scope for measuring the effects of the web, concentrating on only a single form of political

participation, and one practiced by those already engaged in the political process.

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Cyber Parties 1.0

In addition to the broader debate over the impact of the Web on democracy, there exist minor

niches within the debate that have the promise to reveal the effects of the Web with much

greater clarity. In choosing to focus on the political parties this thesis attempts to narrow the

debate and look for effects on a much less grander scale.

The Cyber Party

The parties literature is dominated by the existing historical taxonomy of political parties.

Whether is the case in practice or not, the theoretical leaps from cadres to mass to catch-all and

possible to cartel, have shaped the thoughts of many of the writers we are about to consider. If

the web changes the game so dramatically that parties are forced to adapt their organisation to

cope, then we could well see the emergence of a new form of party organisation. The Cyber

Party is described as:

An alternative response might be another ideal type of political party, with its origins

in developments in media and information and communication technologies,

particularly the internet, combined with new trends in political participation and the

de-institutionalisation of political parties: the cyber party

(Margetts, 2001, pg. 8)

Margetts conception of the cyber party is an amalgamation of the social trends which have been

impacting political parties and the growth of new media, in particularly the Internet. This very

much follows on from the existing taxonomy of political parties, in essence forming a next step

after the catch-all model (although not a foregone conclusion). Margetts identifies three demand

factors which are driving these changes, the increasing reluctance of citizens to join political

parties instead favouring single issue groups, the fluctuations in partisanship and finally theincreased use of the internet as a channel for political activity (Margetts, 2001).

Following the logic of the catch-all party, Margettes also argues that the cyber-party will have

little role for formal membership structures, which she sees as already beginning to break down

as even traditional parties begin to offer intermediate stages of membership. The relationship

between party and member then is foregone in favour of a broader relationship, facilitated by

technology, with any one willing to engage (Margetts, 2001). If this is to be the case then newly

formed cyber parties are unlikely to distinguish significantly between members and

nonemembers, instead according the same privileges to all that potentially support the party.

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This conception of a cyber party is an interesting starting point, calling into question as it does

the very notion of membership as a requirement for participation. But outside the theoretical

world the single party type is an oversimplification, with every party likely to come to the cyber

table with its own particular sets of interests and existing practices.

Lofgren and Smith make the argument that party change is inseparable from what has gone

before, and that party strategies will be very much tied up in what kind of party is making the

strategy as this excerpted table shows.

Party Strategy Mass party

strategy

Cartel party

strategy

The consumerist

strategy

The grassroots

strategy

Role of ICTs Complementary

to other forms of

political

communication

Campaigning Campaigning,

intercepting

public opinion

ICTs replace

membership

organisation

(Lofgren and Smith, 2003@5)

For Lofrgren and Smith, then the impact of ICTs, or in our case the Web, is not uniform, but

different for every party. In the UK context this would lead us to predict that different party

types would have very different approaches to the way in which they use the Web, with large

parties such as Labour and the Conservatives, both of which share elements of the mass party

and what Lofgren and Smith term the consumerist strategy, we should expect the web to be

used as a campaign tool. For smaller and more grassroots orientated parties such as the Pirate

Party we could expect the web to play a major organisational role for the party, replacing the

membership organisation.

This is an argument consistent with the approach of Rmmele who argues that adaptation to ICT

use cannot be seen as a one size fits all process, but instead is dependent on party aims

(Rommele, 2003). In this account parties are seen as having one of four possible strategies:

Vote Maximisation

Office Maximisation

Intra-party democracy

Policy-Seeking

Office maximisation strategies are broadly seen as only being viable in multi-party systems

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where coalition government is the norm. The remaining strategies roughly break down in line

with the predictions of Lofgren and Smith, vote maximising parties will operate in a top down

fashion whilst intra-party democracy parties will seek to use ICT to enhance member

representation. Policy seeking parties Rommele argues will seek to use ICT to only push their

single issue. Again we can see that a partys origins and previous strategy, what Kircheimmer

argued was baggage to be cast off, may well be key to understanding how a party is likely to use

the web.

Others argue that the simple presence of ICT in a party is not enough to bring about such

profound change:

The simple presence of information communication technologies will not automatically

transform an organization. Much like a tyre factory that installs phones for better

communication is still just making tyres; a political party that starts using emails

instead of memos for internal communication is still the same political party

(Boyd, 2008, pg.169)

According to Boyds perspective, only a minority of eDemocracy parties will truly change as a

result of Web use; with the majority of traditional parties retaining their strategies. This is not

incompatible with the outlook of Lofgren and Smith and the notion of the web as acomplimentary form of communication as opposed to a replacement for other forms of intra

party organisation.

