The corruption of private interests

Ideology is not the only source of the suspicions that attend partisanship. So is self-interest, the very quality that a Hobbist politics, centered on security and prosperity, elicits in place of ideological or religious conviction. Parties, which “aggregate interests,” necessarily invite us to consult our private interests and to act politically with a view to them. From a republican perspective, this represents a kind of corruption, a failure to identify and act from a conception of the common good.

The famous treatment of factions in James Madison's tenth Federalist helps to put this concern into focus. Faction, or any “number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” is inevitable under conditions of freedom.³¹

The problem of faction arises from the fact of disagreement. More precisely, as Madison says, the “different and unequal faculties of acquiring property” reveal themselves under conditions of freedom, and because of self-love, the unequal possession of property lends a certain tinge or bias to one's opinions. But it is not only property that stands at the roots of disagreement: more generally we are susceptible to a “zeal for different opinions,” whether they involve religion, principles of government, or just about any other speculative or practical point.³²

What gets lost amid so many self-seeking individuals who so enthusiastically disagree is an appreciation of the common good. As we know, Madison refuses to rely on virtue or wisdom alone to overcome this tendency to faction. With the passing of the revolutionary generation, so “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” Nor does Madison expect us to be a “nation of philosophers.”³³

Famously, Madison instead opts for an institutional solution to a moral problem. In particular, he favored representatives chosen in electoral districts large enough to make it difficult for those who share an interest to discover their shared interest, and make it unlikely that those who do discover such an interest constitute a majority. Only “diffusive and established characters,” he speculates, will successfully attract support in large districts—not, we might say, petty partisans.³⁴ Madison hopes for representatives “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”³⁵ For their part, citizens should look for and prefer such “diffusive” characters over promise-making partisans. And ideally (though we know many will fall short), both should act from a disinterested and general appreciation of what conduces to the common good.

This hope for a politics oriented to the common good rather than to “partial considerations” is not necessarily opposed to party. Parties may or may not be factions. The Jeffersonian Republicans, for instance, which Madison helped found in the 1790s, understood themselves as defenders of the cause of self-government, and therefore distinct from a faction.³⁶

Parties that collect many separate “partial considerations” into one large, if untidy, package are also not factions in the Madisonian sense because they are not dominated by narrow (or partial) interest or animated by passing zeal. But even parties that are not partial in the narrow sense will be ever tempted to flatter narrow interests and popular passions when this offers a path to power.

Parties as the tools of elites

What distinguishes partisans from single-issue zealots (and so also distinguishes parties from Madisonian factions) is precisely an appeal to the common good. From necessity (to attract a large group of supporters) if not from principle, parties need to frame their appeals broadly. They generally cannot claim only to have the most expert or most just answer to one set of narrow and specific policy questions, as an interest group might. They aspire, after all, to rule. As such, their appeal must be general. Unlike factions or interest groups, parties speak the language of the common good.

But a familiar anti-partisan view takes this connection to the common good to be an illusion that masks the self-seeking ambition of the few. On this view, partisanship—the disposition to stand with a party, a group making a claim to rule—should be viewed always as an elite phenomenon against which ordinary citizens must ever be on guard.³⁷

Depending on its specific articulation, this view dismisses either the desirability or the reality of the “party-in-the-electorate.” John Aldrich, for instance, argues that we should restrict the term partisan to describe only office-seekers and the benefit-seekers who surround them. Voters, he argues, “are not part of the political party at all, even if they identify strongly with a party and consistently support its candidates.” They are merely “brand-name loyalists”—no more part of the party than are devoted Coke drinkers part of the Coca-Cola corporation.³⁸

What really defines partisans, on this view, is not mere loyalty, but ambition. The true partisan is one who occupies or shares in the spoils of office. This is also what makes partisanship a danger. Nor should we be fooled by partisan language that appeals to the common good, or by the moral considerations that parties advance. These are a necessary fiction, a veil that shrouds the more selfish interests of office seekers. Tocqueville describes the process best:

On this view, the “doctrines,” and “principles” that give ideological substance to parties are epiphenomenal. They are the smooth veneer that renders the seamy core of parties—individual ambition to rule—publicly respectable, the popular appearances that allow striving, ambitious politicians to seduce a mass electorate.

