How To Build A Successful Political Party?

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Politics is a complex and broad realm. One could argue between the desire to attain power and the greed to sustain as the end goals of politics. It is a harsh and fierce battleground that seems calm and organised on the outside but as one digs deep into the world of politics, he realises quite the opposite. The greed to sustain power comes from the ability of a political party to sustain and mobilise the support of its voters in other words the public. Political parties consider a range of policies and strategies that help them keep their voters intact and have successful electoral campaigns. In this essay, our set of aims focuses on strategies such as party organisation, ideologies of different parties, socialisation, and party messaging, which different parties use in different ways to achieve their desired objective.

Party organisation refers to the structure of a political party and how it maintains its connection between the leaders and the workers to maintain and sustain the political base for the desired electoral results. As stated by Brandon Van Dyck “Strong party organisations benefit vote-seeking elites. At the most basic level, organizationally strong parties have large memberships, and party members tend to be more likely than non-members to show up at the polls and support their party’s candidates.” (Dyck, 2014)

Party organisation is becoming a key element in shaping the results of an electoral campaign. More and more efforts are being put in by leaders to establish rock-solid relations with key elite groups to gain leverage of their patronage. “Party organizations take many forms. National and state parties are large and complex organizations. They have permanent headquarters, chairpersons, boards of directors, and full-time employees with specialized responsibilities. They maintain lists of officers and members, operate under established bylaws and rules, and hold scheduled meetings and conventions. Local parties range from highly active, well-organized, professional structures to haphazard, amateur operations.” (Schmidt, 1998)

One of the prominent features of a successful, well-established political party is its ability to be organised. Especially in times of calamities and political turmoil, it is a fact that no party has reached its pure potential without taking advantage of political turmoil and sacrificing the most at that critical moment. At that critical juncture the ability of a party to remain together and keep its far-reaching organisation, ranging from local political activists to bureaucratic elites, and financial elites under one frame of a commonly shared ideology. The simpler it sounds, the more complicated it is in real life. “What’s more, strong party organizations facilitate and strengthen on-the-ground electoral mobilization. Party activists do campaign work organizing rallies, going door to door distributing written information, and transporting people to polling booths, while local party offices provide financial, material, and logistical support for these activities. Local activist networks also enable patronage-based parties to channel resources to constituents more efficiently than they could otherwise” (Zarzaga, 2011) 

Although establishing a strong party organisation may take plenty of time and effort, party leaders still try to reinforce it while considering a long-term plan. Establishing it is a complex task, keeping everyone intact while fulfilling the demands of different groups. Be it economic or political party leaders tend to go through tough times to see the fruits of it in the future.

“Strong organization provides parties with electorally valuable “legitimacy benefits”: a party’s membership statistics may be widely disseminated via mass media; a large membership may act as an effective symbolic representation of a party’s existing or target constituencies; a vibrant internal life may enhance perceptions in the wider electorate that the party in question is broad-based, participatory, and internally democratic. In all these ways, a strong organization can make a party more appealing to undecided voters, thus strengthening its electoral performance.”   (Scarrow, 1996) 

Ideology at its basic is defined as a “set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved” (Erikson, 2003)

It is a source of guidance for the masses, one of the beautiful analyses of political ideology done by Philips W. Shively explained by JS Omotola in his article “Philips W. Shively posits that ideology is useful to people, both for their own personal ease and satisfaction and for their public political activities. At the individual level, ideology helps to make sense reasonably easily and quickly of the varied political questions that come to one’s attention. In terms of its public utilities, it helps people to make persuasive arguments convincingly to enlist popular support for a given public policy” (Shively, 1997:46 – 47) , (Omotola, 2009)

It is evident that a party without a clear political ideology is nothing but an aimless group of people fighting over power. A political party's identity is based on the party’s ideology, the ideology it brings to the voters, and the narrative it builds up for the next electoral campaign. A clear-cut ideology is the first step towards establishing one's foot in mainstream politics. Political ideology has the capability to bring the masses under one unit, ranging from party leaders, party workers, voters, and even the confused voters who are supposed to be pleased by the most relatable political ideology. It is by far the most important characteristic of a successful, well-established political party.

Politics is considered a war of ideologies; a successful party will have the capability to put its political organisation under one common ideology and have the flexibility to smoothly transit between political ideologies considering the change in political landscapes whilst maintaining unity amongst themselves.

Political Socialisation is a process through which information is transmitted amongst the masses through various channels and helps individuals acquire their political beliefs and develop an ideology to support the most relatable political party. Political socialisation produces internal and external influence over an individual's knowledge and has the power to shape one's understanding of politics. “Political socialization" sometimes refers to actual observations of socialization processes, in any of the above senses, taking into account both the socialized and the agents of socialization” (Greenstein, 1970)

Let us now look at the mediums through which political socialisation takes effect known as the agents of political socialisation; Family is one of the key elements in shaping a child's perspective on politics, family exerts the most influence whilst the child is an adolescent.

