With election campaigns kicking off in a number of countries, small parties on the left need to remember that voters are not just looking at campaign promises but also at how political parties campaign.
When we go to vote we may ask ourselves various questions: Are we voting with our conscience or using our vote strategically? What are our options? What does the political party stand for and who is the candidate who is running?
But when it comes down to it, a lot of us need to feel we trust a political party or candidate before we can vote for them, even if that trust means we trust them to do just a little bit better than the alternative. This is not something that is exclusively important for the left. Trust is a crucial component of selecting a political party or candidate to vote for across the Left-Right spectrum. In countries such as Spain, Greece, Italy, the United Kingdom, France and Austria the monopoly held by traditional political parties is breaking up and new political parties are forming. These changes are largely explained by the public’s new found distrust of the traditional political parties. The public feel like they have had enough and no amount of rhetorical maneuvering by political party leaders will bring back confidence to the parties.
In Spain this has led to the rise of the left-wing populist party Podemos. In France it has led to the rise of the right-wing nationalist party National Front. While it is clear that distrust of the traditional parties will not necessarily lead to support for left-wing political parties, new smaller parties have a chance in such a political environment. However, even new political parties have to deal with questions of trust.
In the United Kingdom, trust in the growing nationalist UK Independence Party takes a hit every time a new story is exposes links between party officials or candidates and racism (although they still attract a significant following for a small party). In Italy, the relatively new crypto-populist party Five Star Movement gets its trust from its party leader Beppe Grillo – a famous comedian. However, the party’s ambiguous political agenda that cherry-picked from across the political spectrum – alongside their fame, fortune, and links to the establishment – meant that they did not have the trust of a large segment of the population. In the 2013 local elections, disaffected voters decided to stay home and not vote instead of electing the Five Star Movement’s candidates.
While political parties with elected representatives can develop trust by trying to shape policy, small political parties have little to present to the electorate and this means they have a hard time developing trust. When a party’s interest is against the ruling elite, maintaining any level of trust is even harder. Officials in government, in the media, and in business are likely to use their resources to attack the new party. This is currently happening in Spain. Podemos is being attacked in the media for having links to the Venezuelan government. Podemos has claimed to be a populist party and therefore any direct links to the leftist government may shake public trust, and therefore electoral support.
The case of Podemos is perhaps extreme. While Podemos has yet to obtain significant political power and has only existed since early 2014, it has topped several general election polls since late October of last year. With the general election coming up in December at the latest, Podemos has become a serious threat to the establishment.
For smaller political parties, their trust has to be developed. A good platform is not going to cut it. This is partially because there is no reason to trust what a political party says. What the public wants to see is if they can trust a party to do what it says.
This is where the act of political campaigning becomes important. For new political parties, campaigning is their primary way of interacting with the public, and displaying that they can be trusted. If small political parties of the left only make promises about what they will do once they are in power, they can only gain trust after being elected. But if parties need to be trusted before they are elected, then these parties are stuck.
What small left parties can do is use their electoral campaigns to make promises about how they will campaign – and then stick to those promises. Keeping promises about what the party does before it is elected or gains any political power can help it get the trust it needs to obtain some political power.
In many cases small political parties already make pledges about what they will do on the campaign trail. In the UK, Left Unity is a new political party that officially recognizes that “support for our party and its electoral success will only advance to the extent that it is genuinely representative of working class communities, and an organic part of the campaigns and movements they generate and support.”
The first part of this statement may be particularly difficult to stick to. The working class in the UK is not particularly left-leaning. Socially conservative elements within the working class are not negligible. Having the party be ‘genuinely representative’ may pose some difficult challenges to the existing policy promises that welcome immigration and advocate for feminism and anti-capitalism.
The second part of the pledge – to work organically through campaigns and movements – is much more practical. This generates the expectations that Left Unity will be focused on working in grassroots campaigns, participating in community organizing and engaging with its electorate on the ground. This can differentiate it from a political party that focuses on interacting with citizens just by mailing them a flyer. It can also build trust because it demonstrates the concern for the constituency the party seeks to represent, rather than the career ambitions of its candidates.
Such ‘campaigning pledges’ can be crafted in a wide range of ways. Pledges to host meetings with the public can be made. Pledges to have candidates that match the constituency’s demographics in terms of gender, ethnicity and race can be made. Parties can make a pledge to use recycled paper when distributing campaign literature or only using union-made promotional materials such as T-shirts or banners. Candidates can also pledge to make personal sacrifices during the campaign that demonstrates their commitment to a cause. Such ‘sacrifices’ can include not shopping at chain stores, being present at every parent-teacher conference, or volunteering at a homeless shelter twice a week.
Pledges can be made to highlight important differences between the small party and the large establishment parties as well as addressing timely and locally important issues. For example, if there is a local concern around smog or traffic, a small left party could pledge to cycle or use public transportation to get to work during that local campaign. This way a local issue is addressed but instead of simply making a pledge about what that party or candidate could do once in office, that candidate is making a pledge now and developing trust.
Of course, this only works if the party or candidate sticks to the pledge. By making promises and not sticking to them during the campaign, the candidate is likely to lose any credibility he or she had. But sticking to the pledge can prove to be important for small parties.
These pledges should not be viewed as campaign tricks. We should remember that the reason people don’t vote for small left parties may not just be that they disagree on the issues or that they don’t care. People have grown to become skeptical of politicians’ promises to such an extent that a party’s political platform is simply not enough. This is perhaps a healthy dose of cynicism towards an electoral system that has often made matters worse for the majority. Earning the public’s trust is not just important to gaining political power in order to try to make improvements through reform, but important in developing a new political culture of continuously earned trust.
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