Party Systems in the United Kingdom and the Older Commonwealth: Causes, Resemblances, and Variations
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1959.tb00889.x |
| Date | 01 February 1959 |
| Published date | 01 February 1959 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
PARTY SYSTEMS
IN
THE UNITED
KINGDOM AND THE OLDER
COMMONWEALTH
:
CAUSES, RESEMBLANCES, AND
VARIATIONS
LESLIE LIPSON
University
of
California,
Berkeley
1.
Statement
of
the
Problem
THERE
are good reasons for the increasing attention which political
scientists have recently given to the study of parties. In
a
democratic com-
munity the party system forms the focal point on which
all
political forces
converge. Everything that is politically significant finds
a
place somewhere
within the parties and in the relations between them. Conversely, everything
that is done by the parties is relevant to politics. Thus, an extension
of
knowledge about the party system helps to unravel the politics by which
a
people is governed. Why is it that the parties have come to occupy
so
crucial
a role in the functioning of modern democracies? This question is inevitably
implied in analysing the subject of parties, but it is not always explicitly
raised and answered. Since the argument of this paper does attempt an
answer, it is fitting to start with
a
general picture of the place and functions
of the party system on which the ensuing discussion will be based.
The parties owe their importance in
a
democracy to this fact: It is they
that provide the bridge to connect the groupings of society with the institu-
tions of the state.
On
the one side, society generates the clusters
of
interests
which push their way into the political process. On the other side there
stand the constitutional rCgime, the men and machinery of government,
the institutional structures which compose the state. The state exists within
society, and society permeates the state. But an intermediary
is
needed to
provide
a
link between them-an intermediary which, to perform its role,
must belong partly to both. Such are the political parties. The party system
functions as a conductor of energy and as
a
transformer. It receives the
This article was originally presented as a paper at a panel of the Convention
of
the
American Political Science Association in St. Louis,
1958.
For
the research on which
it
is
based
I
am greatly indebted to the Rockefeller Foundation for their support.
(L.
L.)
Political
Studies.
Vol.
VII,
No.
1
(1969,
12-31).
LESLIE LIPSON
13
impulses that flow from society, transforms them into the current of politics,
and then distributes it among the institutions of which the state is con-
structed. Conversely, it is the party system which fastens the impress of the
state upon the plastic associations wherein men combine.
Whatever lies in the middle will naturally be susceptible to influence
from the two sides between which it is placed. This, of course, explains the
difficulties that arise whenever one attempts to interpret the causes of a
party system. Precisely because the parties are located in between the state
and its society and belong in some measure to both, it has been possible for
researchers to argue with considerable plausibility for either factor as the
prime determinant of party politics. Hence,
two
kinds of answer have been
given to the question: ‘Why does this community have this kind of party
system?’ Some have thought that the institutions of government are the
primary source for the formation of parties and their duration. Others
believe that the party system derives in the main from the character
of
the
society around it. The location of the parties in the middle has invited this
divergence. But it remains the province of scholarship to continue the search
for the factors which seem to incline the issue on one side or the other.
The purpose of this paper is to inquire into these problems in the case
of five countries. These are the United Kingdom and the four excolonies
which were the first to attain full self-government within the Common-
wealth-Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. For compara-
tive study of this topic, a more appropriate group than these five could
scarcely be found. The party system which began to form in England after
the Civil War of the seventeenth century was exported in the nineteenth to
the overseas territories inhabited by emigrants of British stock. In Australia
and New Zealand the indigenous populations were either too few in number
or too retarded in culture to affect the imported system. But elsewhere the
British tradition had to learn to tolerate that which it could not absorb: in
Canada the descendants of France’s
ancien
rigirne,
and in South Africa an
offshoot of seventeenth-century Holland and a large majority of tribally
divided Africans. The United Kingdom, its influence fortified by ancient
heritage and present might, provided the model from which the English-
speaking colonists derived their political attitudes and governmental struc-
tures. Here then was a situation where an identical pattern of institutions
and ideas was transplanted to geographical regions remote from the place
of origin and scattered from one another. As it struck root and grew, the
exported system retained some of its inherited features, but mingled these
with the characteristics acquired in the new environment.
Also,
as the
process of nation-building required amalgamation into larger units, the
federal principle was borrowed from the United States and adapted to the
circumstances of Canada and Australia. Thus, after the lapse of four or
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