Political parties are caught in the crossfire of contemporary criticism. Some are accused of being excessively technocratic and removed from citizens’ concerns, while others are attacked for their populist discourse and for pandering to the base instincts of constituents. But what ideal of partisanship do we have in mind when we blame parties for the ills of democracy? And how do real-world parties actually compare to this normative ideal? Democratic Partisanship bridges political theory and empirical study to answer these questions. It explores and compares how key democratic norms hailed by political theorists, such as good justification and respect for opponents, resonate with right-wing and left-wing party members in Hungary and France. Focusing on the partisan’s perspective, the book explores how and why some party organisations reconcile the most contradictory democratic imperatives while others fail to uphold basic principles. Far from writing-off parties as intrinsically suspect, Democratic Partisanship makes an incisive case for a new partisan ethic in an age of democratic crises.

I am deeply impressed by this staggeringly original book which brings together so successfully the all too rarely combined ingredients of normative democratic political theory and the forensic empirical analysis of individual cases. In the process Lise Herman illuminates the current precarious condition of democratic partisanship like no other. * Colin Hay, Sciences Po Paris *

Lise Esther Herman is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeter. She is the author of (with Julian Hoerner and Joseph Lacey J, 'Why does the European Right accommodate backsliding states? An analysis of 24 European People’s Party votes (2011-2019)', European Political Science Review, Online First, 2021; 'Can Partisans be Pluralist? A comparative study of party member discourse in France and Hungary', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 23 (1), 2020 and (with Russell Muirhead), 'Resisting Abusive Legalism: Electoral Fairness and the Partisan Commitment to Political Pluralism', Representation, Online First, 2020.