The Theory of (Intra-) Party Democracy

Abstract

In Chapters 3 and 4 objections were raised to theories of popular control over government which rely on competitive elections to achieve accountability of elected representatives. In this chapter a theory, the origins of which predate Schumpeter’s theory, is introduced to explain how the balance between governmental responsiveness and responsibility can be attained. This is the theory of party democracy. It explains why there is a need for political parties to be both internally democratic and centralised, and why their policy goals should be determined as far as possible by their activists, or members. The origins of it are twofold. In the first place, it derives from the arguments of 19th-century socialists that political parties needed to be internally democratic if democracy at the level of the state was to be attained. (It was this assumption that Michels also accepted, and which allowed him to conclude that democracy was impossible.) Secondly, it is embodied in some party government theories.1 It is a theory that has remained largely dormant in political science literature since the 1950s, although some of its arguments and assumptions have been rehashed in the party reform debate in America in the early 1970s.2 The most important statement of it is found in a well-known report of a committee of the American Political Science Association which, at the time and subsequently, was derided by its critics.3