The Promise of Party in a Polarized Age

Muirhead, Russell

doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674736023

Cited by 108 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…In the past decade, a number of democratic theorists have taken an interest in the normative dimension of partisanship, thereby making a first step towards bridging the existing divide between contemporary democratic theory and party studies (White and Ypi 2010;Rosenblum 2008;Muirhead 2006;Bonotti 2012Bonotti , 2014White 2014;White and Ypi 2011;Muirhead 2014;Rosenblum 2006, 2012;Rosenblum 2014;Wolkenstein 2016;White and Ypi 2016). This literature contrasts with minimalist theories of democracy which, albeit giving a strong role to parties, define them narrowly as coalitions of self-interested politicians competing to attract the vote of rational citizens (see for instance Downs 1957).…”

Section: Theorizing the Democratic Merits Of Partisanshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic Partisanship: From Theoretical Ideal to Empirical Standard

Herman

2017

Am Polit Sci Rev

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In recent years, a number of scholars have taken parties and partisanship as objects of normative theorizing. They posit partisanship as a fundamentally democratic practice and develop a model of what partisans can do at their best to contribute to liberal democracy.However, the standards the literature puts forth remain insufficiently specified to serve as If parties fulfil such irreplaceable functions, this also implies that their failures will have consequences for the vitality of modern democracy (Goodin 2008). While a vast literature documents the democratic performance of political parties, party scholars have been reluctant to engage with contemporary democratic theory. This has resulted in a body of work that is generally under-theorized, and which tends to overlook some of the central affective and symbolic functions that parties perform (van Biezen and Saward 2008). This paper responds to these challenges with a model of democratic partisanship amenable to empirical study. My starting point is a recent body of democratic theory that takes partisanship as its main object, and from which I derive a number of standards for democratic partisanship. For the purpose of this article, I define partisanship as the routinized practices and discourses of the supporters, members and leaders of a particular party in support of a shared conception of the public good. 2 Partisanship is democratic when these routinized practices and discourses contribute to liberal democracy, understood as a system of limited representative government that ensures both popular self-rule 2 As emphasized by White and Ypi, partisanship conceived as the "collective will of partisans" can exist without a party structure at its centre (White and Ypi 2016, 23). For the purpose of this article, I focus on those more easily identifiable communities that find an organizational expression and are thus tied together by party support, membership or leadership.Lise Herman, Forthcoming, American Political Science Review 3 and respect for minority rights. The set of specific indicators that this article develops serves to empirically evaluate the democratic merits of partisan discourse more specifically.In what follows, I will first discuss the lack of engagement of party studies with democratic theory, and how existing theories of partisanship are either insufficiently refined or insufficiently comprehensive to empirically evaluate the democratic merits of partisan discourses and practices on their basis. In the second part of this paper, I further conceptualize these theories and focus on two main characteristics that the literature ascribes to democratic forms of partisanship:cohesiveness and respect for political pluralism. Starting from these two general concepts, I derive a series of more specific indicators that can serve to evaluate the extent to which the discourses of real-world partisans meet these normative ideals. The last section of the paper illustrates how this theoretical framework can be applied in empirical studies of...

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Section: Theorizing the Democratic Merits Of Partisanshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic Partisanship: From Theoretical Ideal to Empirical Standard

Herman

2017

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Most of this literature is concerned with developing idealized models of what parties "at their best" can do. For instance, in their multiple writings on the topic, Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead have developed a theory of "ethical partisanship" whose key feature is a willingness to engage in the defense of a specific conception of the common good in a spirit of "regulated rivalry" (Muirhead 2006(Muirhead , 2014Rosenblum 2008Rosenblum , 2014Muirhead and Rosenblum 2012). Similarly, White and Ypi have recently suggested that parties can contribute to fostering a democratic "ethos" of collective participation by encouraging otherwise dispersed individuals to mobilize in the pursuit of shared political projects, and provide public justification for them (White andYpi 2010, 2011; on this point, see also : Bonotti 2014 andTeorell 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Crisis of Party Democracy, Cognitive Mobilization, and the Case for Making Parties More Deliberative

Accetti

Wolkenstein

2017

Am Polit Sci Rev

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The much-discussed crisis of political parties poses a challenge to democratic theorists as institutional designers: how can the capacity of parties to mediate between society and state be resuscitated? In this paper, we suggest that parties need to become more internally deliberative, allowing partisans to debate policy and more general visions for the polity. We outline a prescriptive model of deliberative intra-party democracy, drawing on the empirical literature on the changing structure of civic and political engagement. We argue that deliberative reforms are the most appropriate response to the demands of an increasingly more cognitively mobilized citizenry which seeks self-expression and non-hierarchical forms of political engagement. We highlight the model's distinctive strengths and defend it against several objections.

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“…Yet if partisanship within the Mexicanborn community were largely or exclusively "negative," troubling normative implications could be raised. For the general public, affirming positive connections to a major party can orient individuals toward the political system in a constructive manner, provide a basis for interpreting policy issues and evaluating government performance, and offer a framework for collective political action (Green et al 2002;Huddy, Mason, and Aaroe 2015;Lewis-Beck et al 2008;Muirhead 2014;Rosenblum 2008). The noteworthy rise of positive partisanship for Mexican immigrants during major national campaign cycles can thus be taken as a welcome harbinger of democratic inclusion (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2016; Rosenblum and Tivig 2014;Sears, Danbold, and Zavala 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%