Yu Haiqing: The Orientation of "the People" in Western Political Parties and Its Practical Paradoxes
In recent years, Western party politics has encountered developmental difficulties, one of the primary reasons being the disconnect between theory and practice. The function of political parties as intermediaries between the state and society has become increasingly weak, while the divide between political elites and the ordinary masses has become increasingly severe. The conflict between their positioning of themselves as representing "the people" and their practice of "de-peope-ization" [1] has led some Western political parties deep into a crisis of representation.
"People" Expressions in Western Political Discourse
In the Western world today, various political parties are a mixed bag, with vastly different organizational forms, widely divergent political stances, and distinct ideological viewpoints. If one were to find a commonality among these diverse parties, declarational expressions regarding "the people" could be said to be a shared characteristic. Currently, except for a very small number of parties such as certain Communist Parties that explicitly express their class attributes, almost all Western political parties brand themselves as "catch-all parties" (or "parties of the whole people") and "people’s parties." They claim to be representatives of the whole people, the nation, or the citizenry, taking liberty, justice, and solidarity as their basic values, aiming to enhance the well-being of the masses and realize the interests of all or the vast majority of people.
Traditional mainstream Western parties, such as conservative parties, liberal parties, and Christian democratic parties, all have their policy biases and specific voter bases. However, while stabilizing their core electorate, most parties actively project an open posture "toward all people of all strata and groups" to absorb support more broadly across social classes. For example, among the two major parties in the United States, the Democratic Party’s supporters mainly come from labor, people of color, and ethnic minorities; its policies emphasize welfare and equity and tend to protect middle-class interests. The Republican Party’s support base mainly includes large entrepreneurs, conservatives, and white supremacists, and its policy propositions are heavily influenced by big capital. Yet, in the clearly biased election platforms of each party, "the people," "the nation," "citizens," "everyone," and "the ordinary masses" are words that are repeatedly mentioned to highlight their broad representativeness. For instance, the homepage of the Democratic Party’s official website features a highly conspicuous declaration: "We are fighting for a better, fairer, brighter future for every American." In the 2016 Republican platform, "workers" appeared 27 times, "citizens" 41 times, and the word "people" appeared as many as 110 times.
Western social democratic parties have undergone a process of development and change from traditional working-class parties to a modern transition toward "de-class-ization." The European social democratic parties established in the late 19th century under the guidance of scientific socialism primarily engaged in political activities centered on the working class, taking the liberation of the working class as their mission and the abolition of private property and the establishment of socialism as their ultimate goal. After World War II, to adapt to changes in social structure and the need to win more voters, social democratic parties abandoned their positioning as workers' parties and generally shaped a new image as "people's parties" representing all social strata. Since the late 1980s, against the backdrop of accelerating globalization and the questioning of traditional social democratic economic and social models, social democratic parties successively launched the reform waves of the "Third Way" or the "New Middle Way." The core change in their social base was to break through the original voter base, expand the range of supporters, and seek common ground while reserving differences [2] with other political forces, especially seeking more supporters among centrist forces. To this day, the "people's party" positioning, biased toward protecting the interests of the lower-middle class, remains the political spectrum orientation of Western social democratic parties. The 2018 national platform of the Australian Labor Party stated its mission is to "remove the barriers that prevent people from participating fully in economic and social life... regardless of background, social class, or parental wealth, everyone can share in prosperity." The British Labour Party’s 2019 election manifesto explicitly stated its future goal was to "build a fairer Britain that cares for everyone and shares wealth and power."
Western Green parties and ecological parties, which lead with the "ecology card," similarly take the maintenance of the broader interests of "the people" as their goal. After proposing policy stances such as "ecology first," social justice, promoting sustainable economic development, and building a pluralistic, equal, and free society, their party platforms often emphasize that these propositions align with the interests of all and everyone, intending to "benefit all people," enable "the free development of every individual," and allow "all people to lead a good life," and so on. The 2020 draft platform of the German Green Party proposed that its "policies will be oriented toward everyone," "not based on individual interests or the interests of small groups, but combining different interests with a common vision for the future," and "committed to achieving common goals in a diverse society."