This concern is crystallized in Robert Michels's 1905 argument for the “iron law of oligarchy.” In modern partisanship, Michels writes, “aristocracy gladly presents itself in democratic guise.”⁴⁰

Every party, on this desponding and tough-minded view, is essentially oligarchic. The underlying idea is that a people, in order to govern itself, needs to be organized. Yet as soon as they organize themselves (through a party or by any other means), they will be betrayed by their own organization. For every organization must be led, and every leader or would-be leader must already possess—or soon enough develop—a particular interest in leading. This particular interest will be necessarily different from, and at times opposed to, the common interest.

On one hand, party is essential to modern democracy. On the other, there is no party without an oligarchic organization, and therefore no true democracy. One way or another, elites will co-opt power to serve themselves. Mass partisanship, or the identification of everyday citizens with a party, is nothing more than a kind of team spirit cultivated by elite partisans for their own benefit. It allows elites more latitude of action. At its best, this insulates government from the fickle passions of the people, and gives democracy a certain stability (thus post-WWII students of political culture celebrated the open and moderate partisanship of American parties).⁴¹

At worst, supported by the blind loyalty of everyday partisans, elites can get away with pursuing programs and policies—and their interest in reelection—without regard for the real preferences and interests of those they are charged with serving. Perhaps a cadre of self-serving elites is the price of political stability in the modern world. Perhaps democracy is elusive; in its truest sense, even impossible. But for those committed to its possibility, the less mass partisanship, the better.

Moral integrity

The final argument against partisanship looks to the problems associated with groups in general. When groups we identify with pursue purposes we do not endorse, our integrity suffers (where integrity is understood as an alignment between what we believe, and what we say, or stand for, or do). This cost will usually rise as the size of the group increases. The more members a group has, the more views and interests it amalgamates, and the less likely that what the group stands for fully correlates with what any individual in the group believes. The larger a group, the lower its standards. For this reason, there is often more integrity in being your own person than in being a party person.

The real issue at stake is not merely the number of issues on which a party may fail to reflect an individual's views, but rather involves points of principle or matters of moral urgency. Principles are most likely to get lost—to be abbreviated, compromised, or forgotten altogether—when we give ourselves over to groups. And what is party loyalty but a sort of giving over of oneself? From a principled perspective, we should think of ourselves as Henry David Thoreau would have it: belonging to a party of one.

In identifying with a party, we participate in a process of aggregation that invites us to think of principles as less weighty and binding than they are. This is why Thoreau disparages voting:

But right and wrong cannot be decided by a majority: only conscience will suffice. “It is not desirable,” Thoreau says, “to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”⁴³

For Thoreau, the grave and principled wrong of slavery—and the threat of its expansion through the 1846–48 war with Mexico—morally precluded any identification with either party or with the established government.

The deeper worry here is not only that a group will fail to stand for what is right, but that in identifying with a group, in giving the political part of ourselves over to a political group, we will lose touch with conscience, with principle, and with right. War and the expansion of slavery offered the particular occasion for Thoreau's protest, but identifying the particular principle at stake in the practice of slavery required cultivating an independent moral capacity. Identifying too completely with a group threatens to crowd out this moral capacity, to undercut the independence of mind so necessary if the voice of conscience is to be heard. Better to be men and women, independents all, than partisans.

The unnatural people

The first argument for party spirit looks to the fundamental thing parties do: they manufacture majorities. In a democracy “the people rule,” but the embarrassing and unavoidable fact is that the people almost never stand as one; even when they do, such as in the wake of an attack, their spontaneous oneness is fleeting. In normal times, public opinion is, as Tocqueville said, “infinitely fragmented.”⁴⁴

A fundamental political task in democracies is to collect these many millions of various and disparate views, distill them—necessarily insulting some while privileging others—and endorse, roughly speaking, one collectively binding rule.

Many factors can make one binding rule legitimate or just: the wisdom it embodies, the effectiveness with which it serves popular ends, the procedures by which it was formulated. Among these, one of the most forceful things that give legitimacy to any binding rule is popular support. The numerous—a plurality, a majority, a super-majority—have a kind of moral claim to legitimacy simply by their numbers.⁴⁵

It also should. Counting, or aggregation, is a necessary way of recognizing the equality of citizens who under conditions of freedom will inevitably disagree.

