On the Side of Angels symposium
16. Andrew Rehfeld: Institutional responses

Rosenblum’s defense of parties and partisanship leads us to figure out how representatives can be both advocates and deliberators at the same time. What really emerges is an endorsement of a juridical system applied to politics in which advocacy and deliberative judgment are separated in different locations rather than collapsed. The question then becomes what institutional structures can create a robust deliberative sphere that gives rise to many points of view, but that allows each member also to be independent enough to listen and change their mind. I think this is in the spirit of Rosenblum’s suggestions, but it is not clear to me that stronger partisanship alone is the solution. Instead, I think the solution is to separate the advocacy from the decision making itself in different kinds of ways.

In my last posting I mentioned one way to do this: create a professional legislature that was not based on parties, and let political parties be really big collections of interest groups that stay out of government. This is not a fully worked out view but it hints at what’s needed. Interestingly, both Mill and in our own day, Thomas Christiano have institutional fixes generally along these lines. Indeed, they point to what I would say was the biggest disappointment to me about Rosenblum’s work: it oversimplifies the role of institutional design.

Mill envisioned that in close votes in Parliament there would be enough members with sufficient judgment and independence who could decide the merits of the issue absent prior partisan commitments. Relying on the Hare system also meant that candidates would run on personal platforms rather than be mired in partisan politics. As Rosenblum well explains in more length in the book, Mill did not foresee the kind of robust partisanship that Rosenblum is promoting and what she properly terms “proto-Millian”. Rather, the electoral system would permit non-partisans running on the strength of their character, or intellect (or any other feature) to enter politics and temper the whole.

But I think by relying primarily on the logic of Liberty rather than the institutionalism of Considerations on Representative Government, Rosenblum missed Mill’s important solution to the problems of parties and partisanship within a legislature: representatives, in Mill’s view, would not be the authors of legislation. Instead, representatives were to debate on the issues, set agendas and vote up and down on legislation written by professionals serving on a “commission on legislation.” This commission, filled by experts, would craft the best solution to the problems that the members of parliament identified. There are all sorts of reasons to question whether such a solution would actually remain independent. But the point is, Mill had envisioned a far more robust institutional response to the problems of parties, by separating the battle of principles from the business of legislation.

Tom Christiano, in his terrific Rule of the Many, institutionally separates the set of general principles from actual policy. Parties would take fixed positions on general principles, what he calls “the aims of society” that citizens would debate and express their preferences for. Once elected, legislators would not be expected to compromise or deliberate about these aims, but rather deliberate and are flexible about the means by which they are achieved. In such a case they might have to give up their first best way of achieving the aims for which their parties stand, but as advocates for those aims (rather than particular policies) they would be in the best position to do that. They are thus “mandated” to follow their principles for which they are advocates, but fully independent (as proper deliberators must be) to decide what is the best way to achieve them given the constraints of other partisans with different, non-flexible aims in the legislature as well.

Whether or not either of these or some other institutional fix is practicable, they are ways of providing “voice without earplugs” because they involve separating out the advocacy from the deliberative and decision-making function. Without such a separation, I don’t see how a defense of partisanship can stand, except as a defense of a principle that participants themselves cannot endorse.

Andrew Rehfeld

On the Side of Angels symposium
15. Andrew Rehfeld: Regulated Conflict and a “proto-Millian” defense of parties or “Vote for me, I’ve probably got the right answers.”

In my first post I argued that we might get more of Rosenblum’s beneifts of partisanship without the costs, by thinking about “interest groups” as the proper outlet for partisanship, and then structuring government to be an independent, non-partisan body. This view contrasts with the practical fact that many, perhaps most, interest groups align very closely with existing political parties. In this post I want to make clear why I don’t think Rosenblum’s argument is ultimately successful at the level of legislative political parties. In my final post, I’ll offer some ideas about what we might do to counteract the problems.

In her defesnse of parties, Rosenblum counters the anti-party argument that parties aim at partial good. Rosenblum does not reject this, but rather notes that from these partial views can emerge a whole, if debate is structured in a proto-Millian way to make sure a trial of ideas alighting on a better solution emerges from this conflict. Further, parties bring real advocates to debate their position, not just those of the devil. As she quotes Mill, “objections have force when they come “from persons who actually believe them, who defend them in earnest, and do their utmost for them.” The “contestation,” she writes, “corrects error…Without party rivalry, ‘trial by discussion’ cannot be meaningful.”

Thus for contestation to happen in the right way we need parties that have these two features to them: a) their members believe their view is best for all; and b) they must be open to changing their minds about what is best for all.

Now if “partyism” means that parties are partial, only hubristically saying they are promoting the common good, then it is unclear how a Millian clash of ideas is happening at all. Such parties are compromising and trading off to get as much as they can for their own group. Participants do not come ready to engage in a principled discourse about the whole, they come ready to seek their own goods for their own members. And this is very much the character of contemporary political deliberation, no less so than in the United States. Indeed, it describes the logic of classic pluralism as articulated by Dahl and Truman.

But this is not Rosenblum’s defense, and for good reason. Parties themselves are not actually partial in the sense of advocating for a part of the whole; they are by and large committed to a view of what would be best for the whole. And this is not just a “hubristic” posturing as Rosenblum describes in her first posting (although it can be that too). All partisanship is based on a clash between different views about what would be good for all that organize the political party itself: Green principles; Labour principles; Democratic, and Republican party ideals. The Democrats in the United States, believe we would all be better if we followed their programs, as does the Labour party in Israel believe that country would do better if it followed theirs. (I thus must also disagree with her contention in her first post that it is individual partisans who try to proselytize and seek new recruits. In my own experience, my very partisan neighbors are least likely to try to get new recruits to believe as they do. Far more likely are the Democrats and Republicans as parties going to cast about seeking new converts by framing their arguments in the broadest possible way.)

But if partyism is defended on the lines of a Millian debate arising between parties who advocate for what they believe is best for all (a), the second problem emerges that is at odds with (b), the view that party members should be open to changing their mind. For if they were open to changing their minds, they would not be the kinds of strong advocates that Rosenblum is envisioning necessary for a Millian outcom. Rather, party members would have to hold this far more tepid view: “well, before the clash of ideas happens within the legislature, we Republicans believe that taxes should go down; but of course we can’t really endorse that until we hear what the other side has to say.”

Now I think that’s a perfectly reasonable position to take, but no politician is likely to be relected on such a platform “Vote for Us, we’ve probably got the best ideas, but we’ll just have to wait and see!” But that position is what’s at the core of Mill’s view that Rosenblum plays on—it is no longer quite the pro-party, rough-and-tumble, clash-of-ideas-by-true-believers-to-see-which-one-actually-emerges-as-best. Or if that’s what Rosenblum means, it is not clear it connects with any parties of which I am aware.

In my final posting I will turn to institutional solutions that might achieve Rosenblum’s goals of deliberative advocacy and partisanship.


Andrew Rehfeld

On the Side of Angels symposium
14. Andrew Rehfeld: What about interest groups?

Nancy Rosenblum’s book is a welcome counter-weight to recent trends in deliberative theory and the resurgence of republicanism (ala Pettit) that have tended to minimize the role of political parties. The emergence of Barack Obama as possibly a “post-partisan” president continues that trend in the real world. What Rosenblum’s work has done is renew arguments that offer a stronger version and defense of party’s and partisanship. It is a work of political theory in its synthetic best: sensitive to history, philosophically interesting, empirically aware and with implications for political action. It is a subtle work, brimming with insight and I’m delighted to engage this rewarding work.

My delight stems in large part because I’m kind of a diehard anti-party, and anti-partisan, kind of guy. My loathing to both strands comes from the kind of cognitive shut down I see among partisans. Rather than exhibit some ideal point of Millian advocacy that Rosenblum describes, these partisans are unable to listen to other arguments at all. In fact, it is not so much that they believe what they do that I think is the problem, but rather that their beliefs about politics are fixed to a party leadership that then shapes and in no small part determines what they ought to be. The Yellow Dog Democrat is the perfect example.

In more theoretical terms, partisanship and partyism as Rosenblum has defended it here is self-contradictory, for it relies on a value for the system that none of the participants themselves can endorse. Further, what Rosenblum’s defense, based on Millian principles of contestation, would require is not what now exists, but what I have elsewhere called “voice without earplugs,” that is a way to structure the legislature so that many views can be promoted even as those expressing them are open to changing their own minds. Finally, I think Rosenblum has ignored the role of institutions to help channel and develop the proper role of parties and partisanship within the system. What emerges in her treatment is a defense of a system in which advocacy of partial views is the governing principle in order that partiality not be the governing principle!

Parties and partisans, but what about interest groups?

