Parties and Partisanship: Perspectives from Political Theory

Abstract

Political parties are a pervasive feature in the landscape of modern politics, built into the standard definition of democracy as a method for selecting political representatives via competitive elections. However, because they are conventionally seen as an institution rather than an idea, parties have traditionally been a topic for political scientists, not for political theorists. This neglect has both extrinsic and intrinsic reasons. On the one hand, the eclipse of parties in the sky of political philosophy/theory was the by-product of a broader division of labor among political scientists, following the advent of the Behavioral Revolution in the 1960s (van Biezen-Saward 2008); party politics became the monopoly of empirical political science, while political theory turned into a an “applied moral philosophy” enquiring into the ends and ideals of political action (liberty, equality, and especially justice) (Waldron 2014). On the other hand, the messy world of parties was destined to remain peripheral in the geography of late 20th-century democratic theory, pervasively dominated by Rawlsian and Habermasian notions of reasoned public consensus and scarcely inclined toward a vision of politics as a gladiatorial battlefield. The various correctives to electoral and party politics that deliberative theorists proposed – deliberative pools, citizens’ juries, mini-publics – exemplified their common diffidence towards partisanship (more than parties) as an obstacle to the goal of enlightened deliberation. Even now that the appeal of deliberative democracy has decreased, the entrenched prejudice against party spirit remains pervasive in political theory and practice alike. Recent calls for epistocracy as a corrective to democratic government (Brennan 2016), the widespread critique of elections (e.g., Achen-Bartels 2016, Guerrero 2021; contra, Przeworski 2018), and proposals for more open political institutions empowering citizens more than self-referential party élites (Landemore, 2020) resonate powerfully in the world of democratic theory. In the arena of political practice, the rampant success of populisms around the globe marches together with the belief that technocracy is conducive to more efficient outcomes and thus preferable to conventional party democracy. “Techno-populism” is the name that some theorists have envisioned to criticize a new logic of democratic politics superseding the traditional Left/Right divide and advocating a balanced mixture wherein Burke’s landmark idea of parties (vs. factions) as “honourable connections” and the 20th-century axiom that “modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties” (Schattschneider 1942) come powerfully under attack (Bickerton-Invernizzi Accetti 2021). This panel draws on the recently rejuvenated study of parties and partisanship among political theory, historical and normative (e.g., Rosenblum 2008; Muirhead 2014; White-Ypi 2016; Bonotti 2017; Herman 2017; Rosenbluth-Shapiro 2018; Wolkenstein 2019; Skjönsberg 2021) to push the agenda forward and thus contribute to the study of a “key concept” of our political lexicon. It brings together a well-balanced group of theorists who work on party politics and political competition from different perspectives: historical, normative, contemporary, and comparative. Speakers include Dongxian Jiang (Stanford), Emilee Chapman (Stanford), Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti (York), and Alexander Kirshner (Duke). David Ragazzoni (Columbia) will chair the panel and serve as co-discussant with Lise Herman (Exeter).

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