The Normative Value of Partisanship: When and Why Partisanship Matters
| Author | Dimitrios E Efthymiou |
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717707401 |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2017
Article
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(1) 192 –208
The Normative Value of
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717707401
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Why Partisanship Matters
Dimitrios E Efthymiou
Abstract
Recent work on partisanship has highlighted the role of political parties in rendering democracy
and justice widely accessible to citizens. In these recent works, a distinction is drawn between a
contemporary conception of partisanship that focuses on fidelity to political parties and a classic
conception that emphasises the importance of a civic ethos of active political engagement. I argue
that these two conceptions of partisanship are not so disparate if we focus on the role of political
parties in promoting civic commitment and contestation. More specifically, I show how a normative
account of partisanship can contribute to a defence of a civic ethos of political commitment. I then
argue that commitment leads to contestation among both partisans and non-partisans, and that
polities lacking active contestation of political commitments are in one significant respect less well
off than those societies where there is such contestation.
Keywords
partisanship, political parties, democracy, deliberative democracy, civic virtue
Accepted: 13 January 2017
The Value of Partisanship
The study of partisanship has traditionally been at the core of political science, and
recently, it has enjoyed a resurgence of interest among political theorists (Muirhead,
2006, 2011; Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2006; Rosenblum, 2008; White and Ypi, 2010,
2011, 2016). The driver for this resurgence is the view that citizens’ disaffection with
political parties weakens the ability of citizens to influence policymaking, thus depriving
institutions of the civic engagement necessary for democratic legitimacy (Offe, 2006;
Schmitter, 1995; White and Ypi, 2010: 809). This article considers the normative role that
partisanship might properly play in democratic politics.1 I will defend three conclusions
Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main,
Germany
Corresponding author:
Dimitrios E Efthymiou, Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am
Main, HPF 12, 60629 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Email: efthymiou@em.uni-frankfurt.de; dimitrios.efthymiou@gmail.com
Efthymiou
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about the value of that role. First, partisanship is not on a par with prejudice or partiality.
I endorse the view that partisanship can have genuine moral content, but maintain that
partisanship does not necessarily express a democratic virtue or any other particular nor-
mative principle.2 Second, the conception of partisanship which interests political theo-
rists should emphasise the normative dimensions of party commitment. The aim here is
to present a normative defence of partisanship that accounts for both its intrinsic and its
instrumental importance for contemporary multi-party democracies. Third, a normative
account of partisanship may not be able to do all the work that some political theorists
want to assign to it. Partisanship is but one aspect of party politics and political commit-
ment – and only under certain conditions is it ‘a seedbed of civic virtue’ (Putnam, 2000:
19, 152–154).
The structure of the argument proceeds as follows. In the next section, ‘Defining
Partisanship’, I examine the concept of partisanship as used by political scientists and
discuss why a normative account of partisanship, as a set of reasons for partisanship,
needs to be congenial with the commitment citizens show to political parties. Then, in
the section ‘Partisanship Revived’, I distinguish between two possible defences of par-
tisanship: an intrinsic defence and an instrumental defence, and discuss recent attempts
to support these positions. In the section ‘Partisanship as Commitment’, I outline the
difficulties associated with an intrinsic defence of partisanship and support the claim
that such a defence must be conditional on whether or not it expresses a particular moti-
vational structure – one that is based on civic commitment and not just on party fidelity.
The reason we consider partisanship normatively significant, I argue, is because we
consider its actions to more successfully express, and nourish, a particular motivational
structure than other actions. In the section ‘Partisanship as Contestation’, I sketch an
instrumental defence of partisanship. I anchor this defence to the political contestation
that commonly characterises partisanship and offer an account of the value of having
such a conception available in democratic politics. I argue that commitment leads to
contestation among both partisans and non-partisans, and that a world containing no
contestation of political commitments would be worse than one in which there is such
contestation. Finally, and to address a number of objections, I criticise arguments that
have been offered in support of a more narrow conception of normative partisanship
than the one I defend here.
Defining Partisanship
Partisanship is a highly operationalised concept in the study of political behaviour. Before
I evaluate its normative significance, I will briefly examine how political scientists have
understood the concept and how this understanding frames the adoption of the concept by
political theorists. I take political scientists and political theorists to subscribe to the same
definition of partisanship, ‘the political orientation of citizens who stand with a party.
This orientation is both psychological in that citizens identify with a party and behav-
ioural in that they usually vote for it, and possibly give it time and money’ (Muirhead,
2006: 714). In this article, I adopt a definition of partisanship which comes close to the
contemporary understanding of the concept by placing commitment to a political party at
its core. This conception of partisanship prioritises party loyalty (Mair, 2013: 35–37).
This is important because, in the absence of a nuanced understanding of partisanship, the
term either gets too inclusive or becomes too difficult to distinguish from the much
broader category of party politics.
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Political Studies 66(1)
In providing an account of possible defences of partisanship, I think it is useful to look
at how empirical political science understands the term and its role in democratic politics.
The locus classicus for the study of partisanship by political scientists is the work of the
so-called big four of the Michigan School (Campbell et al., 1980). These four ‘founding
fathers’ considered partisanship to be an example of social identification. According to
their view, the individual’s self-concept is derived from her knowledge of her member-
ship of a group, like a political party, together with the value and emotional significance
attached to that membership (Holmberg, 2007: 559). In these accounts, affect and group
belonging is emphasised over cognitive factors. Party identification is seen as being
formed mainly by socialisation in the first third of one’s life (Green et al., 2002). Hence,
party identification is conceived as an exogenous variable, ‘affecting politics while not
being affected by it’ (Holmberg, 2007: 564).
More recent work builds on the work of the Michigan School and its emphasis on party
identification. But whereas the earlier work of the Michigan School emphasised that par-
tisans deflect information which is inconsistent with their party attachments, more recent
work concedes that partisans can change their perceptions of the parties and even vote for
other parties, but, crucially, without changing ‘the team for which they cheer’ (Green
et al., 2002: 8). Furthermore, recent research on partisan sorting has shown that voters’
partisan and ideological commitments are closely linked. This is due to party elites
becoming more ideologically polarised. This elite-level phenomenon, it is argued, pro-
vides voters with information to understand the policy positions adopted by the two par-
ties. Voters use these cues to align their partisan and ideological beliefs. As a result,
partisans become more conservative or more liberal by adopting the ideological outlook
of right or left party elites, respectively (Levendusky, 2009).
The deep-rooted nature of partisanship is confirmed by studies showing that political
competition dramatically shapes the salience of partisanship in interpersonal trust (Carlin
and Love, 2016). Evidence suggests that trust among co-partisans is high, whereas it is
low among rival partisans. These inter-group trust gaps are greater than those based on
social identities such as socioeconomic status. This makes it easier for voters to select
parties which represent their interests, even though it undermines the ability of supporters
of different parties to cooperate across party lines (Carlin and Love, 2016). Some studies
even find that genetic factors strongly influence the decision to identify with any political
party, and that certain personality traits influence the intensity of party identification
(Gerber et al., 2012; Settle et al., 2009). Experimental studies on the influence of altruistic
concerns on voting behaviour also suggest that partisan altruists...
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