Rosenblum’s distinction between partisanship and partyism is really helpful. As Rosenblum demonstrates, the view that independents are ideal observers weighing carefully each side of the argument is bogus: they are rather “politically detached” ignoramuses (my term) who would prefer to watch TV than engage their fellow citizen in debate, and this should alone should temper our enthusiasm for them. But it is not clear to me whether partisan engagement by citizens on the issues is based on reasoned judgment which later turns into advocacy (the Millian model perhaps) as much as it is determined by family or cultural upbringing. In any case, being a partisan is likely to cause citizens to connect with others and engage with the issues and that alone is a good thing.

But here, I think I would advocate partisanship (“identification with others in a political association”) without parties (which is exactly what Madison’s ideal was). In large part, this is because partisanship among citizens appears far more like religious belief than it does reasoned civic discourse generating community and a commitment to the life of the polis. So we might say that partisanship is inevitable among citizens in a large representative government, and it does have some nice political consequences in terms of building community, etc. But it does not follow that the community it fosters or the views it generates among its partisans are worth channeling into the legislature. In which case, we might endorse partisanship as a check on abuses of government (since engaged citizens on either side are more likely to resist abuse) than a non-partisan citizenry. But at the same time we’d want to structure the legislature and government itself to resist the underlying partisanship. (I’ll return to that theme in another posting.)

What this raises is whether the very helpful analytic distinction between “partisanship” and “partyism,” is sufficient to get the benefits without the costs. I think it would be helpful to consider “interest groups” as a third location of partisanship, in way that would give the benefits of partisanship an outlet (by having citizens involved in issues about which they care) and to have them possibly managed by an independent, non-partisan legislature. Ideally, individuals interested in politics and policy would have to make a choice: are they committed to policy ideals as represented by their supported interest groups, or are they interested in impartial governing? Indeed, the recent “ethics” rules issued in Obama’s first days as President that restrict lobbying by former members of his staff have much of this flavor to it. It is not that Obama objects in principles to lobbying and interest group partisanship, per se. Rather, it is that his role in government is to be the adjudicator and not a partisan. This is rough—obviously Obama is a Democrat. But it hints at a way we might get the benefits of partisanship without the negatives of party in government.

Partisanship, as Rosenblum has set it out, thus depends on governing party’s, rather than merely organized interest groups. I would encourage us to think about this differently, that the benefits that Rosenblum defends for partisanship might be gotten without legislative political parties. What we need—for reasons I’ll pursue in my next post—is a way to separate the legislative effects of parties (which I think contra Rosenblum may only be a second best solution) from the positive citizen effects of partisanship.


Andrew Rehfeld

On the Side of Angels symposium
13. Nancy Rosenblum: response to Urbinati

Nadia Urbinati has offered two wonderfully reflective responses to Angels. Representative government, she insists, makes parties essential. I trace philosophical accounts of this insistence in the history of political thought in “Moments of Appreciation”. I’m grateful for Urbinati’s extension of the idea in her reconstruction of contemporary representation. She reinforces the point that modern parties are more than convenient vehicles for conducting elections or for organizing governments; they are creative in constructing lines of political division. Urbinati adds that ideally parties are stable institutions that create on-going connections between partisans and representatives. They are communicative forums. They are unique institutions for insuring that representatives are responsive to citizens. Urbinati rightly sees parties as deflating notions of accountability that focus on principal/agent mechanisms or contractual formalism. Parties create and sustain political relations apart from electoral moments. Of course, this sensitive rendering of political partisanship depends on parties that are not ephemeral, or short-term alliances among officials. It emphasizes civilian partisans – parties as in a sense membership groups.

Urbinati notices the enduring tension between the partisan and partial character of representation and acting in the national interest. In some systems like the U.S. this is further complicated by the fact that representatives are bound to serve their districts as a whole, including nonpartisans and supporters of the opposition. This results in tortuous accounts of representation as seen in Supreme Court opinions, which I discuss. Urbinati makes the important point that “partisanship is a process of unification not an act of unity”. Partisan representation suspends these elements; it is the unique institution of representative democracy and partisanship the distinctive democratic political identity.

I want to respond as well to Urbinati’s sensitive discussion of anti-politics. She rightly points out that I identify two “glorious traditions” of antipartyism in the history of political thought: holism, which is anti-political (or an exploitation of party designed to put an end to parties and politics) and another which accepts pluralism and political conflict but rejects parties as the institutional form in which divisions are played out. To these she adds a post-democratic form of anti-partyism that like holism is anti-political, but without holism’s philosophic foundations. This is less an additional category, I think, than an episodic feature of democratic anti-partyism overall. Urbinati focuses on contemporary deliberative democratic theory, which identifies good citizenship with judgment rather than passion or interest, or partisanship. This is of course one of the main themes of Angels, and I probe it in detail in the chapter “Correcting the System”. Like Urbinati, I argue that this rejection of partisanship is a recipe for disempowerment. My only quibble with her treatment is her suggestion that apathy is the outcome of antipartyism. True, partisanship is linked to political engagement and excitation. But other forms of participation – advocacy groups or social movements – are equally engaging, if short-lived. The characteristic outcome of this form of antipartyism is less apathy than revulsion at politics tout court. It results in the view that pragmatic problem-solving can replace politics. Its familiar expression is a “just fix it” state of mind that takes the prosaic popular form of impatience with government but is also articulated in expert and elite theory. Putting political decision-making in partisan arenas off onto courts and agencies is a self-protective move on the part of elected officials in the face of public revulsion. It is also an ineliminable part of advanced political economy where problems seem politically intractable; John Dunn’s The Cunning of Unreason captures this moment. All this makes parties and partisanship more, not less, imperative, and it makes a defense of political, partisan democracy both necessary and difficult.

Nancy Rosenblum

On the Side of Angels symposium
12. Nancy Rosenblum: Response to Marin

I take just one exception to Prof. Marin’s probing comments: at the outset she seems to assign to parties attributes that I assign to partisans – and then only to partisans who fit my account of ethical partisanship. Many institutional features of parties are a response to the formal and political requirements of specific electoral systems – a point to which I return in answer to Prof. Marin’s question about proportional representation. Within those constraints, whether parties are inclusive, comprehensive, and compromising is the result of decisions by party leaders, activists, and “civilian” partisans. I try to take care not to animate the institution!

Prof. Marin’s argument is that in appreciating partisans who aim at inclusiveness and comprehensiveness I invoke a “public, collective `we`”. That is correct: partisanship, I suggest at some length, is a shared political identity that can be usefully understood in terms of identity politics. It is also true that one reason for valuing partisanship is its potential for articulating a general conception of the public interest. Of course, partisans do not always attempt this, and may fail when they do. And the connection between political identity and articulating an account of the general interest is important: partisans situate themselves in a system of political opposition, and their programs and candidates serve a notion of the public interest (when they do) that is contested. The important point for me is that only partisans active in party politics make this attempt because it is in the context of elections and partisan governing that open, conscious appeals are made to the great body of citizens. Other forms of political action fall short on this account, and although individual Independents may conceive a comprehensive account of the public agenda they are scattered elements who have neither means nor intention to articulate their ideas as part of a program of political action. Prof. Marin concludes that there is a tension between the value I place on parties play as carriers of comparatively comprehensive accounts of the public interest and my criticism of the anti-party tradition I call “holism”.

My first response is to say that we should take holism seriously as a philosophical and political position. If we do, it is not hard to see “what about holism is responsible for its antiparty tendencies”. Partisan advocates for a contested conception of the public interest are anathema to holism. Properly understood holism is anti-political. It is typically utopian in its vision of perfect unity. Every strain of philosophical and political holism shares a rejection of pluralism and of political partiality and parts. All social and political groups threaten the unity and integrity of political order, on the holist view, but because parties have partiality and opposition as their aim, they stand out as the most morally and politically unabidable. Holists cast parties as parts against rather than parts of the whole. That parties may contest notion of the public interest rather than partial interests makes them no less particularist. For holists, the common good cannot be identified or instituted by means of a dialectic of party conflict. Nothing is more antithetical to holism than James Bryce’s observation that a party system “stimulates the political interest of the people, which is kept alive by this perpetual agitation.”

My second response is to say that in any political society that accepts pluralism, parties and partisans are the indispensable, committed agents of responsible democratic pluralism. They are unique in this, which is why I refer to partisanship as the morally distinctive political identity of representative democracy. The most important and defining characteristic of partisanship – more important than the ethical elements of inclusiveness, comprehensiveness, and compromisingness – is that even though partisans speak to the public at large and often wish they could claim to speak for everyone, they know they do not represent the whole. Divisions and partiality are not lost sight of. The chastening knowledge is always there. To say the obvious, yes, partisans want to win “the moral ascendancy that comes from earning the approval of the great body of the people”. But it is a defining characteristic of parties in democracy and the heart of the moral distinctiveness of partisanship that any majority, or supermajority, or consensual mandate is temporary and revocable. Partisanship is imbued with this truth about democratic politics as the inseparable from the act of drawing significant lines of division, and with an acceptance of the vicissitudes of pluralism. This is the discipline and the creativity of partisanship.

