Matthew Lynch

_In most liberal democracies, political parties often adopt different positions on many issues and thereby provide voters with a choice on a variety of matters. However, in standard voting models, it is assumed that political parties strive to converge on the median position. Therefore, one could argue that the existence of different political parties makes little difference. This is because regardless of the initial political stance of the winning candidate or party, in most cases they will identify the same electoral issues and often adopt similar measures in response. 

However, in reality certain factors prevent parties from fully converging on the median voter position. While, candidates themselves might be unable to appeal to the median voter position due to strong personal beliefs or principles, the internal structure of parties also may play a part.

Most often, political parties with internal democratic mechanisms will elect party leaders who can appeal to most median voters but whose ideology and policy principles are closer to the party's position than the rest of the electorate. For example, a left-wing party will be keen to elect candidate who can appeal to median voters but would be more left wing than the rest of the electorate. In this case, the candidate might occupy the median position within the party, which would still be more left wing than the rest of the electorate.

In response to recurring problems and issues, modern political parties embarked on wide reforms aimed at creating more transparent and democratic mechanisms. In the US, many states feature primary elections and party caucuses that are better regulated. Therefore, most often, the winning candidate of the democratic or republican nomination emerges quite clearly and early in the process.

As a result, party conventions ceased to be events in which parties choose candidates and became more of a formality in which the nomination of a candidate was officially announced and celebrated. In the UK, the Labour party began to choose its party leader through an electoral college, which was composed of a third of each of the votes of party legislators, members associated with the trade unions and individual party members.

These changes were certainly welcomed, as they seemed to address many of the flaws of the existing systems through more democratic and transparent mechanisms. The new election processes not only opened up the leadership process of political parties but also made it more accountable.  However, critics argue that these reforms have exposed modern political parties to a new set of problems.

One of the major criticisms is that modern political parties no longer fulfill the role of being independent organizations that feature their own unique character and the ability to bring together contrasting social interests to the political process. Furthermore, the reforms have transformed the election of party leadership into a spectacle that is comparable to a general election. This has allowed other forces such as the media, interest groups and business co-operations to play a more significant role in the internal election process of a political party. The expanding influence of these forces has come at the cost of the influence held by traditional party groupings.  Thus, the ability of political parties to develop policy ideas and allow leadership candidates to emerge has declined significantly.

In the early 20th century, it was vital for political parties to develop a network that could rapidly recruit members, supporters and election workers from amongst the voters. Thus, parties were massive organizations that could mobilize thousands of election workers during the election cycle. Failure to organize on a large-scale often meant losing the election.  However, by the 1970's parties began to evolve into a 'catch all' model. This required party leaders to run a more direct campaign and winning candidates had to successfully appeal to the electorate and the media.

As a result, political finance became extremely valuable in order to finance media coverage, opinion polls, focus groups and other elements of a political campaign. This change transformed political parties into more flexible organizations that could quickly evolve around a new leadership and the significance of the party bureaucracy declined. More importantly, these transformations also coincided with the dwindling levels of party membership.

Just as campaign financing became the most important resource in any election, major political parties began losing their key sources of revenue such as party subscription fees and individual donations. Thus, party leaders had to depend on large donors in order to gain the necessary funds for election campaigns that have become increasingly more expensive.  This dependence has exposed political parties to significant amount of influence from wealthy individuals and corporate donors.

Therefore, powerful donors can set the agenda of an entire political campaign or fund candidates who champion policies that are favorable to their interests. This has even caused some critics to argue that party leaders are now becoming more focused on designing policies in order to attract wealthy entities.

 As a result, voters are tasked with electing representatives who are more inclined to serve the interests of their major donors rather than their constituents. This has arguably set about a vicious cycle in which the influence of powerful donors discourages ordinary voters from taking part in political parties or making significant donations because they feel that their influence will always be very little in comparison, which in turn forces party leaders to depend on such donors even more. The wide range of campaign-finance related scandals that have plagued elections in liberal democracies in the past few decades have not helped to improve things either

In simple voting models, parties and voters act according to a single dimension (conservative or liberal, left or right, etc.). However, in reality, there can be sometimes two or more dimensions. Hence, while voters may vote primarily along conservative or liberal dimensions, they may also vote based on ethnic, religious, economic and social values. This would make it impossible if not very difficult for a particular party or candidate to accurately represent all the interests of voters at any given point in time. This dilemma is further aggravated by forces such as globalization, which continue to add to the variety of political dimensions that could influence a voter.

