Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship 1 PART I Glorious Traditions of Antipartyism and Moments of Appreciation Chapter 1: Glorious Traditions of Antipartyism: Holism 25 Chapter 2: Glorious Traditions of Antipartyism: Fatal Divisiveness 60 Chapter 3: Moments of Appreciation 108 PART II Post-Party Depression Chapter 4: Progressive Antipartyism 165 Chapter 5: Th e Anxiety of Infl uence 210 Chapter 6: Correcting the System: Association, Participation, and Deliberation 254 PART III The Moral Distinctiveness of "Party ID" Chapter 7: Partisanship and Independence 319 Chapter 8: Centrism and Extremism and an Ethic of Partisanship 369 Chapter 9: Militant Democracy: Banning Parties 412 Conclusion: "We Partisans" 456 Notes 461 Index 577

Promotional Information

Part intellectual history, part a study of contemporary politics, Nancy Rosenblum's exciting, original book poses an energetic challenge to both political theory and to citizens disaffected by democracy today. For those who think democracy would be better without strong political parties, Rosenblum seeks to show that parties and partisanship are central to meaningful political commitment. -- Richard H. Pildes, New York University School of Law Riveting and highly original, On the Side of the Angels argues with great gusto as well as deep learning that both parties and partisanship are wrongly despised today as fragmenting the desirable holism of the body politic. No other book so comprehensively interprets the account of parties and partisanship given by major political philosophers while offering a contemporary normative argument that parties and partisanship serve the political good. -- Kathleen M. Sullivan, Stanford Law School

About the Author

Nancy L. Rosenblum is the Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government and chair of the Department of Government at Harvard University. She is the author of Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America (Princeton) and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

"Incisive and deftly written... The most provocative part of On the Side of the Angels is not the discussion of parties as institutions; most people will readily grant that democracies require parties. What is more striking is Rosenblum's case for partisanship."--Paul Starr, New Republic "Rosenblum's analysis ... adds much greater rigor, clarity, and depth to [existing scholarship]... Even more, she creates a defense of partisan identification that is, at least to this reviewer, totally original."--John Aldrich, Perspectives on Politics