Prof. Marin ends with an institutional challenge. Do the elements of my ethic of partisanship argue against proportional representation, where parties are less likely to be inclusive and their objectives comprehensive. I have no simple answer to this fair question. Proportional systems with many small parties that are effectively single interest or identity groups or that occupy a tiny piece of the ideological spectrum obstruct the sort of democratic deliberation that can arise in party politics. Their partisans speak to narrow constituencies, their agendas are typically truncated, and inclusiveness and compromise take place at the level of government formation and ministerial decisions, and are often fragile and temporary. But within the constraints of electoral systems, often enough parties that begin as narrowly sectarian become more inclusive – consider European Christian Democratic parties. In short, the applicability of the elements of my ethic of partisanship to PR is variable and depends in part on the specifics of electoral systems that are beyond the scope of this project. That said, I do suggest that inclusive umbrella parties (or electoral districts that require segmented religious or ethnic parties to appeal beyond their group) are more likely to develop comprehensive agendas and to broadcast reasons to wide swaths of the voting population. Even so, there is no assurance: “narrow-casting” is a regrettable feature of the national electoral behavior of American umbrella parties, for example. The impetus must come from partisans themselves, hence my attention the ethical dimension to partisanship.


Nancy Rosenblum

On the Side of Angels symposium
11. Nancy Rosenblum: Response to Melissa Schwartzberg

Professor Schwartzberg rightly observes that parties (I would add party systems) do not necessarily operate in a way that enhances deliberation or political participation. The extreme case of course is charlatan parties -- parties that do not intend to respect election results or that intend if successful to subvert democratic norms. I devote one chapter of On the Side of the Angels to the subject of banning parties. I look at parties that are avowedly anti-democratic or that challenge the secular or egalitarian character of democratic society. The orthodox justifications for “militant democracy” and the criminalization of parties with antidemocratic ideologies are only part of the story. The challenges posed by parties have changed since World War II; the justifications that can reasonably be offered for outlawing religious or ethnic parties, for example, are an increasingly important theme in modern constitutionalism and a neglected aspect of democratic theory.

Prof. Schwartzberg’s concern is parties that respect democratic norms and institutions but that in the course of formulating issues, creating lines of division, staging the battle, selecting and simplifying agendas and arguments are insufficiently responsive to groups that desire a hearing and influence. Of course, the important reductivist business of parties is matched on the other side by the business of adding new issues and partisan voices – a quick look at changes in both the constituencies and issues identified with Democratic and Republican parties over the last few decades is a simple case in point. We have been more attentive to exclusion than we have been to the difficult business of creating political order out of the mass of ideas, programs, and personalities that flood political life and demand attention. Prof. Schwartzberg’s concern is the opposite: the perils of reductivism, the fact that parties may obstruct popular “civilian” partisan in-put in the construction of platforms, policies, and agendas, and in the selection of candidates. (They may also, of course, narrow the range of arguments that are brought to bear in advancing agreed-on agendas and candidacies.)

I don’t see a contradiction between Schwartzberg’s best-case scenario and her concern that agendas and candidates are generated by internal conflicts among leaders and activists. For one thing, this seems to me to be a matter of degree. Party activists are typically members of interest and advocacy groups, and bring these perspectives to bear on internal party politics, so that by itself the amount of “grass-root” participation does not determine the breadth of considerations that go into programs and priorities. Mass participation is not the only way to insure that the common recognizable interests of ordinary citizens are taken into account. Besides, there are practical limits to just how inclusive party organizations should be during the different stages of the electoral process and in the party-building stages in between elections. (I assess legal requirements for democratic decision-making within parties, and attempts to mandate open or non-partisan primaries to enhance participation.) That said, in many democracies and certainly in the U.S., parties organize not only national elections but also elections and governing at the state and sometimes local levels so that even if we count just party activists, that adds up to a considerable number of citizens, and a manifestly diverse group as any caucus-goer knows. Moreover, large-scale partisan participation (and recruitment of partisans) is typically episodic – as we know, events and candidates can open the gates to activism. The most important thing to say in response to Prof. Schwartzberg’s reasonable concern is that only partisans are motivated to take part in the business of shaping political lines of division and the arguments that explain those divisions; the push for inclusive deliberation must come from them.

There are two cases where Prof. Schwartzberg’s concerns about reducing the voices in party deliberations point to more serious challenges to my appreciation of parties and partisanship. One is when parties or a segment of a party is captured by a particular set of donors or moneyed interests. This was Ostrogorski’s preoccupation: “organization reached its climax: from a broker in offices it rose to a trafficker in political influence….”. Where there is systemic corruption, the formal and informal activities of partisans are not decisive in shaping critical aspects of the party agenda, choosing specific candidates, or directing the actions of partisans in office. I discuss this complex subject in “The Anxiety of Influence”.

The other way in which parties can obstruct best-case deliberation is when particular groups are excluded from the ambit of every party; whether on account of prejudice or because their electoral influence is judged insignificant and not worth mobilizing. Prof. Schwartzberg proposes that this exclusion is a source of disaffected independence, and that I should take this into account in my severe criticism of Independents. The causes of disaffection and political detachment are not well known, and have more important sources than inhospitable political parties. In any case, that is an empirical question I am not equipped to answer here. But I can that the Independents that concern me (and that have the solicitude of most political theorists) are not non-voting sufferers of anomie, but proud anti-partisans who look down on partisans for moral reasons and who identify Independence with epistemic high ground. Of course, the response to exclusion from party life does not have to be political detachment. Historically, third parties and fusion parties in the U.S. have been formed to represent regional or ideological or identity groups, and they have often been taken up and absorbed by major parties over time. Robust parties are remarkably changeable institutions.

As this suggests, the problem that interests me in Prof. Schwartberg’s remarks is whether the response to captured parties or exclusionary parties is an attempt to create another party or a resort to other forms of political influence and agitation. My appreciation of parties entails a double contrast: first, partisanship in contrast to vaunted Independence, and second, partisanship in contrast to activism via interest and advocacy groups, social movements, and so on. All sorts of political organizations serve important democratic purposes, of course. But if we value these other forms over parties and partisanship, we are liable to misunderstand and even detract from the distinctive purposes (including the deliberative purposes) that are served if they are served at all only by parties and electoral politics.

One last observation. Both Profs. Schwartzberg and Marin focused on my brief for the potential of parties as deliberative agents and arenas. True, one of my concerns has been to bring parties and partisanship into the ambit of the dominant deliberative strain of democratic theory, where they have been ignored or depreciated. But that is just one of my objectives. The elements of an ethic of partisanship I propose serve other democratic purposes besides deliberation. And the overarching reason for appreciating parties and partisanship has to do with acceptance of political pluralism and contestation. Partisanship, to repeat, is the only political identity that does not see pluralism and political conflict as a bow to necessity, a pragmatic recognition of the inevitability of disagreement. It requires severe self-discipline to acknowledge that my party’s status is just one part of a permanently pluralist politics, and the provisional nature of being in the majority, or governing, or for that matter being in the minority. In short, partisanship accepts the regulated rivalry that defines democratic politics.

Nancy Rosenblum

On the Side of Angels symposium
10. Patrick Deneen: Progressivism and Partisans

Nancy Rosenblum has done a great service in seeking to rehabilitate the place of parties and partisanship in the discourse of political philosophy. Her effort to categorize the sources of “anti-party” sentiment is admirable – divided into categories of “the luster of independence,” “escape from the deadly groove,” and “weightlessness.” A bit of historical flesh on these theoretical bones might add both some complexity and robustness to her categories, and further pose a challenge to her categorizations of what is praiseworthy about parties and partisanship – namely, “inclusiveness,” “comprehensiveness,” and “compromisingness.”

I wish, in particular, to focus on the second of the grounds for philosophical opposition to parties and partisanship: the desire or imperative to “escape from the deadly groove.” Rosenblum stresses the Progressive-era sources of this particular suspiciousness, and rightly so: it was during the Progressive era that an increasingly dim view of the role of Parties in electoral politics and governance reached a modern apogee. Suspicions toward Party gave rise to reforms such as the Direct Primary, the Initiative and Referendum, and perhaps most importantly (in terms of eviscerating the practical force of Parties), civil service reform leading to a massive decrease of political appointments.

