"The Realities of Political Responsibility: Parliament and Party in Western Europe" (outline), Undated

THE REALITIES OF POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY:

PARLIAMENT AND PARTY IN WESTERN EUROPE

Outline for a Research Project

Otte Kirchheimer
Columbia University

Though Western Europe has reached a high degree of economic

stability, most of its major nations -~- France, Germany, Italy --
ave still groping for political forms adequate for advanced indus-
trial mass society. On the threshold of unified European political
institutions they are left with the disagreeable sensation that
essentials of the structure under construction are still missing.
The difficulty does not lie in technical agencies, commissions or
courts. Experience with European institutions has already shown
that the links purportedly connecting the institutions with the
public at large and ite representatives are weak. The difficulty
is only partially that Europe has not yet developed a political
substructure of its own. It is part of the much wider and pervasive
problem of communication between governing elites and their clien-
teles. The political form of such difficulties varies from country
te country. It may lead, as in Prance, to the abandonment of any
building of long-term political institutions dn faver of tricky
plebiscites, It may lead, as in the Federal Republic, to abandon-
ment of meaningful, political discourse between political profes-

sionals and their clienteles, in favor or sporadic wrangling ovex
;_————_ by -tLeing -reguler_eleetions—_for_a_parliamentary assembly-to the --

the various professionals' respective responsibility in dublous
"affairs", Or it may, as in Italy, manifest itself in a more
traditional way with seemingly ivreconcilable political elites

drawn up against each other.

In none of these cases is there much vitality left in the
traditional forms which provide legitimacy and focus responsibility
selection and control of the executive. It is now closer to the
facts to state the proposition on political responsibility as
follows: A cabinet is responsible fer the political business con-
ducted by a bureaucracy over which it has an uncertain control to
@ parliament which lacks any means outside the trappings of consti-

tutional authority for enforcing such control.

To disengage the present meaning and future requirements of
political responsibility in Western European society calls for an
dnguiry into the status ef the major political institutions. For
this purpose I have chosen parliament and the political parties.
Both are intermediaries between the voter and the executive. Without
cues from these intermediaries neither the voter nor the executive
can operate in anything but a haphazard way. But how do parliament
and parties function presently? In pegata to parliament, we need
first an analysis of the extent to which its functional authority
and prestige have recently declined. To what extent is that decline
due to non-repetitive factors operating in particular societies? _
fo what extent is it due to technological factors and to ideological

obsolescence operating in all of them?
Research Proposa

Ao Parliament

a

— propose to examine these questions:

1. Yo what extent has parliament been relegated to a kind of

constitutionally sanctioned ceremonial pesition with ite functions

—__________ el ther_assumed_by_other_insatitutions—or going begging? —To—-what-—————___

extent and in what flelda has legislative authority been superseded
in substance, Af not in form, through (a) combined administrative,
interest group and expert domination of the legislative process
(mglana, Germany); (b) radical constitutional reshuffling of legis-
lative authority (France)?

2. To what extent has budgetary control been transformed from
a key function te a purely aymbolic act because of (a) the physical
burden and intellectual impossibility ef genuine contrel; and (b)

the incompatibility between economic planning and budgetary control?

3. To what extent have parliamentary committees, whether of
regular or special investigatory type, been able to substitute asa
agencies for control of the executive?

(a) Meance: the arduous, but loging, struggle for parlia-
mentary control over public enterprises.

(b) Great Britain: limitation of the select committee as
control mechaniem.

{c) Federal Republic of Germany: tactically motivated inter-
party feuds artificially kept alive for publicity purposes Limit

the value. of investigations.
4, he Ombudsman: Functions effectively as complaint device

for small man. Does he substitute for political control?

5. The representative character of parliament. In spite of
4ts technical shortcomings in supervision of the executive, parlla~
ment might still exercise a degree of moral and political leader~

ship. The extent to which it has been and will be able to do so

depends largely on the recruitment and quality of ite membership.
VarLous European studies in this field will be brought together and
analyzed to determine the kind of leadership being attempted, and
to be expected, from Parliament:

(a) the extent and depth of interest-~representation;

(b) the bureaucratic component;

(c) impact of intellectuals and professions;

(a) typology of the structures of parliamentary political
leadership.

