Conceptualising Political Parties – Different Theoretical Perspectives

The main concern of this paper is with finding ways of bridging the empirical – normative gap that the workshop organisers have identified with regard to political parties. Such a bridging exercise can be aided by conceptualizing political parties from systematically different theoretical vantage-points. That has bearings on the normative assessment of political parties, because these assessments ultimately hinge on the analyst’s underlying conception of politics –analysts’ underlying conceptions of actors’ action orientations and the manner in which politics is conducted (with the relevant categories being instrumental action, strategic action, norm compliance, and deliberation). Parties civilise conflicts and structure deliberation; receive and structure opinion and will formation processes; give contents and direction to political action programs; recruit leaders; and furnish leadership. Parties promote contending world views and train leaders to reconcile these when acting in a political leadership capacity. A further reason for discussing political parties from different action orientations and theoretical vantage-points is to broaden the analytical repertoire of ways of understanding the role and salience of political parties. I refer to broader conceptions of political conduct as well as about political structuring: politics as strategic games; as conducted within and among institutionalised contexts; and as deliberative processes. That brings up many different images of parties (strategic actors; institutionalised organisations or carriers of institutionalised values and conceptions of appropriate behaviour; party systems as organisational fields; parties as strong publics versus as mini-publics; parties as ‘sluices’. An assessment of parties from the main theoretical action orientations will shed light on the totality of functions parties may and do undertake; which of these images is the more compelling in empirical and normative terms; how these functions may be reconciled within and among different parties and party systems; and the broader normative implications of the various possible configurations.