A central claim of democratic theory is that democracy induces governments to be responsive to the preferences of the people. Political parties organize politics in every modern democracy, and some observers claim that parties are what induce democracies to be responsive. Yet, according to others, parties give voice to extremists and reduce the responsiveness of governments to the citizenry. The debate about parties and democracy takes on renewed importance as new democracies around the globe struggle with issues of representation and governability. I show that our view of the impact of parties on democratic responsiveness hinges on what parties are—their objectives and organization. I review competing theories of parties, sketch their testable implications, and note the empirical findings that may help adjudicate among these theories.
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Political parties are endemic to democracy. However, they are not part of the formal definition of democracy; nor do the constitutions of most democracies dictate a role for parties. Indeed, in most countries, parties operate in a realm little regulated by statutory law. In the United States, the founders were dead set against parties. Madison, in Federalist 10, drew no distinction between parties and factions—“a minority or majority” united by “some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” (1982 [1787]:43)—but he realized that the price paid in liberty of eliminating the cause of parties would be too great. Parties, then, were an inevitable by-product of the liberties associated with a republican community combined with the human propensity toward division and conflict; “where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions” (1982 [1787]:44). Despite the efforts of founders, including the authors of the Federalist papers, to design institutions to control parties and factions, within a decade of the birth of the American state they had begun to organize the new nation's political life (see Hofstadter 1969).