Parties, Democracy, and the Ideal of Anti-factionalism: Past Anxieties and Present Challenges

Abstract This essay weaves together the history of political and legal thought, contemporary democratic theory, recent debates in scholarship to examine ambivalent relationship between parties democracy. Celebrated as a structural necessity for mechanics government, are also handled with suspicion their hybrid nature—neither entirely public nor completely private—and always-possible regression into factions. Anti-factionalism, I show, has been powerful ideal driving constitutional imagination practice over centuries, from antiquity (with its emphasis on parts horror factions), age revolutions signature anxieties about divisions), up through present. However, this long historical process not extinguished long-lived concern nature implications party spirit, it made democracy safe revamped forms factionalism. Two manifestations factional politics stand out landscape: authoritarian regime changes populist constitutionalism. While former is easy diagnose but hard prevent, latter exemplifies torsion within. Despite differences, both scenarios remind us that constitutions need envision mechanisms prevent undermining liberal order they have designed serve. At same time, call renewed attention study domains theory scholarship.