Intra‐party Democracy: A Functionalist Account*

Abstract

This paper articulates a functionalist account of intra-party democracy (IPD). Like realist critics, we insist that IPD practices be evaluated on the basis of whether they facilitate resistance to domination and capture at the level of the polity as a whole, and therefore accept certain realist worries about IPD. Yet realists neglect the possibility that wealthy interests could control the political agenda by capturing all viable parties simultaneously-and that mass-facing IPD could counter this threat of oligarchic agenda capture. Taking this as the key function of IPD within broader democratic systems, we conclude that inclusionary party reform is less urgent in more flexible party systems, where dissenters are better able to resist this threat from within the framework of inter-party competition. Regardless of the context, meanwhile, we also conclude that mass-facing IPD practices should aim at enabling ordinary members and supporters of a party to resist agenda capture by oligarchic interests. Though we stop short of defending any particular set of reforms, we reject the emphasis of recent IPD advocates on individualized forms of deliberative participation, in favor of a more oppositional and collectively-oriented approach-on the grounds that the latter is more likely to encourage the development of effective institutions of countervailing power.

Reawakening a Revolutionary Party: The Ancient and Modern Princes in Wang Hui’s Political Theory

“…These two "lessons" set him apart from many other defenders of parties, like Peter Mair. Wang essentially favors what Bagg and Bhatia (2022) call "mass-facing intra-party democracy," even though Bagg and Bhatia do not address one-party systems in nonliberal democratic countries. "Realist" defenders of parties like Mair-to adopt Bagg and Bhatia's phrase-doubt that intra-party democracy (IPD) is necessary for improving democratic outcomes.…”

What Is It Like To Be a Partisan? Measures of Partisanship and Its Value for Democracy

“…Political theorists have recently come to a new appreciation for the importance of political parties and partisanship in democracy. Works exploring the democratic functions of parties (Disch 2002;Rosenblum 2008;Goodin 2008, 204-23;Muirhead 2014;Rosenbluth and Shapiro 2018;Landis 2018), and of partisanship (Rosenblum 2008;Muirhead 2006;White and Ypi 2016;Efthymiou 2018), have been joined by others showing how parties and partisanship can help manage pluralism (Bonotti 2017;Bellamy et al 2019) as well as a burgeoning literature investigating whether parties should be internally democratic (Wolkenstein 2016;Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein 2017;Wolkenstein 2020;Bagg and Bhatia 2021). So how have political theorists conceived of the value of partisanship for democracy?…”

Sortition as Anti‐Corruption: Popular Oversight against Elite Capture

“…In an electoral system, of course, parties are responsible for such agenda‐setting tasks—and although it is hardly free from capture (see Bagg and Bhatia 2021), this process is at least somewhat transparent. Elections also give political outcomes a basic appearance of fairness, providing a clear path for opponents to bring about change (Abizadeh 2021, 798; Malleson 2019, 177).…”

“…Sortition‐based reforms could also help protect the integrity of elections—reviewing districting decisions and other changes to election law (Delannoi, Dowlen, and Stone 2013), for instance, or scrutinizing interactions between lobbyists and elected officials (Dowlen 2017). If the task given to randomly selected citizens can be sufficiently narrowed, finally, oversight councils could even be used to loosen the grip of elite donors and cross‐party “cartels” (Katz and Mair 2018) on the political agenda (see Bagg and Bhatia 2021)—perhaps by evaluating a series of concrete agenda items raised by external groups.…”