While many of the criticisms of Party were couched in recognizable terms that decried the role of the “partisan hack” or the absence of expertise in government (this was the same period that witnessed the rise of Political Science as an ascendant discipline), at a more fundamental level many of the criticisms of partisanship partook of a deep suspicion toward “the deadly groove” of ethnic or “tribal” solidarity. In particular, once-ascendant Protestant leaders had witnessed the rise of a new form of Party government – the urban machine – one that rested deeply upon the communal coherence of immigrant communities. These communities – often Irish, but also Italian, German, and Jewish – represented not only a different set of ruling personalities, but more often than not a fundamental challenge to the liberal idea of Party that resolved itself around interests. Instead, there was a fear that Parties were increasingly defined in terms that were less grounded ultimately in the individual and instead coalesced around shared communal and social features based in common ethnicity, religion, and history. This changed landscape represented a basic challenge to the liberal assumptions that had permitted the flourishing of Party – namely, that all Parties are reducible to individuals who possess interests, and thus that are manageable in accordance with the systemic assumptions of the liberal constitutional order. By contrast, Parties based in identification of blood, race, history, religion and ethnicity were a different beast: this form of identification represented a deep and fundamental challenge to liberal democracy, and thus had to be combated with determined ferocity.

Progressives – most often liberal Protestants – increasingly decried Parties in general, and couched their criticisms in terms of an aspiration to a new universalism that resembled… liberal Protestantism writ large. Thinkers such as Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey urged a transcendence of “partisan” particularity in the name of a new form of national unity. Such thinkers aimed to hollow out devotions to local and particular associations and identifications, at once reducing identity to that of the individual and the nation (the temporary, even Hegelian locus of the “universal”). The partial or mediated identifications of the new immigrant classes represented a threat to the liberal order; indeed, it can be argued that the religious (often Catholic) sources of commitment to various forms of local mediation (e.g., the parish) were seen by many as the greatest obstacle to the assimilation of these new immigrant communities into the liberal individualist and universalist order. Concurrent with attacks on Party and partisanship were similar efforts to “universalize” a new form of national, liberal education (represented best in the efforts of Horace Mann and John Dewey) and the embrace of a new science of politics (i.e., a universal and replicable form of “political science.”).

That is: what was precisely objectionable about the form of Party that so perturbed the liberal elite was that these parties were noteworthy for being: 1. exclusive; 2. particular; and 3. uncompromising. They were parties based upon strong local communities with longstanding shared traditions and beliefs. They rejected many of the fundamental premises of liberalism, including most fundamentally a self-understanding that begins by conceiving humans to unencumbered, monadic, rational individuals. Reading the arguments of the Progressive opponents to Party during the early years of the twentieth-century, one encounters over and over a condemnation of their irrationality, their “tribal” quality, their backwardness, their recidivism, their very threat to the American way of life. Opponents to such threats couched their alternative vision in the name of the universal, the rational, the scientific, the national and transcendent. If parties were to survive, it was only by basing a new form of Party upon these latter, liberal characteristics. By means of a variety of Progressive-era reforms, the “organic,” communal and local form of partisanship was largely routed in favor of our current form of Parties that are predominantly national, interest-based, shifting alliances.

If Rosenblum is today able to praise parties at best for being “inclusive,” “comprehensive” and “compromising,” it is only because one major and challenging alternative to the liberal conception of partisanship was almost wholly defeated in the early part of the 20th-century. Her praise of Party is made within the comfort of the liberal paradigm – seemingly challenging the “independent” or “rationalist” extremes of liberalism, albeit well within the comfort zone of liberal presuppositions of the role and status of Parties within the contemporary polity. One wonders on what side Rosenblum would have found herself during the Progressive era, when Parties were proudly exclusive and liberalism believed itself under assault by a very different set of anthropological assumptions lodged under the banner of Party?

Patrick Deneen

On the Side of Angels symposium
9. Henry Farrell: Comparative questions

On the Side of the Angels is more than a good book; it’s a necessary one. The lack of sympathetic accounts of partisanship in political theory, and in our wider public discourse, is extraordinary, and Rosenblum provides a nuanced, well-argued and exciting account of why we should think about partisanship as having benign consequences for politics.

That said, a seminar like this is supposed to provoke critical debate, not gushing encomia, if it’s going to have value. So here’s my criticism. I would have liked to have seen more comparative analysis of parties, and the debates around parties, in different countries. Such analysis is present in Rosenblum’s book, but mostly around the margins – her main interest (with the exception of the final chapter on banning parties) is very clearly the US debate on partisanship and parties, and the various streams of thought that have flowed into it. I think that a lot could be learned from applying her arguments to different contexts. Since I’m most familiar with European political parties, here are two examples.


First – Rosenblum’s fascinating account of the modern American critique of partisanship situates it in large part in the historical context of the Progressive movement. The Progressives saw party machines as intrinsically bad for American politics, and sought to encourage reforms that would weaken political parties in various ways. Many Progressives believed that politics in the ideal would not involve partisanship at all, instead relying on various forms of civil society mobilization to tackle political problems. The ideal political actor was not the partisan (who was supposedly dependent on bosses to tell him what to do) but the independent. Rosenblum’s account of how this implicit set of biases feeds into contemporary debates about the virtues of deliberation, the benefits of civil society, the need to reform fundraising practices and so on is quite convincing. While (as she acknowledges), other strains of thought are implicated, there is an apparent connection between Progressive critiques of parties, and the assumptions of latter-day civic reformers.

This spurs an interesting (at least to me) question – can some of the differences between left-of-center European critiques of parties and left-of-center American critiques be traced back to cross-Atlantic differences in historical situation at the beginning of the last century? The argument might go as thus: those who were most influential in the US debate were indeed Progressives, who, as Rosenblum observes, believed that parties were intrinsically problematic. Those who were most influential in the European debate were Social Democrats and their intellectual heirs, who had quarreled with Communists (the Kautsky-Bernstein debates), and who held that the best way to achieve socialist equality was through the ‘paper stones’ of the ballot box rather than revolution.

Thus, not only were the European reformers not opposed to parties, but they saw one party (the Social Democratic party) as having the capacity to redeem politics. While American reformers worried about party politics as such, European reformers worried that the party (and especially its leaders) would be corrupted by its engagement with traditional politics. The perceived problem was the opposite of the American one – not that politics would be debased by parties, but that parties (and left parties in particular) would be debased by politics. Thus, in part, a very particular European tradition of critique, ranging from Michels through Pizzorno to this recent piece for the New Left Review by Peter Mair, all focus on the ways in which parties may be corrupted by an overly close engagement with hierarchy and the state.

Now, to be clear, one should not construct an overly idealist account of how this debate has developed – differences between European and American debates are at least as much the product of different objective situations as of different historical traditions of debate. But Rosenblum’s fascinating historical account of Progressivism at the least raises the question of whether debates about parties from early in the era of mass-mobilization continue to resonate in Europe too.

A second comparative angle is suggested by Rosenblum herself in an aside. When writing about mixed constitutions (which seek to address social divisions by assigning different institutions to different parts of society, rather than allowing parties to organize themselves), Rosenblum suggests that the European Union is a good modern example of what a mixed constitution looks like. This – combined with her later arguments about the salutary consequences of partisanship for politics – has some interesting possible implications that could be developed further.

Political theoretic debates about the European Union typically focus on its ‘democratic deficit’ and its lack of a ‘demos.’ Here, the problem is two-fold. First, the European Union has serious problems of democratic legitimacy, because of the quite attenuated links between EU decision making and democratic choice. Not all agree that this attenuation is a problem (some, like Andrew Moravcsik, perceive it in quite benign terms), but the perceived democratic illegitimacy of the European Union has haunted debates over reform, and helped spur various initiatives (greatly improving the decision making clout of the European Parliament, seeking to provide greater involvement for national parliaments and the like).

There is still controversy over the extent to which supranational arrangements can have direct democratic legitimacy in the absence of a self-conscious European demos, but perhaps more pertinently, none of these reforms seem to have worked. The European Union is suffering a continuing legitimation crisis, which appears to have worsened dramatically over the period of reforms, rather than getting better. EU publics, in contrast to elites, seem indifferent towards the EU and disengaged from it when they are not actively hostile toward it.

Here, Rosenblum’s arguments perhaps provide a different perspective on the problem and the possible locus of a solution. By treating the EU as a mixed constitution, we can see how the EU’s legitimacy problem has similarities with the more general question of how different sets of interests should be balanced in mixed arrangements. But more importantly perhaps, we can also see how further constitutional reforms may not on their own be sufficient to engage publics with the EU. We may need partisan contention (or some close equivalent) too. Some of the EU’s legitimacy problem may not rest with the institutions but with Europe’s political parties.

Most particularly, there is a nearly complete absence of partisanship at the European level. This is not to say that there are not European parties. The European Parliament groups together Socialists, Christian Democrats, Liberals and others in broad party organizations which do have an important role in organizing debate at the European level. Furthermore, national level parties have created some limited umbrella groupings, so that Christian Democratic leaders from different countries meet together regularly. But these are parties without partisanship. Voters, to the extent that they know these groupings exist, don’t care about them (for example, voting for European Parliament candidates usually turns on purely domestic issues, punishing the government etc).