"The people" is, moreover, the natural political label of Western populist parties. Since the 21st century, populist parties have risen in the West and continuously expanded their influence. The composition of populist parties is complex, and their policy propositions differ greatly or are even diametrically opposed, but they share commonality in their core concepts of being anti-establishment, anti-elite, and appealing to mass support to challenge traditional authority and political structures. Therefore, in the value logic of populist parties, the people/masses are endowed with supreme status, becoming the starting point and end goal of all their radical rhetoric. For example, left-wing, right-wing, and single-issue populist parties such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the National Front in France, the Freedom Party of Austria, and the Five Star Movement in Italy all call themselves "spokespersons for the people." They utilize issues that trigger widespread public dissatisfaction—such as economic crises, austerity policies, political corruption, and environmental degradation—to propagate "the people's anger," responding to the people's desire for change by proposing corresponding policy stances to attract public attention and identification. Some parties intertwine and overlay populism with nationalist and xenophobic stances, putting forward inflammatory and provocative slogans such as "French people first" or "Austrians first," thereby giving their claims regarding the people an extremist character.
The Contradiction Between Discourse Positioning and Actual Practice: An Intractable Paradox in Western Party Politics
In observing and analyzing Western political parties, just as when we judge a person, we must not only listen to their words but also watch their actions. From the long-term practice of Western party politics, "the people" are by no means a priority item on the party policy list; the interests of big capital represented by interest groups and the party's own interests are always higher than and prior to the interests of the masses. Populist parties likewise cannot represent the people; their political mobilization is essentially an entrapment and hijacking of the mass will. The declining Western party system is becoming increasingly rigid and dysfunctional, facing growing public dissatisfaction and opposition. This practice of "de-people-ization" has turned the "people" discourse held high by Western parties into a mere "value symbol." The contradiction between discourse positioning and actual practice has become an intractable paradox in Western party politics.
Capital interests are higher than the interests of the masses. Theoretically, the essential attribute of any political party is its class nature; all are representatives of specific classes, strata, and social groups. Western competitive political parties are no exception. In the contemporary West, mainstream political parties are bourgeois in nature, usually representing the interests of big capital in a certain sector or field. Although they may make a certain degree and range of policy improvements and interest compromises for the purpose of stabilizing their rule, their class nature dictates that the goal of maintaining the primary and fundamental interests of capital cannot change. Capital interests are always the core interests of mainstream Western parties. From the perspective of concrete practice, mainstream Western parties and big capital—especially interest groups—are bound together by inertia. The two are linked in their class nature and mutually need and support each other politically. Political parties need the financial support provided by interest groups for elections, while interest groups need to intervene in the political process by cultivating their own spokespersons to realize their own interests. This relationship dictates that after Western parties take office, they must inevitably reward the capital supporters behind them through various hidden or ingenious ways. In this process, when the interests of the masses do not conflict with the interests of capital, the party may incidentally realize some of the masses' interests. However, when the interests of the masses conflict with those of capital and interest groups, the party will inevitably lean toward supporting capital interests. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic's spread in the Western world, the reason governments hesitated in making prevention and control decisions such as closing borders, locking down cities, and suspending work—thereby losing the best opportunity to effectively control the epidemic—was primarily because these measures, while beneficial for protecting people's health and safety, would bring huge negative effects to economic development, thus affecting the big capital interests behind the ruling party. Behind the various Western government behaviors during the pandemic—slow decision-making, shirking responsibility, concealment, and the creation of rumors—we can see that the unchanging law of "capital supreme" always dominates the behavior of mainstream Western parties.
Party interests transcend public interests. From the developmental logic of Western competitive democratic politics, the declarational expressions of various types of parties regarding "the people" are fundamentally based on the needs of electoral competition. One vivid metaphor compares the Western multi-party parliamentary democratic system to a political market economy: what is peddled in the economic market are stocks, while what is sold in the political market are votes. To obtain governing status, a party must compete for more votes in the political market; elections thus become the "baton" guiding party behavior. Western parties have gradually lost their intermediary function of representing and reflecting public opinion and have degenerated into electoral tools. All propositions and actions are subject to electoral needs, currying favor with all classes, strata, and social groups, and putting forward various unrealistic or even difficult-to-implement promises to compete for voters. Once in power, each party determines principles and policies based on maximizing its own interests and maintaining its own ideology and political stance; national and public interests are often cast aside. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the issue of wearing masks—originally a simple public health matter—triggered an open confrontation between the U.S. Democratic and Republican parties because the physical mask had become a symbol of the two parties' struggle for invisible political and ideological dominance. The starting point of the two parties' debate was not the protection of the people's lives and health, but their own political self-interest: maintaining the correctness of their own party’s values, denying the political legitimacy of their competitors, and suppressing each other to win over voters. Similarly, at a critical moment when the epidemic was spreading, the Trump administration organized rallies of ten thousand people to drum up votes for the upcoming presidential election. Meanwhile, the federal government and various state and city governments bickered and shirked responsibility due to partisan interests, disregarding the safety of the masses and sacrificing the people’s interests for political gains. Regarding such chaos in American political society, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out incisively in an interview that this is "a manifestation of a deep internal crisis in the United States, the root cause of which is that the interests of the ruling party are already higher than the interests of the whole society and the people."
