Rethinking the Modern Prince: Partisanship and the Democratic Ethos

P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 0 VO L 5 8 , 8 0 9 – 8 2 8
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00837.x
Rethinking the Modern Prince: Partisanship and
the Democratic Ethospost_837809..828
Jonathan White
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics and Political Science
Nuffield College, University of Oxford
This article lays out and defends the role of political parties in cultivating a democratic ethos among citizens. It argues
that citizens’ commitment to the democratic idea of self-rule requires positive conviction of the worth of collective
political agency, and suggests that this conviction draws on three main sources, characterised as normative, motivational
and executive. The article shows theoretically why parties are able to cultivate all three sources in a way no other
political actor can match, thus constituting a unique and indispensable mode of civic engagement. Moreover, it
proposes that the widely noted shortcomings of parties in contemporary democracy leave this basic capacity
unimpaired, indeed that certain important developments herald renewed opportunities.
A number of recent studies have sought to capture processes of change in contemporary
democracies by reference to ideas of ‘depoliticisation’ (Mair, 2006), ‘citizen disaffection’
(Schmitter, 1995) or ‘political malaise’ (Offe, 2006). These words imply that something to
whose presence we have become accustomed, and which has perhaps played an important
ethical role in democratic life, is in danger of being lost, though quite what the thing is
remains contested. Some diagnoses focus on the rise of policy making by non-majoritarian
institutions, seeing in this the erosion or streamlining of democratic practices. Others
emphasise decreasing levels of political participation and an increase in electoral volatility.
Still others focus on the narrowing of political choices made available to voters at election
time. Most accounts give at least some of these developments a critical reading, noting how
they tend to weaken the ability of citizens to influence policy making directly, or how they
increase political alienation and deprive institutions of democratic legitimacy (Offe, 2006).
At the heart of these concerns seems to be the vitality of the democratic ethos itself,
understood as a positive conviction among citizens of the worth of engaging with collective
political agency so as to exercise the fundamental democratic principle of collective
self-rule. This article explores the conditions necessary to the maintenance of this convic-
tion, and advances an ideal-typical conception of the role of political parties in promoting
it. It does so not by providing a comprehensive empirical account of the current challenges
faced by parties in Western countries, or by seeking to offer a positive causal model for
contemporary processes – these issues have already been carefully explored by other
scholars. Rather, the article takes a distinctly theoretical route. It begins by suggesting that,
at least since the advent of democracy as collective self-rule, conviction regarding the worth
of collective political agency has drawn on three sources: first, an ability among citizens to
articulate political ideals that can be addressed through collective action (the normative
source); second, a willingness to see these goals as ours, in the sense that our own fate or that
© 2010 The Authors. Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association

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of those with whom we identify is bound up in their achievement, and that they may
require ‘our’ collective engagement to be met (the motivational source); and third, an
understanding that political agency can be institutionally applied to secure them (the
executive source). The article then examines which modes of civic engagement, if any, can
nourish these sources, and argues that the crucial role is best played by political parties. The
article goes on to show that although there are other forms of civic activity that are able to
cultivate some of the three sources mentioned, the party is unique in being able to address
all of them.
In contemporary scholarship, despite the industry with which empirical research on parties
continues to be conducted, their centrality in rendering meaningful the idea of collective
self-rule is often forgotten. Parties are acknowledged as exercising an important procedural
role, organising the mechanisms of government, legislation and the selection of office
holders, and they are recognised as a key component in the idea of representation, notwith-
standing increasing doubts about their capacities in this regard (Dalton and Wattenberg,
2002). But rather less attention is given to the role of parties in cultivating a broader
democratic ethos. Such an ethos, in addition to the liberal virtues of tolerance and respect
of individual rights, entails a commitment to the idea of dealing collectively with matters
of common concern. It implies the belief among citizens that self-government is possible
and desirable. As we shall note, parties and their relationship to society have changed
significantly in recent decades, yet their importance to the idea of democracy, and to some
of its most significant practices, persists. By exploring their role as essential modes of civic
engagement necessary to cultivate conviction of the worth of political agency, the intention
is to contribute to a wider rethinking of the place of political parties and partisanship in
contemporary democracy ( Biezen and Saward, 2008; Muirhead, 2006; Rosenblum, 2008).1
Three Sources of Commitment to Political Agency
It is often emphasised that one of the most fundamental features of democratic politics has
to do with the possibility of connecting political agency to collectively determined goals.
‘Government of the whole people by the whole people, equally represented’, to use J. S.
Mill’s definition (Mill, 1861, ch. 7), is what democracy ultimately means, and it holds true
for any conception that takes seriously the idea of collective self-rule and not merely the
constitutional restraint of authority. The recognition by citizens that certain situations are
a matter of concern, and that they can and should be addressed in common rather than by
individual adaptation, is what publicises them and makes them relevant to decision making
by democratic means. A political community that can adequately be regarded as democratic
is one in which the citizenry holds on to the basic conviction that political engagement is
for these reasons meaningful, notwithstanding the possible limitations of existing structures
and practices.
Yet a question more rarely explored concerns the conditions under which this belief in the
worth of political agency can be strengthened and reproduced. For simply the existence of
institutional structures to some degree responsive to public influence hardly suffices to
ensure its endurance. A democratic ethos requires that the idea of collective self-rule be
© 2010 The Authors. Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association
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given focus and rendered meaningful to citizens. While this issue has been widely prob-
lematised by republican political theorists, scholars with purely normative interests have
often taken civic engagement for granted as a natural inclination of citizens, leaving the
sources necessary to cultivate it unexamined. In this section we argue that a democratic
ethos may be seen as drawing nourishment from three sources: normative, motivational and
executive, understood as explicitly political in focus. Let us consider these in turn.
The normative source concerns the ends of political action and the principles by which they
are inspired. It involves the appreciation that there are political goals that deserve to be
pursued, and that there is a relationship between them such that they need to be pursued
as part of a more or less coherent whole. Cultivating this source involves giving political
shape to the grievances that are manifest in society, to the dissatisfactions that persist despite
outward appearances of consensus, and connecting these to normatively grounded, power-
ful notions of the possibility of a better society. It involves appeals to general interests and/or
to political values such as freedom, justice and equality, and implies analysing conflicts
between these, identifying normative priorities in particular historical circumstances, and
combining them to address substantive political problems ( White, 2010).2
The normative source is necessary to guide citizens’ critical appraisal of their joint political
institutions, to allow them to form judgements on matters of common concern and to
articulate such judgements in a way that could appeal to...