The Trouble With Parties

by MARC F. PLATTNER

The Public Interest, Spring 2001

The presidential election of 2000 presented the United States and the world with a vivid lesson in the power of political partisanship and its potentially damaging effects. Through five long weeks of angry confrontations in the legislature, the courts, the media, and the streets, partisans on both sides disputed a whole series of issues related to the counting of the votes. Not only Republican and Democratic officials but also judges, columnists, academics, and ordinary Americans repeatedly sided with the positions taken by their favored presidential candidate. All claimed to be guided by the public interest, the law, or the principles of justice, yet on every point at issue, no matter how narrow or technical, they almost invariably espoused the view that favored their own party. Virtually no one publicly broke ranks on any matter. The division between the two sides could hardly have been more systematic or more pronounced.

There is, of course, a brighter side to this picture. None of the street protests turned violent, and there were no injuries, much less any deaths. No one seriously suggested that the dispute should be settled on any other basis than that provided by the Constitution. And when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its final ruling on the matter, it was universally if reluctantly accepted by the partisans of the losing side. Though partisanship exerted a powerful hold, its grip was clearly weaker than that of the Constitution.

Why did the broader public interest in maintaining the constitutional order and the rule of law prevail over partisan interests? Several reasons may be cited. First, America's now centuries-old and deeply rooted tradition of reverence for the Constitution posed a formidable obstacle to any resort to extraconstitutional measures. Second, the differences of principle or policy between the two parties, especially on the economic and foreign-policy issues where the president has the greatest influence, were remarkably modest. Third, the livelihoods of most Americans (except for a small number of people seeking political appointments in a new administration) were not likely to be immediately affected by the outcome of the presidential contest, and the prosperity that the country was enjoying diminished any inclination toward seriously disrupting the status quo. It would be folly, however, to expect such favorable conditions always to obtain in the United States, let alone in other democratic countries. These cond itions are especially likely to be absent in newer democracies, whose political institutions inherently lack (in Madison's phrase) "that veneration which time bestows on everything, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability." In less well-entrenched democratic regimes, particularly in Latin America, it has not been uncommon for bitter party divisions to precipitate military coups or even to lead to civil war.

The decline of the political party?

But if too much partisanship can be fatal to democracy, the weakness of parties can also pose dangers. In a legislature with weak party attachments, it may prove impossible to pass needed legislation; the result, as in Yeltsin's Russia, is often to resort to presidential decrees or even the forcible disbanding of the legislature. Conversely, legislators may be easily wooed by a president through patronage or less savory means; in countries with weak parties like the Philippines and Korea, it has been common for presidents elected without a legislative majority to acquire one through massive party defections. Indeed, one of the areas in which the dozens of new democracies established in the past two decades have been least successful is the creation of strong and stable political parties committed to democracy. In part, this reflects the impossibility of "crafting" a party system--unlike most other key democratic political institutions, parties cannot be legislated into existence. At the same time, it reflect s a global trend, as political parties seem to be increasingly enfeebled institutions in the more established democracies as well.

Almost everywhere, parties no longer command the loyalty or confidence they once did, and the number of independent voters and ticket-splitters has grown. In countries such as Italy, Canada, and Venezuela, highly organized and deeply rooted parties have virtually crumbled, giving rise to new and more fluid political patterns. Finally, political parties seem to be increasingly in disrepute, both reflecting and stimulating voters' suspicion of, and even contempt for, "the politicians" (or "the political class").

A large literature has grown up, especially in the United States, documenting and often lamenting the decline of political parties. Many political scientists have unfavorably compared America's fluid and diffuse parties with the more disciplined and "responsible" parties of Europe. In recent years, however, European parties have been showing signs of the same weakening of public support that has afflicted their American counterparts. As Susan Pharr, Robert Putnam, and Russell Dalton conclude from a review of data from most of the advanced democracies, "The collapse in citizen engagement with political parties [since the 1970s] ... is as close to a universal generalization as one can find in political science."

