These are concepts that pervade the lives of citizenry within many nation states. Within the variant of democracy installed within many societies an element of partisanism tends to rise - the concept of individuals uniting within a structure of common direction.

The concept does make some sense. A party, unlike an individual, has the advantage of also being a brand - an identity all in itself to which more voters would identify rather than any individual candidate. It also provides the security of the strategy of ’safety in numbers’.

Yet what becomes increasingly difficult to overlook are the inherent problems that arise thanks to the embracement of this structure. As with any structure which takes on an identity of its own, the individual candidate and his or her standpoints tend to be lost and subdued by a rising set of standpoints held by the party itself. The collective element takes on a pseudo-democratic element and thus views shared by a greater number of individuals or individuals of greater influence within the party tend to subdue other views that may be deemed non-conforming.

It is also to be noted that such problems manifest outwardly as well as inwardly, especially when it comes to the manifestation or interaction with other seperate concepts such as the ‘democracy’ which is peddled within many countries today.

This is very easy to illustrate through a simple example. If party White is of a standpoint in favour of the economy while highly conservative upon the issue of religious rights while party Black is of a standpoint striking balance between sustainable economy and environment and are in favour of restricting religious freedoms to the home, what choices are available to the voter who wishes to see more liberal religious freedoms and a balance between sustainable economy and environment?

When it comes down to the ballot box, voting for a person from party Black who stated sympathies for religious freedoms would not truly do justice to the viewpoint of the voter as in all probability party Black’s religiously-restricting views would likely over-ride the views of even a loose cannon who does well at election time. The collective party system tends to smother the individual.

It therefore comes as no surprise that a large portion of countries see a lack of voter enthusiasm and lower turnouts, where choosing not to vote is not criminalized.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Contemplations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.