 “As with children's views of political authority, findings during the last decade have substantially revised earlier conclusions about the family as an agent of political socialization. When Hyman in 1959 summarized existing political socialization studies, a conclusion of high rates of transmission from parents to children seemed warranted.” (Neimi, 1977)

Educational institutions are another form of political socialisation, research draws further emphasis on high schools and universities as at that youth level, students are considered far more politically enthusiastic. “High school, according to our schema, should be a crucial time for the development of political attitudes, since young people by this time have the cognitive capacity to deal with political ideas. Yet studies have not been uniforming in finding positive effects of the schoolroom.” (Neimi, 1977) 

Moreover, effective political socialisation encompasses party's engagement through corner meetings, mutual gatherings, public forums, and collective business concerns. Parties form alliances with various elitist groups, ranging from the financial, bureaucratic, and military elites. This allows parties to broaden their support and secure a large vote bank of different demographic, cultural, and ethnic groups. Political parties place due emphasis on political socialization as it is one of the key elements to secure the support of the masses, different roles are assigned to party workers only to focus on maintaining alliances with various elitist groups.

Political messaging refers to the concept of transmitting political ideas, narratives, or concepts by the candidates or the workers of the party through various mediums such as social media, news broadcasters, political speeches, electoral campaigns, etc. Political messaging is a powerful tool that informs the public of the policies, strategies, and their ideologies of the candidates and helps them understand the narrative of the candidate more accurately and precisely. This unifies and mobilises the support base as they tend to gain a better understanding and relativity through communications. Political messaging also provides candidates with a platform to counter their opponents' arguments, answer the critics, and solidify their character publicly. This can have a major influence on the voter base as they are able to distinguish and correspond effectively. Moreover, political messaging provides opportunities for parties to win over undecided voters. Through careful and well-crafted messages, parties tend to gain influence over undecided voters to mobilise their support base. One shouldn't be in any doubt regarding the importance of political messaging in an electoral campaign. The fruits bore by political messages should be used with immense care and knowledge by a successful political party. Successful political messaging also includes flexibility in approaching different ethnic, cultural, or financial groups. Distinct groups must be approached by a distinguished but carefully planned message that not only is relatable but digs deep down in their hearts and triggers a feeling of hope, inspiring them towards greatness so they are deeply connected with the agenda. History is itself evidence for this claim. Let us take a few examples from history, Hitler’s regime was full of catastrophes and destruction, yet he managed to interpret his view amongst his support base and widen his support all over Germany. Successful political leaders find a unified common ground amongst the distorted masses through the collective use of political messaging and tend to extract desired actions for desired objectives. One could analyse the rigid and complex landscape of Afghanistan and could argue the upbringing of the Taliban extremism because of all political tools used with precise due intelligence to target the empathy and religious enthusiasm among the young politically active generation.

The modern world is getting digitised day by day, and the use and strength of social media have exceeded one's imagination. To mobilise youth through social media and various channels is also becoming as important as any other media. This raises a concern for political parties to be more attentive and flexible in learning newer methods of political messaging. Obviously, lead communication through social media is much faster, cheaper, and has the ability to reach far more audiences than any other stated platform. However, due caution has to be paid as social media has the ability to manipulate one’s argument.

Conclusion

As a student of politics, one should always know the strategies political parties tend to take to get the desired electoral results. It is also necessary to know the factors that have a deep effect on the results of electoral elections. Every stated factor is bound to have its benefits as well as drawbacks. However, it mostly depends upon the way in which a political party implements it. Building a broad, trustworthy political organization would be time-consuming and demanding. Leaders must have the utmost character of patience and perseverance. Trust is gained through hard times, and facing hard times is inevitable in establishing a rock-solid political organization. Just like that a clear-cut ideology provides the political party with an aim, it gives them a foundation to build upon. Furthermore, without effective socialization, a party could never reach its full potential. Socialization forces parties to act diversly and provides them access to groups far broader than their scope. In addition to this, it would be incomplete to end this essay without mentioning the power of political messaging. It is a powerful tool that has the capability to influence and persuade people and engage them along the electoral journey to reach electoral success.

Studying political strategies and implementation in detail, to derive and list any factor that bears the most responsibility towards the desired election results would be impossible, every strategy has its due importance in its dedicated area of concern. Successful electoral campaigns often have a mix of all these tools carefully drafted according to the likeness of different groups. A successful political party would not waste time distinguishing between them but rather focus on implementing all these simultaneously with immense care, knowledge, and flexibility.

References

Van Dyck, B., 2014. Why party organization still matters: The workers’ party in Northeastern Brazil. Latin American Politics and Society, 56(2), pp.1-26

Schmidt, S.W., 1998. Political Parties in the Technological Age. Policy Studies Journal, 26(2), pp.341-346.

Zarazaga, R., 2011. Vote-Buying and Asymmetric Information: A Model with Applications to Argentina. In APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper.

Scarrow, S.E., 1996. Parties and their members: Organizing for victory in Britain and Germany. Oxford University Press.

Erikson RS, Tedin KL. 2003. American Public Opinion. New York: Longman. 6th ed.

Omotola, J.S., 2009. Nigerian parties and political ideology. Journal of Alternative perspectives in the Social Sciences, 1(3), pp.612-634.

Greenstein, F.I., 1970. A note on the ambiguity of" political socialization": Definitions, criticisms, and strategies of inquiry. The Journal of Politics, 32(4), pp.969-978.

Niemi, R.G. and Sobieszek, B.I., 1977. Political socialization. Annual review of sociology, 3(1), pp.209-233.