The Role of Parties in Twenty-First Century Politics: Responsive and Responsible?

For a long time analyses of political parties were framed within the usual context of democracy and of the historical transformation of the forms of democratic government. More recently several authors, among which eminently Peter Mair, progressively began to question the relationship between the normative definition of democratic government and the actual operation of parties. These new concerns are well epitomized by the tension between ‘responsiveness’ and ‘responsibility’ that gives the title to this book.

While classic democratic theory sees as desirable that parties in government (and in opposition, too) are sympathetically responsive to their supporters first and more generally to public opinion and, at the same time, responsible toward the internal and international systemic constraints and compatibilities, these two roles seem to have become more difficult to reconcile and even increasingly incompatible.

The chapters of this book explore the tensions between responsiveness and responsibility decomposing the international sources from the domestic sources and discussing the options and the possibilities for political parties to continue to play the role of provider of political stability in rapidly changing domestic and international environments.

This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Luciano Bardi is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pisa and part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (EUI, Florence), where he co-founded, with Peter Mair, the Observatory on Political Parties and Representation (OPPR). He has published extensively in the field of Comparative European Politics and on EU Parties and Party Systems.

Stefano Bartolini is ‘Peter Mair Professor of Comparative Politics’ at the European University Institute. He was previously Professor at the universities of Florence, Trieste, Geneva, and Bologna. From 2006 to 2013, he directed the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence. In 1990, he was awarded the Stein Rokkan Prize and in 2001 the Gregory Luebbert APSA Prize.

Alexander H. Trechsel is Swiss Chair Professor in Federalism and Democracy and Head of the EUI SPS Department, Florence. A Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University), he is also Director of the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) at the RSCAS. His research interests include e-democracy, direct democracy, federalism, European integration and political behaviour