Some argue that platform parties do not propose a real solution to political disaffection because they are ultimately reproducing and exacerbating the individualising tendencies of contemporary society, in which people are connected at the same time as they are isolated from one another. This problem raises the question of ‘social integration’, a task which, as argued by Sigmund Neumann,289 constituted one of the main strengths of mass parties, concerned as they were with the construction of community as much as with its mobilisation for electoral purposes.
