PANEL 7 / RETHINKING POLITICAL PARTIES IN CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRACY
CONVENORS GIUSEPPE BALLACCI and JOANA PINTO
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected].
Political parties are key elements of modern democracies and have long structured representation, electoral competition, and mediation between society and the state. Yet, their normative status has been a source of debate. Classical theorists such as Rousseau, Tocqueville, and Hegel viewed parties with suspicion, seeing them as threats to civic unity, vulnerable to oligarchic capture, or signs of institutional decline. By the mid-twentieth century, however, democratic theory shifted toward a more systematic defense of parties as indispensable to representative government. Schattschneider famously argued that “democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties,” highlighting their role in organizing electoral choice, Sartori developed sophisticated typologies of party systems, analyzing how different configurations of party competition shape democratic stability, while Duverger demonstrated how electoral laws structure party systems. This literature largely normalized parties as permanent structural features of democratic life. Yet, this mostly functional acceptance coexisted with growing concerns about party decline, dealignment, shrinking participation, and the rise of “cartel parties” increasingly detached from their social bases.
This ambivalence created the conditions for a normative turn. Contemporary democratic theory witnessed a revival in the defense of parties as vital democratic actors. Rosenblum, Muirhead, and Bonotti defend parties as essential for representation, political identity, and structured contestation, arguing that partisanship provides the commitments necessary for democratic self-government. At the same time, theorists such as Mansbridge, Landemore, and many deliberative or participatory democrats explore alternative institutional models in which parties are complemented by other forms of participation, play a reduced role, or are no longer central at all. The coexistence of renewed defenses of parties with calls for post-partisan democracy underscores the need to rethink how parties should be positioned within contemporary democratic theory and whether they remain the primary vehicles for democratic legitimacy and inclusion.
Building on this context, this panel invites contributions that explore how political parties should be conceptualized, justified, and organized within democratic theory, as well as whether alternative democratic models might challenge or replace traditional party systems.
Possible questions include (but are not limited to):
This panel welcomes work that reexamines the normative role of political parties, critiques their current forms, or rethinks the broader relationship between democracy, legitimacy and political partisanship. Scholars in political philosophy, democratic theory, and related fields are encouraged to submit proposals.
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected].
Political parties are key elements of modern democracies and have long structured representation, electoral competition, and mediation between society and the state. Yet, their normative status has been a source of debate. Classical theorists such as Rousseau, Tocqueville, and Hegel viewed parties with suspicion, seeing them as threats to civic unity, vulnerable to oligarchic capture, or signs of institutional decline. By the mid-twentieth century, however, democratic theory shifted toward a more systematic defense of parties as indispensable to representative government. Schattschneider famously argued that “democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties,” highlighting their role in organizing electoral choice, Sartori developed sophisticated typologies of party systems, analyzing how different configurations of party competition shape democratic stability, while Duverger demonstrated how electoral laws structure party systems. This literature largely normalized parties as permanent structural features of democratic life. Yet, this mostly functional acceptance coexisted with growing concerns about party decline, dealignment, shrinking participation, and the rise of “cartel parties” increasingly detached from their social bases.
This ambivalence created the conditions for a normative turn. Contemporary democratic theory witnessed a revival in the defense of parties as vital democratic actors. Rosenblum, Muirhead, and Bonotti defend parties as essential for representation, political identity, and structured contestation, arguing that partisanship provides the commitments necessary for democratic self-government. At the same time, theorists such as Mansbridge, Landemore, and many deliberative or participatory democrats explore alternative institutional models in which parties are complemented by other forms of participation, play a reduced role, or are no longer central at all. The coexistence of renewed defenses of parties with calls for post-partisan democracy underscores the need to rethink how parties should be positioned within contemporary democratic theory and whether they remain the primary vehicles for democratic legitimacy and inclusion.
Building on this context, this panel invites contributions that explore how political parties should be conceptualized, justified, and organized within democratic theory, as well as whether alternative democratic models might challenge or replace traditional party systems.
Possible questions include (but are not limited to):
- How should political parties and political partisanship be reconceived to better respond to the challenges of contemporary democratic life, such as democratic backsliding, populism, polarization, erosion of trust, or digital forms of mobilization? Do such developments require a structural rethinking of the party system?
- How do liberal, republican, and agonistic theories provide different accounts of the proper function and justification of political parties in democracy?
- In what ways do historical, cultural, or institutional conditions shape the democratic legitimacy or dysfunction of party systems?
- What alternative models of representative, deliberative, or participatory democracy could transform or even replace the party-centered model, and might these better secure inclusion, equality, political justification, or democratic legitimacy?
This panel welcomes work that reexamines the normative role of political parties, critiques their current forms, or rethinks the broader relationship between democracy, legitimacy and political partisanship. Scholars in political philosophy, democratic theory, and related fields are encouraged to submit proposals.
