Across the board, Western democracies are experiencing deep dissatisfaction with their political parties. Each nation has its own excuses — scandals, corruption, problems — but given just how widespread this is, it's implausible that local conditions are the entire story. Evangelicals' dissatisfaction with the Republican Party is getting a lot of press attention, but it should be approached in the broader context of what's occurring in the West generally.

The Spring 2006 Wilson Quarterly discusses “Public Images of Political Parties: A Necessary Evil?” by Russell J. Dalton and Steven A. Weldon, in the Nov. 2005 West European Politics:

Respondents in 17 of 20 Western democracies surveyed in 2004 identified political parties as the institutions most affected by corruption. In surveys conducted between 1996 and 2000 in 13 advanced industrial democracies, only 30 percent of those polled (38 percent in the United States) said they believed that parties care what ordinary people think.

It’s not only the parties that are in bad odor with the public. But in the European Union, the public judged political parties the least trustworthy of a long list of institutions in annual surveys between 1997 and 2004. They won the trust of only an average of 17 percent of the EU population. Even big corporations, with the second-lowest trust level, did much better than that, passing muster with 33 percent of those polled.

If anything, Americans may be more trusting of their political parties than most Western nations, which might make the growing distrust of the Republican Party on the part of evangelical Christians — as well as secular conservatives — a long-overdue correction. There are serious problems for democracy that can result from this sort of distrust: lower voter turnout and lower participation in the political process, for example. On the other hand, people who have a strong desire for politics will seek other outlets and this may make democracy more healthy.

That dissatisfaction has spurred electoral reforms in the United States (e.g., term limits), Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and elsewhere. It’s also prompting “more involvement in nonpartisan forms of political action,” such as citizen interest groups and referendums. And, the authors believe, it will eventually lead to louder demands for direct citizen involvement in the details of policy administration. This “public skepticism about political parties is one piece of a general syndrome involving the public’s growing doubts about representative democracy, and a search for other democratic forms.”

Unfortunately, past doubts and anger with representative democracy have actually lead to anti-democratic reforms in some nations. Not every instance of doubt leads to positive improvements: sometimes people get so frustrated that they are willing to follow someone who says that we should just ditch the whole system and jump into something that provides a stronger leader with stronger social cohesion. In an era when people are dissatisfied and complaining, we should be very careful about whom we listen to and what sorts of advice is offered.

 

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