Abstract
Political parties are essential for the workings of modern representative democracy. And despite a vast body of empirical work, political parties are still “the orphans of political philosophy”(Schattschneider 1942:10). In recent years a small albeit growing body of literature has emerged to address this political theory deficit, or the need to clarify how and where to situate parties within political and democratic theory. This paper examines two such important efforts. Jonathan White and Lea Ypi link partisanship to political justification. Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum argue that partisanship is a distinct political identity that is essential for civilizing conflict in pluralist societies. The assessment of these two positions on partisanship and party will shed new light on how to think of partisanship and political parties in theoretical terms. Has partisanship greater affinity with deliberative democracy than what is generally thought? Or do we need a different theoretical register when assessing the role of parties in modern democracy? Muirhead and Rosenblum do not provide a theoretical position on identity so as to clarify how distinct the political identity they associate with partisanship is from mainstream conceptions of identity. Is there scope for reconciling the two positions on partisanship? Or is a reconciliation ultimately dependent on political and constitutional culture and structure to stabilize partisanship and render it conducive to democratic norms?
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