This lack of partisanship in turn means that European political parties have not constructed the kinds of divisions that (as Rosenblum argues), usefully organize political contention, transforming it from a potentially inchoate mass of quarreling interests and groupuscules into a comprehensible and relatively organized system where politics is organized around one or a few key differences of policy and/or philosophy. Instead of being presented with clearly different approaches to governing Europe, voters are typically presented either with party consensus (that Europe is a ‘good’ thing) or with a battle between this consensus (as presented by mainstream parties) and a variety of arguments from those on left and right who argue that the European Union is fundamentally ill-advised or illegitimate.

The pro- and anti-Europe divide may, or may not, itself be a useful division. But what it surely means that voters are not presented with choices about which Europe (whether social-democratic, free market or whatever). Instead, they are faced with a choice (to the extent that they have a choice at all) over whether Europe – e.g. whether to affirm or reject the decisions made by a coalition of left-wing and right-wing elites about the direction of European integration.

The lesson that I’d like to draw (which goes somewhat further than Rosenblum’s own argument about the benefits of partisanship) is as follows. The European Union would likely have more legitimacy in the eyes of voters if it were organized as a space of partisan contention. The lack of real argument between different partisan forces as to how Europe should be organized contributes to voters’ disengagement.

Henry Farrell

On the Side of Angels symposium
8. Mara Marin: Holism and the public interest

In her On the Side of Angels Nancy Rosenblum offers us reasons to reject a long tradition in the history of political thought according to which “partisan” is an invective and “Independents” are “portrayed as partisans undisputed moral superiors.” She proposes “an ethic of partisanship” as the ground for appreciating parties.

Parties have three features, she argues, that are as many reasons for us to appreciate them. Parties aim, first, to be inclusive, secondly, to offer “a comprehensive story about the economic, social and moral changes of the time, and about national security” and, thirdly, partisans are inclined to compromise.

This is a refreshing and complex view that I appreciate not only for establishing parties and partisanship as legitimate and central subjects for political theory, but for being an excellent example of how work in political theory can be developed in dialogue with both empirical political science and the history of political thought.

But what strikes me about these features is that they invoke a public, collective “we” (beyond that of the party membership) and an idea of the public interest. (This is true of at least the first two features, but arguably also about the third, given that the justification of this last feature is linked to the other two features). For the inclusiveness feature of parties does not simply mean that party identification is shared by diverse groups (people from different states, of different religions, etc.). Rather, it means that partisans want to be in the majority because they “want the moral ascendancy that comes from earning the approval of ‘the great body of the people.’” Parties are comprehensive in the sense that even as partisans pursue partial interests, they “share a complex of concerns and connect particular interests to a more general conception of the public interest” (my emphasis). Parties make possible what Rawls calls “public reason” by situating particular issues “in what we consider the most reasonable and “complete” conception of political justice we can advance” and by speaking “to all citizens as citizens and not view them only as situated in some interest group or social class” (On the Side of the Angels, 359).

But if the value of parties is given by the moral value that comes from being approved by the people, and from offering a conception of the public interest, then it seems that ultimately what matters is the whole, the country, not the parts, the parties (even when they are inclusive and comprehensive). To put it differently, there is, at least at first sight, a tension between justifying parties by invoking the public interest and rejecting holism as a tradition of antipartyism. Or is there a difference between the conceptions of “we” and of “public interest” invoked by the ethic of partisanship and those at work in holism? What are these differences, if any?

I think that we need to know more about these differences not only to have a more complete picture of the ethic of partisanship, but also to understand what about holism is responsible for its antipartyism tendencies. Is it simply the idea of a body politic, or is it a particular way of conceiving it (for example, as an organic entity to whom all parts should be subordinate) that is responsible for antipartyism? Is it possible to distinguish the general ideas of the political “we” and of “public interest” from the particular ways of understanding them that constitute holism as a tradition of antipartyism, and thus maintain a more widely acceptable conception of holism? More importantly, does the ethic of partisanship depend on a such version of holism - a conception of what constitutes the body politic and the general interest - that is not inimical to parties? If so, what is that conception?

Finally, is the ethic of partisanship a normative standard to be used to assess and criticize particular parties and particular party systems? Should we commend parties for their sincere attempts to link particular proposals to a general conception of the public interest? Should we reject parties that do not make that attempt (or are - in our view - insincere when making it)? Does the ethic of partisanship give us a reason to reject proportional representation systems because they make parties less likely to be comprehensive (On the Side of the Angels, 359)? Does it give us reason to prefer systems with fewer parties because having “fewer parties enables coherent and comprehensive narratives” (On the Side of the Angels, 359)?

Mara Marin

On the Side of Angels symposium
7. Melissa Schwartzberg: The development of parties' programs

On the Side of the Angels is, in my view, an exemplary work of political theory: it demonstrates the value of classical works of political thought as source material by which to challenge conventional views, and the richness that comes from drawing on the findings of empirical political science to construct normative arguments. Rosenblum’s discussion of the role of parties in fostering deliberation is illustrative of her general methodological approach, as she draws on classical political theory, contemporary normative work, and empirical research in developing her claims. Against much of deliberative theory, Rosenblum suggests that parties have a pivotal role to play in enabling deliberation. On her account, parties serve (attractively) to reduce the multidimensional nature of disagreement: parties bring interests and opinions into sharp opposition so as to subject them to Millian “trial by discussion.” Freeform deliberation is doomed to fail, she rightly holds, and to the extent that parties clarify points of disagreement and thereby enable deliberation to occur more robustly prior to voting, they perform a critical democratic activity. Yet it doesn’t strike me as obvious that the reductive process generated by the party system will necessarily operate in a way that enhances deliberation or democracy more generally, and so I’d like briefly to consider the circumstances under which it is likely to be beneficial and the conditions under which this process could do real harm.

The best-case scenario for parties and deliberation might run as follows: Parties’ agendas emerge from a substantially less constrained deliberative process; it is relatively easy for civilian partisans to participate in this process, and there is a forum in which outlying or extreme positions can be heard and debated. Through this deliberative process, candidates are identified and platforms developed. Civilian partisans then can take up the banner, helping to construct arguments on behalf of the proposed policies and responding to criticisms of opposing parties, which have generated their own policies and platforms through a dynamic process that responds to the choices of the other parties. In this world, independents would, as Rosenblum argues, miss out on the fundamental activity of framing, defending, and criticizing issues in response to others’ arguments. Further, given the expansive nature of the deliberative process ex ante, the independent might rightly be charged with epistemic or moral hubris insofar as they fail to listen to or learn from others’ positions.

Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that policy agendas and candidates do actually emerge in such an inclusively deliberative fashion – programs and candidates typically result from internal conflicts among party leaders and activists at various levels. Now, Rosenblum would probably argue that this isn’t a problem: she holds, I think, that the real work of citizenship comes after the construction of parties and their agendas, of deliberating in the context of preexisting alternatives. But without such a role for citizen partisans in the construction of these alternatives, I fear that the beneficial reduction in the dimensionality of debates generated by internal party politics may have as a side effect an unappealing parochialism. Further, since would-be civilian partisans may not view the party as reflecting their divergent perspectives – that is, they may feel it is insufficiently inclusive – their identification with the party may be gravely attenuated, thereby pushing more partisans into the ranks of the disaffected independents. The argument, in this case, that independents are “weightless” may be unfair if, while partisans, they felt that their weight – their distinct perspectives and their solidarity within a deliberative process – had gone unnoticed. The creativity and moral salience of partisanship so elegantly defended by Rosenblum depends, it seems to me, upon offering civilian partisans a genuine opportunity to participate in the development of their parties’ programs.

[On the role of deliberation in reducing the dimensions of disagreement and thus helping to generate single-peaked preferences (and avoid cycling), see also Jack Knight and James Johnson, “Aggregation and Deliberation: On the Possibility of Democratic Legitimacy,” Political Theory 22:2 (May 1994), pp. 277-296)]

On the Side of Angels symposium
6. Nadia Urbinati: Parties are not an Option in Representative Democracy

Rosenblum’s defense of the morality of the political party and partisanship represents a seminal contribution to both democratic theory and political theory. Resuming Ignazio Silone’s maxim that the crucial political judgment is “the choice of comrades”, not of independent bystanders, Rosenblum links partisanship to citizens’ participation and political responsibility. This is her central thesis: “Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and compromisingness set the contours for the best possible partisanship. They enable the distinctive work of partisans: drawing the lines of division and shaping the system of conflict that orders democratic deliberation and decision. Among the political identities that democracy generates, only partisanship has this potential.” Partisanship is an indispensable mean to regulate political conflict in peaceful manner, recognize political pluralism, and generate political agendas and political identities. These are compelling arguments, essential to the understanding of political action in democratic society, both inside and outside of the institutions. Drawing on my book on representative democracy, I would propose an additional argument that may stress Rosenblum’s thesis: representative democracy makes parties essential.

