This essay weaves together the history of political and legal thought, contemporary democratic theory, and recent debates in legal scholarship to examine the ambivalent relationship between political parties and democracy. Celebrated as a structural necessity for the mechanics of democratic government, political parties are also handled with suspicion for their hybrid nature—neither entirely public nor completely private—and for their always-possible regression into factions. Anti-factionalism, I show, has been a powerful ideal driving constitutional imagination and practice over the centuries, from antiquity (with its emphasis on parts and its horror over factions), to the age of democratic revolutions (with its signature anxieties about divisions), up through the present. However, this long historical process has not extinguished the long-lived concern with the nature and implications of party spirit, nor has it made party democracy completely safe from revamped forms of factionalism. Two manifestations of factional politics stand out in the contemporary political landscape: authoritarian regime changes and populist constitutionalism. While the former is easy to diagnose but hard to prevent, the latter exemplifies a torsion of the constitutional and democratic imagination from within. Despite their differences, both scenarios remind us that constitutions need to envision mechanisms to prevent parties from undermining the liberal democratic order they have been designed to serve. At the same time, they call for renewed attention to the study of parties in the domains of democratic theory and constitutional scholarship.

This essay defends deliberative democracy by reviving a largely forgotten idea of corruption, which I call “cognitive corruption”—the distortion of judgment. I analyze different versions of this idea in the work of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bentham, and Mill. Historical analysis also helps me rethink orthodox notions of corruption in two ways: I define corruption in terms of public duty rather than public office, and I argue that corruption can be both by and for political parties. In deliberative democracy, citizens can take off their party hats and may be more influenced by the force of the better argument than in party democracy.

Recent literature has renewed interest in the stratarchical model of intraparty decision-making. In this version of party organization, the functions performed by parties are distributed among their discrete levels. The result is a power-sharing arrangement in which no group has control over all aspects of party life. Thus, the model potentially provides an antidote to the hierarchical version of organization. This article examines the principal parties in Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand to test whether there is empirical evidence of stratarchy. An examination of candidate nomination, leadership selection and policy development finds strong evidence of shared authority between both levels of the party in key areas of intraparty democracy. Both levels accept that they cannot achieve their goals without the support of the other and so a fine balancing act ensues, resulting in constant recalibration of power relations. There is, however, little evidence of the commonly presented model of stratarchy as mutual autonomy for each level within discrete areas of competency. Instead, both the party on the ground and in the centre share authority within all three areas, resulting in a pattern of mutual interdependence rather than mutual autonomy.

Political parties play a major role in democratic processes around the world. Recent empirical research suggests that parties are increasingly less important to citizens. Simultaneously, classic and contemporary theories of representative democracy specifically still minimally incorporate accounts of party benefit. This article attempts to reconcile normative political theory on democratic representation with party politics literature. It evaluates party democracy’s value in comparison with its next best theoretical alternative – pluralist democracy with individual representatives – along two different paths. It argues that parties are not flawless, but party democracy is preferable over pluralist democracy. Parties increase predictability and the transparency of policy outcomes. This, in turn, facilitates better accountability between voters and their representatives. In addition, parties save politics from becoming a dispersed and even possibly a contradictory set of actions.

According to a strong and lasting prejudice, which has recently been expressed with renewed vigour, the optimum form of democracy is bipolar. The bipolar pattern, however, is not the only one possible. If the relevant conditions are in place, other patterns are possible, such as the formation of government majorities through a convergence of ‘centrist’ and intermediate parties. This pattern is not free from problems, and one of the main issues of debate in the Italian case, with its long tradition of centrist governments, is over the apparent poor functionality of the party system. The functioning of a party system, however, depends on its circumstances, and a centrist party system can function just as well as its bipolar counterpart. Indeed, it is questionable whether Italy has gained from its new bipolar structure and whether the new structure will endure.