Creating a Platform
Why Have a Platform?
For existing party members and potential recruits, the platform provides a brief and handy summary of your party’s position on major policy issues.
A platform charts a policy course for your country, based on key conservative or free market principles. The ideals articulated within this document should not be “motherhood” statements to which any party might subscribe, instead each paragraph on every issue should reflect values which uniquely belong to your side of politics.
What It Is Not
This document is not a comprehensive, nor completely topical statement of party policy. Party committees should publish reports and policy documents regularly which offer more detailed policy statements.
Also, party conferences develop policy statements on more specific issues on a regular basis. This platform is about core principles and ideas.
How Is It Constructed?
This document is developed by your party members, in wide consultation with them. The parliamentary representatives of your party should have an input, but not the final say. This document is a set of guiding instructions, from the broader party membership to the party leaders.
Regular review and revision of the document as important as the initial creation of the document. Ideally, a perfect platform would spell out principles so timeless, that the document never needs revision. But in practice, any party platform eventually needs to keep pace with societal and technological change.
Platform development or review could be delegated within the broad areas of responsibility of the party policy committees. In some parties, there is a standing committee with sole responsibility for shepherding the review of the platform. If feasible, all branches and party structures should be written to seeking their input. New party members should receive the latest copy of the platform whenever they join the party.
Final approval of the platform, or vetting of changes is best done by a peak conference of your party. Conferences can also separate motions which are core principles (thus suited for the platform) from motions which may be topical but ephemeral and thus not suitable to the Platform.
The language of the document should elevate the platform above the dry language of a regular policy plan. The best platforms read like works of art. However, poetic words should not be taken as an end in themselves, since this approach can reduce your platform into an obtuse string of obscure words and ambiguous sentences. The most powerful ideas should be first drafted in clear language which ever reader can easily grasp. Future drafts should only transpose a more poetic word in place of a common word, provided that the statement retains its clarity.
It needs to be clearly articulated at the start of your platform that this document is a statement of principles and core ideas shared by party members. The document should broadly appeal to the wider electorate, by showing that your party has a vision to which they can connect. However, in practice, the main readership of the platform will be signed-up party members.
In the end, the Platform is the property of party members. It reflects their thoughts and values.
If you wish to gain media coverage by launching the statement, then consider involving unknown plain-speaking "grassroots" members and getting them to do some set-piece speeches before the media.
Related Pages
Example: Contract with America
The APDY's draft "We Believe" statement