Ideological Beasts, Functional Organizations or a Mirror of ‘Me’? Voters’ Perception of Democratic Party Functions

While the functions of political parties in the democratic system have been extensively defined in the political science literature, it is still an open question whether citizens attribute the same roles to parties. Established theories of parties emphasize their linkage functions geared towards participation and representation or effectiveness. This article investigates where citizens locate parties in their democracies and whether their understanding of party functions is connected to their democratic values, preference for democratic institutions, and evaluations of the democratic systems. This investigation is based on original data from two surveys from 2019 and 2020—both run in the UK and Australia—which include novel survey instruments measuring citizens’ preferences for party behavior. The findings show that citizens either have strong preferences for participation and representation rooted in their democratic values or relate to party leaders and have tribal understandings of parties, which are unrelated to democratic values. Furthermore, effectiveness in the form of electoral success is of lesser importance than one would assume and unrelated to democratic values. These findings indicate, first, that citizens’ perspectives party functions are not as clearly delineated as they are in the party literature and, second, that the source of citizens’ discontent with parties can be rooted in democratic expectations or completely unrelated to them.