To hold that the numerous have some claim is not to say that its claim is absolute, or trumps every other claim. It is rather one ingredient in the mix of democratic legitimacy. All the familiar and real fears of majority tyranny make it wise to limit the power of the numerous in various ways: multiplying veto points, ensuring representation of minority groups and views, structuring constitutional rather than plebiscitary majorities, entrenching rights, and so on. But none of these limits on the numerous eradicate its claim completely; on the contrary, they presuppose a background condition where the numerous have some claim simply because they are numerous.

This highlights what is, from a democratic point of view, an argument in favor of partisanship: it expresses a willingness to make a good faith effort to stand with a group striving for democratic legitimacy. Unlike the single-issue activist, unlike the Thoreauvian person of conscience, unlike the judicious independent, what distinguishes the partisan is this willingness to stand with a group striving for democratic legitimacy. Untidy, unruly, compromising of pure principle, this group aspires to be a larger group, ideally the largest of groups: the people as a whole. Partisans may fall short, and stand permanently in minority and opposition. But they aim for more.

For this reason, partisans are driven to offer reasons that appeal broadly—if not from an abstract moral commitment to democratic principles, then from strategic or prudential concerns. Rhetoric, which makes principle palatable by connecting general principles to particular opinions and sentiments, is ever the partisan's ally. Some rhetoric will appeal to interest, other rhetoric to convictions of a more moral sort. But in either case, parties that aim to attract large numbers to their side have to speak to general concerns. They have to form some more or less articulate and better or worse approximation of the common good.

Yet there is a difference between the partisan's path to the common good and the independent citizen's path. The ideal independent citizen forges for himself or herself a conception of the common good. There is no reason to think that many independent citizens, each forming his and her conceptions independently, will stand with anyone else, even when they are motivated by justice. The burdens of judgment are such that individual conceptions of what is reasonable or just will rarely align. The willingness to participate in the process of coming together—standing with rather than only standing for—distinguishes the partisan from the ideal independent citizen, who keeps informed and may even form a “reasonable conception of justice,” but who acts alone.⁴⁶

None of this is to say that partisans are better when they succeed at recruiting a majority to their side, nor is it to affirm that majorities always deserve the moral authority they command. Majorities can be good and majorities can be bad. The moral and epistemic grounding of majority rule is subtle and never altogether convincing.⁴⁷

In general, we settle for a majority only because it is the closest practical approximation to the people as a whole. Because it falls terribly short of complete consensus, the domain of majority rule will under any decent government be hedged and constricted. But sorry as the case for majority rule is, the fact remains that democracy cannot easily do without it. Somewhere the variety of individual sentiments, interests, and convictions needs to be collected. This can happen in the legislature, when parties that individually fall short of a majority join a governing coalition. It can happen in the electoral process, where a slate of candidates or parties is winnowed through run-offs or primaries. It can happen in the electorate itself, where, aided by the prod of single-member districts, voters take into account not only what they think about a candidate's positions, but also the probability that these positions will appeal to others. The point is that this has to happen somewhere: a group large enough to claim democratic legitimacy does not exist spontaneously, antecedent to the political process. It must be created.⁴⁸

The observation that parties “aggregate” opinion is a staple of twentieth-century political science. What goes less noticed is that this aggregation is not entirely the product of the machine-like operations of a system, where individuals enjoy benefits they do not intentionally supply. The aggregation only happens because certain citizens—namely, partisans—are willing to participate in the process of its creation. This is the respect in which partisanship is a virtue of democratic citizens: it displays a democratic sympathy, a willingness to compromise, to give and to take, and (perhaps most of all) to bear the burdens of standing with one's fellow citizens. The asociability of human nature—our tendency to privilege our own point of view—means that standing with others is a strain. E pluribus plures: out of many, many. To be governed, and more crucially, to govern ourselves, we have to suppress the ways we find others disagreeable and learn to abbreviate at least some of our convictions. There is a cost to one's integrity that comes from standing with a group. If this were easy, if it were natural or spontaneous, it would not be anything to admire. But it is a virtue democracy can never be entirely without.

Mill's standing antagonisms

Many identify with a party not out of an interest in participating in the creation of a legitimate claim to govern, but from devotion to a cause. They stand with others not for its own sake, but for advancing a particular understanding of the common good. This understanding is often connected both to a sense of which concrete interests in society that should take priority, and also to a sense of justice. What often motivates citizens to stand together is the fact that in doing so, they stand for something—and sometimes more importantly, against something else.

