Democracies throughout Europe and the United States have expressed a deep yearning for political renewal. It has led, virtually everywhere, under various names, to a profound leadership renewal. With the emergence of new faces, talents, raising great hopes.
By contrast, a genuine revival of political parties is nowhere to be seen. They remain predominately, everywhere, as they have for over a century, even for the newest parties, machines for nominating candidates, and then for providing the most committed activists with positions of parliamentary assistants or various prebends in public services.
And when they talk politics, political parties only talk about details and have conflicting positions, relying on stereotyped attitudes and declamatory postures. Without any concrete content. They only seek what is good for them, and not what is better for the country. They seldom reflect on what they could do together, they seldom develop broadly shared thinking.
With an election conducted on the proportional representation system, only apparatchiks who have been with the leaders throughout their career are elected; and with an election conducted on the majority representation system, all too often our elected representatives think only of their constituency interests, even when they are not in line with the interests of the country as a whole.
We should not be surprised that parliamentary work is so often subject to the executive arms of the state, when the laws are timid when the reforms are far from what people expect. And it is possible to understand how citizens take an interest, everywhere, much more in the presidential elections than in the parliamentary elections.
That is extremely dangerous as a democracy cannot be based solely on the popular legitimacy of leaders, however exceptional they may be. Without a powerful Parliament, with no respected, passionate and competent Members, having individually direct contact with the people, democracy will soon come to resemble the populist regimes it is supposed not to emulate.
The key to the problem lies in the nature of political parties. In the social networks world and a general fragmentation, these organizations founded at the end of the 18th century can no longer fulfill the role assigned to them: help in the formation of a political consensus around a project and ensure a thorough and effective control of the executive.
In the 21st century, in the deep-seated democracies, they must not, therefore, be treated only as machines for nominating candidates. They should be useful. And for that reason, they should assume responsibility in the seven following areas:
1. Thinking about the world and providing a vision to citizens for geopolitical stakes, new values, social movements, technological developments, of the rapport to the world of work, and to culture.
2. Thinking about the country, its place in the world, its strengths and weaknesses.
3. Clarifying values to defend.
4. Elaborating a social project consonant with these values.
5. Inferring a meaningful policy program, to implement this project.
6. Monitoring the implementation of such a program by the executive, both at Parliament and in the field.
7. And above all, a new function: parties need to move beyond pleading, they must do and act. They should not just talk about unemployment, poor housing, bureaucracy, and education. They should no longer leave to the NGOs alone the whole responsibility for concrete action. They must themselves become facilitators of social change, launching concrete measures on the key points of their programs.
It is in doing so that they will attract activists, regain the interest of voters, that words and deeds will go hand in hand, that they will be useful to the country, and will protect political renewal from being a ruse of a populism with a human face. That they will make political life again what it should never have ceased to be: the supreme expression of human freedom.