On Partisanship

Political parties play a central role in the workings of modern representative democracy. The late Peter Mair put it succinctly: "The same organization that governed the citizenry also gave that citizenry voice, and the same organization that channeled representation also managed the institutions of the polity.”(Mair 2009:5) This central role has however not been very much appreciated by political theory. As Nancy Rosenblum has noted, “(p)olitical theory harbored no great political expectations parties could disappoint.” (Rosenblum 2008: 5) In this paper, I examine two different approaches to partisanship, both of which are attempts at dealing with this normative deficit in political theory, namely the weak normative justification of parties and partisanship. I first examine and outline the position set out by Jonathan White and Lea Ypi who link partisanship directly to political justification. I discuss that in relation to Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead who argue that partisanship is a distinct political identity. Each approach accordingly situates partisanship in a distinct theoretical perspective or tradition the underlying theoretical and normative assumptions of which are more or less explicitly articulated by the authors. White and Ypi in underlining the link between partisanship and justification draw on deliberative democratic theory. Rosenblum and Muirhead in their alternative reading of partisanship as a political identity are less explicit on the theoretical assumptions undergirding their views. The two perspectives differ in terms of what they emphasize and where they locate partisanship. White and Ypi locate partisanship in the public sphere, whereas Rosenblum and Muirhead locate partisanship in the political party understood as an institutionalized organization. The question of how to address the normative deficit of parties will be addressed in two steps. As a first step, I will explicate the normative-theoretical assumptions underpinning each position on partisanship. Second, I consider how well each theoretical perspective captures the core functions of parties. The better the fit, the more the resources of the theoretical perspective can be brought to bear on the analysis. In the third and final section I briefly discuss what these reflections imply for the development of representative democracy in the European Union (EU). I start by defining partisanship and parties. Thereafter I discuss each theoretical perspective along these two steps, and conclude with some reflections on the implications for the EU.