Resisting Abusive Legalism: Electoral Fairness and the Partisan Commitment to Political Pluralism

Abstract

This paper focuses on how electoral fairness is vulnerable to abuse by self-interested partisans-especially abuse that conforms to legally and constitutionally sanctioned procedures. This phenomenon sometimes labelled 'abusive legalism,' challenges the aspiration to design institutions that depend only on rationally self-interested actors for their endurance. Electoral fairness in particular, we argue, depends on partisans who endorse and act from a commitment to political pluralism. We identify the normative reasons that make sense of such a commitment, and consider the difficulties involved in applying this commitment to practical projects of institutional reform. In this process, we define a theoretical framework that both adds to the expanding literature on democratic partisanship and provides a basis for further empirical research on the mechanisms of democratic backsliding.

Can partisans be pluralist? A comparative study of party member discourse in France and Hungary

“…Anti-pluralist discourse in Hungary is associated with anti-pluralist practices: the abuses of power by ruling party Fidesz since 2010 (Freedom House, 2019b; Pech and Scheppele, 2017) can be read as a progressive translation into governmental practice of the strongly polarised political discourse dominant in the Hungarian political environment since the early 2000s (Herman, 2016; Palonen, 2009). This suggests the particular importance of studying the role that pluralist forms of partisanship play in the successful democratisation of post-authoritarian societies, but also in the continued endurance of democratic institutions in older democracies (Enyedi, 2016; Galston, 2018; Herman and Muirhead, 2020).…”

“…In this regard, a number of political theorists have recently argued that specific responsibilities fall on partisans – those citizens that act with others in pursuit of translating a certain vision of the common good into governmental policy through competing in elections (Bonotti, 2011, 2018, 2019; Bonotti et al, 2018; Herman and Muirhead, 2020; Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017; Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2006; Stojanović and Bonotti, 2019; White, 2015a, 2015b; White and Ypi, 2010, 2011, 2016, 2018; Wolkenstein, 2016a, 2016b, 2018, 2019). The position of partisans in the public sphere – with privileged access to financial resources, media attention, law-making and key administrative positions – lends them significantly larger amounts of political power than other citizens (Herman and Muirhead, 2020). In Bonotti’s (2012, 2018) formulation, this creates positional duties for partisans, specific legal and non-legal obligations attached to their level of responsibility within liberal democracy.…”

“…The remaining of this paper addresses these questions with an exploratory study of the attitudes of 117 party members in France and Hungary towards their political opponents, based on a framework derived from theories of democratic partisanship. How partisans relate to their political opposition can indeed be seen a key domain of expression of pluralist partisanship (for an overview, see Herman, 2017; Herman and Muirhead, 2020). The very engagement of partisans is rooted in the conviction that their own ideas and policies are superior to those of their opponents (Rosenblum, 2008: 358).…”

“…In the past decade, a number of democratic theorists have aimed to rehabilitate partisanship as a normative category, and thus account for what ‘good partisanship’ entails in democratic societies (Bonotti, 2012, 2014, 2019; Bonotti et al, 2018; Herman, 2017; Herman and Muirhead, 2020; Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017; Muirhead, 2006, 2014; Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2006; Rosenblum, 2008; Stojanović and Bonotti, 2019; White, 2014, 2015a, 2015b; White and Ypi, 2010, 2011, 2018; Wolkenstein, 2016a, 2016b, 2018, 2019). Against the long-standing belief that partisanship, defined here as an array of discourses and practices in support of a certain vision of the common good attached to partisan identification (Herman, 2017), is necessarily vector of intolerance and division, one of the central contentions of this literature is that partisanship is compatible with a pluralist orientation.…”

Party Linkage, Public Justification and Mixed Electoral Systems

“… 1. It is also important to stress that the relationship between electoral systems and partisans’ behaviour is not unidirectional. As Herman and Muirhead (2020) point out, institutions, including electoral systems, do not simply help to realize certain normative goals by relying on individual partisans’ rational self-interest. Instead, they themselves must also rely on partisans’ moral commitment tospecific norms of behaviour and discourse .…”