Representative democracy reveals the limits of a conception of politics as an individual-to-individual relation between the candidate and the electors sealed by elections. It reveals the limits of a conception that rests on the formalistic element of authorization (voting) and a juridical (as private) interpretation of representation as agent/principal relation. A democratic theory of representation compels us to go beyond the intermittent and discrete series of electoral instants (sovereign as the authorizing will) and investigate the continuum of influence and power created and recreated by political judgment and the way this diversified power relates to representative institutions. Augustine Cochin wrote years ago that “a people of electors by itself is not capable of initiative, but at most of consent;” yet a representative democracy is not a “crowd of inorganic voters.” Political parties and movements are the means citizens create to give their political presence an effective and persistent character through time. Their strength and social rootedness signal the strength of democratic representation.

Moreover, since representation functions politically (to make laws) in a collective and public setting and since laws cannot be treated like contractual agreements because they impose their authority on all indiscriminately, not just on those who agree with them or those whose ideas are represented by the majority, it is extremely important that we abandon the logic of the contract in interpreting representation.

However, that representation cannot be regulated and checked like a 'contract' between a principal and an agent does not mean that citizens can only check representatives through elections. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was right to say that representation cannot be a contract. Yet just because political representation can only exist in the juridical form of a non-legally bounded contract of mandate, some other form of ‘political’ mandate is needed to check representatives. The very fact that representatives play an active (legislative) role implies that they are not independent of the electors; it implies a political kind of 'mandate.'

The seed of the democratic character of representation germinates from the paradox that although a representative is supposed to deliberate about things that affect all members of the polity, she is also supposed to have a sympathetic relation to a part (the part that votes for her). In substance, a relation of ideological sympathy and communication between the representative and her electors is necessary and can occur only because political representation excludes legal mandate and is not a contract. The sympathetic relation of the representative to the part that voted for her is and must only be a matter of opinions or ideas, an informal and thus not authoritative kind of relation. This means however that the representative is not politically autonomous from her electors although she must be legally autonomous. Party is the political link of interdependence between citizens and elected representatives.

In democratic politics, representation is not "acting in the place of somebody," but more precisely, being in a political relation of sympathetic similarity or communication with those in the place of whom the representatives act in the legislature (from here citizens’ quest of representativity comes). The assumption of this (idealized or ideological) kind of sympathy (which is the foundation of the advocacy aspect of representation) is reflected in the statute that regulates how the deputies vote in the representative assembly. Except in clearly specified cases (which pertain to decrees, not laws), the voting record must be made public. Electors need to know what the representatives do and say and how they vote in the assembly because they need to compare representatives judgment to their own judgment.

That a political representative is required to share her ideas only with her electors, not with the whole nation as a homogeneous body, entails that representation is itself a denial of plebiscitarian and populist democracy (a homogeneous identification of the body politics with one leader). Indeed, in order to acquire the moral and political legitimacy to make laws for all it must articulate pluralism but not superimpose an unreflective unity over an indistinct mass of individuals. It is thus important to make clear that representation is a process of unification not an act of unity that erases pluralism. As such, it presupposes and fosters pluralism, one that is not a mere social given but a political construction made by free citizens in their conflicting divisions or sympathetic alliances. Representative democracy is based on political parties and partisanship.

Nadia Urbinati

On the Side of Angels symposium
5. Nadia Urbinati: A Third Tradition of Anti-Partyism

Against the current: this would be my blurb for Nancy L. Rosenblum’s On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship, a fresh and bold attempt to subvert the “canonical” opposition to “parties as institutions and moral disdain for partisans” in the history of political thought. More than that, Rosenblum’s book is a timely and praiseworthy vindication of the value and uniqueness of democratic politics, the true Cinderella in contemporary democratic theory’s turn to cognitivism and the obsession with truth.

On the Side of the Angels wants to rescue “from futility” the positive role of political party “in the long history of antipartyism” that has marked the renaissance of democracy in modern world. Rosenblum reconstructs two “Glorious Traditions” of antipartyism: the holistic one and the pragmatic one. The former is radically hostile to pluralism; it can be either hierarchical and communitarian or egalitarian but is decisively anti-democratic (the Platonist tradition and reactionary tradition, from Rousseau to de Maistre fit this description). The latter is instead realist in accepting social pluralism but still resilient in justifying partisanship (Hume and Madison fit this description). Few are the modern authors on the side of the angels; among them Burke, Hegel, Tocqueville, and moreover John Stuart Mill who, although did not praise parties, grasped the dialectics of opposite visions of society (Progressive and Conservative) in representative government. We owe Mill the point that “without party rivalry, ‘trial by discussion’ cannot be meaningful,” writes Rosenblum. Developing from Mill’s proto-partytism, Rosenblum offers two strong and persuasive arguments in defense of partisan politics: that parties shape political conflict as no other collective actors can do, and that their decline or even absence in contemporary democracy signals a crisis of democratic politics.

I would propose to integrate Rosenblum’s two antiparty traditions with a third one: the myth of the unpolitical and even the anti-political. Whereas the former two traditions belonged to or were born from within a pre-democratic society, this new antiparty tradition is instead the offspring of a mature democratic society, and the expression of contemporary democratic theory. Strain of politicization is not new to critics of democracy. Beginning with early nineteenth century and as a reaction against the political process of emancipation started with the French revolution, it crossed the works of several generations of communitarians, anti-rationalists and anti-egalitarians. Burke and de Maistre, the founding fathers of modern anti-democracy, were critical of popular assemblies mainly because elections dethroned competence and virtue from politics and made the latter an arena of competing interests, in which all issues became relative in value and subjected to the volatile opinion of numerical majorities.

Yet contemporary’s strain of partisanship is more intriguing than the traditional anti-democratic lamentation because is made in the name of, not against democracy’s values. Criticism of democracy’s vocation to engender partisanship is to be found in Philip Pettit’s work and, although to a lesser degree, in Pierre Rosanvallon’s. Democratic institutions (a “system whereby the collective will of the people rules,” Pettit writes) are fueled by the “politics of passion” to narrow which proponents of unpolitical democracy see only one remedy: containing politics altogether while expanding deliberative fora and committees of experts, and moreover instituting adversarial practices of judicial contestation, solutions that are not democratic in character because not based on majority rule. From here comes, Rosanvallon has argued, “the growing importance we must recognize to the development of new modes of intermediary structuring of actions of surveillance by means of militant yet not partisan organizations.”

In contemporary democracy, the working force against partisanship is thus judgment, a faculty that plays a negative role, as that of monitoring and censuring. Judgment acquired momentum in the second half of the twenty-century, in coincidence with the consolidation of constitutional democracy, the technological revolution of the means of information and communication, and the expansion of civil society, domestically and globally. In representative democracy, the actor of negative politics is not the citizen-elector but the citizen-judge through an uninterrupted work of public scrutiny that is and remains informal although extremely influential. Judgment is the site of counter-politics; is located in civil political society as a permanent work of evaluation and criticism of politique politisée.

Yet the citizen-judge wants to make power more transparent and impartial, not more affordable or widespread. Unlike with the citizen-elector or the political participant, the goal of the citizen-judge is to devise institutions and rules that can in the long run make political participation less needed and thus partisanship less pronounced and relevant. Apathy seems to be the final outcome of this new trend of democratic antipartitism and antipartisanship. In Rosenblum’s words, the strategy of contemporary political philosophers “to sever deliberation from partisanship” is primed to foster an attitude that is inimical to democracy, which is unavoidably political because makes all issues an object of public talk and all values a matter of opinion.

Works cited:

Philip Pettit, “Depoliticizing Democracy”, Ratio Juris, 17 (March 2004): 52-65.

Philip Pettit, “Deliberative Democracy, the Discursive Dilemma, and Republican Theory,” in Debating Deliberative Democracy, ed. James S. Fishkin et Peter Laslett, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003.

Pierre Rosanvallon, La contre-démocratie. La politique à l’âge de la défiance. Paris: Seuil, 2006.


Nadia Urbinati

On the Side of Angels symposium
4. Nancy Rosenblum: "The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’," Part II: Moments of Appreciation of Partisanship

(See Part I here)

Now for three notes of appreciation for partisanship, corresponding to the elements of my proposed ethic of partisanship.

1. Inclusiveness. The first is the inclusive character of party id, which is characteristic though not unique to partisanship in the U.S.. That is, identification with Democrats or Republicans from Florida to California, and at every level of government. No other political identity is shared by so many segments of the population as measured by SES or religion. Nor are partisans clumped tightly together on an ideological spectrum. This is not to say that all partisans have an especially deep moral commitment to inclusiveness -- only that they are ambitious to be in the majority. Understand, however, that claiming a majority is more than a matter of strategic necessity or institutional design. Partisans want to win elections, but a plurality can suffice. They want to have their policies enacted, but there are other avenues of political efficacy. Rather, partisans want the moral ascendancy that comes from earning the approval of “the great body of the people”. In this respect, inclusiveness is a conscious democratic value.

