Political Parties

Question

What are the various challenges faced by political parties?

Answer 1

Political parties face several challenges in their quest to represent and govern effectively:

1. Internal Conflicts: Disagreements within the party can lead to factionalism and weaken the party's unity and effectiveness.

2. Funding and Corruption: Securing funds for campaigns often leads to reliance on wealthy donors, which can result in corruption and undue influence.

3. Public Trust: Maintaining the trust of the electorate is crucial, and scandals or broken promises can erode this trust.

4. Adapting to Change: Keeping up with societal changes and evolving voter expectations requires constant adaptation and innovation.

5. Media Scrutiny: Intense media scrutiny can amplify mistakes and controversies, impacting the party's public image.

These challenges require strategic management and a commitment to transparency and integrity to navigate successfully. 

Answer 2

There are many challenges faced by Political parties which are explained below:

• Lack of internal democracy within parties is the first challenge.
• Across the globe, one can see that there is a growing concentration of power in the hands of few or just one leader.
• On what transpires inside the party, ordinary members of the party do not get sufficient information.
• Ordinary members are unable to influence decisions as they lack sufficient connections.
• Decisions are taken in the name of the party, by leaders having more power.
• Parties do not conduct internal regular elections, organisational meetings are not conducted and do not maintain a register of the membership.
• Since too much of power is wielded by few leaders in the party, those who disagree with the leadership are unable to continue working in the party.
• Personal loyalty to the leader becomes more important than the loyalty to party policies and principles.
• Due to the system of succession due to dynasty in the political parties, ordinary and hardworking party members are unable to rise to the top.
• A transparent and an open system of functioning is not followed by political parties, which prevents deserving party members from rising to the top.
• Relatives or people close to the leaders of the party are given favours which are unfair to other party workers.
• Members of just one family hold complete control in many parties. This is not fair to other members of that party.
• Hence people who do not have popular support or adequate experience get the positions of power which is unhealthy for a democracy.
• The other important challenge is, during elections there is a rising role of muscle power and money power in political parties.
• Candidates who can raise lots of money or those who have lots of money are usually nominated by the Political Parties.
• Political parties have supported many criminals for contesting elections.
• Short-cuts are used to win elections since parties’ sole focus is on winning elections.
• Decisions and policies of the political parties are usually influenced by organisations or rich people who give funds to the party.
• Across the world, due to a decline in the ideological differences among political parties, there is no significant difference, thereby reducing choice to the voters.
• Not giving meaningful choice to the voters is the fourth challenge that is often faced by political parties.