B, he Party

The decline of parliament as an dnatitution coincided with a
change in the fortunes of the political party. The high-water mark
of parliament was at the game time the formative period of the party,
as expression of popular currents before becoming the prime mover
of government. Today the party of integration has established its
daninance and invested the state, utilizing parliament only as a
place where previous electoral decisions and inter-party compacts

are registered. At the same time the mass party of integration is
__integration-type parties;

iteelLf undergoing important mutations as a consequence of the in-

crease in the number and importance of government functions,

The major changes in the character and role of the parties are:
fa) the narrowing of the substantive content of Inter-party
differences;
(b) the increasing official character of the "friendly"
(c}) a diminution of the fecus of popular attention on the
party because of people's increased well-being and the enhanced
vole of the state-in direct administration and the omnipresence of

interest groups.

To what extent does the party, in this stage of soeclal develop~
ment, retain its capacity for integrating the population inte the
political structure by translating popular desires and images into

action preferences and forcing these preferences on decision makers?

i. ‘The Electorate and the Party

Yoting preferences and abstention records furnish limited eri-
teria for the party's integrative potentialities. They may give
some help towards determining the respective share of images,
symbols and specific desiderata. French, German, Belgian, Italian,
and English studies, correlating social class and political activity,
need to he compared and analyzed to give more precision to the idea

of political cheice. A related problem is the interpretation of

aif
6
abstentionism. Under what circumstances does the increase or de-

erease of abstentions affect the legitimacy of electoral cholces?

2, Party Membership and Party Leadership

The meaning ef party membership for the fulfilling of party
poles and for the legitimacy of party functioning is undergoing
changes. The party as an institution for adjusting group dif-

ferences_has different membership prerequisites and a different hy owe ee —
basis of legitimacy than the party as program builder. The new

role of the party changes both leaders' images and members! images

of the party and increases the gap between them. We need further

study of the images of the party among

{a) party leaders;

(ob) party activists;

(c) dues-paying party members 3

(a) voters,

3, Blements Determining Action Preferences

Political action preferences derive Trom a symbiosis of many
thought patterns and from the urgency of many demands. what ele~
ments decide the rank order in which issues are taken up?

{a) leaders! perceptions of the relative ease or difficulty
of meeting specific situations;

fb) leaders' personal scales of values, acceptance of
existing elites, deviant images of society, etc.;

(c) institutional pressures and their avoidance: the pre-

requisites of a competitive party game.

~————

4, Survival Chances of Party Action Preferences

Party action preferences are declarations of Intentions, To
what extent can we trace the factors deciding their chances of being
carried through?

(a) choice of party representatives appointed to political
offices;

{o-)-eohesiveness—of_party_organization; ae — —

fe) welevance of party decisions to basic political Lasues;

(4) mechanisms of enforcement of party declaions;

le) typology of relations between civil servants and political
head of department,

5. Competitors of the Integration Party

The political party which attempta to integrate the population
dn the existing or a slightly modified political structure is only
one of the forces, and not always the most significant one, competing
for people's loyalties. The advantage of the party's association
with the machinery of the state may be outweighed by its remoteness
from key groups of the population. Hence the Importance of the
relations which 1% may establish with other organizations having
possibly. closer or more continuous access to various strata of the
population, The means and forms of its Interrelation with them may
determine its effectiveness.

(a) the opposition of principle: stabilizer or destabilizer
of the integration party?
8

{b) the party and inchoate popular movements: hostility
vs. attenpts at absorption.

fc) political parties and interest groups: who shapes whom?

(a) under what conditions does there prevail between party
and interest group a relation of absorption, clientele, various
degrees of alliance, relations of benevolent, strict, or hostile

neutrality?

6, The Conditions of Survival of the Non-monopoliatic Party

as Originator of Political Action Patterns.