This paper examines the issue of how partisan commitment and institutional compromise can be reconciled. It explores the limits of compromise and the tension between a purist approach that leaves no space for concession and seeks to preserve principles come what may, and an equally unilateral position which maintains that when a perfect realisation of those principles is not in sight, “the movement is everything” as the early social-democrat E. Bernstein put it. The paper seeks to offer an account of partisan virtue in trying to steer a middle ground between these poles whilst preserving the integrity of their vision.
