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Center for the Study of Democracy
UC Irvine
Title:
HOW POLITICAL PARTIES SHAPE DEMOCRACY
Author:
van Biezen, Ingrid
Publication Date:
11-01-2004
Publication Info:
UC Irvine, Center for the Study of Democracy
Permalink:
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/17p1m0dx
Citation:
van Biezen, Ingrid. (2004). HOW POLITICAL PARTIES SHAPE DEMOCRACY. UC Irvine: Center
for the Study of Democracy. Retrieved from: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/17p1m0dx
Keywords:
democracy, democratic institutions, political parties, elections, legislatures, voters
Abstract:
<p>This paper assesses the relationship between the nature of political parties and varieties
of democracy. It is argued that the changing role of parties can be attributed to an ideational
transformation by which parties have gradually come to be seen as necessary and desirable
institutions for democracy, and that this has contributed to a changing conception of parties from
voluntary private associations towards the political party as a ‘public utility’, i.e. the party as
an essential public good for democracy. Recent cases of democratization, where parties were
attributed a markedly privileged position within the democratic institutional framework, provide
the most unequivocal testimony of such a conception of the relationship between parties and
democracy. At the same time, however, fundamental disagreements persist about the meaning of
democracy and the actual role of political parties within it. Regrettably, however, the literatures on
parties and democratic theory have developed to a large degree in mutual isolation. This paper
provides a preliminary attempt to move beyond the consensus which exists on the surface that
modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties by considering varieties of party and
different conceptions of democracy.</p>
This paper assesses the relationship between the natu