Although it is difficult to assign normative positions to those who debate the impact of the web

on party change, with change not necessarily being synonymous with improvement or decline, it

is possible to look at the researchers above and believe that they dont consider the web to be

detrimental to the cause of intra-party democracy. Even if the web has no impact on a party at

all, the rank and file will not be left any the worse for it.

However, as well as these optimistic predictions there is a shadow that hangs over the web as

well as other technological developments. The ability to store and process large amounts of

information by computer, which has only recently been made available to parties, could well

lead to an increase in overall control by party elites. Lipow and Seyd argue that what they

describe as the Wave of the future theorists are, in striving to circumvent the party and raise

the power of the individual to a new level, putting the very foundations of democracy at risk:

If the Demos agenda is realized and parties and legislative bodies as we know them

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vanish, a system of teledemocracy or juries taking their place, then it will be the result

of a politics whose contours are fairly clear. We would suggest that it is not democratic

politics but its opposite: the populist politics of demobilization, desegregation and

atomization in which intermediate institutions become instruments of elite manipulation

from above rather than associations through which ordinary people can exercise power

from below.

(Lipow and Seyd, 1996, pg. 283)

Clearly this approach places the party as an institution at the heart of democracy and is probably

guilty of over-estimating the power that can currently be exercised from below, but at the

same time it raises the very real spectre that increasing use of the web as a tool of party

organisation may, far from distributing power more equally across a flatter organisation

structure, instead concentrate it in the hands of the party elite, reinforcing, or even extending,

the existing hierarchical structures in place. This is a thesis foreshadowed by Wring and

Horrocks (Wring and Horrocks) when they argued that the increase in plebiscitary democracy

had produced a backlash which drove party elites to seek even greater control, a specific

example of this being the development of Excalibur or the issuing of pagers to the

Parliamentary Labour Party, both of which allowed the party elite to exert greater influence over

what its members said and did. Although Wring and Horrocks are evidently referring only to

technology being used to exert power over the relatively small parliamentary elite, it is only asmall step to Lipow and Seyds conception of elites with so much information about their

members that they become expert at manipulating them. It seems like one of the major impacts

of the web on parties might be to further cement the stranglehold of the dark arts of marketing

over the parties base of support.

Empirical approaches

Empirical observations about the effect of the Web on political parties are similarlyunderdeveloped with a great deal of academic focus instead resting on the importance of the

web as a campaigning tool (Gibson and Ward, Lusoli and Ward, 2004). Early efforts to examine

the role of ICTs in internal party organisation focussed on change across two dimensions within

the party, the vertical, i.e. improving relations between members and elites, and spatial, or

increasing the power held by collective groups across the party structure (Gibson and Ward,

1999). Gibson and Ward found that there was little evidence that either of these dimensions

were experiencing significant changes thanks to the impact of ICTs:

Whilst parties use of the internet is still in its formative period and they are not using

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the medium to anywhere near its full potential, the results presented here suggests that

the internet is unlikely to revolutionise party democracy. Indeed despite the many

claims that the net has different properties to the traditional media, its impact on party

behaviour seems set to continue many of the trends exacted by the traditional electronic

media.

(Gibson and Ward, 1999, pg. 364)

Pederson and Saglie argued that there were three possible outcomes of the nets involvement

with party politics, member empowerment, elite empowerment or politics as usual. Examining

the habits of various levels of party members in both Danish and Norwegian political parties

they found limited support for the elite empowerment scenario, but they ultimately concluded

that politics as usual was the most likely outcome (Pederson and Saglie, 2005). Subsequent

work in this vein to identify a number of possible trends in Norwegian parties similarly found

that the internet was yet to make a significant impact, finding that as a source of political

information the Web was rated lower than the mass media, face to face contact in importance for

providing political information (Heidar and Saglie, 2003).

Returning to UK context subsequent work has reduced the focus on internal party democracy

and instead looked at linkage functions, arguing that the impact of ICTs may not necessarily be

whole sale change but on a much subtler and less noticeable level amongst pre-existing partyelites (Lusoli and Ward, 2004). The Lusoli and Ward study is possibly the most informative in

terms of this research project, arguing as it does that the conceptions of a return to widespread

participation in mass parties which aggregate existing interests is unlikely as a result of ICT,

instead focussing on the ability of ICTs to deepen the involvement of existing activists. In

addition Lusoli and Ward argued two additional points, firstly that the Net may well erode the

importance of constituency parties in favour of the national party and secondly that the new

media was likely to be of far higher utility in smaller parties such as the Greens compared to the

parties they surveyed, Labour and the Lib-Dems,

What several of the above authors have acknowledged is the limited nature of the impact of

their studies in the time frame they have been conducted in (Gibson and Ward, 1999, Heidar and

Saglie, 2003, Pederson and Saglie, 2005). In reality these studies have looked at what may well

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