Partisans are motivated as much by the desire to combat the injustice (and foolishness) of their opponents as the desire to advance their own commitments. From the partisan's perspective, contestation only arises because one's opponents are flawed. To the Democratic eye, for example, Republicans appear heartless. Republicans experience Democrats as irresponsibly innocent. Each routinely accuses the other of bad faith and hypocrisy. One's opponents lack either intelligence or compassion, and in either case the partisanship of the other side seems to reflect something more defective in it than in oneself. Perhaps the defect is only a mistake, like a factual or logical error—or worse, perhaps it reflects a touch of evil? While prone to view opponents with suspicion, partisans usually do not perceive their own side as partisan at all, since their own side looks universally true. Each side sees itself as standing for a certain understanding of justice, and from this perspective the nation would be better off if their opponents in some sense did not exist. While defensive about their own commitments, partisans tend not to think of partisan contestation as something good: it is only because of the injustice of one side that the other side has to fight at all.

Contrary to this partisan self-understanding, the second argument for partisanship holds that contestation is itself necessary for justice. The argument combines several propositions: first, that political or practical judgment often reflects a reconciliation of opposing claims; second, that we are individually constituted as to better see (and feel) one side rather than the whole; and third, because of our limitations, conflict between adherents of rival values can produce compromises or reconciliations that are more reasonable than would be the case without conflict.

While a number of thinkers have advanced the case for conflict, each in a distinctive way (for instance, Machiavelli, Ferguson, Hegel, and Marx),⁴⁹

it is more common to put the accent on harmony, reconciliation, and agreement over dissensus. This makes a certain sense in that cardinal political goals like peace, stability, and justice always depend on a measure of consensus both elusive and fragile, and the task political theory most often sets for itself concerns the kind of peace and justice that are both possible and worthy. Even amid the stability of advanced industrial democracies, one of the dominant questions in political theory concerns the possibility of agreeing about justice, given the deep differences in interest and belief that liberty makes inevitable.⁵⁰ To suppose that disagreement rather than rational consensus is somehow essential is the less common position, both in the history of political thought and in contemporary political theory.⁵¹

One figure who advanced such a view, and the person to whom this argument looks for inspiration, is John Stuart Mill. What is curious about Mill is that he was both a partisan and a non-partisan defender of partisanship. In particular, he prized the kind of ideological contestation that can fuel partisan contestation. As a partisan, Mill knew where he stood: he was, he says, always a “Radical and Democrat for Europe.”⁵²

On the side of democracy, he was inclined to see “the numerical majority everywhere unjustly depressed, everywhere trampled on, or at the best overlooked … nowhere possessing power enough … even to prevent themselves from being taxed avowedly for the pecuniary profit of the ruling classes.”⁵³ His partisan commitments did not compress the scope of his thought, nor did his philosophic impartiality unmoor his political commitments.

At the same time he supported the cause of democracy in Europe, he was deeply worried about majority rule. In particular, he was profoundly worried that the authority of the majority would extend beyond legislation to custom and opinion, crushing all that opposed it and eradicating the sources of contestation that might nourish a more democratic future. Mill was willing to stand for his beliefs, yet did not blind himself to the possibility that they were partial. In short, he both defended democracy and worried about its defects, and from this curious position he hoped that while his party would win, its victory would never be so complete as to extinguish vigorous partisanship.

The enduring image of partisanship Mill offers comes in the pages of On Liberty, where he defends the ultimate importance of free expression by an appeal to the dialectical nature of truth, at least the truths relevant to human things. Mill takes it as a “commonplace” that:

The necessity of order and the desirability of progress: both are true, and yet unalloyed each can be disastrous. They each stand—like authority and liberty, equality and distinction, courage and gentleness, faith and skepticism—as what Mill calls “fractional truths.” Any prudent application of one value requires that it be somehow blended with what opposes it. “No whole truth is possible,” Mill says, “but by combining the points of view of all the fractional truths.”⁵⁵

To unpack Mill's argument, it is important to see that the idea of many-sided or fractional truths does not mean that “truth” in some metaphysical sense includes analytically contradictory elements. The romantic idea of a paradoxical truth can be enchanting, but the author of A System of Logic (1843) would not so complacently betray the canons of consistency. In speaking of “many-sided” truth, Mill is not talking about truth in a metaphysical or analytic sense but is rather addressing “the great practical concerns of life,” or what is true with respect to action and politics. Truth can be better understood in this context as prudence, or what is advisable with respect to action and policy. Metaphysical or logical truths do not apply straightforwardly in political life.

