Against Party Democracy: Rejecting Democratic Theorists’ Status Quo Bias—and a (More/less) Radical Panorma of Alternatives

Even so-called “established” Western democracies are, at least according to the mainstream of scholarship, “in crisis”. Political parties arguably play a particularly crucial role in liberal democracies by linking “ordinary citizens” to “professional politics”. Yet, these are also subject to citizens’ frustration: traditional parties are also “in crisis”. They have, for example, lost their roots in society, thereby contributing to populists’ rising appeal to citizens. Yet liberal-representative democracy also seems almost unthinkable without political parties. Dismissing the distinction between “professional politicians” and “ordinary citizens”—and what, e.g. Habermas labelled the “two-track model”—I argue that the vast majority of democratic theorising suffers from a severe status quo bias. This bias leads to blind spots when theorists consider alternative ways of “doing democracy”. Based on my account practising “Radical Openness”, I propose a methodological turn: democratic theorists need to tackle the challenge to democratise democratic theory and include (a) citizens’ voices and (b) empirical research. An open-minded assessment of democratic practices at different levels across the globe offers us multifarious ways to combine practices in a context-sensitive manner. Based on recent fieldwork/(secondary) empirical research, I conclude by providing a glimpse into what these alternatives may look like in different contexts.