Reforming the Downs Framework

    Much has been written about growing political "radicalism" within the West. In the UK, this new "radicalism" has taken shape in Nigel Farage’s Reform and Rupert Lowe’s Restore. If we were to map these two parties using the Hotelling Model, Reform would be to the right of the Conservative Party and Restore would be a little further right of Reform. Within a multiparty system, these parties tend to remain ideologically pure as there is more of an incentive to remain put and secure your base as opposed to moving closer to other party platforms. Downs notes that new parties crop up either as a means to win elections or influence current parties. While it seems as though Lowe’s Restore (2025) was likely founded with the hope of influencing Reform (2021) to move further right to regain the defectors, Reform itself grew out of the Brexit Party. Amazingly, Reform has overtaken the Tories to become the second most popular party in the UK behind Labour. How did this happen?

    According to Downs, parties seeking victory are founded in response to a change in voter distribution or a crisis which disrupts the social order. Because there was no seismic change in voter distribution pre-Brexit, we would conclude that there must have been a crisis which disrupted the social order. For Reform to have surged in popularity in such a short time period is at the very least indicative of the socially disruptive quality of the Brexit decision. To be clear, it would be confirmation bias to use Downs’s framework as a means to retroactively categorize Brexit as a cataclysmic event akin to his examples of WWII or industrialization. Since Downs is rather vague as to defining what it means for a crisis to disrupt the social order, it’s difficult to avoid using confirmation bias to force these events to fit within his framework. Perhaps another explanatory category should be added such as a long run ideological trend. The current trend of populism is arguably the fuel for Reform and many other new parties, and is incredibly difficult to pin down to a single causal event. Adding this new category to the mix could help explain the success of Reform and the rise of other parties that may seem to slip through the cracks of the framework.