Defending Democracy: Parties as the Agents of Resilience and Adaptation Against Delegitimization

ABSTRACT

Since the development of representative democracy, parties have been a near-universal feature. Yet at the same time, they have been consistently critiqued. Today, they face challenges to their legitimacy as insurgent anti-system parties rise, leading to a return of these old critiques. This article builds on work by Rosenblum and Mouffe, among others, in exploring the political philosophy behind parties and differing perspectives on the purpose of politics. Doing so in tandem with the empirical literature on the contemporary challenges of political parties in Israel and Germany, this article builds a concrete normative and practical justification for the centrality of parties in contemporary politics. The article argues that political parties in partisan conflict are the best tool for creating agonistic politics out of antagonistic conflict; they achieve this by managing conflict rather than ignoring it or letting it remain antagonistic. Further, the article argues that parties are the only practical tool available for governing modern states democratically. Finally, this article challenges contemporary pessimism surrounding political parties by focusing on the historical power of party systems to adapt to changing conditions to win votes and to become more representative and agonistic. Indeed, the rise of new parties, ordinarily considered a sign of decay, should be taken as a sign of the adaptability of party systems.