Partisanship and the ethics of citizenship
An important body of literature has documented, and sometimes lamented, the decline of partisanship over the last few decades. Party membership and partisan identification seem to have decreased significantly, while skepticism towards partisan politics has increased among populations of consolidated democracies. However, as I argue in a recent article, while some aspects of this evolution are worrisome, it is unclear that we should regret the age of massive partisan loyalty. While parties may be essential to a well-functioning democracy for a diversity of reasons, partisanship, understood as the sustained commitment by citizens to a particular political party, is more ambivalent. In other words, parties may be more valuable than partisanship.
