Partiti, partigianeria e civiltà

Over the past few years, a number of political theorists have examined the normative dimensions of parties and partisanship. Some have justified the desirability of parties in liberal democracies by appealing to the values of legitimate opposition, regulated rivalry, and nonviolence: by institutionalizing societal pluralism in a nonviolent way, parties can make a key contribution to the stability of liberal democracy. Others have defended the view that parties and partisans can make an important contribution to the process of public justification on which the legitimacy of liberal democratic laws and institutions depends. In this paper, we argue that both of these influential arguments in defence of parties are grounded in the idea of civility, and specifically of two dimensions of civility, i.e. what we call “moral civility” and and “justificatory civility”. In addition to these two dimensions of partisan civility, we identify a third one which we call partisan “civility-as-politeness”. This is related to norms of politeness and etiquette that regulate partisans’ speech and behaviour during electoral campaigns and within legislatures. We analyse partisan civility-as-politeness to partisanship and explore its connection with the other two dimensions of partisan civility.