Parties, Policy-Seeking Versus Power-Seeking

A simple way to frame the motivations of political parties that contest elections is to ask the question: do political parties win elections to implement their policies, or do they build their policies in order to win elections? This is another way of stating the problem of whether ideology is a means or an end. Anthony Downs's answer to this question was to confirm the idea that policy plays a purely instrumental role in the allocation of political power. In this sense, before elections, policies are proposed opportunistically in order to satisfy the median voter's ideal point. After elections, policies are repositioned in order to form the most politically expedient coalitions. The power-seeking argument is not just a positive theory—that is, a statement of how political behavior works—but it also posits that political parties that do not orient themselves toward an office-seeking strategy will fail to obtain and hold on to political power, in the same way that businesses that fail to maximize profits fall into insolvency.

It is possible to argue, however, that the alternative explanation is true: that parties are policy-seeking organizations in a manner that places the same emphasis on politicians as rational, utility-maximizing agents. This is because we can also assume an infraparty arena where candidature is dependent on a majority of rank-and-file party [Page 474]supporters. In this arena, success is dependent on the support of the median party supporter, not the median voter in the electorate at large. Assuming the median party supporter's motivations are ideological in nature, we could then say that party candidates are policy-seeking actors. The influence of party leaders and whips may also deter individual politicians from reneging on policy commitments in the interest of office seeking.