Political Parties in Constitutional Theory

Abstract

Political parties appear to be in crisis. The recent wave of democratic deconsolidation in several established democracies has been accompanied by the collapse, authoritarian takeover, or external capture of mainstream political parties, the partisan capture of state institutions, and a rise in hyper-nationalistic and exclusionary partisan rhetoric. While political parties have long been a central object of study in political science, constitutional theory scholars have, by and large, ignored this key democratic institution. In part, this has been due to the influence of the American and the British constitutional traditions which, unlike their European continental counterparts, are largely ..