In Europe and the United States, the post-1945 era marked a shift from ‘mass parties’ to broad ‘big-tent’ parties. Mass parties had operated on strict class lines. Democratic socialist outfits appealed to industrial workers, while conservative parties represented business elites and religious traditionalists.

Big-tent politics had already taken root in North America due to its vast geography, rapid industrialisation, and diverse immigrant and Black populations. To build winning national majorities, the Democratic and Republican parties developed broad platforms, accommodating competing internal factions under a shared umbrella and a loose ideological core. This was the beginning of big-tent parties.

The Democratic Party in the US, especially from the early 1930s onwards, has housed democratic socialists, progressives, social liberals and pro-business centrists, alongside its conservative Southern wing, which existed within the party till the early 1960s. The latter was mainly to bag votes from the ‘Bible belt’ states. The modern Republican Party functions as a broad umbrella encompassing social conservatives, Christian nationalists, fiscal centrists and right-wing populists.

A similar evolution occurred in western Europe after World War II. According to the German jurist Otto Kirchheimer, as the post-war economic growth expanded the middle-class, most voters began to favour pragmatic moderation over class antagonism. Left-wing parties, such as the UK Labour Party and Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shifted toward a progressive centre-left stance, while centre-right parties, such as the British Conservatives and Germany’s Christian Democrats, softened their hard social moralism and elitism to capture votes from across the classes.

Political scientists mostly view big-tent parties as important democratic stabilisers. By absorbing diverse economic, regional and social groups, a big-tent outfit facilitates them to negotiate and form a consensus under a single umbrella. This........

© Dawn (Magazines)