Political parties have long eluded the attention of normative political theorists. This has changed in the last 15 years, with a growing number of publications by authors like Nancy Rosenblum, Russel Muirhead, Jonathan White and Lea Ypi, Fabio Wolkenstein and others. Matteo Bonotti's new book is a welcome and important contribution to this movement; it proposes the first in-depth exploration of the role of political parties and partisanship within the framework of Ralwsian political liberalism and public reason.
After discussing, in chapter 2, the political obligations attached to partisanship, Bonotti surveys, in chapter 3, the space open to partisan contestation within political liberalism. The main focus of his analysis is on religion: Bonotti argues that rather than insulating all religious matters from democratic debate through constitutional establishment or separation, Rawlsian political liberalism leaves the symbolic aspects of the establishment/separation debate (that is, whether the public display of religious symbols should be accepted or not) open to partisan debate through ordinary legislative politics. In the last pages of the chapter, he reminds us that the constitutional entrenchment of economic liberties and social rights is also inconsistent with political liberalism and that this feature of Rawls’ thought “nurtures parties and partisanship” (61), by leaving social and economic issues within the scope of democratic contestation.
But if political liberalism allows significant space to partisan debate, isn't it the case that Rawls’ public reason “suffocates” political parties and partisans by limiting their ability to appeal to comprehensive doctrines when advocating for, or against, policy proposals?
To answer this question, Bonotti starts by sketching a route that he rejects because it involves describing public reason as an extrinsic constraint to the purposes of political parties. While traveling along this road, in chapters 4 and 5, it is difficult to resist thinking that public reason is indeed suffocating: not only does it extend over all public forums in which partisans are active, but, according to Bonotti, attempts to limit its application to constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice or to favour the “inclusive” or “wide” conception of public reason defended by the later Rawls do not reduce significantly its constraining effects on partisan advocacy. Indeed, Bonotti goes so far as to argue that political liberalism does not provide any good moral reasons for rejecting the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
In the next chapter, Bonotti shows that we need not go down this road at all. Instead of describing public reason as an external constraint on partisan debate, we should acknowledge the internal connection that exists between the normative demands of public reason and those of partisanship. To highlight this internal connection, Bonotti starts by exposing, as others have done before, the key difference between parties and factions from a normative perspective: parties, unlike factions, are committed to the common good. The next step is to insist that, in liberal democratic societies characterized by reasonable pluralism, to be sincerely committed to the common good implies a commitment to public reasoning because this is the only way to treat all citizens as free and equal persons.
What is particularly interesting in Bonotti's argument is the way he fleshes out the specific role that political parties and partisans play as key intermediaries between ordinary citizens, who remain committed to different conceptions of the good, and public reason. Whereas Rawls expected each individual citizen to work out how their comprehensive doctrine relates to the political conception of justice, Bonotti argues that political parties have an important facilitating role to play in this regard.
In chapter 7, Bonotti makes two main arguments: firstly, he shows the importance of relaxing Rawls’ conception of public reason to make it more inclusive towards the use of nonpublic reasons by ordinary citizens, while entrusting elected partisans with the task of finding public reasons to support the policies ordinary citizens support. Secondly, Bonotti defends a division of justificatory labour within parties between elected partisans who bear the duty to comply with the constraints of public reason and other partisans whose task is to engage in nonpublic reasoning with their constituents. The ability of parties and partisans to be effective mediators between the nonpublic reasons of citizens and the public reason of the institutions of the liberal democratic state is key to securing stability and legitimacy in diverse societies.
Bonotti's normative account of partisanship does not have much to say about contemporary pathologies like the rise of populist parties, aside from dismissing them as mere factions. This may come as a disappointment to those looking for answers to the many problems that tax political parties in existing democracies. What Bonotti does provide is a clear and convincing view of how political parties can fit within the normative horizon of political liberalism.