In this case, it will be difficult for political parties to converge on the median voter position (assuming that there are voters in-between these dimensions), which in turn makes competition between the parties more difficult to predict. Supporters of the current system argue that relatively predictable voting patterns will eventually emerge in the long-run and help parties to once again converge on the median position. However, the fact remains that it is becoming increasingly difficult for representatives to represent a majority of the values or principles individual voters have, which arguably does significant damage to the concept of representative democracy but is essentially unavoidable.

For example, assume a voter is socially liberal (pro-abortion, pro-gun laws, pro gay-marriage, etc.) and economically conservative (against large-scale government spending, privatization, minimum state influence, etc.). Furthermore, the only parties the voter can choose to vote for are either socially and economically liberal or socially and economically conservative. In this case, during each election cycle, a voter will have to decide which of these values mean more to him/her at that given point of time and vote accordingly, thereby foregoing other interests. Not only does this mean that voters will not be represented properly but they would also be forced to vote against some of their own interests.

Thus, during the election cycle, if a voter were to vote for the conservative party based on economic factors, he/she will also be voting against their social interests (assuming that the conservative party will put forward a conservative social agenda). Moreover, globalization is ushering in new dimensions such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, arms control, etc., that will continue to add political dimensions and thereby add to the complication.

In the case of countries that feature more than two political parties (a feature that is common except in the US), each individual party will be less inclined to attract median voters. On the contrary, they could remain effective by focusing on a particular dimension. Thus, many liberal democracies are experiencing the influx of smaller parties dedicated to a specific cause such as global warming or extreme nationalism.

The aforementioned problems with the election process in a representative democracy are not new but they have become more visible in recent history. While it may be easy to fix some of the institutional or practical problems regarding the voting system, it would be a lot harder to fix problems associated with the growing amount of political dimensions.

An independent media is a vital feature of any liberal democracy. If the government was able to control all the information regarding its own actions then it could most certainly escape all accountability and even have an unacceptable level of influence over its citizen's actions. This is why the importance of a free press cannot be under-estimated. In a liberal democracy, the aim of a free press is to continually scrutinize the government and provide people with accurate and impartial information so that they can act on it accordingly.

Thus, the media acts as an effective check on government power and influence over its citizens. In the last few decades, there has been an unprecedented growth in mass media accompanied by the falling costs of radio, TV, satellite and Internet services. This phenomenon has helped bring political information to a much wider audience. On the other hand, the boom in media services has also allowed various organizations from all over the political spectrum to quickly and effectively reach their target audiences.

A common charge against the media is that it increasingly seems to lack the principles of objective and impartial reporting. Instead, many major organizations seem to be taking one side of the political spectrum and at best provide relatively bias coverage or at worse act like virtual propaganda machines for a particular political party. Certainly, some issues are subjective and hence there can be no universal line of thought and requiring all news organizations to passively report only what they see and not include an analytical perspective, would to a certain degree, defeat the purpose of having a free press.

While some of the general problems regarding the media and liberal democracies today can be easily identified, it is much harder to come up with an effective remedy. It is very difficult to completely remove political influence and enforce a perfectly neutral position. Indeed, this would be counterproductive. The media today does not just report the news but also represents the views of certain segments of society. As such, many news organizations cater to liberal or conservative lines when it comes to political information.

In theory, this could provide healthy debate because at any given point of time some news organizations will be supporting or opposing government policies. However, sometimes there is a thin line between healthy debate and active intervention and it is common for media organizations to often cross this line. In the process, a negative consequence would be the degradation of accurate political information. Therefore, some issues that can be objectively reported are often distorted to a point that it causes more confusion than clarity to the general audience.

A major concern in many liberal democracies is the emergence of media empires, where a few individuals have managed to concentrate vast amounts of media assets and use them to actively influence political opinion. Thus, these individuals, from whichever point of the political spectrum can deliver a powerful political message on behalf or against a political establishment through their respective media empires. This is especially damaging if parts of the general public are more exposed to one particular media empire either due to its high popularity or the lack of alternative media sources.

Furthermore, these individuals possess the ability to provoke people or interest groups into mobilizing, simply by highlighting a particular issue. For example, horrific images from the battlefield or a controversial medical study can invoke a massive response. Therefore, even if it could be argued that the media cannot exactly influence people directly, they can most certainly have a strong influence on what issues people are made aware of or exposed to.

The danger in all of this is that it could distort the quality of information that people receive and that in turn could distort their decisions.  If positive issues are reported in a negative manner then at-least some voters will vote against them even if it is contrary to their own interests, and vice versa. This is made worse when there is a high level of voter apathy, which means people will be less interested in taking part or learning about particular issues that could affect them. However, these concerns are nothing new. In fact, with the emergence of the first TV and Radio networks, governments in the Europe and America put forward legislation that forced broadcast media to adopt a neutral position. In Europe, in particular, the state often intervened to nationalize major broadcasting networks.

Furthermore, the rise of media corporations, whose owners were enthusiastic to express their political opinions, seemed to herald the end of the media empires of yesteryear. Yet, nationalizing major broadcast networks or heavy-handed regulation can open up the media to government intervention or censorship, which is highly damaging as well. Even with such efforts, owners of media empires have adapted by swiftly embracing new technology and expanding to different broadcast media such as private terrestrial and satellite TV. Today media empires continue to dominate much of the mainstream broadcast networks in many liberal democracies.

A person’s culture and upbringing has a profound effect on how they see the world and how they process information.  This fact was discussed by Richard Nisbett in his work, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners think differently…and why Nisbett worked with psychologists in Japan and China and determined that the holistic way of viewing the world typical of many students from those countries differed from that of their American counterparts, who tended to view the world in parts or distinct classes of objects that could each be defined by a set of rules. 

In other words, the Asian children see the world in terms of the relationship between things, whereas the American children see the world in terms of the objects as distinct entities. This information is helpful when we consider how cultural background might influence approach to learning and school performance.  There are a number of theories that seek to explain differences in school performance among different racial and ethnic groups.  Three theories stand out: the cultural deficit theory, the expectation theory, and the cultural difference theory.

The cultural deficit theory states that some students do poorly in school because the linguistic, social, and cultural nature of the home environment does not prepare them for the work they will be required to do in school. As an example, some students may not have as many books read to them as are read to children in other homes. Not being able to read has a negative influence on their vocabulary development. Vocabulary development may also be stifled by the amount and nature of verbal interaction in the home. As a result, some children arrive at school lacking the level of vocabulary development expected. The cultural deficit theory proposes that deficiencies in the home environment result in shortcomings in skills, knowledge, and behaviors that contribute to poor school performance.

Expectation theory focuses on how teachers treat students. Teachers often expect less from students of certain racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.  When teachers expect students to perform poorly, they approach teaching in ways that align with their low levels of expectations.  In these instances, students tend to perform at the low levels expected of them by teachers.

Rosenthal and Jacobson tested this theory in their Pygmalion Effect study. A group of teachers were told that their students were due for an intellectual growth spurt during the school year.  Even though the students were average in terms of academic performance, the teachers interacted with them based on this expectation. All students in the experimental group improved both academically and socially by the end of the year. Based on the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy, students who experience high expectations seek to reach the level of expected behaviors. Correspondingly, students who experience low expectations act to meet the level of behavior expected of them.

The cultural difference theory is based on the idea that students who are raised in different cultural settings may approach education and learn in different ways.  It is important for teachers to be aware of the difference between the school atmosphere and the home environment.  People from different cultural traditions may have an approach to education that differs from the mainstream approach used in American schools. For instance, differences can be noted in the Polynesian concept of learning, whereby younger children are generally taught by older children rather than by adults.  This is a very different approach to learning and one that may need to be considered in an American school that is attended by Polynesian students.

Teachers need to ensure that they incorporate methods of teaching in their classrooms that accommodate various beliefs and cultural notions students bring to school. This requires each teacher to develop an understanding of their student’s culture, but also to know who their students are as individuals. It is also important for teachers to ensure that they treat all students the same and to have high expectations for each one, so that they will all strive to reach their full potential.