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Promising Parties: Can Parties in Government still Deliver?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

Mark M. Gray
Mark M. Gray*
Affiliation:
Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, 2300 Wisconsin Ave., NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20007, USA
*
E-mail: mmg34@georgetown.edu
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Abstract

The ability of political parties in advanced industrial democracies to maintain the traditional linkage between voters and their governments by making and attempting to fulfill policy promises is potentially being challenged by emerging social, political, and economic forces of the 21st century. Parties may become less meaningful to the electorate as they deal with the cross-pressures created by the forces of Europeanization, globalization, localism, and the increasing independence of central banks. These factors have the potential to make parties in government, at the national-level, marginally less able to fulfill the promises they make to voters. The review of literature presented here regarding these challenges indicates that although the risks to parties are very real, the effects of these emerging forces have yet to substantially diminish the primary roles and functioning of national parties in government. Those most at risk of being affected in the future are parties who rely strongly on economic appeals and promises.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 16 , Issue 3: The State of the Parties– Party Democracy in the 21st Century , July 2008 , pp. 305 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2008

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