The Declining Representativeness of the British Party System, and Why it Matters
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.12050 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Declining Representativeness of the British
Party System, and Why It Matters
Heinz Brandenburg
University of Aberdeen
Robert Johns
University of Essex
In a recent article, Michael Laver has explained ‘Why Vote-Seeking Parties May Make Voters Miserable’. His model
shows that,while ideolog ical convergence may boost congruence between governments and the median voter, it can
reduce congruence between the party system and the electorate as a whole. Specifically,convergence can increase the
mean distance between voters and their nearest party. In this article we show that this captures the reality of today’s
British party system. Policy scale placements in British Election Studies from 1987 to 2010 confirm that the
pronounced convergence during the past decade has left the Conservativesand Labour closer together than would be
optimal in terms of minimising the policy distance between the average voter and the nearest major party.We go on
to demonstrate that this comes at a cost. Respondents who perceive themselves as further away from one of th e major
parties in the system tend to score lower on satisfaction with democracy. In short,vote-seeking parties have left the
British party system less representative of the ideological diversity in the electorate,and thus made at least some British
voters miserable.
Keywords: representation; policy convergence; British politics; satisfaction with
democracy
Crisis might be overstating the point, but party politics in Britain is not in rude health.
Fewer voters report a feeling of attachment to a political party,and the proportion reporting
strong attachments has declined especially sharply (Denver et al., 2012, pp. 70–1). Despite
an electoral system strongly discouraging votes for parties other than the Conservatives and
Labour,the proportion of votes won by those parties has fallen from over 90 per cent in the
1960s to less than 70 per cent in recent elections (Denver et al., 2012, p. 2). When the
precipitous decline in turnout is taken into account, the electoral hold of these parties looks
even shakier. Recent British Election Studies (BES) also show that feeling thermometer
ratings for the Conservatives and Labour show a noticeable cooling trend, and that general
evaluations of political parties and elections are not complimentary (Clarke et al., 2004, pp.
290–1; 2009, ch. 8).The competition between the major parties at election time leaves a
growing proportion of citizens unimpressed.
In this article we suggest that one reason is an increasingly unrepresentative party system.
Ideological convergence not only leaves the major British parties less distinct and thus
narrows choice; it can also leave the average voter further in terms of ideological distance
from the nearest party with a realistic chance of governing.That variable – distance from the
nearest major party – is at the heart of this article. We argue that it provides an additional
yardstick of representation, beyond the usual concern with congruence between govern-
ment and the median voter. Further, it has the potential to shape broader system orienta-
tions. Independent of election outcomes and government performance, voters may derive
satisfaction with democracy from a sense that their opinions are at least represented by a
contender for office.
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doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12050
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014 VOL 62, 704–725
© 2013The Authors. Political Studies © 2013 Political StudiesAssociation
Both the theoretical and empirical sections fall into two main parts. First, we consider
how the British party system should be structured in order to maximise representation of
the ideological dispersion in the electorate. Put another way:what configuration of the two
major parties would minimise the average distance between voters and their nearest major
party?1Second, we consider the extent to which this matters in terms of citizens’ satisfac-
tion with democracy.We show that the dramatic convergence of recent years has left many
voters ‘ideologically disenfranchised’ – that is, a long distance from their nearest significant
party – and that this has indeed taken a toll on democratic satisfaction.While our empirical
focus is on Britain, there are grounds for expecting similar findings wherever the major
contenders, in their pursuit of the median voter, have left a party system that neglects
ideological diversity among voters.
Representation, Parties and Party Systems
The concept of representation is at the heart of electoral politics (Pitkin, 1972). Yet it
remains contested in important respects. Outside the focus on descriptive representation,
concerning the extent to which different segments of society, such as women and ethnic
or linguistic minorities, are given a voice or a presence in parliaments (e.g. Banducci et al.,
2004; Celis and Childs, 2008; Pitkin, 1972, ch. 4), the emphasis of electoral researchers is
largely on substantive or policy representation.Although this stems from empirical analy-
ses of issue voting, the concern is largely a normative one, namely the extent to which
parties or governments manage to represent or respond to the policy preferences of voters
(Adams and Merrill, 1999; Blais and Bodet, 2006; Huber and Powell, 1994; Miller and
Stokes, 1963; Powell, 2004; Schmitt and Thomassen, 1999). Almost invariably, scholars
have assessed dyadic relationships: between candidates and their electoral districts (Miller
and Stokes, 1963), between voters and parties (Schmitt and Thomassen, 1999) or between
governments and the electorate (Huber and Powell, 1994).The latter investigates whether
governments enact the popular will – and how well institutional arrangements ensure as
much.
In those models, the popular will is typically represented by the median voter. As Matt
Golder and Jacek Stramski (2010, p. 90) summarise,‘the predominant way to conceptualize
and measure citizen–representative congruence is in terms of the absolute ideological
distance between the median citizen and the government’. Representation is thus under-
stood in terms of what those authors call ‘absolute median citizen congruence’.
The logic underlying these models is clear and G. Bingham Powell concludes that
‘[t]he appropriate normative standard for the congruence of citizens and policymakers is the
position of the median citizen’ (Powell, 2000, p. 164). But there are limitations to the
‘commonality’ approach of focusing on governments and the mean or median voter. It
neglects all information about the distribution of citizen preferences – that is, about
whether and how opinions vary. As such, it implies consensus, downplays ideological
divisions and thus gives an incomplete account of the representative capacity of political
parties. While parties are widely acknowledged as the crucial linkage between public
preferences and policy making, most clearly so in the ‘responsible party’ model of repre-
sentation (Miller and Stokes, 1963; Powell, 2004; Schmitt and Thomassen, 1999),the focus
remains on governments. It is by gaining office and enacting their programmes that parties
DECLINING REPRESENTATIVENESS 705
© 2013The Authors. Political Studies © 2013 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014, 62(4)
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