Defending Political Parties in a Context of Scepticism and Devaluation: A Scrutiny of Hans Kelsen's Contribution

This contribution focuses on Hans Kelsen’s contribution to the reflection on political parties. In the interwar period, Kelsen took part in a very controversial debate on the question of the necessity of political parties in the democratic process. This debate forced him to systematize a defence of political parties in order to present their functionality and to describe the place that they take in his particular definition of democracy. In this paper, I intend to consider several aspects: First, I would like to systematize the reasons that Kelsen believes political parties are so necessary to democratic life. For him, they are the only vectors that effectively express preferences. In that way, the valorisation of political parties is in complete accordance with his definition of democracy and very much orientated to the appliance of the principle of self-determination. Second, I would like to present the program that Kelsen conceived in order to enhance political parties in a constitutional democracy, by strengthening their legal status or by making them more compatible with the principle of the imperative mandate. Third, I intend to explain in which discursive context and debate Kelsen defends his own conception of Parteienstaat. As I will show, Kelsen’s case for political pluralism is related to a particular conception of representation that denounces the conception of the general will, which belongs for him to mythologies. In the fourth part, I will scrutinize the contemporary questions aroused by Kelsen’s conception of political parties. For example, is voter control over deputies really consistent with the compromise activities that are so valued by Kelsen but require that deputies have room for manoeuvring ? Kelsen’s contribution was intimately related to strong critics of political parties, which makes his reflection even more interesting today considering the relative decline of political parties described by Peter Mair.