Party candidates may have short-term strategic interests (or safe seats) that allow them to speak only to “the base”, or to sliver audiences, or even to deliberately depress participation, and activists may demand single-minded attention to one issue and ideological purity. But ordinary civilian partisans aspire to persuade and mobilize as many as possible to identify with them. Their horizon of political expectation extends beyond a single election cycle, and their disposition is to inclusiveness.

2. Comprehensiveness. The second element of an ethic of partisanship, and grounds for appreciation, is attachment to others in a group with responsibility for telling a comprehensive public story about the economic, social, and moral changes of the time, and about national security. Of course, partisans sometimes focus on a specific event and their party’s competence to identify and deal with it. Partisans pursue partial interests, though this is not unreconstructed interest group pluralism since partisans share a complex of concerns and connect particular interests to a more general conception of the public interest.

It would be overstating the case to say that given the comparative comprehensiveness of their concerns partisans assume the obligation Rawls articulated: to advance some conception of the public good that is not ad hoc but situated in the most complete conception of political justice we can advance. It would be understating the case to say that in contrast to members of interest and advocacy groups, including self-styled public interest groups, partisans are not single-issue voters. An important result follows from comprehensiveness: ordinary partisans are rarely extremists because adhering single-mindedly to one single dominating idea has little appeal.

3. Compromisingness. Inclusiveness and a comprehensive account of what needs to be done are only possible if “we partisans” demonstrate the disposition to compromise. When compromise is with fellow partisans it acknowledges the larger “we”. We have only to think of political purists to underscore compromisingness as a moral disposition of ordinary partisans. Purists “cant about principles”. They represent intransigence as a virtue. They do not find failure ignominious. As one Republican sensibly objected, “I did not become a conservative in order to become a radical…”.

Of course, compromise can be evidence of abject pandering or raw opportunism. If you are partisans, you know for yourselves, I suspect, that working out the bounds of reasonable compromise is part of the discipline of partisanship.

Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and compromisingness set the contours for the best possible partisanship. They enable the distinctive work of partisans: drawing the lines of division and shaping the system of conflict that orders democratic deliberation and decision. Among the political identities that democracy generates, only partisanship has this potential.

The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’

This brings me to the overarching achievement of parties and partisanship. We know that in political life partiality and disagreement are inescapable, and so are groups and associations of all kinds organized in opposition to one another. But we tend to forget that political parties and partisanship are not inevitable, and should not be taken for granted. Commitment to political pluralism, to regulated political rivalry, and to shifting responsibility for governing makes party id the morally distinctive political identity of representative democracy.

We might think that the vicissitudes of political fortune and the limits of human volition make this existentially true, a felt experience. Or we might say that all citizens in democracy have a part in this; they do, presumptively, formally. But partisans are expressly identified with it. Partisanship is the political identity that does not see political pluralism and conflict as a glum concession to the ineradicable “circumstances of politics”. And while thinking they should speak to everyone, partisans do not imagine they speak for the whole. True, they are on the side of the angels, offering a satisfactory account of what needs to be done. But however ardent and devoid of skepticism, there is this reticence. Partisans do not represent the opposition as a public enemy. They don’t secede, revolt, or withdraw in defeat, and “elections are not followed by waves of suicide.”

Skeptics of my appreciation of partisanship can be forgiven today. For several decades, the leadership of American parties often appears to want to destroy one another as an effective and legitimate opposition – even to the extent of trying to criminalize political differences. They are hubristic, claiming to represent the nation not a part. Intransigence has become a virtue; compromise even with fellow partisans is not in their repertoire; failure is not ignominious even if the public business is not done. The thrust of an ethic of partisanship, of course, is critical as well as appreciative.

These failings do not characterize ordinary partisans, or taint partisanship as a proud political identity. In any event, nonpartisanship cannot sustain democracy and democratic citizenship, and even vaunted bipartisanship is a temporary corrective at best. That is all the more reason for democratic theorists to connect the practice of democratic citizenship with partisanship, and to consider the terms and conditions of better partisanship as seriously as they do impartiality and institutions designed to work without parties or partisans. Political theorists should adopt these orphans of political philosophy and take them in.
Works Cited:

Edmund Burke, “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs”

Jesse Macy, Political Parties in the United States 1846-1961

Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, “Political Liberalism vs. “The Great Game of Politics””, Perspectives on Politics (March, 2006).

Theodore Roosevelt, American Ideals

E.E. Schattschneider, Party Government

Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion

On the Side of Angels symposium
3. Nancy Rosenblum: "The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’," Part I: Independence

On the Side of the Angels has three purposes. I create a typology of the antiparty arguments that recur in the history of political thought, and identify rare “moments of appreciation”. [Blog #1] I go on to trace the “post-party depression” that accompanied the rise of mass electoral parties in the U.S.. Virtually every contemporary political pathology and scheme for correcting the system by eliminating, circumventing, or containing parties has its roots in Progressive Era, when antipartyism and the ideal of political Independence were at a pitch. I trace this continuity in case law and democratic theory. Finally, drawing on work in political science, I propose grounds for an appreciation of partisanship in democratic politics today, and I outline an ethic of partisanship.

Partisanship needs a moment of appreciation. We recognize “partisan” as invective; the barb comes out of improbable mouths, a virtual reflex. Nothing is clearer than the solicitous attention showered on political Independents, or that they are typically portrayed as partisans’ undisputed moral superiors. Democratic theorists are no exception. Parties are famously “orphans of political philosophy”, and political theorists today continue to ignore or disown them. Sober realists might concede the minimum: that parties are convenient mechanisms for “reducing the transaction costs” of democracy. Perhaps they might be brought to say that while partisans are not admirable, some number of them are indispensable to realize the function of parties. But any concession is pragmatic, unexuberant, unphilosophical, grudging.

The notion commonplace in democratic theory that an “intelligently and progressively democratic” system depends on the ability of its supporters to attain a nonpartisan spirit is exactly wrong. In contrast, I cast partisanship as the characteristic and morally distinctive political identity of representative democracy. I chip away at the moral high ground claimed by Independents, and provide “party id” – ordinary citizens’ identification as a partisan –an iota of dignity. (My focus here is “civilian” partisans, referred to as “the party in the electorate”, though a similar argument applies to partisans in government.)

To make the case, I offer three points each about Independence and partisanship.

1. The Luster of Independence. Declining party identification – a “no preference” response on a survey of political attitudes -- is widespread throughout advanced democracies, but the proud self-designation “Independent” is unique to the U.S.. The peculiar luster of Independence here owes to a civic ideal of self-reliance as a virtue and social condition that preceded organized parties, and was later replanted in the soil of electoral politics. In Judith Shklar’s formulation: citizens [must] “be independent persons in both their political and civil roles, who give and withdraw their votes from their representatives and political parties as they see fit.” From early on partisanship began to be cast as degraded citizenship, as abject dependence rooted in clientelism, capture, or blind loyalty.

To be clear: the core of Independence as a political identity today is antipartisanship, not antipartyism. True, fundamentalist Independents reject party systems per se as too rigid to accommodate political judgment, and others may regret the current configuration of parties. But it is the avowal that she is not a partisan that gives Independence its luster, and explains the apt term “closet partisans” applied to the majority of Independents who end up voting regularly with one party.

2. ‘Escape from the Deadly Groove’
Progressives introduced the influential view that where the partisan is seduced or bought, the Independent is a free agent. The supporters of party organizations were characterized as thoughtless, set in some “deadly groove” and under some affective thrall. Today, the contrast is posed in cognitive as well as moralistic terms. Where partisans are “judgment-impaired”, crippled by perceptual bias, the Independent is a nimble “positive empiricist”, “cognitively mobilized.” These assertions do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. Independents typically know less than strong partisans, and cannot reasonably claim that they bring balanced information to bear. Unanchored, Independent’s considerations are more likely to be chaotic and ad hoc than partisans’. They participate in politics less.

Nonetheless, several heroic representations of Independence are commonplace and need to be disposed of. Escape from the deadly groove does not make the Independent bravely Thoreauian, doing in every case “what I think right”, since she is reduced to choosing among courses set by others. There is no warrant for casting Independents as Humean impartial observers, judicious umpires inclining victory to this side or that “as they think the interests of the country demand”. Nor as sensitive to Mill’s “half-truths” and to the dynamic by which every position derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other.

What if individual Independents were disinterested, or impartial observers and correctors of the deficiencies of every party? Even the ideal Independent lacks the moral distinctiveness of “party id” I turn to shortly, beginning with the fact that Independents are politically detached and weightless.