Take the principle of human equality. While a partisan of democracy, Mill also thought the ideal of human equality could be “detrimental to moral and political excellence.”⁵⁶

He was essentially ambivalent—sympathetic to the political expression of equality and also worried about it. The principle of equality stands as one of Mill's fractional truths, in that every person is in some respects equal to all other persons, while in some ways equal only to some other persons, and in still other ways the equal of no other person. That human equality is true in some respects and not in others does not involve any logical contradiction or paradox. It is in practice, not logic, that partial truths need to be reconciled and blended.

As a second example of fractional truths, consider the maxim that just government is based on the consent of the governed, an axiom for progressives like Mill. Progressive societies cannot view the past with the sort of pious reverence that places what is inherited beyond touch. To be progressive is to view the past critically. In this sense, ideals of progress imperil traditions that depend for their strength on the authority of ancestors, such as revelation and the authoritative traditions of its interpretation. In place of ancestral authority, progressive ideals substitute a new standard of authority based in the rational consent of the governed. Because progressive societies cannot dispense with order, they need to assert that social order can be maintained in the absence of pious reverence for the past. Order can depend on a popular appreciation of the benefits gained in exchange for compliance and obedience; in short, it can be founded on consent.

Against this claim, conservatives hold that consent is too fragile a basis for the preservation of social order, and view progressive ideals (rather than the past) critically. Political communities and social orders need to draw on, they believe, a supply of veneration. Something (the royal lineage, ancient customs, a constitutional settlement) needs to elicit pious reverence for the social order to hold.

In practice, both claims can be partly true. A social order based on veneration alone can cement oppression and invite stagnation. An order based on rational choice alone would be ever-vulnerable to bad choices and shifting moods. The advantages of each may compensate for the other's defects, yet it is difficult to hold the two claims simultaneously.

This difficulty points to Mill's second claim. The tension between partial truths does not follow from logic, but from human character. The rivalry between equality and distinction or between progress and order has less to do with the meaning of the concepts themselves than with, as Mill says, “the types of human character which answer to them.”⁵⁷

The source of our insight is also the source of our limitation: we are attuned by upbringing and nature to better feel and see one side of the truth at the expense of others. Every capacity is also incapacity. Our own groove or situation—our nationality, our upbringing, our temperament, our age, our financial standing—opens our eyes to some things while closing them to others; we are each one of us equipped, Mill says, “for perceiving some things, and for missing or forgetting others.⁵⁸

This tendency, ordinary and recognizable enough, extends even to great minds, as Mill so forcefully demonstrates in his companion essays on “the two great seminal minds of England in their age,” Jeremy Bentham and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.⁵⁹

United as “great questioner(s) of things established,” Bentham and Coleridge were divided about all else: “Each of them scarcely sees anything but what the other does not see,” Mill says.⁶⁰ In particular, Bentham saw what needed to be changed (most particularly in England's legal inheritance), while Coleridge grasped the truths contained in traditional institutions and opinion. While Bentham had no regard for convention and built a philosophic system from scratch, founded on the simple truth that pleasure is good and pain is bad, Coleridge assumed that the antiquity or prevalence of an opinion is “a presumption that it is not altogether false.”⁶¹ Bentham thus neglected tradition in favor of reform, while Coleridge opposed reform in the name of conservation. Their modes of thought, their perceptions, and their recommendations are fundamentally antagonistic, yet Mill finds in each of them—and more importantly, in both together—unquestionable genius.

The genius of each, however, is intimately related to his limitation: to see more would have caused each to see less. Mill castigates Bentham's narrowness of mind, which engendered such dogmatic confidence that, as if with one eye closed, it led him to deny as absurd all he disagreed with. Yet at the same time Mill appreciates the advantages this narrowness conferred: “For our part,” Mill says, “we have a large tolerance for one-eyed men, provided their eye is a penetrating one: if they saw more, they probably would not see so keenly, nor so eagerly pursue one course of enquiry.”⁶²

This is why partisans can illuminate the political world, if not for their own benefit, for those who are less attached to party and cause. Because practical truths are many-sided, partisanship has its place.