The weakening of political parties is a trend that extends well beyond the democratic world. Indeed, while democratic political parties may be growing weaker, they are also spreading to more and more places. By contrast, the "single" parties that not long ago ruled all the Communist countries and a large number of states in the Third World are becoming an endangered species. Today, there remain only a handful of countries ruled by Communist parties, and their future cannot be considered bright. Elsewhere as well, one-party regimes are in decline (except, perhaps, in the nonmonarchical countries of the Arab world). Last year alone, long-dominant parties that had manipulated elections to maintain their control lost power in Mexico (after 70 years), in Taiwan (after 50 years), and in Senegal (after 40 years). Moreover, a number of the remaining one-party states, including North Korea, Syria, and Iraq, seem to be undergoing a reversion to dynastic rule--a sure sign of the debility of the party as such.

There is something curious about the very notion of a single-party regime. It is relatively easy, perhaps, to understand de facto one-party rule, where a dominant party seeking to preserve a facade of democratic legitimacy permits the existence of genuine opposition parties but manipulates electoral outcomes. It is much harder to understand a de jure one-party state, where the special status of the ruling party is embedded in the constitution or the laws. Of course, nondemocratic ruling parties sometimes emerged out of opposition parties in parliamentary contexts. Still, why should a party that succeeds in gaining power and erecting a nondemocratic regime not rule directly through the government, but instead preserve a dual structure with, the ruling party alongside (and usually above) the government? Probably this has something to do with the ideological character of the Leninist "vanguard" party that provided the model for subsequent totalitarian and authoritarian parties, but the rise and decline of the o ne-party state is a subject that needs separate treatment. For present purposes, it suffices to note that the Communist and fascist systems that so powerfully shaped the history of the last century exceeded even their democratic rivals in the centrality that they gave to party. Partly for this reason, the twentieth century is likely to be remembered as the age of the political party.

Even if we limit our analysis to democratic regimes, the recent weakening of political parties is a complex phenomenon, to which many factors have doubtless contributed. Some scholars even argue that what we are witnessing is not so much a decline of parties as a change in their role. In any case, there is a clear consensus among political scientists that political parties, whatever their difficulties and shortcomings, remain indispensable to the functioning of modern liberal democracy. As democracy has spread over the past quarter-century, competitive political parties have spread along with it, and despite all their ailments, their global reach today is wider than it has ever been. Apart from a few tiny island nations in the Pacific, there are no "really existing" democracies without parties. Certainly, no one has yet suggested a plausible and adequate substitute for the seemingly essential role that they play in structuring democratic politics in large modern societies. Today, then, the democratic politic al party is at once an indispensable and a deeply troubled institution, and its condition is likely to remain uncertain. Thus, even beyond the issues raised by America's 2000 presidential election, there are powerful reasons to engage in reflections of a fundamental kind on the nature of political parties and their place in a liberal democratic order.

The views of the philosophers

If one seeks to begin such reflections by turning to the tradition of political philosophy, one quickly discovers that, prior to the eighteenth century, little was said about parties except to condemn them. Of course, political parties in the sense that we now know them did not appear until the differentiation of Whigs and Tories in England in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Yet partisan divisions have always been a feature of politics, especially in republics. In the cities of the ancient world, the principal source of internal conflict was between oligarchic factions and democratic ones; as any reader of Thucydides will recall, such conflict not infrequently led to civil war and to one or both of the factions allying themselves with a foreign power. Thus it is hardly surprising that faction was regarded as a supreme political evil. It is true that ancient political thinkers from Aristotle to Polybius and Cicero developed the idea of the mixed regime, which combined both democratic and oligarchi c elements with the aim of moderating internal conflict, but this approach did not envision anything like the institutionalization of political parties.

Nor did the early modern thinkers, even those whose ideas played a key role in the subsequent emergence of liberal democracy, have much to say about parties. Locke's Two Treatises are silent on the subject, and Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws does not include them in its principal account of the English political order. When major political thinkers did begin to treat the subject, for the most part they continued to condemn parties. This is even true of the American Founding Fathers. The political system they designed was meant to allow for the interplay of conflicting interests, but not for their alignment into organized political parties. The presidency, in particular, was meant to be a nonpartisan office, and the original presidential selection system in the Constitution was adopted with this goal in mind. While one can argue that in most respects American political institutions have evolved within the broad outlines envisaged by the Framers, political parties remain a glaring exception.

The first major work of political theory wholly devoted to the subject of political parties was Lord Bolingbroke's A Dissertation upon Parties, published in 1733-34. Bolingbroke attacks "the spirit of party, which inspires animosity and breeds rancour; which hath so often destroyed our inward peace, weakened our national strength, and sullied our glory abroad." He thus calls upon good men to "join their efforts to heal our national divisions, and to change the narrow spirit of party into a diffusive spirit of public benevolence." While acknowledging that the emergence of the Whig and Tory parties under the reign of Charles II may have reflected real differences of principle, he argues that this division of parties should have been rendered obsolete by the settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688. At the same time, Bolingbroke pleads for the support of what he calls the Country party against the Court party, of "constitutionists" against "anti-constitutionists," The Country party, however, "mus t be authorized by the voice of the country. It must be formed on principles of common interest.... A party, thus constituted is improperly called a party. It is the nation, speaking and acting in the discourse and conduct of particular men." In effect, Bolinghroke, initiating a pattern followed by many subsequent authors and statesmen, calls for a party whose goal is to put an end to party divisions.

The next major political philosopher to address systematically the issue of parties was David Hume, writing in the middle years of the eighteenth century. In his essay "Of Parties in General," Hume writes:

As much as legislators and founders of states ought to be honoured and respected among men, as much ought the founders of sects and factions to be detested and hated; because the influence of faction is directly contrary to that of the laws. Factions subvert government, render laws impotent, and beget the fiercest animosities among men of the same nation, who ought to give mutual assistance and protection to each other. And what should render the founder of parties more odious is, the difficulty of extirpating these weeds, when once they have taken root in any state.

Yet in another essay entitled "Of the Parties of Great Britain," Hume notes that Britain's form of government is itself an almost unavoidable source of party divisions: "The just balance between the republican and monarchical part of our constitution is really, in itself, so extremely delicate and uncertain, that, when joined to men's passions and prejudices, it is impossible but different opinions must arise concerning it, even among persons of the best understanding." Therefore, he concludes, "however the nation may fluctuate between them, [Court and Country] parties themselves will always subsist, so long as we are governed by a limited monarchy." Hume opens still a third essay, entitled "Of the Coalition of Parties," by asserting, "To abolish all distinctions of party may not be practicable, perhaps not desirable, in a free government." The "only dangerous parties," he adds, are those based on disagreement on "the essentials of government," as this can lead to civil war. Thus Hume's verdict on parties see ms to range from detestable to almost inevitable to perhaps even necessary (or at least better not abolished) in a free government.

The first major thinker to offer an unambiguous defense of party was Edmund Burke in his "Thoughts on the Present Discontents" (1770). In this essay, he specifically sets out to dispute the doctrine that "all political connections are in their nature factious, and as such ought to be dissipated and destroyed." Burke goes on to define party as an "honorable connection" aiming at the public good, rather than a faction animated by seditious passions or venal private interests: "Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." Against those who use "the cant of Not men, but measures" as an excuse to "get loose from every honorable engagement," Burke defends party loyalty:

As the greater part of the measures which arise in the course of public business are related to, or dependent on, some great, leading, general principles in government, a man must be particularly unfortunate in the choice of his political company, if he does not agree with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these general principles upon which the party is founded ... he ought from the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to his opinions.

As Harvey Mansfield, Jr., has emphasized, Burke was the first to go beyond saying (as Hume had) that parties are inevitable or tolerable to say that they are respectable. Burke used his unparalleled eloquence to ennoble adherence to party as high-minded devotion to principle.

The emergence of parties in America

In his superb study of the origins of the party system in the United States, Richard Hofstadter, comparing the views of the American Founders with these British thinkers, finds clear counterparts to Bolingbroke and Hume, but none to Burke. The classic statement of opposition to parties is found in George Washington's "Farewell Address," in which he warns his fellow countrymen "in the most solemn manner" against the "spirit of party." According to Washington, the spirit of party

Hofstadter identifies James Madison as an American counterpart to Hume in his belief that, while parties are evil, they are an inevitable accompaniment of political liberty, and therefore must be checked and limited rather than eliminated. It is certainly true that Madison's famous argument in favor of the large republic in Federalist 10 is based on the contention that "the latent causes of faction are ... sown in the nature of man," and that faction cannot be abolished without abolishing liberty. Madison also accepts that "the spirit of party and faction" (he seems to use the two words more or less interchangeably) will be involved "in the necessary and ordinary operations of government." But Madison's proposed solution for solving the problem of faction in a free society does not call for permanent and well-formed political parties. Instead, drawing in part on the historical experience with religious sects, he calls for "extend[ing] the sphere" to "take in a greater variety of parties and interests." The id ea is to foster a multiplicity of small and constantly shifting "parties" representing particular interest groups, rather than a few deeply rooted and well-organized national parties. As is clear from the records of the constitutional convention, and especially from the system of choosing a president adopted in the Constitution, none of the Founders intended the new political system to function on the basis of parties...

[As George Washington remarked in his farewell address to Congress, a political party] "serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions."

Yet during Washington's presidency, two competing national parties emerged who regarded themselves as divided over basic principles. The Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and Madison, viewed the pro-British Federalists as monarchists; the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams and favored by Washington, viewed the pro-French Republicans as Jacobins. The dispute became so bitter that the Federalists tried to criminalize opposition through the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798). But in the elections of 1800, the Republicans won a resounding victory, even though the selection of Jefferson himself as president came only after a bitter deadlock in the House of Representatives.

As political scientist James Ceaser has pointed out, the emergence of party competition created a grave problem for the method of presidential selection included in the Constitution. On the presumption that the presidency would be a nonpartisan office with its occupant selected on the basis of personal merits, the Constitution gave each member of the electoral college two votes to be cast for two different candidates; it then stipulated that the candidate receiving the most votes (providing he received votes from a majority of electors) would be designated president, while the candidate with the second-highest number of votes would become vice president. In 1796, this system led to the election of a Federalist president (Adams) and a Republican vice president (Jefferson). The original constitutional language also provided that if two candidates won an equal number of electoral votes (and a majority of the electors), the House of Representatives would choose between them. This provision became relevant in 1800 when the Republican party caucus in Congress chose Jefferson and Aaron Burr as its candidates (with the clear understanding that Jefferson would be at the top of the ticket), but each of these men received 73 electoral votes. As a consequence, the decision between them was thrown into the House, voting by states. Many Federalists in the House supported Burr, leading to a protracted stalemate that was not broken until Hamilton's influence helped persuade a few Federalists to abstain, tilting a majority of the states to Jefferson. This tension between the reality of parties and the constitutional method of presidential selection led to the adoption in 1804 of the Twelfth Amendment, which directed future electors to cast separate votes for president and for vice president.

Despite the intensity of party competition between the Federalists and the Republicans, both sides continued to view party competition as undesirable. As Hofstadter puts it, "Each side hoped ... to eliminate party conflict by persuading and absorbing the more acceptable and 'innocent' members of the other; each side hoped to attach the stigma of foreign allegiance and disloyalty to the intractable leaders of the other, and to put them out of business as a party." Thus Jefferson's famous statement in his first inaugural address, "We are all republicans; we are all federalists," was intended not to legitimate the two parties but to pave the way for the absorption and disappearance of the Federalists as a distinct party.

In this the Republicans eventually succeeded, which led after the War of 1812 to the period of one-party dominance that became known as the "Era of Good Feelings." The Republican president during most of that period, James Monroe (1816-24), was a leading defender of the anti-party principle, at least in a purely republican government like that of the United States. While allowing that in a constitutional monarchy like England parties might legitimately attach themselves to either the king or the people, Monroe insisted that in the United States "there is but one order, that of the people," whose sovereignty is assured, thus leaving no need for partisan divisions. Monroe's successor as president, John Quincy Adams (1824-28), the first president of the century chosen without political party backing, was an equally vehement opponent of party, declaring in his inaugural address:

Ten years of peace, at home and abroad, have assuaged the animosities of political contention and blended into harmony the most discordant elements of public opinion. There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political parties. It is that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other, of embracing as countrymen and friends, and of yielding to talent and virtue alone that confidence which in times of contention for principles was bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.

Parties great and small

But of course American politics did not long remain partyless. The man most responsible, both as thinker and politician, for the resuscitation and rehabilitation of party, and in that sense at least an American counterpart to Burke, was Martin Van Buren. A senator from New York who strongly opposed Monroe and Adams, Van Buren helped engineer the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 and later himself succeeded Jackson as president in 1836. In his Autobiography, Van Buren wrote:

Knowing ... that political parties are inseparable from free governments, and that in many and material respects they are highly useful to the country, I could never bring myself for party purposes to deprecate their existence. Doubtless excesses frequently attend them and produce many evils, but not so many as are prevented by the maintenance of their organization and vigilance. The disposition to abuse power, so deeply planted in the human heart, can by no other means be more effectually checked; and it has always therefore struck me as more honorable and manly and more in harmony with the character of our People and of our Institutions to deal with the subject of Political Parties in a sincerer and wiser spirit--to recognize their necessity, to give them the credit they deserve, and to devote ourselves to improve and to elevate the principles and objects of our own and to support it ingenuously and faithfully.

Visiting the United States during the presidency of Jackson, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of "the incessant agitation of parties," which he characterizes as "a necessary evil in free governments." Tocqueville distinguished, however, between "great" and "small" parties. The former belong to revolutionary epochs when great principles are at stake. Among these he includes the Federalist and Republican parties that competed in the early years of the American republic (though he also states that "both parties of the Americans were agreed on the most essential points"). These kinds of parties are "usually distinguished by nobler features" than those that prevail in more calm and settled epochs, "the times of small parties and intrigues."

Tocqueville is rather harsh in his evaluation of the latter: "Minor parties ... are generally deficient in political good faith. As they are not sustained or dignified by lofty purposes, they ostensibly display the selfishness of their character in their actions." Society is "agitated" and "degraded" by such parties, which "invariably disturb it to no good end." Moreover, Tocqueville adds, "To a stranger all the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to be incomprehensible or puerile, and he is at a loss whether to pity a people who take such arrant trifles in good earnest or to envy that happiness which enables a community to discuss them."

It is not hard to guess in which of these two categories Tocqueville would put our present-day parties. Although one might well quarrel with the sharpness of the dichotomy that he draws, it does highlight the central problem of political parties. If they reflect fundamental differences of principle, they threaten the unity and stability of the regime. Anyone who is committed to democracy would not want to encourage the emergence of disloyal or "anti-system" parties that seek to undermine the constitutional order. If, on the other hand, parties agree on essential political principles, their differences frequently will seem trifling, frivolous, or merely selfish, and their constant seeking of partisan advantage will appear to reflect a disregard for the larger public good. Clearly, there is a middle ground in which parties work best--when they remain in agreement over the basic elements of the regime but differ on other weighty matters that rise to the level of what Burke calls "great, leading, general princip les in government." Today, American parties probably fall somewhere in between this middle ground and the "small parties" that Tocqueville disdains, but the narrowing of ideological differences that has characterized the post-Cold War era seems to be pushing them in the direction of the latter.

The institutionalization of parties

During the half-century following Tocqueville's visit to the United States, parties of the sort that Van Buren promoted and defended became a central institution of American political life. Writing in the 1880s, Lord Bryce devoted a major section of his classic work The American Commonwealth to describing "The Party System." "In America," he writes, "the great moving forces are the parties. The government counts for less than in Europe, the parties count for more; and the fewer have become their principles and the fainter their interest in those principles, the more perfect has become their organization." No account of American government can be adequate, Bryce insists, if it fails to go beyond the Constitution and the institutions it authorizes to consider "those extralegal groupings of men called political parties." For "party association and organization are to the organs of government almost what the motor nerves are to the muscles, sinews, and bones of the human body. They transmit the motive power, the y determine the directions in which the organs act."

In many parts of the United States, as Bryce recounts, party organization (the "machine") had reached a high point of development, while the principles for which the parties stood were becoming ever murkier. It is this hypertrophy of party organizations that gave rise to the Progressive movement and its efforts to weaken the grip of the parties by enhancing both popular participation (through primary elections, referenda, and the like) and the role of neutral civil servants and experts. In a note added to the third edition (published in 1910) of The American Commonwealth, Bryce notes that after 1890 the "sins of the machine, and the abuse of the system of nomination by primaries and conventions ... led to an effort to cure those abuses and to secure the ordinary citizen in his freedom of selecting candidates for office by bringing party nominations under the authority of the law and surrounding them with safeguards similar to those which surround elections." Thus most states enacted statutes regulating the t ime and manner of meetings for nominating party candidates for office and delegates for party conventions, and the new state of Oklahoma entered the Union with a constitution containing provisions governing primary elections. As a result, the selection of party nominees through primaries became a matter regulated by law, overseen by public election officials, and administered at public expense.

Bryce suggests that this approach will seem strange to Europeans, "whose habit of regarding party organization as a purely voluntary matter and parties as fluid and changing, not solid and permanent entities, makes them averse to any legal recognition of parties as concrete and authoritative bodies existing within the community." (At around this time, however, some Continental countries were beginning to go much farther than the Americans in officially putting parties at the center of the electoral process, adopting systems of proportional representation in which voters cast their ballots for party lists rather than individual candidates.) The "English mind," Bryce adds, might incline to think that "the voluntary and unfettered action" of good citizens should be sufficient to wrest control of the parties from the machines, so that "this recourse to state regulation and supervision might be dispensed with." But Bryce concludes that American parties are so much stronger and better organized than British ones th at this alternative strategy would be "inapplicable to American conditions."

The Progressive impulse waned after World War I, leaving behind what has been characterized as a "mixed system" of party presidential nominations, in which some jurisdictions remained controlled by party regulars or "bosses," while others used more open procedures. But with the internal party reforms of the late 1960s and 1970s, the balance tilted in the direction of "openness," as primary voters wrested control of the nomination process almost entirely from the party regulars. The result has been lengthy candidate-centered primary campaigns, with the parties serving as vessels for the eventual nominee rather than as selectors. Another important change was effected by the campaign finance legislation of the 1970s, which gave parties a legal status that they had not previously enjoyed on the federal level and instituted public funding for presidential campaigns.

Parties, the state, and civil society

Parties seem to be necessary for democratic government to function effectively, but they also seem to be a perennial problem for democratic government--when they are too strong as well as when they are too weak. As the very word party indicates, parties represent part of the citizenry rather than the whole. They always claim, of course, in Burke's words, to be dedicated to "promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." But even if they do adhere to principle, the very fact that they constitute an organized part, but only a part, of the larger community renders their motives suspect. The loyalty that they require to function properly means that their members will often join in pursuing measures that more clearly benefit their party than their nation. Parties are inherently partisan, and hence they are inherently suspect--if no longer of disloyalty or subversion then of the narrow self-interest that leads to the kind of "partisan squabblin g in Washington" today's American voters claim to deplore.

In the aftermath of the 2000 election, of course, the favored solution to the problem of partisan division is "bipartisanship." This term, so familiar and natural to American ears, is bound to seem a bit odd to the rest of the world. Most democratic countries, after all, have more than two parties that wield significant influence in political life. In any case, the notion of bipartisanship seems to presuppose the legitimacy of partisan division, but then to ask the two parties to overcome the partisanship that is their very raison d'etre. obviously, bipartisanship is necessary in situations of national emergency, and it may be useful and practicable with regard to particular issues where the parties are in agreement, but it hardly makes sense as an overall recipe for how parties should conduct themselves. On the level of principle, bipartisanship (as opposed to nonpartisanship) is logically incoherent. Of course, it is also utterly impractical, so there is not too much reason to worry about its damaging effec ts. One may he confident that each of the parties will continue to accuse its rival of acting in partisan fashion, while itself claiming to be guided by the public interest and the spirit of bipartisanship. Such is the nature of parties.

It is no doubt precisely because of their partisanship that parties, while appreciated by most political scientists and practitioners, are often viewed suspiciously by ordinary citizens. People may strongly support their own party, but they are much less likely to feel positive about parties as such, especially since they typically will have a low view of rival parties. In fact, in democracies around the world, political parties typically rank at or near the bottom in measures of citizen trust or confidence in institutions. Almost everywhere parties are in had odor; idealistic young people today aspire to join "public interest" groups or other "civil society" organizations, not political parties.

For obvious reasons, the idea of political parties was especially discredited in the former Soviet sphere. The anti-Communist opposition in Eastern Europe revitalized the concept of civil society, understood as a united citizenry radically independent from an oppressive state. Some believed that this united civil society, which helped bring about the downfall of Communist regimes, could also become the basis of a new and more elevated democratic order. Very quickly, however, broad civil-society groupings like Solidarity in Poland and Civic Forum in the Czech Republic began to fragment. In practice, it turned out that democracy did not seem to be able to function without differentiated political parties. In other democratizing regions as well (especially Latin America), there is a growing recognition that civil society, for all its virtues, cannot provide a substitute for weak or corrupt political parties. But, of course, it is not easy for the international donors who have generously supported civil-society o rganizations to give grants directly to explicitly partisan institutions.

The anomalous character of political parties makes if difficult to located them in terms of the distinction between the State and civil society. Although parties have proven to be essential political institutions in a democracy, they are not really part of government. Neither are they usually regarded as belonging to civil society. Some scholars even speak of parties as belonging to a separate realm of "political society", although it is not clear that this concept furthers our understanding. The fact remains that political parties exist somewhere in the interstices between civil society and the state and serve as a link between the two realms. To function successfully as conduits between citizens and their government, parties must reflect the sentiments of civil society, which inevitably change over time. Thus it is only natural for old parties to disappear and new ones to emerge (or for existing parties to be thoroughly transformed) as the composition of the population changes and new issues arise. The same is not true, at least not to the same extent, for governmental institutions proper, which are rooted in a largely unchanging constitutional order. In earlier eras political parties, as informal and extralegal institutions, were perhaps closer to the realm of civil society. But as they have increasingly become recognized in law, regulated in various ways, and even funded partly by the public treasury, they have been moving closer to the governmental side of the ledger.

Campaign finance reform?

The awkward "in-between" status of political parties is reflected in the problem of campaign and party financing, which is a burning issue--and an abundant source of scandal--in new and established democracies alike. Sometimes this problem is posed in terms of "too much money" being spent. Yet this concerns seems to be misplaced, if one compares the level of political financing with the magnitude of the government resources that campaign victors control or the importance of parties and elections in a democracy--not to mention the amounts spent on, say, beer and pizza advertising. The real problem is the source of the funds and the ways in which this influences the conduct of public life.

It would be nice if parties could be funded largely by volunteer labor or membership dues, but today not even large nonpartisan civil-society organizations can be adequately funded in that way. People once were attracted to party service by the prospect of patronage, but such jobs have been sharply limited by civil-service reform. Large contributions from wealthy businesses and corporations carry obvious dangers. Soliciting voluntary contributions from small donors is a difficult business; policies offering tax breaks for such contributions have been adopted with little effect, though perhaps they have not yet been given an adequate trial.

Then, of course, there is the increasingly favored approach of direct public funding of parties and/or candidates, which may eliminate private influence but brings along a host of other difficulties connected precisely with the fact that parties are not properly government institutions. Thus public-funding legislation does not cite parties by name; it refers to parties that have won a certain percentage of the vote (or a certain proportion of seats in parliament) in past elections. But this necessarily benefits established parties, creates barriers to entry for new ones, and introduces a set of artificial benchmarks that powerfully influence the electoral process. Consider, for example, how the lure of public funding for parties achieving 5 percent of the presidential vote affected the Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader campaigns in 2000. Political scientists Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair have attributed to public funding the emergence in Western Europe of what they call the "cartel" party: "No longer simple brok ers between civil society and the state, the parties now become absorbed by the state."

This is hardly the place to launch into a detailed discussion of the complex issue of political finance reform. I merely wish to underline that any serious treatment of this issue must also be informed by an awareness of the larger problem of political parties. If we are to have political parties and campaigns, funds must be found to support them. But no adequate source of funding will be trouble-free. Parties are inherently problematic institutions, yet they have also proven to be indispensable to liberal democracy. We must not only learn to live with them but also to improve them and limit their inevitable defects, without crippling their ability to perform the tasks only they can do. Parties are the weak point of democracy, and its fate in the century ahead will depend in large part on theirs.

MARC F. PLATTNER is co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies.