Parliamentary system: Encyclopedia II - Parliamentary system - Parliamentarism and Party Formation

Parliamentary system - Parliamentarism and Party Formation

Traditionally, parties in parliamentary systems have had much tighter ideological cohesiveness than parties in presidential systems. It would be difficult for a parliamentary system to have a party like the United States Democratic Party, which was a directionless coalition of Southern, conservative, Protestants and urban, liberal, white ethnics until the 1980s. A parliamentary system's party must support a government, if a party in a parliamentary system had wildly divergent wings, its goal of government support would be highly problematic.

In parliaments, legislators are claimed by some people not to have the freedom to vote against their party leadership. An individual legislator in a parliamentary system is usually a creature of his party machine, not an independent spokesman for a district. A parliamentarian can criticize his party’s leadership, but continued disloyalty against the party leadership may lead to the person not being slated to stand in the next election under the party's banner. He may even be expelled.

Parliamentary systems with tight party discipline have less of an ability to accommodate dissent than parties in loose discipline systems. Thus, there is an incentive to channel dissent through new parties, not through intra-party conflict. Thus, parliamentary systems – even ones that vote by first-past-the-post, will see a proliferation of alternative parties.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Parliamentarism and Party Formation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki