Representative democracy is currently in crisis. Symptoms of this crisis are the decline of traditional party families (i.e. Socialist, Christian-democratic, Liberal) and the rise of populist parties, both of which have been at the heart of dozens of academic works and newspaper covers over the past years. However, not much has been said about the role of mainstream (traditional) parties in the crisis and, especially, what they can do to solve it and improve the functioning of democracy. The workshop aims to reflect on Peter Mair’s work about the role political parties in general, and what role party system interaction and party organization, play in the functioning of modern representative democracy at the national and the European level.
While Katz and Mair’s influential article on the “cartel party model” (1995) provided an explanation for the overall stability of party systems and organizations, Mair’s later work shifted its focus and departed from the previous emphasis on “stability” (Enyedi, 2014). Mair, either alone (2013) or with co-authors (2018), became more pessimistic and doubtful about the role parties played as “transmission belts” between the policy preferences of citizens and the policy-making of their elected representatives. He went as far as to argue that parties in government have abandoned their representative role and hence no longer fulfill their function as mediators between popular and constitutional democracy. No wonder than that, as he put it, the public debate on democracy has just become ‘an attempt to redefine democracy in the absence of the demos’ (Mair, 2006, p. 9). This “democracy without a demos” is a catch-phrase that has pervaded many debates about the European Union’s democratic deficit, a topic he also pursued in his later years.
Mair’s growing pessimism, and the reasoning behind it, are as relevant today as they were ten years ago. However, and going one step further, our workshop and the special issue that will come out of this workshop, aim not so much at mourning about the crisis of democracy, but to be forward-looking. Contributions to the workshop should focus on the positive sides of party politics, their key role for democratic sustainability, and explore the potential of political parties for rebuilding, maintaining, and improving representative democracies.
Moderator: Fernando Casal Bértoa | University of Nottingham
Sanna Salo | University of Helsinki
Joost van Spanje | Royal Holloway University of London Nina Liljeqvist | Swedish Parliament
