Rethinking the Modern Prince: Partisanship and the Democratic Ethos

Abstract

This article lays out and defends the role of political parties in cultivating aAt the heart of these concerns seems to be the vitality of the democratic ethos itself, understood as a positive conviction amongst citizens of the worth of engaging with collective political agency so as to exercise the fundamental democratic principle of collective self-rule. This paper explores the conditions necessary to the maintenance of this conviction, and advances an ideal-typical conception of the role of political parties in promoting it. It does so not by providing a comprehensive empirical account of the current challenges faced by parties in Western countries, or by seeking to offer a positive causal model for contemporary processes -these issues have already been carefully explored by other scholars. Rather, the paper takes a distinctly theoretical route. It 2 begins by suggesting that, at least since the advent of democracy as collective self-rule, conviction in the worth of collective political agency has drawn on three sources: first, an ability amongst citizens to articulate political ideals that can be addressed through collective action (the normative source); second, a willingness to see these goals as ours, in the sense that our own fate or that of those with whom we identify is bound up in their achievement, and that they may require 'our' collective engagement to be met (the motivational source); and third an understanding that political agency can be institutionally applied to secure them (the executive source). The article then examines which modes of civic engagement, if any, can nourish these sources, and argues that the crucial role is best played by political parties. The paper goes on to show that although there are other forms of civic activity which are able to cultivate some of the three sources mentioned, the party is unique in being able to address all.In contemporary scholarship, despite the industry with which empirical research on parties continues to be conducted, their centrality in rendering meaningful the idea of

On Partisan Political Justification

“…Note that a compromise of either kind remains susceptible to critique from an excluded register, and is therefore more fragile and liable to relapse into contestation than the kinds of consensus generally envisaged by deliberative theorists. 29 Further elaboration of the role of parties understood as ideal-types can be found in White and Ypi 2010. ostensibly bound up in certain historical conditions. First, as a challenge to the notion that partisans make political conflict intelligible to a wider public, it may be said that often they have quite the opposite tendency to make things more obscure, e.g.…”

“…To be sure, narrower forms of subjecthood may support such categories, helping to mobilise people to a certain set of normative goals (White and Ypi, 2010). But those goals are partisan rather than factional only to the extent they are proposed in the name of the public good.…”

“…The agents involved face the task of drawing from the ideational resources current in society (notions of public interest, or interpretations of the basic terms of democratic discourse such as 'freedom' and 'equality'), deliberating on these, using them to interpret and categorise the social and political world, rearticulating them as political programmes, and justifying these to a constituency in opposition to those who would promote different perspectives. The practices of partisanship provide both the necessary dynamic for ideational innovation as well as a focal-point for cross-temporal continuity (White and Ypi 2010). Political justification has 'ideological underpinnings' -not in the sense that it necessarily involves dissimulation (the conception of ideology as distortion seems in any case problematic (Freeden 1996)) -but in the sense that it is inseparable from the historically-formed intuitions it plays off.…”

“…Political views are developed and perfected in the process of confrontation with other available alternatives. Since the days of England's Whigs and Tories, and on into the age of mass mobilisation, partisanship has involved political groupings of a certain level of cohesion forming around different interpretations of the public good, arising from distinctive political histories, experiences and traditions of political argument (White and Ypi 2010) (Rosenblum 2008). Under conditions of mass enfranchisement, these political alternatives are then promoted to the public at large and modified in the course of popular engagement.…”

“…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.…”