“Political parties are a necessary condition for a democracy”. Justify the statement by giving four reasons.
We need political parties because they perform various functions such as they put forward different policies and programmes. They play a decisive role in making laws for a country. They also form and ran governments. They shape public opinion and they raise and highlight issues.
We can understand the necessity of political parties by imagining a situation without parties. Every candidate in elections will be independent. Therefore, no one will be able to make any promise to the people about any major policy changes.
The government may be formed, but its utility will remain ever uncertain. Elected representatives will be accountable to their constituency for what they do in the locality. But no one will be responsible for how the country will run.
As we have seen, large societies need representative democracy. As societies became large and complex, they also needed some agency to gather different views on various issues and to present these to the government.