Populism entraps the mass will. The rise of populist parties in the West has a basis in public opinion; it is a concentrated reflection of a series of crises in trust, identity, and participation brought about by the intensification of social fragmentation caused by inequality, immigration, and security issues in Western society in recent years. Populist parties brandish the banners of narrow nationalism, anti-immigration, and anti-globalization, vigorously promoting "identity politics" and making a great fuss over issues of religious and cultural identity, using public dissatisfaction with reality to shape their own political identity. In this sense, populist parties do not truly represent the people; or rather, they only achieve the entrapment or hijacking of the general mass will by intensifying the irrational factors in public opinion. From the perspective of concrete practice, after populist parties and politicians take office, their policies of "country first" with narrow nationalist overtones are forcibly implemented, which not only threatens the stability of world economic development but even directly damages the interests of their own people. For example, when American populist politicians launched a "trade war" against China, it seemed on the surface that domestic employment opportunities would expand due to increased tariffs. But in reality, due to soaring production costs, intensified economic instability, and the impact of relevant counter-measures, America's manufacturing employment and the international competitiveness of its goods actually declined, ultimately resulting in damage to the interests of the American people. At the same time, populist parties and politicians act against the trend of history, practicing isolationism and protectionism, impacting the stability of the international political order with unilateralism, and replacing international cooperation with great power competition. This both exerts a negative impact on the international order and causes collateral damage to the interests of their own people. For instance, at the critical moment of the COVID-19 outbreak when all countries needed to work together to fight the epidemic, the American populist government not only failed to actively participate in international cooperative actions but also took actions that undermined global solidarity, such as withdrawing from the World Health Organization. As Western critics have noted, these behaviors "will not protect the lives or interests of the American people, but will make Americans sick and leave America isolated and helpless."
The party system has lost the trust of the masses. As the party system—which supposedly reflects the true essence of Western democracy—has increasingly trended toward decay in recent years, it has become burdened with deep-seated problems and frequent crises, continually losing the trust of the people. The original design of Western two-party or multi-party systems was to coordinate relations within the ruling group through party competition and to curb the abuse of power by the few through partisan checks and balances. However, this has derived into protracted decision-making, cumbersome procedures, and low efficiency. For instance, in recent years it has frequently come to light that Western political parties find it difficult to reach consensus on vital issues concerning people's livelihoods—such as education, immigration, fiscal policy, and healthcare reform—leading to various decisions being discussed without resolution [3] or resolved without implementation [4]. Faced with sudden emergency public disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic, some Western governments exhibited poor execution and extremely low efficiency, and were even considered to have "already become unable to undertake the state's most important responsibility of protecting its citizens." Such issues have greatly affected the well-being of the masses. Furthermore, the endogenous defects of the Western party system have become increasingly prominent. Institutional arrangements such as "winner-take-all" and the setting of parliamentary thresholds result in a party gaining seats through a simple majority or leads to certain small parties being excluded from the political arena, thereby preventing the will of a portion of the people from being expressed. Increasing institutional rigidity and a lack of flexibility have also become important reasons for the apathy of Western populations toward party politics and the fact that election participation rates continue to hit record lows.
In summary, the severe disconnect between political parties and the masses has caused a lack of representativeness, which not only weakens the legitimacy of the Western party system but, in the long run, is also shaking the foundations of the liberal democratic system. Consequently, for years Western parties have been continuously issuing various "prescriptions" to improve their "flexibility" to strengthen the connection between the party and the people. However, these efforts struggle to achieve their intended goals due to their class essence; the paradox of Western party politics remains unresolved.
Drawing lessons from the practice of Western party politics, as we uphold the "people-centered" development philosophy today, we must not only fully demonstrate the questions of "what it is" and "why it is," but more importantly, we need to think deeply about "what to do" and "how to do it." Only by effectively translating understanding into action and integrating it into all the work of the Party can we truly interpret the governing character of the Communist Party of China: "people first." This is a key and critical issue for practicing the Party's original aspiration and founding mission in the New Era.
Yu Haiqing, Deputy Director and Researcher of the Department of International Studies, Institute of Marxism Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Source: People's Tribune, late August issue Web Editor: Xinran