Yet Mill puts partisanship in its place. For he writes not solely of Bentham, not only of Coleridge, but both, side by side; with the specter of the other, he demotes each alone. Better than, or higher than, the partisan is to see beyond partisanship to the rival claims of each side—as Mill does in sizing up Bentham and Coleridge as a pair. “It is not on the impassioned partisan,” Mill says, “it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect.”⁶³

The benefits of partisanship would seem to accrue to non-partisan onlookers. Mill's defense of partisanship was for the sake of something beyond partisanship: judicious compromise and deliberation.⁶⁴

Ethical partisanship

Yet impartiality is elusive. Onlookers are unlikely to be completely neutral to what they witness and at the same time interested enough to follow it. When they do follow it, even they are likely to feel more sympathy for this side or that. Without any sympathy, they are unlikely to follow the contest. Lacking any conviction, they are less likely to appreciate the full force of the positions at stake. Partisanship invites one-sidedness, while impartiality breeds indifference.⁶⁵

But it would be a mistake to rigorously divide neutral observers and committed partisans, as if these referred to wholly separate sets of people. Such a division asks too much of observers and too little of partisans. Better to recognize that the division between “impassioned partisans” and “disinterested observers” can run through the same person. One part of us gives ourselves over to what we intuit, feel, and know—which gives rise to our particular perspective on things, and may support party spirit. But the “giving over” ought to be less than complete, so as to preserve an observational self that looks at our own commitments from a distance. As the bystander learns from the impassioned partisan, so this reflective and observing self cannot fully awaken before we cultivate the part of ourselves that fully feels and only sees what is partly true. The key to ethical partisanship is not to let one part cripple the other.

Ethical partisans stand, and yet know that this is not the only reasonable place one can take a stand. They hope their side wins, yet know that victory should never be total. The most admirable partisans are brave enough to stand up publicly for what they see, yet are capacious enough to know that what they see is not the whole of things. This partisanship is capable of reflecting with some detachment on one's stand, perhaps even able to entertain one's political enemies in grudging good cheer. Such partisans stand, but not “unflinchingly.”⁶⁶

They would flinch—at the thought that one side would win a victory that might bring an end to partisanship itself.

Mill's image of partisan contestation—of “combatants fighting”—is drawn from war, and amid the passions of battle. Yet partisanship is not in fact war: in its normal modes it does not aim for wholesale revolution and it forsakes violence. There is a difference between “adversaries” and “enemies.”⁶⁷

The everyday disputes among partisans engage, if only indirectly, disagreements about fundamentals: how far equality should be extended, how rule of the people should be structured, how completely liberty should be rendered. What they do not involve is a dispute about how such disputes should be settled. Ethical partisans agree to carry out their contest within certain boundaries. These boundaries are often set by the terms of a constitutional settlement that itself governs the manner and mode of partisanship: it places certain things squarely out of bounds. In principle, it can seem a relatively simple thing to articulate these boundaries. Appeals that challenge constitutional essentials such as political equality, for instance, would be “out-of-bounds.”

In practice, however, it is often perplexing—and controversial—to locate exactly what constitutional essentials prohibit and permit, and formal restrictions on the kinds of claims partisans can advance often depend on concrete historical episodes that make clear what is to be avoided. Germany, Israel, Turkey, and Spain have all banned particular parties because of their unwillingness to forsake violence in pursuit of political goals or because they oppose the “free democratic basic order.”⁶⁸

The defense of vigorous partisan contestation focuses less on identifying precisely which substantive claims are forbidden or permitted, and more on the procedures the contest follows. It leaves the problem of identifying the range of permissible contestation to partisans themselves. Partisans will often enough be tempted to accuse their accusers of transgressing proper boundaries, of contesting what should not be questioned. Such charges are a staple of ordinary political rhetoric. Whether the charge has merit in any concrete instance often cannot be entirely decided in an ethical realm purified of partisan contestation.

The single procedural principle that ethical partisans never transgress is the prohibition of violence. Ethical partisans keep their guns in their holsters. The ethics of war are distinct from the ethics of partisanship. Such a commitment to non-violent procedures of contestation is supported by a Millian recognition that our convictions are unlikely to be “true” without qualification. Ethical partisans manage to maintain two points of view: one that is up close, engaged, and feels the power of conviction, and another that looks on from a distance, and sees one's own commitments as partial. The renunciation of violence also finds support in the idea of partisanship as a willingness to stand with a group that is striving to acquire democratic legitimacy. On this understanding, a party is not an entirely principled thing. It is a patchwork association, appealing to principle, but in a loose enough way to appeal broadly. As such, it is not a source of moral truths so pure that losing comes to seem intolerable.

Finally, we should keep in mind that even if, as Mill says, “truth, in the practical concerns of life,” is reducible to “standing antagonisms,” it is not as if all values are naturally paired with some opponent. All disagreement cannot be contained by antagonistic dyads that compete in some abstract sense, waiting to inspire rival partisans. Important values will be lost in the contest of two or even three grand parties, which is one reason to favor the sort of proportional representation that gives incentive to smaller parties. At the least, it is important to remember that two-party systems in no way reflect the ‘nature of things.’⁶⁹

Yet pair-wise “antagonisms” draw our attention away from the fragmentation of value and focus it on the general tendencies of the age. Much of everyday political contestation is nourished by a deeper and usually unseen contest of fundamental alternatives. This contest is shrouded in non-revolutionary times. Indeed, partisans' agreement to compete via non-violent means within the terms of a constitutional settlement itself helps to shroud those deeper differences that nourish partisan contestation. For instance, as Tocqueville noticed about even the partisanship of Van Buren's day (which seemed so utterly devoid of principle), when one attends carefully to the “secret instincts” and “innermost thoughts” of motley and unprincipled American parties, one discovers that they are “more or less linked to one or the other of the two great parties that have divided men since there have been free societies.” One works to extend the popular power, the other to restrict it. This does not mean that either party wishes to make democracy or aristocracy prevail wholly, Tocqueville insists, only that “aristocratic or democratic passions … form as it were the sensitive spot and the soul of them.”⁷⁰

An ambiguity about founding principles is built into liberal democracy. The ambiguity stems not merely from the fact that founding principles can empirically conflict with each other, as with the liberty-equality “trade-off.” Rather, it derives from the qualified or partial basis of the claims of liberty and the claims of equality themselves. Thus any foundational or constitutional settlement should leave “contingencies, remainders, resistances, and excesses” that nourish and inspire partisan contestation.⁷¹

At any moment, certain political questions become our questions: they connect to interests, elicit passions, and generate convictions. Are embryonic stem cells an appropriate subject of scientific research? Are concentrations of wealth undermining equality of opportunity? How should the burden of taxation be shared? Professional politicians have an interest in introducing questions that divide voters to their advantage. At the same time, practical questions arise for us in the particular way they do at least in part because we understand ourselves as a progressive regime, one that should become fairer, more democratic, more just, and more prosperous over time. But where—if anywhere—do we get off the train of progress? How—if at all—should we slow it down? When—if anytime—should we add to its fuel?

It is difficult to make these judgments exactly, as Mill would say. It is rather easier to give ourselves over to one side or the other—to discern and to feel the claims of progress only, or the claims of preservation only. Those who are on occasion internally torn between various pulls, the pull to reform on one hand and the pull to stabilize or conserve on the other, need to hear from those who see things in a more one-sided way. This defense of party spirit approves of such fundamental sources of enduring partisan contestation, and takes even the meaning of liberty and democracy to be in some sense unsettled and impossible to be settled. This is not to say that everything is partisan, all the way down; but the path to independent judgment and a discerning appraisal of practical affairs needs to “go through” the partisan's perspective. To dispense with the partisan's insight is not to arrive at some pure independence or “view from nowhere”—it is likely to avoid politics altogether.⁷²

So long as we are sensible of our interests or care about what is right in the world we inhabit, we will disagree. And so long as we disagree, partisanship will have a place. The divisions that partisans reflect and invent are natural in democracy. The persistence of parties and partisanship reminds us that the people are divided into parts, each of which wishes to have its way. These parts or parties, bound by shared interest and by common commitments, make the political world turn. It is they who, disproportionately, keep informed, show up to vote, and fuel campaigns. They are the ones who cheer in joy and mourn in sorrow on election night—and either way, steel themselves for another fight. There is reason to view with some sympathy those who take a stand, and who are bold (and in some respects unreflective) enough to carry this stand to the political world. If they are prejudiced, narrow, and blind in some respects (and they often are), they are also idealistic, inspired, and knowing. What we should seek is not a politics without partisanship, but an ethics of partisanship.