Can Deliberative Democracy Be Partisan?

Muirhead, Russell

doi:10.1080/08913811.2010.508631

Cited by 30 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is a longstanding debate whether parties are actually harmful and/or incompatible with deliberative democracy (see e.g. Muirhead, 2010), or on the contrary absolutely central (White and Ypi, 2011). In the case of technocratic governments, it might be argued that if the objective of deliberation within a democratic policy is to determine the common good, then technocratic ministers are equally well placed to do so.…”

Section: Preventing Political Deliberationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technocratic Governments in Europe: Getting the Critique Right

Pastorella

2015

Political Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In Europe, technocratic governments have become a popular topic of debate. Commentators have condemned them as a 'suspension of democracy' or even as 'the end of democracy as we know it'. However, no academic analysis has assessed whether technocratic governments are indeed undemocratic. This article is intended to fill this gap by assessing technocratic governments' democratic credentials. It compares them to party governments along the main dimensions of party democracy, including representation, deliberation, constitutionality and legitimacy. It concludes that technocratic governments in Europe are not undemocratic per se, but are still a worrying phenomenon insofar as they reveal shortcomings that remain hidden in normal party governments: a loosening of delegation and accountability ties between voters, parties and cabinets; increasing external pressures on domestic political actors; and the weakening of partisan ideology-based politics. The article will add further elements to reinforce the already vast literature on the crisis of -especially party -democracy in Europe.Keywords: democracy; technocracy; Eurocrisis; technocratic government; political party Technocratic governments, while not a new phenomenon on the European political scene, seem to have become a particularly widespread form of government recently. A comparatively high number of technocratic governments, as defined by Duncan McDonnell and Marco Valbruzzi (2014), have been appointed since the beginning of the Eurocrisis.1 It is therefore the right moment to ask a fundamental question: Are technocratic governments democratic? More specifically, do technocratic governments meet the standards of democracy as it is understood in Europe -that is, party democracy (Mair, 2008;Van Biezen, 2012;Van Biezen and Borz, 2012)? Common sense, even etymology, would seem to indicate that technocracy is, by definition, incompatible with any democracy. It generally partners well with autocracy. Together with populism they are the Scylla and Charybdis of democratic ideals. Technocratic governments even made some commentator mourn the 'end of democracy as we know it' (Brunkhorst, 2012). It is not clear, however, whether such accusations rest on any stable grounds, either in terms of democratic theory or democratic practice. Exploring such matters is important, on the one hand, to fully understand an under-explored political phenomenon -that of technocratic cabinets -and, on the other hand and more importantly, to add an additional perspective to assessing the status of European democracies. This article will therefore proceed as follows. After clarifying some of the terminology and concepts used, it will address major criticisms aimed at technocratic governments, touching upon problems related to constitutionality, electoral competition, policy choices, accountability and legitimacy. It will show that technocratic governments have been criticised on wrong assumptions or judged against unrealistic democratic standards. In the second part, the article will id...

show abstract

Section: Preventing Political Deliberationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technocratic Governments in Europe: Getting the Critique Right

Pastorella

2015

Political Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Partisans, it may be said, are ultimately conformists: they put loyalty to their fellows above loyalty to reason and to their consciences (Muirhead 2010(Muirhead , 2006. In this view, rather than spontaneously forming allegiances and a common identity with those with whom they share similar opinions, they pick up the sense of common identity first and work backwards to the opinions they believe they should therefore hold.…”

Section: Pathologies Of Partisanshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While empirical scholars of the political party sometimes lose sight of the fact, common ground exists as regards the non-particularist constituency to which both modes of action make appeal. Partisanship, unlike factionalism, involves efforts to 2 Important exceptions are Muirhead 2010Muirhead , 2006Rosenblum 2008;Goodin 2008; see also White and Ypi 2010. These authors have all emphasized the democratic relevance of partisanship, but its specific contribution to political justification remains to be explored.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

On Partisan Political Justification

White

Ypi

2011

Am Polit Sci Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Political justification figures prominently in contemporary political theory, notably in models of deliberative democracy. This article articulates and defends the essential role of partisanship in this process. Four dimensions of justification are examined in detail: the constituency to which political justifications are offered, the circumstances in which they are developed, the ways in which they are made inclusive, and the ways in which they are made persuasive. In each case, the role of partisanship is probed and affirmed. Partisanship, we conclude, is indispensable to the kind of political justification needed to make the exercise of collective authority responsive to normative concerns.

show abstract

“…For an excellent synthetic discussion, see Muirhead (). For contributions that address the (limited) compatibility of partisanship and democratic deliberation, see Gundersen (); Williams (); Hendriks et al.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Deliberative Model of Intra‐Party Democracy

Wolkenstein

2015

J Political Philosophy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author's final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it.A deliberative model of intra-party democracy * FABIO WOLKENSTEIN Political Science, London School of Economics and Political Science I. INTRODUCTION: PARTIES AND LINKAGEPolitical parties serve a number of important functions in representative democracies.Connecting citizens to government is perhaps the most important one. This is how parties were traditionally conceived, and it continues to be the main standard according to which their legitimacy as representative institutions is evaluated. 1 Intra-party democracy is instrumental in establishing and sustaining this connection between society and government. Internally democratic parties empower the members on the ground, who have privileged access to the demands of the constituents, and provide them with opportunities to channel these demands into policy decisions. 2 Earlier versions of this article were presented in workshops at the LSE, the universities of Western Bohemia in * Plzeň and Lucerne, as well as at Sciences Po Paris and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I thank André Bächtiger, Simon Beste, Gideon Calder, Maurits De Jongh, Charles Girard, Lilia Giugni, Simon Glendinning, Volkan Gül, Andrew Knops, Jenny Mansbridge, Giulia Pastorella, Carmen Pavel, and Sanna Salo for incisive and generous comments on these occasions. The article has also greatly benefited from exchanges with Cecilia Bruzelius, Charlotte Haberstroh, Lise Herman, Abby Innes, Jakob Kapeller, Mareike Kleine, Christina Maria Koch, and Jonathan White. My thanks to them for engaging with my work. Finally, I am grateful to the two anonymous referees of the JPP for their extensive and extremely helpful comments.As Sartori (1976, p. ix) put it more than a quarter century ago, "parties are the central intermediate and In this article, I begin by arguing that existing models of intra-party democracywhich focus on candidate selection and direct participation, respectively-are not adequate to the task of linking citizens to government. I suggest that these models run the risk of simply reinforcing the preferences of the party elite, thus weakening, instead of strengthening, the members on the ground. Missing from these models are fora of discussion and debate, in which the party base can...

show abstract

Can Deliberative Democracy Be Partisan?

Cited by 30 publications

References 24 publications

Technocratic Governments in Europe: Getting the Critique Right

Technocratic Governments in Europe: Getting the Critique Right

On Partisan Political Justification

A Deliberative Model of Intra‐Party Democracy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About