3. Weightlessness. Partisanship is identification with others in a political association. “We partisans” organize and vote with allies, not alone. Independents are as detached from one another as they are from parties. If Silone is right that the crucial political judgment is “the choice of comrades”, Independents do not make it. They are not sending a coordinated message (even if analysts are in the business of interpreting what their votes meant). Independents do not assume responsibility for the institutions that organize public discussion, elections, and government and are not responsible to other like-minded citizens.

Which is why what Teddy Roosevelt called “mere windy anarchy” is the perennial anxiety of those who imagine Independents as the hope for democratic reform. I’ll give the last word on this point to Edmund Burke, who said it first: “In a connexion, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the publick.”

(Continued in Part II here.

Nancy Rosenblum

On the Side of Angels symposium
2. Nancy Rosenblum: "Glorious Traditions of Anti-Partyism and Moments of Appreciation," Part II

(See Part I here.)

But a third moment of appreciation, a philosophical defense of parties, did depend on the character of the lines of division among parties. Like regulated rivalry and governing, this moment of appreciation assigns the advantages of parties to the very divisiveness that appalls antiparty theorists. Hume’s version of the philosophical moment rests on a stringent ethic of partisanship. Here, as in ethics, Hume assumes the pose of “impartial observer”, the standpoint he took assessing the actions and claims of Whigs and Tories during the Glorious Revolution. “Impartial” is understood relative to the parties; the observer is independent of connections, nonpartisan. But Hume wants to claim more: the position of impartial observer has its own center and ballast -- what he calls “the proper medium”, “extremes of all are to be avoided”. From this standpoint: “Though no one will ever please either faction by moderate opinions, it is there we are most likely to meet with truth and certainty.”

The striking note is that Hume would impress the impartial observer’s perspective on partisans themselves. Partisans might be injected with “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism” and hesitation. Partisans should sometimes exhibit a sense of fallibility and accompanying humility, and should incline to a generous estimate of the opposition’s intentions (“there are on both sides wise men who meant well to their country”). Hume escalates his demands further: partisans must also “persuade each that its antagonist may possibly be sometimes in the right…that neither side are …so fully supported by reason as they endeavor to flatter themselves”. This requires partisans to acknowledge that no one party is in the complete interest of the nation, or even of those who advance it. Hume proposes an ethics of partisanship equivalent to moderation grounded not in pragmatic accommodation or the checking function of opposition but in philosophic insight into parties’ “proper poise and influence”.

Hume’s imperative goes against the grain of actual partisanship. After all, the role of philosophic spectator is phenomenologically alien, and the attitude of hesitation is antithetical to much political action. Generous assumptions about the opposition’s intentions (“wise men who mean well”) are episodic at best. Only sometimes, and only some partisans, stand back from their rightness, and when they do it does not always mean recognizing that other parties share in being right or moderation of a kind “likely to bring truth and certainty”. A less demanding ethics of partisanship is my subject in later posts.

The most enduring philosophical moment of appreciation shares Hume’s assumption that parties’ contributions are complementary, only here, the benefits of opposition do not depend on partisans’ stepping back to become impartial observers. Less stringently, more hopefully, the dynamic of party antagonism does the work. I call this moment proto-Millian.

We are familiar with Mill’s insistence on “the social function of antagonism” and his signature argument about one-sidedness. Truth “is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners.” Mill erected the philosophical framework of progressive antagonism and insisted that this process requires actual advocates, not devil’s advocates or impartial observers. He explained in On Liberty that objections have force when they come “from persons who actually believe them, who defend them in earnest, and do their utmost for them.” But is Mill’s “trial by discussion” a defense of parties?

The claim that contestation corrects error, heightens awareness of arguments for and against propositions, and produces better decisions and more legitimate ones was and remains long-standing enlightenment orthodoxy, but the link between opposition and improvement did not identify political parties as the agents of fruitful antagonism. For example, the most ardent voice of enlightenment, William Godwin, tied social improvement to “communicative politics” (his term) but insisted that the “shibboleth of party has a more powerful tendency, than perhaps any other circumstance in human affairs, to render the mind quiescent and stationery”.

This judgment should be familiar, for contemporary political philosophers typically sever deliberation from partisanship. Insofar as “the internal telos of deliberation is consensus”, partisanship is anathema by definition. Deliberative theorists who do not aim at overcoming disagreement nonetheless associate partisanship with “coercion, negotiation, or, in its most discursive form, rhetorical manipulation”. (Gunderson)

We are prodded to ask: when Mill speaks of “The great council of the nation; the place where the opinions which divide the public on great subjects of national interest, meet in a common arena, do battle, and are victorious and vanquished”, does he intend a brief for parties? There are good reasons to think that Mill’s “party of order or stability” and “party of progress or reform” each of which “derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other”, did not refer to actual political associations but to “modes of thinking”, a bow to two seminal minds in philosophy, Bentham and Coleridge. Actually existing parties appalled him. “In the present situation of Great Britain, and of all countries in Europe” parties are incapable of serving as the nation’s “Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinion”.

So I call this moment of appreciation proto-Millian. Mill himself turned to institutional arrangements for antagonism without parties, the most important being his campaign on behalf of proportional representation. A new breed of political men, “hundreds of able men of independent thought” would enter the field and be voted into government, he imagined. Honorable, distinguished men “having sworn allegiance to no political party” would offer themselves in undreamed numbers. In place of party Mill imagined a “personal merit ticket”. But could “hundreds of able men of independent thought” drive improvement on Mill’s own terms? Does independence insure “a serious conflict of opposing reasons” or a real struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners? True, Mill’s nonpartisan men of merit are not Humean impartial observers. But why should we think that Independents would spontaneously fall into complementary camps, partisans of order or progress, rather than promiscuous coalitions? Or that they would provide actual liberal and conservative partisans backbone and muscular reasons? Mill was right to be skeptical that coherent legislation could emerge from “a miscellaneous assembly”, and to approve of “concert and cooperation”. Yet he leaves us to imagine Independents doing the work.

I am wary of the philosophical moment of appreciation if only because a lot is lost if intellectual boredom leads us to take regulated rivalry and responsibility for governing for granted, or if they are overshadowed by the drama of progressive antagonism. Another caveat is that there is no reason to think that principles or values or interests arise in antagonistic pairs, or at all. Finally, the philosophical moment of appreciation invites disappointment: from this perspective, partisans disappoint when they are resistant to “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism”, or when “men not measures” dominate, or when contest leads to stasis or compromise. Indeed, the failed promise fuels ferocious attacks on parties and partisanship, most famously Carl Schmitt’s.

The proto-Millian moment of appreciation can be rescued by restating it more modestly. Parties don’t dependably add up to a comprehensive, philosophically defensible whole and are not complements whose antagonism is dependably countervailing, much less progressive. But parties do draw politically relevant lines of division, reject elements of the others’ account of projects and promises, and accept regulated rivalry as the form in which they are played out. It is enough that party antagonism focuses attention on problems, information and interpretations are brought out, stakes are delineated, points of conflict and commonality are located, the range of possibilities winnowed, and relative competence on different matters is up for judgment. We can preserve the proto-Millian position in paler shades as long as parties create lines of division and define themselves in relation to one another. For, caveats in view, it is still the case that politically salient values, preferences, programs, interest, and principles are unlikely to be cast in terms of Mill’s “serious conflict of opposing reasons” unless partisans do the work of articulating lines of division and advocating on the side of the angels. That is the main point to retain from a pared down proto-Millian position: without party rivalry, “trial by discussion” cannot be meaningful. It will not be if interests and opinions are disorganized and are not brought into opposition, their consequences are not drawn out, argument is evaded. Nor can it be fruitful if the inclusion of interests and opinions is exhaustive and chaotic; parties are about selection and exclusion. Shaping conflict is what parties and partisans do, and what will not be done, certainly not regularly in the way representative democracy requires, without them.

My next entry offers a defense of partisanship, and challenges its indefensible absence from democratic theory today.

Works Cited:

William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

Adolf G. Gundersen, “Deliberative Democracy and the Limits of Partisan Politics: Between Athens and Philadelphia,” in Political Theory and Partisan Politics, eds. Edward Portis, Adolf Gundersen, and Ruth Shively.

Hegel, “Proceedings of the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Wurtenberg” in Z.A. Pelcyzynski, ed., Political Writings.

David Hume, “That Politics May be Reduced to a Science” and “Of the Independency of Parliament”Political Essays, ed. Haakonssen.

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813, Memorial Edition.

James Madison, “Parties”, in Jack N. Rakove, ed., James Madison: Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1999).

Mill, "On Liberty" and “Edinburgh Review”in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J.M. Robson; Considerations on Representative Government.

Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, borrowing from Oakeshott.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America.

Nancy Rosenblum